Battleships: Books - History, Types and Construction

An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Battleships - From 1860 to the First World War

This book examines the origins and evolution of early battleships, from the Gloire and Warrior through to the Erzherzog class. It includes a country-by-country guide to over 60 of the major vessels and classes of the pre-Dreadnought era, with information about the construction, appearance, function and history of each.

It features more than 200 photographs, illustrations and diagrams bring to life the history of these amazing fighting vessels. It offers information panels that provide at-a-glance access to specifications such as the vessel's country of origin, size, weight, speed, and much more. It includes detailed personal anecdotes about the people who were the driving force behind the construction and evolution of these fascinating vessels.

Battleships of the World - Struggle for Naval Supremacy 1820-1945

The battleships of the world's navies in the 1820s were descended directly in line from the Revenge of 1577: they were wooden-built, sail-powered and mounted guns on the broadside, firing solid shot.

In the next half century, steel, steam and shells had wrought a transformation and by 1906, Dreadnought had ushered in a revolution in naval architecture. The naval race between Britain and Germany that followed, led to the clash of the navies at Jutland in 1916.
Though this was indecisive, the German navy never again challenged the Grand Fleet of Britain during the war, and eventually the crews refused to put to sea again.
Disarmament on a massive scale followed, but the battleship was still regarded as the arbiter of sea-power in the years between the wars.

However, the advocates of air power were looking to the future, and when in 1940 biplane Swordfish torpedo bombers of the Fleet Air Arm sank three Italian battleships at their moorings in Taranto, the Japanese sensed their opportunity. Their attack on the American Pacific fleet base at Pearl Harbor sank eight battleships - but the American carriers were at sea, and escaped destruction.

Given the distances involved, the Pacific war was necessarily a carrier war, and in the major actions of the Coral Sea, Midway, Leyte Gulf and the Philippine Sea, all the fighting was done by aircraft, with battleships reduced to a supporting role.
Soon after the war ended, most were sent for scrap, and a naval tradition had come to an end.

Battleships: The First Big Guns - Rare photographs from Wartime Archives (Images of War)

This addition to the Images of War series takes as its focus the early Big Gun battleships that saw development and deployment during the First World War. Iconic ships such as HMS Warspite and Malaya feature amidst this pictorial history that is sure to appeal to fans of the series, and naval enthusiasts in particular.

Vessels featured include the battleship Royal Sovereign, the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle, the cruiser HMS Gloucester, the Queen Elizabeth class battleship HMS Barham and the Italian battleships Littorio, Cesare, Duillo, Vittorio Veneto, Conte di Cavour and Doria, amongst many others. British and international battleships feature side by side in a publication that offers a truly representative selection of the kind of vessels in action at this time.

Dreadnoughts - A Photographic History

The construction of British Dreadnought warships between 1905 and 1920 was an enormous financial and industrial undertaking which involved all the major ship builders in Great Britain and two Royal Naval Dockyards. The speed at which these warships could be built became a matter of national importance as Britain was inexorably drawn into an accelerating naval race with Germany.

The massive Dreadnought construction programme had to be mediated through the craft skills and working practices of a wide range of dock and shipyard workers. The leviathans of the sea were built across the country at key ports, including Portsmouth and Devonport. This updated edition encompasses rare and previously unpublished photographs from across Britain, which provide a timely and important insight into this defining period in British naval history.

South American Battleships 1908-59 : Brazil, Argentina, and Chile's great dreadnought race (Osprey)

In 1908 the most incredible naval arms race in history began. Flush with cash from rubber and coffee, Brazil decided to order three of the latest, greatest category of warship available - the dreadnought battleship. One Brazilian dreadnought by itself could defeat the combined gunnery of every other warship of all the other South American nations.

Brazil's decision triggered its neighbour Argentina to order its own brace of dreadnoughts, which in turn forced Chile (which had fought boundary disputes with Argentina) to order some. In the process, the South American dreadnought mania drove the three participants nearly into insolvency, led to the bankruptcy of a major shipyard, and triggered a chain of events which led Turkey to declare war on Great Britain.
It also produced several groundbreaking dreadnought designs and one of the world's first aircraft carriers.

World War Two at Sea - The Last Battleships - Rare photographs from Wartime Archives (Images of War)

The big-gun battleship served as a symbol of the ultimate power of the world's greatest navies beginning late in the nineteenth century and continuing into the Second World War. So historically important was this vessel that the arms race between Britain and Germany to build navies with larger, more powerful battleships was among the key sources of tension between those nations in the lead up to the First World War.

In this book, veteran battleship crew members describe their unforgettable experiences, including those of a young officer in a British battleship at Jutland; tales of the loss of the German warship Scharnhorst in the arctic off the North Cape; the combat experience inside a sixteen-inch gun turret aboard an Iowa-class battleship bombarding Iraq during the Gulf War, and the adventures of HMS Warspite in World War One, in the Mediterranean and on her way to the breaker's yard in 1947.
Included too is the story of the great German battleship Bismarck, which sank the pride of the British fleet, the story of HMS Hood, and that of the USS Missouri on whose deck the final surrender document of the Second World War was signed.
The text is combined with a compelling selection of historic images representing the era of the great battleships from the early years through the First and Second World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the preservation of a handful of these vessels as museum pieces today.