Fleets of World War II [Anglais] [Relié]

I expected this book to be another "mass merchandising" book on WWII warships, but it was surprisingly refreshing in its insightful comments. It is written like a "Consumer Reports" of warships; each entry consists of brief, standard specs (w/ many abbreviations) and concise, lucid and short critical commentary describing the fighting capabilities of the class. For example, it described the Bismarch as overrated (built on WWI battleship design concepts); the Hood as outdated (built on pre-WWI w/ Jutland retrofits) but unmodernized; and the Iowa class as the definitive U.S. battleship (best overall). When appropriate, the book explores, with surprising insightfulness, the armor scheme & torpedo protection, main gun selection, dual purpose vs. tertiary gun scheme, and other characteristics that make a successful design or a subpar design. The general theme is that this is not another "narrative" type book, and it almost goes out of the way to find a major fault with every class (since every class is a compromise of size, cost, technology, etc.). It is brief, with no more than an equivalent half page-column for major ships but as noted by other reviewers, covers a complete range of ships; I think only the major or interesting ships are accompanied by a photo. Here is the downside: (1) the author is described as a freelance writer, so his background and credentials are atypical, i.e., how authoratative is he compared to a John Roberts, Alan Raven, Norman Freiedman, etc.??; (2) there are no line drawings, so this is not a "technical" book; (3) the photos are newspaper-like, dark & lacking detail (they are better than the Jane's reprints of WWI & WWII fleets which were essentially photocopies; and (4) the book paper is similar to softbound book paper; it has a low production value & newspaper feel to it (by a non-military book publisher). At a list price of $[money], it is worthwhile book. If only this material was combined with a Lenton or a Whitley book, it would be standout. The book also has a rebel feel to it; it's almost like the author is saying "You can't get this material from the others - - they're too busy repeating the known stuff. . ."

The Fleets of World War II is a great reference for those people who would like to have some relative idea of the strengths and merits of the opposing sides in this world conflict. The book gives the basic information on each ship; size, speed, number of guns and torpedoes, etc. Most readers could get that type of information in any of a number of sources. Where this book really excels is in the type of details that mere facts and figures do not disclose. How well did the ships company fair as far as habitability? How good a sea boat or how well did the ship maneuver? What was her cruising range? This is the kind of information that can be critical to ships fighting strength but the kind of information that most books leave out. I have read about the great ships for years but I have found information on every page of this book that I didn't know. Here is one example. On paper Japanese cruisers show extremely well. When speaking of the relative strengths of American cruisers to Japanese cruisers Richard Worth makes the following statement. "Cruisers suffered torpedo hits on 31 occasions but only seven of the ships sank, and none sank from a single hit. By comparison, of 24 torpedoed Japanese cruisers, 20 sank, three of them after single hits." This is the kind of comparison that only looking at figures and stats would not reveal.
One area where this book surprised me was is in the minor navies. I fully expected information on the major fleets, American, British, Japanese, German, even French and Italian. Where Mr. Worth excelled is in his treatment of the smaller navies such as China, Denmark, Poland, even Czechoslovakia. For instance most readers probably wouldn't know that Chile not only had an honest to goodness battleship, the Almirante Latorre, but that the United States offered to buy her following the battleship losses at Pearl Harbor.
The Fleets of World War II has been a valued addition to my naval history library. I highly recommend it.

This seems to have a listed every nation that existed during the entire time frame of the conflict (1939-1945). They are listed in alphabetical order of the Nation. From there an overall review of the fleet, the weapons, and then Naval Aviaton. At
that point it lists the combat units of the fleet from BB(or CV if the fleet had them) down to the MTB's that served the fleet. Prior to the listing of the units the author gives an overview of the building projects and how then changed over the course of the war. When the Author talks about the class he lists them by the first name of the class followed by the rest that were built with the class. Also listed is the hull numbers(or Pennant #'s), displacement, Main and secondary battery's, size of torpedos carried, number of aircraft(if carried), speed and when the class was first built. EXAMPLE:LEXINGTON,SARATOGA (CV2,3:36,000tons;eight 8-in,twelve 5inDP guns, AC
90, 33knots 1927).

Followed by that will be a review of the pros and cons of the class when compared compared against some stables of the world. (example the author considered the Yamato Class BB's to be too heavy and drastically inferior to even the S. Carolina Class of BB's or the Nelson class BB's.). Some of these comparisions are based simple things like the age of the units at other times these comparisions are down on the preformance of water tight integtriy and the main batterys performance on things like Velocity of the round and weight of the round fired.

There are some down points to this book. The author decides not to mention what units did what major fleet actions or were in theater during major campaigns. This information would of been nice to compare at a glance the units that were avilable during operations like the defense of Malta Convoys or fight for Gualdalcanal. That the fact that the author for some of the lesser navies or those navies of nations that surrendered to the Axis at the start of the war the listings and review of the class are noticably shorter. The biggest chapters of the books are for the navies of the UK,USSR, Japan, Germany, and the USA. For some of these nations there are reviews in passing of some of thier planned building (like the US and thier Montana Class of BB's) at other times he dives into a serious review of the projects and plans (like the Germany Graf Zepplin CV) but the
author seems selective on which projects he covers and which he just glosses over.

The other point though this book has some pictures it only has pictures of the main or major representive units of a type of ship. They may show the Essex as a representive of American carrier or the Bismarck as an example of the German Battleships. That is it for pictures there is no line drawings or even siloheuttes of the ships.

Like most others have written this is a decent book to start with for research. But not the end all that it might of been. There is serious room for improvement.