What Happened to the Battleship. 1945 to the Present

Книга на английском языке
Much has been written about battleships. Technical studies abound, as do histories of their operations in the twentieth century. They are the most argued over type of warship. Debate still rages about their strategic impact, design, utility, expense, vulnerability and effectiveness.
Historians and naval analysts have tended to draw the curtain in September 1945 when Japan surrendered. Some adopt an even earlier cut­ off.1 To summarise their argument, the events of the Second World War were held to have shown that the battleship had become an expensive and vulnerable anachronism, a naval irrelevance in an era now dominated by the submarine, air power, and the aircraft carrier. Battleships only survived as long as they did, it was asserted, because decision-making admirals were hidebound conservatives, fixated by their formative experiences as young officers in the battleships and the old ways of naval warfare.

Содержание
Preface
Introduction
One. 2 September 1945
Two. Still Work to do
Three. Post-War planning and the Battleship
Four. Bikini Atoll
Five. Thinning the Ranks
Six. Peacetime in the Royal Navy
Seven. Peacetime for the United States and France
Eight. Cuts to the Royal Navy
Nine. Stalin’s Oceanic Navy - Soviet Battleship Ambitions
Ten. Conflict in Korea
Eleven. Cold War - Rearming and deterring in the Early 1950s
Twelve. End of the Line? The late 1950s and ’60s
Thirteen. Vietnam, 1967-69
Fourteen. Revival - The 600-Ship Navy
Fifteen. Preservation, Historic Ships and Relics
Epilogue
Appendix. The Royal Naval Armaments Depot Priddy’s Hard Gun Logs
Bibliography
Sources and Notes
Index