Customer Reviews

Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1906-1921 (Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, Vol. 2)

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The 1906-1921 book of Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships is arguably the second best in the series after the outstanding (although increasingly rare and outrageously expensive) 1947-1995 volume. It includes highly detailed histories of the various ship classes and a great deal of information. This sets it apart from the 1922-1946 edition, which feels strangely empty because it contains little in terms of history of individual ship classes and drowns the reader in facts and figures.

As such, the 1906-1921 edition reads much more like a very detailed history book than its successor, while giving us the same amount of facts and statistics, and is all the better for it.

I recommend it without reservation to fans of naval warfare, provided you can find a copy...

This book, together with the other of the serie that cover the period from 1860 to the present, is an outstanding one, the ideal reference book for the person looking for informations about the evolution of the modern warships through the description of the ship themselves. The book is divided into sections, each dealing with one nation's navy; the ships of every nation are grouped by type and each class is described by a brief textual introduction, a tabular description with the main ships' detail (size, machinery, artillery, armour and so on) and, for each ship, the building dates and the fate. The textual description is, at least for the greater ship category (battleship, carriers and cruisers) quite detailed and reports a lot of interesting data about the building, the machinery, the operational career and some other interesting stuffs. There is a good number of very good drawings and photographs (not as detailed as a ship modeler would hope, but this book is not for the modeler) and you can find in the books every nation that ever possessed a warship. A "must have" for every naval enthusiast!

Conways has always been the most reliable of all the warship histories books. Including specifications, histories, and pictures/drawings of all the ships. A history of each countries navy (during the 1906-1921 era) at the beginning of each nationality listing gives you good reference to understand the type of ships each nation needed and used. This book is very interesting for the World War One expert and/or naval historian or simply a warship lover. I use this book to look at various ships for radio control warship combat. I love this book and look at it many times a week and will buy all the rest of the series of books (Conway All the Worlds Fighting Ships). If you are at all interested in naval warships, definitely buy this book.

The best book of it's type. While Jane's for the same general period is a collection of period work, complete with incorrect data used at the time, Conway's is an accurate library of the warships of the day.

The Conways All The Worlds Fighting Ships series pretty much fills the niche when it comes to a catalogue of the worlds warships from 1860 onwards. There are some books out there that have more details of a specific style of vessel or a particular class and there are certainly some books out there that specifically study a single nations naval power. And of course this book is not meant to be an actual history.

What it is however is pretty much a peerless reference work for naval buffs, wargamers and modellers and is certainly the sort of reference work any serious student should try to get their hands on. The price is prohibitive I grant you, but if you do what I did and buy one of these volumes for yourself each year you'll not regret it given the plethora of statistical date, line drawings and photographs (no colour plates alas). The font is a good size, the book overall quite presentable and very well laid out in a logical manner and it's these little things that for me took this book and the rest of the series from being merely great to pretty much being the centrepieces of my naval warfare book collection.

Save your pennies and bite the bullet, you will not regret having this on your bookshelf for a single minute.

Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921 is the second in a series of 4 volumes which, as the title suggests, lists all the worlds fighting ships built between 1860 and 1995. During the period covered by this book the world's first great arms race was still running a full speed whereby, as one country built a big battleship - so another would simply design one that was even bigger.

Conway Maritime Press are well known for their factual books on ships - especially warships, in which they provide the finest technical documentation. This item is a hard-back book with 440 pages of detailed and factual information. After a brief foreword and an explanation of abbreviations used, we find three main headings; The world's great powers, coast defence navies and minor navies. Under each of these headings all the relevant ships are then listed by country. Displayed by "class" of ship, each section then commences with the largest vessels operated by that country and progresses all the way down to the smallest craft with the oldest ships appearing first. For each class there is one or more line drawings which have become Conway's trademark. These are followed by all the usual technical details; Displacement, dimensions, machinery, armour, armament and complement followed by the names of each ship within that class - it's builder, date laid down, date completed and fate. Each of these is accompanied by a very "readable" text from which we learn of the political intrigue of the day, variations between vessels, refits, new equipment, whatever defects or other problems that beset either the class or a specific ship and a short résumé of the fate of each vessel.

The book is well illustrated with an excellent selection of historic black and white original photographs throughout with at least one picture on almost every page. In summary, this is an excellent technical work of reference and one which will continue to stand the test of time. Put another way, this is one of those books you will wish you had bought - after it becomes out of print.

NM

Conways 1906-1922 volume does an excellent,comprehensive,yet well detailed look at the most intense period of warship development and construction ever seen.All classes of warships,major and minor,of all countries are well addressed,with an excellent text as well as photos and sketches.It will serve a prominent place in my early warship library,along with their 1860-1905 volume.I was pleased at the high quality paper used,not often found today.Well worth the price to any enthusiast,casual or devoted!
Mike Dunham

It's very much like the 1922-1946 book in terms of coverage, and that's fine. What I wanted was a general survey like that, something to fill in the gaps in my knowledge for this period, and I learned many things here. There's only so much you can fit in a book like this, so I can't rate it down for lack of detail, other books can fill that gap.