Описание
The battleships of the world’s navies in the 1820s were descended directly in line from the Revenge of 1577: they were wooden-built, sail-powered and mounted guns on the broadside, firing solid shot.
In the next half century, steel, steam and shells had wrought a transformation and by 1906, Dreadnought had ushered in a revolution in naval architecture. The naval race between Britain and Germany that followed, led to the clash of the navies at Jutland in 1916. Though this was indecisive, the German navy never again challenged the Grand Fleet of Britain during the war, and eventually the crews refused to put to sea again.
Disarmament on a massive scale followed, but the battleship was still regarded as the arbiter of sea-power in the years between the wars. However, the advocates of air power were looking to the future, and when in 1940 biplane Swordfish torpedo bombers of the Fleet Air Arm sank three Italian battleships at their moorings in Taranto, the Japanese sensed their opportunity. Their attack on the American Pacific fleet base at Pearl Harbor sank eight battleships – but the American carriers were at sea, and escaped destruction.
Given the distances involved, the Pacific war was necessarily a carrier war, and in the major actions of the Coral Sea, Midway, Leyte Gulf and the Philippine Sea, all the fighting was done by aircraft, with battleships reduced to a supporting role.
This book charts the evolution of the battleship from the age of innovation in the 1820s through two world wars to the battleship's decline in the 1950s and 1960s. Illustrated with over 100 images and an eight page colour section, this will be a valuable addition to any naval enthusiast's library.
Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Age of Innovation 1820-1870 --
Chapter 2 The Age of Experiment: 1870-1890 --
Chapter 3 The Two Power Standard --
Chapter 4 The Age of the Dreadnought 1906-1908 --
Chapter 5 The Naval Race 1908-1914 --
Chapter 6 Dreadnoughts at War - 1914-1918 --
Chapter 7 Pre-dreadnoughts in the First World War --
Chapter 8 The Treaty of Versailles and the Washington Naval Treaty --
Chapter 9 Rearmament --
Chapter 10 Battle Fleets in Action, 1939-45 - the North Sea and the Atlantic --
Chapter 11 War in the Mediterranean --
Chapter 12 Battleships in the Pacific --
Chapter 13 The End of the Battleship Era.
Bibliography
Index
Pen & Sword Maritime, 2016
Твердый переплёт. Суперобложка
146 стр.
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