Good SHORT history of WWII American Battleships

Reviewed by William A. Hensler, 2006-02-13

There were two types of American battleships in WWII. First, there were the "Showboats", the fast battleships. That are the North Carolina, Alabama, and Iowa class of ships.

The second type of battleships are the old WWI battleships, the Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Tennessee, and the rest of the ships. They were old, slow, rebuilt, and not much more than ocean going gun batteries. However, from a fighting point of view they did much more than the nearly ineffective fast battleships.

Now, why did I give the book only two stars? Well, there are lots better books for pure references, such as the excellent "Battleships, an Illustrated History". If you want to learn the paint schemes of a ship then go to steelnavy.com.

Next, some of the drawings are a little incorrect. The drawing of the USS Nevada on the front cover shows her with some sort of incorrect guns, they look more like 8" guns than 14" of what she carried. That poor drawing negates any value of reference materal.

There are lots of good write ups on what the battleships do in WWII. I really enjoyed the break down, by class of each ship, starting with the Arkansas, then to the Texas class, on to Oklahoma, then to Arizona, ect, ect, ect. A reader will quickly learn what was the operational history of each ship.

However, there are some problems. There is nothing really given for the operation of each ship. Texas got into some gun duels with Nazi army 11" coastal artillery. There is little mention of that. There is a fair write up on the action of the battleship on battleship fighting during the Phillipines campaign during late 1944. However, no maps, plotting of ships, nor is much information given other than general information.

This book is like many other squadron books. The cover and back of the book are in color. The middle of the book has several battleships in various color schemes.

The trouble with this book is it's just too general for such a big subject, battleships. One "In Action" book could have been devoted to each battleship class in WWII.

The book has some great photographs and useful information. But time and technology have passed this book.

It only rates two stars. You can get better references from the web or by checking out Battleships, an illustrated design history.