Jacket blurbs

British Warship Designs since 1906 by G. M. STEPHEN

When Beatty cried out, 'There's something wrong with our bloody ships today', he could have been forgiven for adding 'and tomorrow'. The same cry that went out at Jutland might well have been made when K-Boats failed to surface, when tracer ignited the fuel tanks of an MTB, or when Hood blew up with massive loss of life. It could well have been said when Sheffield sank to the bottom — and had been said many years before the ship's tragic destruction by an air-launched Exocet missile.

It can be argued that the Royal Navy has one of the best combat records of any fleet in history, and one of the worst records in ship design; it can equally be argued that as the RN has fought more wars than most other fleets, so its weaknesses in ship design have been exaggerated in comparison to those navies less heavily involved. Even today the feared Soviet navy has its own problems, but if it is 'great consolation to the damned to have companions in distress', such consolation is short-lived because Western warship design is increasingly treading a peacetime path and repeating errors already made, at great cost, in the past.

British Warship Designs since 1906 is a vigorous appraisal of the Royal Navy's ships and their effectiveness in combat. It considers the performance of ships in service as much as their design specifications, challenges the reputation of several vessels and types, and in particular examines the relationship between actual design and other features in the failure of warships to reach a satisfactory operational performance.

It includes:
* Battlecruisers
* K-Boats
* 'Flower' class corvettes
* MTBs and MGBs
* Armoured carriers
* Tigerand Blake
* 'Blackwood' class ASW frigates
* The ships of the modern Royal Navy