Battleship

From the late nineteenth century until the middle of World War II, the massively armed and armored ship was the ultimate weapon of the world and a classic symbol of naval power. In the early twentieth century the Anglo-German race for more and better battleships was a major source of international tension leading up to World War I. Thirty years later the Japanese High Command believed that in sinking the American battleships at Pearl Harbor they had stuck a decisive blow at the outset of war in the Pacific. In this book, Philip Kaplan looks at many of the greatest of these warships and the lives of the men who crewed the giant vessels. He takes readers to such great battleship encounters as Tsushima, Jutland, the River Plate, and Pearl Harbor, and uses firsthand accounts to bring up the grit and tension of serving on these huge ships in armed conflict. Readers witness the fiery death of the German Scharnhorst off the North Cape of Norway in 1943 and are taken aboard an Iowa-class battleship as her sixteen-inch guns bombard shore points during the Gulf War. Dreadnought, Bismarck, Yamato, New Jersey, and many more of the great ships are brought to life. Over 200 photographs, many in full-color, illustrate this fascinating history on the legendary warships.