Waldemar Goralski Pořadí knih

Covers the USS Stevens (DD-479), one of the 175 Fletcher-class destroyers, and considered one of the finest world War II warships of that type. číst celé

Clearly illustrated and effectively described; an excellent guide to the Japanese Battleship Kongo from WWII.

When, in the early 1930s, the Americans began modernizing their navy, they considered the replacement of old destroyers from the Great War as one of the most urgent tasks. However, the new projects, disappointed and dissatisfied the sailors. Some of these vessels were heavily overloaded (e.g. Sims class and early Benson ships), as a result some of the weaponry had to be removed. By proceeding with the design of subsequent series of destroyers, efforts were made to respect the Treaty restrictions (London, 1936). The originally formulated requirements envisaged a destroyer with a displacement of 1,600 tons and armament consisting of not less than 4.5-inch (127 mm) guns and 10 x 533mm torpedo tubes and a speed of 36 knots. There were six variants of vessels slightly different from earlier Benson and Sims classes. It soon became apparent that additional requirements could not be met within the limits of this displacement. This mainly concerned making space for a 28-mm quadruple automatic cannon and more powerful ASuW weapons.

The battleship “Nagato” was the first dreadnought equipped with a main artillery with a caliber exceeding 400 mm. It was armed with eight 406 mm (16 in) guns. The keel of “Nagato” was laid in 1917 in the naval shipyard in Kure. The ship was launched in 1919 and incorporated into service on November 15, 1920. The sister unit was “Mutsu”. Before the war, “Nagato” underwent many modifications and repairs increasing combat value of the ship. With the outbreak of World War II, “Nagato” became the flagship of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. The attack on Pearl Harbor was ordered from this battleship’s deck.

The German heavy cruiser PRINZ EUGEN was an enlarged version of the Admiral Hipper class ships.

The Brandenburg class battleships were the first blue water warships of the Kaiserliche Marine and can be categorized as the first German pre-dreadnought ships.

HMS Badsworth (L03) was one of eighty-six British Hunt-class escort destroyers. The class would eventually comprise four separate types built between 1939 and 1943. Design work on the class began in 1938. The Admiralty wanted to create warships optimized for convoy escort duties and patrolling. Since there was a huge demand for such vessels in the fleet, their cost was to be the deciding factor. A decision was made to design ships which would be smaller and slower than an average destroyer. In conjunction with their overall simple design this was to allow for rapid mass-scale production. The design was based on the Black Swan-class sloop, but the new destroyers were to be faster and better armed.

HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson were the only battleships of the Nelson class. HMS Rodney was built at Birkenhead Shipyards. She was launched on 28 December 1922, took the sea on 17 December 1925 and was commissioned in November 1927, three months behind Nelson.

Following the defeat in the Guadalcanal campaign, at the beginning of 1943, the Navy Technical Department and The High Command of the Imperial Japanese Navy strived to increase the defensive potential of all their warships. Apart from standard refits of the majority of the Imperial Japanese Navy units, a plan was adopted, which called for reconstruction of two "Takao" class heavy cruisers into anti-aircraft units. Through a coincidence only the Maya underwent such conversion. This publication shows the cruiser in her anti-aircraft configuration and briefly describes her career.

On 4 May 1940 the third Yamato-class battleship was laid down at the Navy Shipyard in Yokosuka. It was to be named Shinano, after a province on Honshu Island, in Nagato prefecture. That was also the name of the longest river in Japan (320 km). Admiral Yamamoto was born at its banks. Due to material supply difficulties, in December 1940 the construction was suspended. In 1942, after the Japanese defeat at Midway (four aircraft carriers were lost) it was decided to continue the construction of the ship as an aircraft carrier, in order to partially make up for losses suffered in this class of ships. The rebuilding scheme was designed by Vice Admirals Keji Fukuda and Seichi Izamur.