It is always a delight to receive a book from Stratus. They choose interesting subjects and the books are well researched. This one is no exception and happens to be part of a series of which I was initially quite unaware. The series covers USN ships and this is the third part of volume 4. It continues where part 2 left off and puts its efforts into destroyers. Those covered are DD-381 to DD-648.

All of these ships were commissioned from the late 1930s until the middle of the war with a number of them seeing action and some of them lost.  Unlike a lot of the older ships, these generally stayed with the USN with few converted to minesweepers or fast transports. Not surprising is that most were scrapped at the end of the war though some did survive to be used post war by foreign navies.

The author has divided each book into the various classes of ship and provides us, where possible, with at least one decent period photo of each vessel. Heading each ship is a name/hull number, builder, date the keel was laid, date of launch and date of commission. There then follows a brief history of the ship that includes its fate. At the end of each class of ship are statistics that include size, complement, speed, engines, armament and so on. Classes covered are Somers, Dunlap, Benham, Sims, Benson and Gleaves with the last two having a considerable number of ships in the class.

A most welcome section for modelers is that which contains information on the various camouflage schemes and patterns used on these vessels. This section includes official USN pattern drawings as some of these Measure camo schemes were quite varied and only used on a few ships.  In all, it is an outstanding reference on the type and one that any naval enthusiast should seek.

April 2024

Review book courtesy of www.casematepublishers.com . You can get your now at this link. 

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