Entering service between 1937 and 1939, the ten British ‘Town’ class cruisers were the most modern vessels of their type in the Royal Navy when the Second World War began. Built in... [read more]

The overriding image of the First World War is the bloody stalemate of the Western Front, but although much of the action did occur on land, the overall shape of the war even the inevitability of... [read more]

Of all the threats faced by the Royal Navy during the first years of the twentieth century, the one which stood out was the risk to Britain’s sea lines of communication posed by... [read more]

John Lambert était un dessinateur naval renommé, dont les plans étaient très appréciés pour leur précision et leur détail par les... [read more]

The technical details of British warships were recorded in a set of plans produced by the builders on completion of every ship. Known as the ‘as fitted’ general arrangements, these... [read more]

Although the Royal Navy did not invent the submarine, Norman Friedman’s new book demonstrates how innovative the service was, to an extent which few will recognise. Its submarines performed... [read more]

The ninth HMS Vanguard, bearing one of the most illustrious names in the Royal Navy with honours from the Armada to Jutland, was the last and largest of Britain’s battleships and was... [read more]

The ‘ShipCraft’ series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeller through a brief... [read more]

John Lambert was a renowned naval draughtsman, whose plans were highly valued for their accuracy and detail by modelmakers and enthusiasts. By the time of his death in 2016 he had produced over... [read more]

For its final battleship design Italy ignored all treaty restrictions on tonnage, and produced one of Europe’s largest and most powerful capital ships, comparable with Germany’s... [read more]

In the late nineteenth century the advent of the modern torpedo woke the Royal Navy to a potent threat to its domination, not seriously challenged since Trafalgar. For the first time a relatively... [read more]

During the Second World War navies developed low visibility camouflage for their ships, on both the vertical and horizontal surfaces, in order reduce visibility by blending in with the sea, or... [read more]

This is a major new study of Italian naval camouflage schemes developed and used during World War Two. When Italy entered the War in June 1940, the Regia Marina (Italian navy) was a force still... [read more]

This is a companion volume to Friedman’ s highly successful British Battleship 1906–1946 and completes his study of the Royal Navy’s capital ships. Beginning with the earliest installation... [read more]

Gradually evolving from the masted steam frigates of the mid-nineteenth century, the first modern cruiser is not easy to define, but for the sake of this book the starting point is taken to be... [read more]

Even as the First World War was ending the victorious great powers were already embarked on a potentially ruinous new naval race, competing to incorporate the wartime lessons and technology into... [read more]

From 1895 to 1944 the US Navy commissioned some 60 steel-clad battleships; the first being Indiana (BB-1) and the last USS Missouri (BB-63). After an impressive showing in the Spanish-American War... [read more]

This volume includes all the features of the regular series but the extent has been doubled to include far more detailed drawings of a class of ship that was built in huge numbers and in many... [read more]

When war broke out in August 1914 France had only two dreadnoughts in service, with a second pair running trials. The main body of the elite Armée Navale was made up of the eleven... [read more]

Since the Second World War the old categories of destroyer and frigate have tended to merge, a process that this book traces back to the radically different Tribal class destroyers of 1936. It... [read more]