The American Battleship

By Samuel Loring Morison & Normal Polmar
Hard Bound; 180 pages
10.00w x 10.00h
ISBN: 0760309892
Throughout two world wars, the battleship served as the ultimate naval gun platform and was king of the warships. Even in this era of supercarriers, battleships still evoke an aura of raw energy and firepower. The American Battleship is a tribute to a class of ships that has served for more than a century with the U.S. fleet.
This work was eagerly awaited by this reviewer. While a nice looking book, it suffers from the all too common lack of proof-reading so evident in publishing these days. The book has numerous instances of things such as "dock" instead of deck, "starboard" instead of port etc. In addition, it appears that many of the photo captions were not proof-read which detracts from some excellent photos contained in the work. A nice photo of USS Wisconsin on page 80 claims it was taken just after commissioning when the Korean War era SPS-6 and SPS-8A radars are clearly visible.
It was interesting to read how the Spanish Navy visited New York right around the time of the outbreak of the Spanish-American War; a fact I do not recall having read before. Another fact I learned was the battleship Kearsarge remained self-propelled after conversion to a crane ship.
However there is definitely enough information and quality photographs in this book to recommend it.
The publishers, Motor Books International, have this book for sale on their confusing website at www.motorbooks.com. It will take some creative searching to find it there however. (DS)