Customer Reviews

Aboard the Farragut Class Destroyers in World War II: A History With First-Person Accounts of Enlisted Men

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I opened this book with some hesitation because often first person historical compilations are filled with bias and inaccuracies, and my other hesitation was the publisher of the book. I have not liked many McFarland books because of bad editing, poor research etc. What I found after starting to read was a book that exceeded my expectations and is truly a gem for those who love Naval History. Mr. Block stayed true to discussing only one class of ships and was wise in not putting every story available into his book. Rather he paints a general picture of the ships and selects the best accounts to let the reader experiences the Farragut's.

What was even more of a treasure was his expertise in the engineering portions of the ship. The book alone was worth reading for his discussions on the set up of the engine rooms, the fire (boiler) rooms and his frank discussion of the sub standard engineering set up of the ships. He has two diagrams worth the purchase of the book showing two different styles of boilers that had me studying both and understanding the operation of boilers even better.

What was truly a pleasant surprise is he didn't go over material available elsewhere but brought out new and relevant material. Such as the U.S.S. Dale a Farragut is explored in Tales of a Tin Can and the overloading of the metacentric height causing the entire class of Farragut's to be top heavy was discussed by the U.S.S. Dewey's captain during the 1944 typhoon by Raymond Calhoun. Block wisely avoided covering material from those books so his book would be a compliment to those two fine books. I can't wait to reread all three books together to get a better sense of the Farragut class.