This is the form of naval history that the publisher and author excel at. The large format, beautifully produced and presented book covers one of the most important classes of cruiser to serve the Royal Navy. – Most Highly Recommended.
NAME: British Town Class Cruisers, Design, Development & Performance, Southampton and Belfast Classes FILE: R3127 AUTHOR: Conrad Waters PUBLISHER: Seaforth Publishing, Pen & Sword BINDING: hard back PRICE: £40.00 GENRE: Non Fiction SUBJECT: WWII, World War II, World War 2, Second World War, air war, naval war, cruisers, major warships, convoys, sea battles, naval guns, sea lanes, submarines, sea mines, German warships, technology, armour, propulsion, performance, sea keeping, Cold War, museum ship
ISBN: 978-1-5267-1885-3
PAGES: 320 IMAGE: B3127.jpg BUYNOW: tinyurl.com/r452rb2 DESCRIPTION: This is the form of naval history that the publisher and author excel at. The large format, beautifully produced and presented book covers one of the most important classes of cruiser to serve the Royal Navy. – Most Highly Recommended. The 'big gun' warship is often thought of as the battleship, with guns of 14in to 18in, in the period leading towards WWII, the USN and Japanese Imperial Navy began introducing large 6in gun warships. The British Town Class cruisers were designed to match these new vessels. Britain has a very poor record of preserving its important warships but, fortunately one of the ten British Town Class cruisers, HMS Belfast, has been preserved and is open to the public as a museum moored on the River Thames, opposite from the Tower of London. The Town Class vessels performed with distinction and suffered heavy damage, four of the ten being lost and the survivors requiring major repairs. In the Battle of the Barents Sea, HMS Belfast ran down and sank the powerful German Scharnhorst. Into the 1950s and the Cold War, the remaining Town Class continued in service with the last to decommission being HMS Belfast, which was handed to the Imperial War Museum to be preserved as a museum ship, a role she continues to fulfill, having already received one major refit when she was towed back to Portsmouth for dry docking and then towed back to the Thames to again open to the public. The author has provided what must be the definitive history of the class with the text being strongly supported by a fine selection of photographic images and technical drawings through the body of the book.