By Christopher Miskimon
On December 6, 1941, most people considered the battleship the queens of the world’s oceans. A day later that notion lay smashed and sinking at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Despite the ascendancy of the aircraft carrier, however, the battleship still had a role to play. The US Navy entered the war with 16 older battleships (including the partly demilitarized Wyoming, retained for gunnery training). Ten modern ships built in the late 1930s or during the war joined them. They escorted carriers, carried out shore bombardments, including a duel between USS Texas and German shore batteries in 1944. A handful of the older battleships took part in the last battleship versus battleship action in history at the Battle of Surigao Strait.
This new work is a well-illustrated coffee table book providing detailed information on each of the battleships which sailed in the US Navy during the war. Hundreds of photographs and charts accompany the text, with thorough data on the ship’s armament, protection, propulsion and more. The book has interesting sections on the Cold War service of the Iowa class and diving on the USS Arizona.
US Battleships 1939-45 (Ingo Bauernfeind, Casemate Publishing, Havertown PA, 2024, 240 pp., photographs, bibliography, index, $49.95, HC)
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