The larger format naval history with a high image content of photographs and drawings that the publisher excels at. – This is a well researched, and nicely illustrated book covering battleships that the French Navy had available in 1914-1918 – Highly Recommended.
NAME: French Battleships of World War One FILE: R2545 AUTHOR: John Jordan, Phillipe Caresse PUBLISHER: Pen & Sword, Seaforth BINDING: hard back PAGES: 328 PRICE: £40.00 GENRE: Non Fiction SUBJECT: French Navy, early C19th, pre-Dreadnought, Dreadnought, construction techniques, warships, marine engineering, Great War, First World War, 1st World War, World War I, World War 1, World War One, WWI
ISBN: 978-1-84832-254-7
IMAGE: B2545.jpg BUYNOW: http://tinyurl.com/y7aulcgv LINKS: DESCRIPTION: The larger format naval history with a high image content of photographs and drawings that the publisher excels at. - This is a well researched, and nicely illustrated book covering battleships that the French Navy had available in 1914-1918 – Highly Recommended. The authors have written an account of the battleships that the French Navy had built before WWI., their use in war and the development to 1922. This is a subject rarely covered in an English language publication and addressed with this comprehensive account. The French Navy experienced a rocky time from 1815. There were colonies and trading centres scattered across the world, and these were added to through the 19th Century. Although France had a much smaller Empire than Britain, it had similar needs in protecting trade routes and projecting power. It spent time and money on moving from line of battle sailing ships, to steam and steel. It introduced the new gun systems with barbettes and turrets, mounting first larger muzzle-loading guns and then breech-loaders. It produced an experimental line of capital ships and pre-Dreadnoughts. However, the French Navy had only two Dreadnoughts in its fleet in 1914 when WWI began. As a result, France was far behind Great Britain in battleship development and numbers in service and also behind Germany. The questions every democratic nation has to ask are – how much do we spend on defence, and who do we have to be able to counter? France had to accept in 1805 that it could never again attempt to challenge the British in a major fleet action. That led to the French Navy receiving less priority for share of the defence funds available. Where it felt the need to compete was in the Mediterranean which had strong implications for French national interest and security. In 1914 it had the most powerful fleet with a Mediterranean seaboard and was able to bottle up the navy of Austria-Hungary. It was also able to use its older battleships with distinction during the Dardanelles campaign and block any Russian Black Sea ships, should Russia become a threat after the revolution there. This new book traces the story from 1890 to 1922, and then covers the extensive modifications made to surviving French battleships during the inter-war years. As with other books in this series, John Jordan covers design in Part I and Phillipe Caresse follows on with the historical chapters from 1900 to 1945, making an excellent partnership and division of labour. The quality of illustration in photographs and drawings is first rate. The text is easy to read and powerful, providing that essential air of authority required in a book of this type. The end result is a book that has no direct rivals in English or in French, making this a book which will stand for a very long time as the definitive reference book on this group of topics.