The World's Worst Warships

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View books by Antony Preston, George Paloczi-Horvath.

Pot calls kettle black? - Rated
As an enthusiast on maritime history, I had hoped that this curious book (gifted to me)would NOT be the let-down that its title suggests. How, after all, do you quantify 'worst'? On first sight, it sounded like a marketing error. Even the subtitle made me wonder - when does a design 'fail'?

I should first admit that I am a long-term fan of Anthony Preston and have great respect for his knowledge and experience. Heck, I even wrote some articles for him in the days of Navy International. Unfortunately, this work is not his best.

Firstly, I don't understand why this fairly slim volume (small format 192pp) is described by the author as having been a 'hard slog', when it is evident (and indeed pretty much admitted in the acknowledgements) that a lot of the content has been taken from other sources. (In one instance, almost verbatim from 'Warships of the USSR and Russia'.)

Secondly, I am very depressed by the lack of care taken by the publisher in the production. There are a good few instances of 'rub-off' and 'show through', the typographical design leaves a bit to be desired and it is once more evident that the text has not been properly edited, and certainly not proof-read. This lack of care is fairly typical of Chrysalis, the publishers now that Conway is but a name, and is so bad in this example that it leads to real trouble in reading the text. All for the sake of a couple of hundred pounds in extra expense.

Further, the writing itself seems to be less than first rate, and the lack of editing leads to painful examples - the most common problem being the marriage of unassociated concepts in one paragraph (see Para 1, p159, for instance).

Beyond all this, however, the author (surprisingly) comes out with some very odd conclusions and opinions.

As an example, the Yamato class are described as having first-rate protection, and yet my reading universally describes these ships as having poor quality armour, badly designed fixings, substandard materials, fairly awful torpedo defenses and much less subdivision than they should have had.

The author ascribes this class's problems as being largely due to their size, as if this in itself were a design flaw. While it is true to say that the design pushed the builders somewhat out of their depth, and was perhaps beyond the capacity of Japanese industry at that time, there is nothing wrong in having a big battleship. In an ideal world, ship designs are as big as they have to be, and it is worth noting that final-generation battleship designs were not far away from the Yamato in bulk.

This shortcoming can be applied to other sections of the book, vis HMS Swift. In short, the author seems critical of innovation, and one has to wonder how any progress would be made if innovative designs are judged to be 'the worst'. In the case of Swift, the concept was in fact very sound...as demonstrated by the size and capabilities of the designs that followed. It is not a design fault to be in the vanguard of progress.

This, in the end, is the main argument I have with this book. The chapters more often deal with general design history over a period of time, not with individual vessels, and the conclusions do not suggest that the ships described are 'the worst'. This is primarily because it is difficult to honestly denigrate a ship that does what it was designed to do, even if that requirement is shown to be erroneous.

The Polyphemus is a good example of this - she was actually a very impressive vessel, and deemed very successful in her time, and it was not a design fault that made her obsolete so rapidly. Indeed, with a greater top speed and longer range torpedoes, she would have suddenly looked a lot like a destroyer.

If one really wanted to discuss 'failures and repercussions of naval design', I would have thought that a discussion of British 'heavy' and 'battle' cruiser designs would have provided much more meat. Mind you, the section on fast attack craft is excellent.

All in all, quite disappointing.

A fascinating selection of ships. - Rated
Before settling down to read this book, I began by glancing through the pages to see what sort of warship might be regarded as the world's worst. The inclusion of the "K" class submarine did not surprise me but the Yamato, Graf Spee and Hood - I thought these were the outstanding Battleships of their day. Then, having read the narrative for each vessel, it became quite clear why they are included.

"The World's Worst Warships" is a hard-back book measuring 10" x 8" containing almost 200 pages of detailed information on a carefully chosen selection of warship types. Commencing with the Monitors of the American Civil War, the Author brings us through his book - chapter-by-chapter and development-by-development, as this particular type of war machine evolves and improves. Each chapter becomes a fascinating read and the book is well illustrated with a generous selection of line drawings and historic photographs. Incidentally, all illustrations are courtesy of "Chrysalis Images." Chrysalis Books are the parent publishing company and I suspect many readers will find some of the images to be new and previously unpublished.

At the beginning of the book, it is very easy for the reader to mock the early efforts of those building the very first iron-clads - the benefits of hindsight and all that. Later on, however, we can only stand in awe as we learn of the political thinking and sheer dogmatism that surrounded the design of this and the building of that. To think that the one country which truly recognised the value of the Aircraft Carrier right at the outbreak of WW2 would also insist on building 2 Yamato class Battleships - the construction of which almost bankrupted the nation and also even deprived the country's fishermen of their nets. It's all in there.

This is a work of reference to interest ship's historians the world over. I also suspect it will be much sought after by Scuba Divers who look for the reasons why this wreck or that wreck is where it is today.

NM