Category: General lists of ships

Some well-known stories of individual ships.

PHELAN, Kieran & BRICE, Martin H. Fast Attack Craft: The Evolution of Design and Tactics. 224p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Macdonald & Jane’s, 1977. ISBN: 356049124.

An excellent description of the development of early steam torpedo boats, CMBs, MTBs and German E-Boats, covering the period from 1880 to the 1970s with much material on WW2. Heavily illustrated, there is a strong readable text which goes well beyond design features.

DODSON, Aidan. Spoils of War: The Fate of Enemy Fleets after the Two World Wars. 328p., bibliog., illus., index. Barnsley: Seaforth; Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781526741981.

Covers an area which has been full of unrecorded or wrongly recorded facts. Traces the histories of navies and ships of the defeated powers from the months leading up to the relevant armistices or surrenders through to the final execution of the appropriate post-war settlements.

JORDAN, John. Warships After London: The End of the Treaty Era in the Five Major Fleets, 1930-1936. 320p., bibliog., illus., index Barnsley: Seaforth, 2020. ISBN: 9781526777492.

A sequel to his earlier work on the Washington Treaty, this considers the impact on design of the quantitative limits on cruisers, destroyers and submarines, imposed by the London Treaty. Again arranged by warship type.

IRELAND, Bernard. Collins/Jane’s Warships of World War II. 255p., illus. Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1996. ISBN: 0004708725.

A pocket sized guide to the major vessels of the major powers – France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and USA. Gives a brief description and specification for each class.

TALBOT-BOOTH, E. C. All the World's Fighting Fleets. 3rd ed. xix, 738p., illus. London: Sampson Low, [1940].

The first two editions were prewar; three other editions were published during the war. A rival to Jane's Fighting Ships and full of technical information.

Largely consists of line drawings of the warships of the major combatants and details of uniform of 16 countries.

An excellently illustrated and exhaustive guide. Reissued by Peerage in 1983 as Badges and Insignia of World War II.

Aims to provide a reasonably comprehensive picture of some representative ships and planes and to describe their employment. Published as three annual volumes.

PRESTON, Antony. An Illustrated History of the Navies of WWII. 224p., illus. London: PRC, 1989.

Although there is some account of campaigns this focuses heavily on the make-up and equipment of the protagonists. Notably well illustrated. Reprinted on several occasions, including Bison Books in 1979 and 1982 (ISBN: 0861240715), Gallery books in 1985 (ISBN: 0831763396), PRC in 1988 and 1998 (ISBN:1856484718).

Photographs and drawings of some of the major units of the major wartime Navies, arranged by country and then by type. There is a general accompanying critique of changes in design.

Silhouettes with brief descriptive notes. Several editions with minor amendments appeared throughout 1940. The seventh added the Italian Navy.

The Washington Treaty of 1922 agreed to legally binding limits on the numbers and sizes of the principal warship types. In doing so, it introduced a new constraint into naval architecture and sponsored many ingenious attempts to maximise the power of ships built within those restrictions. The approach of this book is novel in combining coverage of the political and strategic background of the treaty and the subsequent London Treaty of 1930 with analysis of exactly how the navies of Britain, the USA, Japan, France and Italy responded.

"This book is intended to be everyman's handy guide to those characteristics which a warship is called upon to employ when she works."

The first volume in a 12-volume series with the ambitious aim of becoming the standard reference work on ship technology. Each chapter covers a different type of ship and is written by a well-known expert. Profusely illustrated and encyclopaedic.

An unfortunate title for a series of 12 essays on various operations, mainly involving Britain and Germany, from the war at sea. Relies heavily on photos and artwork from Purnell's eight-volume History of the Second World War.

Some 71 colour plates are followed by descriptions of the ships and their careers. The ships were chosen as being representative of the ships or classes of ships of all the combatant nations.

Fully illustrated short histories of Rodney, Warspite,USS Washington,USS South Dakota, Scharnhorst,and Gniesenau.

An overall technical view. First published in 1936 as Warships Today.

Essentially a reprint of the 1946-47 edition but with addenda and corrigenda integrated and in portrait format.

The standard guide to the warships of the world.

A single volume covering every warship from the Washington Treaty to the end of the wartime construction programmes, plus surviving earlier ships. Over 1,000 photographs and drawings are combined with information from reliable modern sources, covering all the Navies of the world.