Customer Reviews

British Battleships 1939-45 (2): Nelson and King George V classes (New Vanguard)

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This book actually covers more than the two battleship classes described in the title. It also gives nearly two pages to HMS Vanguard, a battleship completed after World War II was over, and the Lion class, which were laid down in 1939 but never completed.

If you know little about these four classes of British battleships, this title is a readable, reasonably well-illustrated, and informative introduction. If you are already knowledgeable, you may be disappointed. I believe author Konstam spread his effort too thinly. By giving background on Vanguard and the Lion class, he lost the opportunity to give the kind of depth I wanted on the King George V class.

The King George V class ships were vital participants in World War II. Three of them were involved in surface actions against enemy battleships. Their protection incorporated the lessons of Jutland, meaning they were well-protected against shellfire. On the other hand, Prince of Wales succumbed to just five torpedoes in the South China Sea, suggesting flotation survival was not ideal. Yet this vital class was given barely over five pages of text; insufficient to address valid questions about protection, seaworthiness, and firepower.

There are two "Range and Penetration" tables, comparing the capabilities of the 16-inch and 14-inch guns of the Nelson and King George V classes: range, gun elevation, angle of descent, and shell velocity. Despite the title, the tables give no information about actual shell penetration.

The author also makes an error on p. 11 when he describes Britain's proposed G3 battlecruisers and N3 battleships as "the first battleships in the world to adopt triple turrets" around the year 1920. They may have been the RN's first triple-turret ships, but by this time the Italian, Russian, and U.S. Navies had all commissioned triple-turret battleships. That said, the related discussion of the Washington Treaty, and its impact on the eccentric design of the battleships Nelson and Rodney, is probably the most insightful section of this book.

This title is simply not up to the standard of Mr. Konstam's earlier title about the Queen Elizabeth and Royal Sovereign classes, which covered a smaller topic with greater depth. Yet it still gives a nice overview of the modern battleships that comprised a vital cornerstone of Britain's survival in World War II's grim early years.

This book provides a useful brief overview of the British Nelson and King George V class battleships, as well as HMS Vanguard and the never built Lion class battleships. It's handsomely illustrated and provides well written and succinct accounts of the ships' development, operational history and key statistics. The coverage of the Nelson class is particularly strong, and Konstam makes a strong argument for considering these ships to have been successful and important assets during the war. Unlike some Osprey books, the book also features a useful bibliography.

However, for all that it's not a successful book. Its main problem is that it tries to cover too many topics in its allocated 48 pages - the Nelson and KGV classes would each easily warrant a book of this length given their interesting design and service histories and the Lion class and HMS Vanguard don't really fit into the scope of the book. As another reviewer has noted, this means that the coverage of all the ships is inadequate. As a result, this book is useful only as a starting point, and doesn't justify its price. In addition, the book is let down by some basic mistakes - on page 8 it's wrongly started that the German battleship Scharnhorst was Bismark's sister ship immediately after she's correctly identified as being the lead ship of her own class of battlecruisers and on page 42 its stated that HMS Rodney was sold for scrap before the date she was placed in reserve (1948 seems to have been confused with 1949). These obvious mistakes should have been caught by the author or editor, and raise concerns about the accuracy of the rest of the book's content (for instance, it seems likely that any typos in the data tables would have also gone uncorrected).

This is a good, concise guide to these two classes of ships, and unlike later Vanguard books covers some of the developments and upgrades applied during the war. One disappointment was that it was obviously written from a traditional British historical viewpoint with a lot of reference to sinking the Bismark but a lot of glazing over of losses and shortcomings of these ships which other books in this series have covered nicely.

Excellent study of the design and careers of these eight ships. Focus is on the evolution of the designs and operational careers with excellent illustrations. This is not intended for model builders, so elaborate drawings and close ups of specific features are lacking. Plusses and minuses of each design are discussed, and the circumstances behind the wartime loss of several are thoroughly examined. Highly recommended for naval enthusiasts interested in how specific design decisions responded to actual wartime requirements.