Battleships - 3D Modelling - Book Publishers - Nebula Hawk

Conways Battleships

The second book on battleships that I have read, is Conway's Battleships: The Definitive Visual Reference to the World's All-big-gun Ships:

An amazing battleship book - that successfully combines text and photographs (both black and white, and colour).
An amazing battleship book - that successfully combines text and photographs (both black and white, and colour).

After reading the introduction of this book, I decided upon one simple stance: I was hooked! The introduction covers an amazing amount of topics: battleships before 1900, fire control, Dreadnought, armour, World War One, the Washington Treaty and World War Two. The introduction also features some stunning photographs ... My favourite is that of the USS Wisconsin - which immediately puts the size of triple 16 inch naval gun turrets into perspective. Another eye opening photograph is the rotating upright of the USS Oklahoma (fifteen months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour) as I had no idea that the American's possessed such salvage equipment. Its another book that lays out battleships country-by-country, and class-by-class, with each entry typically featuring four components: a profile line drawing, a statistics box, lengthy descriptive text, and decent photographs (and/or art). I first read this book in 2011, and still find it's content - to be of interesting value :) Its another navy book, where you cant help but notice, the shear number of entries that both Great Britain, and it's Royal Navy has ... I think its fair to say, that the entries for Great Britain, best illustrate the rise of battleship technology: earlier units featuring anti-torpedo nets and booms, earlier units featuring the loading of coal (as opposed to oil fuel), earlier units featuring bi-planes (on their primary gun turrets), earlier units with wrong lessons learned (the entire battle-cruiser concept!), middle units with the emergence of the first modern battleships (the Queen Elizabeth class), all units the race for bigger naval guns (12 inch, 13.5 inch, 14 inch, 15 inch, 16 inch and 18 inch), later units the quest for speed (especially the Royal Navy's Renown and Hood classes) and finally: later units featuring thicker armour and better armour disposition (with lessons learned from wartime experience). My other favourite country's battleships (within the book), is of course the United States, and it's US Navy ... As such, one important fact is immediately apparent, about earlier American battleships: their reliance on lattice masts. Whilst I understand why the Americans opted for lattice masts (weight saving and supposed better protection from blast shock-waves), I'm so glad that they eventually made the switch to (more conventional) tripod masts! My three favourite American battleship classes (within this book) are: North Carolina (with USS Washington at speed), South Dakota (with USS Massachusetts' secondary armament all aimed skywards) and Iowa (with USS Missouri in memorial at Pearl Harbour). All three entries feature text, that just keeps you turning those pages :) Overall: an amazing battleship book, that both features informative text (although there are some errors), together with stunning photographs (especially for later battleships - such as the Iowa class). And it is here, that I realised which of the book's photographs, is indeed my all-time favourite, battleship photo (thus far): the crew of the USS Missouri, on a particular VJ Day anniversary (which really serves to illustrate, both the size and the power, of an American triple 16 inch naval gun turret!).

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