The World's Worst Warships

As celebrated author Antony Preston notes in his introduction, the question of warship design can easily sound like a boring backwater of naval history. This is especially true once it becomes clear that this book isn't like those "world's strangest airplanes" programs that sometimes show up on TV, with whimsical designs being "flown" off ramps to drop straight into the sea. But this book is actually quite interesting, and filled with Important Lessons for people interested in learning them. The failures of these "world's worst warships" aren't due solely to the shortsightedness of naval architects or the incompetence of shipbuilders. Far more destructive, in fact, are wrongheaded admirals, penny-pinching politicians, pushy civilians with connections, and the recurrent danger of "fighting the last war." Though many of the ship designs listed here could be considered honest-but-failed experiments in new ideas, quite a few of them qualify as among the "world's worst" because of their designers' or champions' refusal to learn the lessons that should have already been apparent to them. I can easily imagine this book touching off among naval officers and historians the kinds of impassioned debates that lists of All-Century football teams do among sports fans. Do famous names like "Bismarck," "Yamato," or the American "four-stacker" destroyers of the mid-War era really belong among the world's worst? Preston makes a strong -- well-sourced, well-argued, and even entertaining -- case that they do. What do you think?

Before settling down to read this book, I began by glancing through the pages to see what sort of warship might be regarded as the world's worst. The inclusion of the "K" class submarine did not surprise me but the Yamato, Graf Spee and Hood - I thought these were the outstanding Battleships of their day. Then, having read the narrative for each vessel, it became quite clear why they are included. "The World's Worst Warships" is a hard-back book measuring 10" x 8" containing almost 200 pages of detailed information on a carefully chosen selection of warship types. Commencing with the Monitors of the American Civil War, the Author brings us through his book - chapter-by-chapter and development-by-development, as this particular type of war machine evolves and improves. Each chapter becomes a fascinating read and the book is well illustrated with a generous selection of line drawings and historic photographs. Incidentally, all illustrations are courtesy of "Chrysalis Images." Chrysalis Books are the parent publishing company and I suspect many readers will find some of the images to be new and previously unpublished. At the beginning of the book, it is very easy for the reader to mock the early efforts of those building the very first iron-clads - the benefits of hindsight and all that. Later on, however, we can only stand in awe as we learn of the political thinking and sheer dogmatism that surrounded the design of this and the building of that. To think that the one country which truly recognised the value of the Aircraft Carrier right at the outbreak of WW2 would also insist on building 2 Yamato class Battleships - the construction of which almost bankrupted the nation and also even deprived the country's fishermen of their nets. It's all in there. This is a work of reference to interest ship's historians the world over. I also suspect it will be much sought after by Scuba Divers who look for the reasons why this wreck or that wreck is where it is today. NM