Warship 2024
224 pages
Andy Field
I have been buying Warship and (full disclosure), occasionally writing book reviews, since 2006, when it was published by Conway. Although now published by Osprey Publishing, a part of the Bloomsbury Group, there has not been any drop in standards in my opinion, and this annual publication remains an eagerly anticipated buy.
Each year, purchasers receive a hardback book, with a variety of different articles on warships and navies, with the emphasis on warships of the 19th century to the present day. The 2024 edition, for example, contains articles about the Japanese battleships Nagato & Mutsu, the Soviet flotilla leader Tashkent and her influence of subsequent designs, an account of the May 1915 actions between Russia’s Black Sea pre-dreadnoughts and the Goeben/Yavuz, a study of France’s large escorts Suffren & Duquesne, the Japanese escort destroyers of the Matsu & Tachibana classes, the German, sail powered, SMS Seeadler, the fate of the French pre-dreadnought, Bouvet, Italian midget submarines, 1934-43, the Royal Navy’s Fishery Protection Squadron, 1883-2023, and an account of the transformation of the Russian prize, Orel, into the IJN’s Iwami.
As if this wasn’t enough to whet the appetite, ‘Warship Notes’, continues with smaller articles, on Italian views on the German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin and the development of the Italians’ Aquila, the story of the French colonial river gunboats, Niger, Le Mage & Faidherbe in the 1880s, an account of an unusual incident involving HMS Cossack during operations during the Spanish Civil War, an account of the visit of Ernest Kennet, a British Naval Constructor, to France’s naval construction branch, in 1939, and a brief continuation of some ‘zombie facts’ (errors which keep being repeated) in naval history.
Two short articles, ‘A Mysterious German Battlecruiser’, and ‘Patterns of Political Nomenclature in the Russian and Soviet Navies’, supplying additional information to an article published in 2023, round off this section, before the Book Reviews, this year featuring 28 recently published books, and ‘Warship Gallery’, this year’s covering ‘The Soviet Navy 1960-1990’.
The quality of research and writing is first rate, and the articles are well supported by photographs, maps and diagrams, making this an excellent annual for naval historians. I always find several articles of interest (this year’s personal favourites being the ones on the Black Sea engagements, and changes the Japanese made to their Russian prize.) and I regularly learn something new. I am sure that readers of the NR who are already familiar with Warship would agree with me in this, and that it makes a welcome, and valuable, addition to any bookshelf or coffee table.
