Warship Pictorial Number 21  Kriegsmarine Prinz Eugen, is yet another superb volume from Steve Wiper of Classic Warships publishing, one which righteously impressed this non-Deutsches Kriegsmarine enthusiast enough to e-pen a review.

Germany's 1930s-designed Admiral Hipper class heavy cruisers were the third of the Deutsches Kriegsmarine's (DKM) "dumb" warship classes, others being the Scharnhorst battlecruisers and Bismarck battleships. Other writers, most notably Koop and Schmolke, address Germany's "wrong ships at the wrong time" concept of the WW II German heavy warships in eloquent detail, so the heavy cruisers' sad tale  will not be discussed here.

For all the Admiral Hipper class' shortcomings (overweight, under-armoured, mechanically unreliable, short-legged, no fire control for the medium AA guns...), the class was arguably the most visually striking of the "Treaty Cruisers" (which were supposed to be 10,000 tons tho the Prinz Eugen was over 19,000 loaded; that is blatant cheating!)

For all their mechanical and technical shortcomings, though, the Admiral H ipper class Schwere Kreuzer (heavy cruiser) Prinz Eugen (third ship of and arguably the most famous of the class) certainly is appealing "eye candy" for warship enthusiasts. The book's centrefold drawing is outrageously tasty, on its own.

The pre-and-early WW II German Navy comprised an elite force in the truest sense of the word. Every sailor and officer represented the creme de la creme de la creme of German youth, healthy, educated, capable, proven...and the big ship crews were finest of the lot! This incredibly high quality of DKM personnel shows in every photo of Prinz Eugen's crew.

An interesting series of photos at the end of the book chronicles the war prize, USS Prinz Eugen in 1945-6, from the ship's surrender at Copenhagen to "his" ultimate bottom-up fate as an A-Bomb target in the Pacific.

The last page of text is a mega-dense (crew compliment-by-year, radar fit progression, shell flight times, ammo stowage, weights, gun and torpedo director info) magnificent "crunch" of stats on the Prinz Eugen, a ship geek's passport to drooling delight.

As Steve Wiper is famous for, this 74-page photojournal contains sparse text and gobs of clear photos on fine quality paper, with precise captions. Curl up in a comfy chair with your favourite beverage and a high quality magnifying glass and progress slowly through the tome. You will be rewarded with a time travel experience.

Review copy courtesy of the reviewer's chequebook.

Reviewed by James Hood

For Scott Van Aken's Modeling Madness review of James Hood's novel,
 Adventure--Into The Neverland, go to:  http://users3.ev1.net/~bjmonkeyandcj/James_Hood.htm

January 2005

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