Fleets of World War II

This is a comprehensive compendium of all ship classes, with an entertaining narrative on each class that includes many interesting anecdotes. Information includes ship names, performance specs, years built, gunnery ranges, armor and the service careers of most of the members of each class. This is a handy reference work as authoritative as Jane's or Conway's.

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 For example, it described the Bismarch as overrated (built on WWI battleship design concepts); the Hood as outdated (built on pre-WWI w/ Jutland retrofits) but unmodernized; and the Iowa class as the definitive U.S. battleship (best overall).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 book covers what I usially look for in the book. The boring statistics can usually be found in the variety of places, but what this book provides is the comparison of the ships and lists teir strengths and weaknesses. It is a guide to the warships of WWII. The interesting thing that it also covers all of the mnir navies that took part in WWII. I loved it.

...of World War 2, then this book is for you. You can find anything on Bismarck and Hood, but have you ever read a review of the Almirante Latorre? Richard Worth has a very extensive and impresive knowledge of all navies during the Second WOrld War and if you are intrested in learning more about the ships of WW2, then this book is for you.