HMS "Warspite" : The Story of a Famous Battleship (War at Sea S)

This book is an absolute classic, and this edition is superbly presented. Roskill was writing this history of the Warspite's in the 1950 and as such some views on the histories have changed (Hindsight is a wonderfull thing), and the new introduction to this edition gives a very fair and even analysis of the strength and waeknesses of Roskill work. With all that said few books on naval history are as evokative as this. Histories tend to be dry and devoide of emotion. With the benifit of over 50 years we can look back at incidents such as the loss of the Hood Or Repulse and POW, and dismiss them as interesting but inevitable events, and in the detailed analysis lose the larger human picture. Roskill is superb at describing the meaning and emotion of the events to the participants. Warspite was without doubt the most sucessful Battleship of the most successfull Class in History. Her story spans the History of the Royal Navy (and Great Britain) from its zenith to it's twilight, and her story reflects greatly on the elan and skill of the senior service, who with limit resource, fought and won the the last of the big gun naval conflicts and closed this chapter to History

HMS Warspite was the most successful British capital ship of the 20th century - you have to go back to Nelson's Victory to find comparable distinction. One of a class of five (her sister ships were Queen Elizabeth, Barham, Malaya and Valiant), she fought at Jutland in 1916, then at Narvik, off Calabria, Matapan, Crete and the Normandy invasion of 1944. Her shooting was generally agreed to be the best in the Fleet - as witness her single-handed ending of the battle off Calabria by hitting the Italian flagship Giulio Cesare amidships at the record range of 26,000 nautical yards (13 miles). And at the second battle of Narvik, she performed a unique feat by accompanying destroyers up the narrow Ofotfjord to sink eight German destroyers and a U-boat. Although the book focuses on the Royal Navy's seventh Warspite, 60 pages are devoted to the first six. There is also plenty of interesting material about life on board, the personalities of officers and men, and a wide cross-section of events in both world wars. After being severely damaged in the evacuation of Crete, Warspite was repaired in Seattle and returned home across the Pacific - just after the beginning of the Pacific War, while the Imperial Japanese Navy was running riot. Characteristically, she crossed the International Date Line at exactly the right time to miss Friday 13th February altogether! Old, tired and battered, Warspite was sent for scrapping in 1946 - a decision which many have condemned as disgracefully insensitive. How much better to have kept her as a museum ship, like HMS Belfast! As it happened, she never reached the breaker's yard, due to events eloquently described in the first of two poems included in the book. (How many battleships have had poems written about them?) The book was written quite soon after these events, and first published in 1957 - allowing the Foreword to be contributed by Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope, the victor of Taranto and Matapan, who flew his flag in Warspite through the thick of the Mediterranean war.

This book is an absolute classic, and this edition is superbly presented. Roskill was writing this history of the Warspite's in the 1950 and as such some views on the histories have changed (Hindsight is a wonderfull thing), and the new introduction to this edition gives a very fair and even analysis of the strength and waeknesses of Roskill work. With all that said few books on naval history are as evokative as this. Histories tend to be dry and devoide of emotion. With the benifit of over 50 years we can look back at incidents such as the loss of the Hood Or Repulse and POW, and dismiss them as interesting but inevitable events, and in the detailed anayalsis lose the larger human picture. Roskill is superb at describing the meaning and emotion of the events to the participants. Warspite was without doubt the most sucessful Battleship of the most successfull Class in History. Her story spans the History of the Royal Navy (and Great Britain) from its zenith to it's twilight, and her story reflects greatly on the elan and skill of the senior service, who with limit resource, fought and won the the last of the big gun naval conflicts and closed this chapter to History.