FAMOUS FIGHTING SHIPS
R315.00
160 pp incl index and acknowledgements. Clean and well bound with no markings annotations or inscriptions. Pages and cover yellowing.
Donald Macintyre commanded the escort destroyers Walker, Hesperus and Bickerton during the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War and was awarded th DSO and two bars and the DSC. He wrote of his experiences in U-Boat Killer, and since his retirement from the Royal Navy as a Captain in 1954 has become widely read as a naval historian.
Fighting ships, as an arm of war, catch the imagination in a way that no other arm can equal. Few regiments, or aircraft certainly no tanks or gun carriers – can compete with the impression made during a war by the careers of famous fighting ships, and it is remarkable how long their fame endures after the hostilities are over.
Donald Macintyres’s ten fighting ships range from the Revenge, Drake’s flagship in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, to the USS Enterprise, which earned no less than twenty Battle Stars and a Presidential Unit Citation. Not all the ships were victorious – the Redoubtable was smashed to pieces at Trafalgar, but her place in history is secure as a ship which fought gallantly to the very end; the Scharnhorst is famous almost by default, and it is interesting to ponder how her speed and superb design might have served a different master. Some had brief and glorious careers, like HMS Ark Royal, others like the USS Constitution and HMS Warspite, became veterans with battle records of remarable length and success.
The author ranges over four centuries, and brings his unrivalled knowledge and narrative skill to bear on the stories of ten ships and their commanders and on all the great conflicts, including two – the War of 1812 and the Russo-Japanese War – which saw the arrival on the world scene of two first-class naval powers. His book is generously illustrated in colour and black and white.
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