Customer Reviews

Battleships of World War Two: An International Encyclopedia

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book offers in one place, substantial information about the battleships of World War Two. A companion to his earlier work on cruisers, I was most impressed by a number of rare photographs that I have not seen before in other books covering the subject.

As a survey of the subject, this offers quite a bit of information. Of course, there are other books that delve into much more detail but you'd have to buy four or five books.

The only disappointment in this book were the line drawings. There were imprecise and not up to par with the drawing of the author's previous book on cruisers. In addition, the gray color of the line drawings were distracting.

Hopefully all the author's books will be combined into one comprehensive reprint, as it is diffcult to find his earlier work on destroyers.

I love the way Whitley compresses it all into one volume that won't chew a hole in your wallet. This is not the last word in battleship references, but it's among the best first words you can find. The one weakness is in its illustrations. Modelers can pass this one by. The line drawings look like the author did them himself, out of necessity--which is actually the case. And there are no armor schematics. However, Whitley goes beyond where other references (like Conway's) grind to a halt, and he goes to the trouble of describing the armor layout rather than simply slapping statistics onto the page. What it lacks in detail, it makes up for with its handiness and broad scope. I'm aware of its limitations, especially where the author was trying to pry information out of Russian and Japanese sources, but I find myself getting plenty of use out of it.

Battleships of World War Two : An International Encyclopedia by Whitley is actually pretty good, especially compared to some of his other efforts. There seem to be fewer editorial errors compared to his book on cruisers and all in all the historical information is useful. Modelers should note that the drawings are pretty useless, which is consistent with the books in this series.

Fortunately, this book seems to be complete, especially if you have Whitley's cruiser book, which is missing the combat history of the British cruiser HMS Bermuda (and not HMS Jamaica, as was mentioned in my Amazon review of Cruisers of World War Two). A pretty good effort, but if you want completeness and better illustrations, go for the Garzke and Dulin series on battleships.

This book gives two tales that justify some of the stars. First, you can use this book for proof of when the USA goes up to Chile and asks to purchase their only battleship, the "Almirante Latorre", to make good the losses of Pear Harbor after December 7, 1941. That's sort of weird because that battleship is not really much better than a "Texas" class ship. Second, Germany sinks the last battleship of WWII. The Russians were given an Italian battleship, the "Guido Cesare", as part of the war prizes given out after WWII. In 1955 the ex-Italian Soviet battleship, now called "Novorossik" sets off a German mine from WWII, started taking a list, the Soviets send in new sailors to hand pump out the ship, it rolls over, and was loss with a fantastic amount of life. Over 500 Soviet sailors died when the Novorossik sank in October of 1955.

Yes, the book has simple drawings of the battleships. But, it does a fairly good job of showing the simple lines of the ships. I scaled some of the drawings, the Graf Spee is about 1/1150 scale. The larger battleships scale out even smaller. You will have to use other books, like the Osprey book on Pocket battleships, if you want specific and detailed information on a particular ship.

Neither the German or Greek pre-dreadnoughts of WWII are in this book. The author gives a good reason why with an explanation of the USS Arkansas battleship. The Wyoming is a sistership of Arkansas. However, Wyoming was removed as a battleship in compliance with the Washington treaty of 1933. So she was not a battleship and her service life was of no matter in this book. The German and Greek pre-dreadnoughts were either training ships or fire support ships, not true battleships. Thus they are not a subject of this book.

However, I liked this book. It gives a good break down of the size of the ships, their tonnages, and the arms. Also, as in the case of the extensively rebuilt American ships, it gives rebuilt figures for tonnages, speed, range, and arms. One of the more interesting tales was a Soviet battleship was rebuilt to burn wood. Yes, while British and American ships burned oil in WWII a Soviet ship was modified to burn wood because all the Soviet coal was needed for their war effort. In addition, this book gives the reasons for the ships losses or their fates. The USS Texas and some other American ships are turned into war memorials. Last, it gives the fate of all the ships. The vast majority are scrapped from about 1947 until 1959. Since the book was written in '97 the USS Missouri and USS New Jersey have become war memorials. Iowa and Wisconsin will become museums but just where has not quite been decided as of the date of this review.

M. J. Whitley does a wonderful job following the American battleship development of pre-1935. The Pennsylvania to the New Mexico class are all very close in lines. Whitley does a masterful job showing how these ships are all evolved from one another. Indeed, the true ships that are the genesis of all American battleships are the Nevada class.

Whitley also shows the aborted German "H" class battleship, kind of like a super Bismarck class ship with 16" guns. This is done with both the British and the Soviets. However, since the American Montana class is never laid down it's not the subject of analysis of this book.

I use this book as a general reference tool. It has a nice and compact write up of all the world's battleships in world war two. It has the service records of the ships, modifications made in their use, and general write up of their designs.

This book is worth it's four stars if you can find it on discount or at your local used book store. I didn't pay much for the book and it now is a useful part of my library. A useful reference book is what we collectors want.

There are serious problems in this book. I've gone through just the Latin American ships and compared the information to Robert Schenia's (RS) work in Latin America: A Naval History, 1810-1987; he is pretty much the premier South American naval historian. While Whitley's events are on the whole accurate, and his statistical descriptions extremely well-done, he has the wrong dates--and not just a few. I'm not sure what happened, unless he made them up...

Example: for the Argentine dreadnought Moreno, Whitley (W) has the dates of launching, completion, and eventual fate wrong.
Launching: RS and the New York Times (NYT) say 23 September; W says 28th.
Completion: RS says March 1915, which appears to be backed up by a late February NYT article reporting on a dispute between Argentina and the US over the ships not being completed; W says 15 January 1915.
Fate: RS says Moreno was sold on 8 February 1957; W says 1 Feb.

Another quick example is the Brazilian Minas Geraes' fate; RS says that she was sold in 1953, Whitley says 1952.

If these are the problems found in just the Latin American ships, what does the rest of the book hold?

M. J. Whitley does his best to describe the world's capital ships of the WWII era but just does not devote enough material to adequately cover the rebuilt ships from the WWI era, the new designs laid down and completed in the 1930's and 1940's, and the designs planned but not laid down or completed. As with his book on Aircraft Carrier Development, the line drawings are crude and not particuarly accurate. Mr. Whitley includes descriptions of the Soviet dreadnoughts laid down in 1938-39-40 (Sovietskii Soyuz class) but indicates nothing about the U. S. Montana class, which were the first US design to be wider than the locks of the Panama Canal. Overall, the material contained here can be found to much better effect in other references.

Excellent reference book for a very reasonable price. I have already spent several hours paging through it and comparing the different ships. Amazon's delivery service was, as usual, prompt and hassel-free. I am quite satisfied.

This is clearly the best book I have seen on battleships. The content level compared to cost was good enough that I ordered the authors books on cruisers and destroyers without seeing them.