Though the British were not the first to fly a plane on or off the deck of a ship, they were the first to develop the aircraft carrier into a proper fighting ship. Like about every nation that had these vessels, the first carriers were converted from something else. In this case a battle cruiser, a ship that had shown itself during the Battle of Jutland, to have some serious defects.

HMS Glorious was Britain's first and was to allow for the development of more capable ships. In fact, Glorious was refitted several times to take advantage of what was learned and served from WWI until she was sunk during the Norway operations in 1940. One major difference between British and other carriers is that the British armored their flight deck. While limiting the number of aircraft they could carry and increasing tonnage considerably, this feature kept the ships in service when others would have been heavily damaged or destroyed.

In this particular book, the author looks at all of the pre-war builds as well as those which were commissioned during and shortly after the war. This includes the Ark Royal, Illustrious and Implacable classes of carriers as well as the unarmored, light fleet carriers. Each ship or class is provided with considerable space to cover their differences in construction as well as general specifications. A short history of each carrier is provided that includes its eventual fate. Pretty much all of Britain's carrier fleet was scrapped, sunk or sold off by the late 1950s, unlike US war build carriers, some which served through the 1970s.

In line with other similar books in this series, the edition is superbly illustrated with quality photographs of the various ships as well as some superb art work  and illustrations showing camouflage and general layout.

An excellent book on a most interesting subject and one that I am positive you will find to be of interest. One that will be pulled from the shelves time after time and one I can highly recommend to you.

July 2010

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