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Battleships of World War I: An illustrated encyclopedia of the battleships of all nations, 1914-1918
Battle Ships of World War I
- GenresHistory
260 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Antony Preston
90 books2 followersAntony PReston was an English Naval Historian and editor.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 25, 2021
I'm not going to sugar coat this: there are far too many errors in this book for my liking and it really should be given a revised edition correcting these and filling in some more information that was omitted. I have historically like Mr. Preston's works and was frankly shocked at the low quality and questionable information. Had this been a period work, I could forgive the errors. I cannot forgive errors made 50+ years after the war.
So we have started off on the wrong foot it seems. I hate jumping into a review with negative energy, but as a reviewer of military history primarily, I am looking for facts, quality data, and well written material presenting these items. This book does offer up some value, but it is hard to overlook glaring issues with some of the facts.
I'm not going to list all of the problems here, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. Page 247 on the Nevada class American battleships. He describes the service history of the USS Oklahoma as "during the Japanese attack she was hit in the magazines by bombs and blew up." This is not true. She was hit by 5 torpedoes and capsized about 12 minutes into the attack. She did not blow up and was not hit by any bombs. I believe he is talking about the USS Arizona, but this was not a Nevada class battleship. In any case, this is a terrible error that anyone reading this book would know was immediately wrong. Shame on Mr. Preston and shame on the editors for not catching this. There are more I found, and possibly others I missed. A true bummer.
My last criticism of significance is the precious little information provided on service records and refits. I know this is an "encyclopedia" meant to broadly cover the topic, but it would have been a much better book with more details added like refitted equipment, deployments, and better service histories. Just saying a ship served in the Pacific is not really sufficient in my mind.
Ugg, so many negative waves. Sorry about that. I will say that there are some good aspects as well. The book addresses virtually every battleship class and most individuals in some regard, and contains a great many pictures that are rarely seen of some of those obscure ships. The general construction information is ok, and the book's bibliography is pretty fleshed out with some older reading sources that is quite nice. Even some neutral navies are covered too.
I wanted to 1-Star this for the grievous errors, but ultimately decided the book does have some value in presenting many ships you just don't get much literature on (early French battleships for instance). A mercy 2 Star rating then with the hopes that a later publisher decides to give this book a reprint with corrections and updated information.
So we have started off on the wrong foot it seems. I hate jumping into a review with negative energy, but as a reviewer of military history primarily, I am looking for facts, quality data, and well written material presenting these items. This book does offer up some value, but it is hard to overlook glaring issues with some of the facts.
I'm not going to list all of the problems here, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. Page 247 on the Nevada class American battleships. He describes the service history of the USS Oklahoma as "during the Japanese attack she was hit in the magazines by bombs and blew up." This is not true. She was hit by 5 torpedoes and capsized about 12 minutes into the attack. She did not blow up and was not hit by any bombs. I believe he is talking about the USS Arizona, but this was not a Nevada class battleship. In any case, this is a terrible error that anyone reading this book would know was immediately wrong. Shame on Mr. Preston and shame on the editors for not catching this. There are more I found, and possibly others I missed. A true bummer.
My last criticism of significance is the precious little information provided on service records and refits. I know this is an "encyclopedia" meant to broadly cover the topic, but it would have been a much better book with more details added like refitted equipment, deployments, and better service histories. Just saying a ship served in the Pacific is not really sufficient in my mind.
Ugg, so many negative waves. Sorry about that. I will say that there are some good aspects as well. The book addresses virtually every battleship class and most individuals in some regard, and contains a great many pictures that are rarely seen of some of those obscure ships. The general construction information is ok, and the book's bibliography is pretty fleshed out with some older reading sources that is quite nice. Even some neutral navies are covered too.
I wanted to 1-Star this for the grievous errors, but ultimately decided the book does have some value in presenting many ships you just don't get much literature on (early French battleships for instance). A mercy 2 Star rating then with the hopes that a later publisher decides to give this book a reprint with corrections and updated information.
Displaying 1 of 1 review