Conway's Warship 2017

This edition is the first I've seen of Warship and I have to say from the start that I am quite impressed with what is inside. According to the editor, this used to be a quarterly and then they stopped publishing for a few years, returning as an annual.

The book is basically a series of articles of various lengths and on a number of different subjects. This is not a book of pretty pictures and filled with general information. Instead it very much one that has in-depth and superbly researched articles. Sort of a nautical version of a series of professional works. This is not to say that what is within is dry and boring. On the contrary, each of the authors has provided an excellent reference on whatever the subject might be and while you might think that these are all about specific ships or types, that is not always the case.

Let me run through the articles that are contained in this year's edition.

The Japanese battleships Kawachi and Settsu; The British armor plate pool agreement of 1903; From Danton to Corbet; DDL: the Australian Light Destroyer project of the early 1970s; From Elba to Europa; Modern mine countermeasures; The light aircraft carrier Ibuki; HACS, a debacle or just in time?; HMS Surrey, Britain's last treaty cruiser; After the Kaiser - the Imperial German Navy's light cruisers after 1918, and the US Navy's last monitors.

As you can see, the navies of Japan, the UK, France, Australia, Italy, and the US are covered in this edition. Some that I personally found fascinating are on the Japanese pre-WWI battleships, the one on early French dreadnoughts, the article on the nearly completed carrier Ibuki (this one has a lot of photos), the fascinating story of what happened to the German light cruisers after WWI, and the story on the less than successful monitors built by the US Navy at the turn of the century.

In addition to the excellent writing, there are a lot of drawings and photos. This is especially helpful in the article on German light cruisers as the survivors underwent a lot of external changes. The HACS article is on the difficulty in developing anti-aircraft directors and the Surrey article includes all the changes that ship went through in its life.

In addition to the articles there are book reviews, a photo gallery of the battleships Benbow, Ajax, and Royal Sovereign in 1926, and a nice piece on the Russian armored cruiser Aurora. It is not light reading and this one took me a while to read, however, I am positive that if you have any interest in warships, you will be as impressed as was I. Highly recommended.

August 2017

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Thanks to www.ospreypublishing.com for the review book.

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