British Battleships Warrior 1860 To Vanguard 1950

A full history of each ship is provided along with some 450 photos, drawings, and plans from the Warrior to the Vanguard.

“Lots of information on the ship’s design, weapons, armor, refits, and service career, along with the Royal Cruise of 1947.” —Model Ship World The ninth HMS Vanguard, bearing one of the most illustrious names in the Royal Navy with honors from the Armada to Jutland, was the last and largest of Britain’s battleships and was commissioned in 1946. Her design evolved from the King George V class and incorporated much of the fully developed design for the two battleships, Lion and Temeraire, that were laid down in 1939 but never completed. At 813ft length overall and 42,300 tons, she was the last battleship to be built for the Royal Navy and the only ship of her class. She was built during the Second World War and incorporated existing twin 15in mountings, and was part of the Royal Navy’s response to the combined and increasing number of German and Japanese battleships in the early 1940s. Immediately recognizable by her transom stern and high flared bow, she had fine sea keeping ability. Her appearance after the end of hostilities, however, and her huge crew requirements proved a conundrum for the Royal Navy, her most significant role being that of Royal Yacht during the royal family’s tour of South Africa in 1947. She was broken up at Faslane in 1960. In this book her design, construction, and career are all covered. Armor, machinery, power plants and weaponry are examined in detail and the author has produced some 35 superb plans, profiles, and other line drawings. The text is further enhanced by the addition of some 80 photos, many in color, from his collection. R.A. Burt’s earlier three volumes are regarded as definitive works on the subject of British battleships before 1945; with this new book he finally completes the story of the Dreadnought era, bringing to life the last of a magnificent type of vessel of which the world will not see again.

From ancient times to World War II and the postwar period, Battleships charts the evolution of the vessel that ruled the seas—a vessel that, until the arrival of the aircraft carrier, would be the most expensive and complex human-made moving object in history. Battleships charts the dramatic evolution of this dominating war vessel. Coverage ranges from ancient galleys to the great ships of World War II to the present, with special emphasis on the ironclad era of the mid-19th century (which saw the greatest innovation over the shortest timespan in naval history) and the great 20th-century battleship race of the dreadnought era. Written by expert military historian Stanley Sandler, Battleships provides insightful examinations of the technological and tactical aspects of important warships from around the world and across time. It also looks at the political and social factors driving the decision to produce battleships in different countries. No other volume has ever captured so completely the impact of the battleship as a weapon of war and a symbol of power.

This work addresses many persistent misconceptions of what the monitors were for, and why they failed in other roles associated with naval operations of the Civil War (such as the repulse at Charleston, April 7, 1863). Monitors were 'ironclads'- not fort-killers. Their ultimate success is to be measured not in terms of spearheading attacks on fortified Southern ports but in the quieter, much more profound, strategic deterrence of Lord Palmerston's ministry in London, and the British Royal Navy's potential intervention. The relatively unknown 'Cold War' of the American Civil War was a nevertheless crucial aspect of the survival, or not, of the United States in the mid 19th-century. Foreign intervention—explicitly in the form of British naval power—represented a far more serious threat to the success of the Union blockade, the safety of Yankee merchant shipping worldwide, and Union combined operations against the South than the Confederate States Navy. Whether or not the North or South would be 'clad in iron' thus depended on the ability of superior Union ironclads to deter the majority of mid-Victorian British leaders, otherwise tempted by their desire to see the American 'experiment' in democratic class-structures and popular government finally fail. Discussions of open European involvement in the Civil War were pointless as long as the coastline of the United States was virtually impregnable. Combining extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, this work offers an in-depth look at how the Union Navy achieved its greatest grand-strategic victory in the American Civil War. Through a combination of high-tech 'machines' armed with 'monster' guns, intensive coastal fortifications and a new fleet of high-speed Union commerce raiders, the North was able to turn the humiliation of the Trent Affair of late 1861 into a sobering challenge to British naval power and imperial defense worldwide.

This book thoroughly explores and analyses naval policy during the period of austerity that followed the First World War. During this post-war period, as the Royal Navy identified Japan its likely opponent in a future naval war, the British Government was forced to “tighten its belt” and cut back on naval expenditure in the interests of “National Economy”. G.H. Bennett draws connections between the early 20th century and the present day, showing how the same kind of connections exist between naval and foreign policy, the provision of ships for the Royal Navy, business and regional prosperity and employment. The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity 1919-22 engages with a series of important historiographical debates relating to the history of the Royal Navy, the failures of British Defence policy in the inter-war period and the evolution of British foreign policy after 1919, together with more mundane debates about British economic, industrial, social and political history in the aftermath of the First World War. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of British naval history.

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 Iris and Mercury of 1875. They were the RN's first steel-built warships; were designed primarily to be steamed rather than sailed; and formed the basis of a line of succeeding cruiser classes. The story ends with the last armoured cruisers, which were succeeded by the first battlecruisers (originally called armoured cruisers), and with the last Third Class Cruisers (Topaze class), all conceived before 1906. Coverage, therefore, dovetails precisely with Friedman's previous book on British cruisers, although this one also includes the wartime experience of the earlier ships.rn The two central themes are cruisers for the fleet and cruisers for overseas operations, including (but not limited to) trade protection. The distant-waters aspect covers the belted cruisers, which were nearly capital ships, intended to deal with foreign second-class battleships in the Far East. The main enemies contemplated during this period were France and Russia, and the book includes British assessments of their strength and intentions, with judgements as to how accurate those assessments were.rn As would be expected of Friedman, the book is deeply researched, original in its analysis, and full of striking insights ‰ÛÒ another major contribution to the history of British warships.

Arms and the State is a history of Britain's first and foremost modern armaments company, the Armstrong Whitworth Company, from its origins in 1854 to 1914. It focuses on the role of Sir William G. Armstrong, an engineer and entrepreneur who transformed his modest mechanical engineering business into a vast industrial enterprise which invented, developed, manufactured and sold heavy guns and warships throughout the world. Arms and the State reconstructs the global arms trade as it follows Armstrong's companies selling the latest weapons to both sides in the American Civil War, Egypt, Turkey and Italy in the 1860s, to China, Chile and Japan in the 1870s and 1880s, and became Britain's leading armaments company in the age of the naval arms races that preceded the First World War. In so doing, it discusses varied topics such as the social and political nature of technological innovation, the quality of Britain's late-Victorian entrepreneurs, and the impact of armaments on British politics, defence policies, the international arms trade and imperialism. Arms and the State situates the history of the company in its technological, political and international contexts, with particular attention given to the role of British Parliamentary politics and the inner workings of the War Office and Admiralty bureaucracies. The central narrative is Armstrong's role in the militarization of technology in the 1850s, the commercialization of the armaments trade on a global scale in the 1860s and 1870s, and the emergence of the British military-industrial state in the 1880s and 1890s. Arms and the State provides a history of the people, the technology and the business of the Arms trade. It is a fascinating story of the domestic politics, the foreign policy and strategic calculations, the manipulation of the press and the bureaucratic intrigues that lay behind the invention, production and proliferation of the first weapons of mass destruction.