British Cruiser Warfare: The Lessons of the Early War, 1939-1941

by Alan Raven

Cruisers were the Navy's maids-of-all-work employed in a greater variety of roles than any other warship type. Smaller faster and far more numerous than battleships they could be risked in situations where capital ships were too vulnerable while still providing heavy gunfire support for smaller ships or anti-aircraft cover for the fleet. As such they were in the frontline of the naval war from the outset - and from its first days the fighting provided unexpected challenges and some very unpleasant surprises not least the efficacy of air power.Cruisers learned to deal with these new realities in the Norway campaign and later in the Mediterranean partly through the introduction of new technology - notably radar - but also by codifying the hard-won experience of those involved. This highly original book analyses the first years of the war when the sharpest lessons were learned initially describing every action and its results and then summarising in individual chapters the conclusions that could be drawn for the many aspects of a cruiser's duties. These include the main roles like surface gunnery shore bombardment anti-aircraft tactics and fighter direction but also encompass technology like radar asdic and shipborne aircraft and even tackle more human issues such as shipboard organization damage control the impact of weather and the morale factor. It also attempts to evaluate the importance of electronic warfare intelligence and code-breaking and concludes with a comparison between the performance of British cruisers and their Italian and German opponents.Thought-provoking and sometimes controversial this is a book that should be read by everyone interested in World War II at sea.

Genres: Military Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2019

About the author

Alan Raven is a British-born naval historian, illustrator, and professional ship-model builder whose work frequently appears in modelling magazines.He was formerly editor of Combat Fleets.

Reviews

[Johnathan Barazzuol]

Quite dry. Too academic. Lots of useful info for navy nerds though.

[Raymond Hackney]

This was another Father's Day present, this time from my youngest daughter.
Alan Raven is a well known and respected R.N. historian. In this book he comes over as seeming to think he is superior to any other current historian, (rather like Geoff Boycott is to cricketing commentary). This, allied to a lot of very annoying proof reading errors resulted in a 4 star rating, rather than a 5 star one. This book is in the Seaforth range from Pen & Sword, and one does not expect so many errors of this type, from this source.
Apart from the above, I found the book to be a fascinating read. It contains just over 300 pages, and is split into 2 main parts - the first 150 pages being a "Chronology of events from 09/1939 to 31/12/1941", whilst the second half has "Summaries" on such diverse subjects as Gunnery, AA tactics, Shipborne aircraft, Radar, Code breaking, Radio and other intelligence, Radio warfare, Italian and German Navies, Crusier design and machinery, etc, etc. The amount of research that has gone into all this must have been immense. The first part of the book provided me with many new aspects of the R.N's early crusier war that I did not know before.
Apart from the proof reading errors, the production is up to Seaforth's usual excellence. One of the main attractions, to me, was the quantity and quality of the photographs. The drawings and plans are also to a very high standard.
The author and publishers are to be congratulated on producing this book. Anyone interested in WW II naval warfare will need one on their bookshelves. I sincerely hope that a sequal, (or even sequals), will be forthcoming, (if the appropriate records still exist). I know the work-load for this would be exceedingly high, but the effort would undoubtedly be wothwhile.
I consider this to be a great addition to my library.

[Shrike58]

Although there is a great deal of useful information in this work, it's hard for me to be very enthusiastic about it. What this essentially boils down to is that one can't forget that this is a fragment of what was going to be a larger book. Perhaps if it had been advertised straight-up as a chronology I might feel a little less judgemental. I'd also be less judgemental if a follow-on work giving an overview of RN cruisers during the rest of the war emerged. When one thinks about it, Alan Raven has to be a rather old man and one suspects that this product is a result of a ruthless assessment of what he was really capable of getting done in the time he had left. Read as an inter-library loan but if I had the option to buy a remaindered copy I'd take advantage of it. My actual rating would be 3.5 if that were an option.