Naval Firepower Quotes

“For the British”
― Norman Friedman, Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era

“Ships and their systems reflect economic and political as much as technical compromises.”
― Norman Friedman, Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era

“Postwar US analysis was that a large armoured ship would succumb to such damage precisely because a magazine fire would produce a critical volume of gas without any relief due to venting or flooding; either event would be inhibited by the ship’s armour and her underwater protection. The loss of USS Arizona to a forward magazine explosion seemed to prove this point.”
― Norman Friedman, Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era

“US surface-gun fire-control development effectively ended with the end of World War II.”
― Norman Friedman, Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era

“The night battle off Guadalcanal demonstrated the limitations of the pre-war centralised command system.”
― Norman Friedman, Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era

“Unfortunately, wartime demands broke up the formations. As a consequence, battles were often fought by commanders who did not know how to react during a fast night battle.”
― Norman Friedman, Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era

“it had gradually ascended through different degrees of diminishing harmfulness, until it had attained total uselessness, which was the nearest approach to perfection such a system could know.”
― Norman Friedman, Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era