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Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnaught Era | 
 enlarge | Author: Norman Friedman
Creator: A. D. Baker
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Category: Book
List Price: $69.95
Buy New: $40.99
You Save: $28.96 (41%)
New (15) Used (7) from $29.95
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 260316
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.7
Dimensions (in): 11.5 x 9.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 1591145554
Dewey Decimal Number: 623.553
EAN: 9781591145554
ASIN: 1591145554
Publication Date: January 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
For more than a half a century the big gun was the arbiter of naval power, but it was useless if it could not hit the target fast and hard enough to prevent the enemy doing the same. Because the naval gun platform was itself in motion, finding a 'firing solution' was a significant problem made all the more difficult when gun sizes increased and fighting ranges lengthened and seemingly minor issues like wind velocity had to be factored in. This heavily illustrated book outlines for the first time in layman's terms the complex subject of fire-control equipment and electro-mechanical computing.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 A model of military scholarship and a very highly recommended addition March 4, 2008
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
26 out of 30 found this review helpful
Battleships are floating platforms for artillery barrages that often proved key and essential components of successful ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore military engagements. They were also to prove vulnerable to submarine and air attacks. Now the combat history and gunnery capability of these massive ships of war is fully explored in "Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns And Gunnery In The Dreadnaught Era" by naval historian and analysts Norman Friedman. The focus is on the guns that made battleships the lords of the sea in their heyday. Replete with historic black-and-white photographs of these ships, and a profusion of interior drawings depicting aspects of the guns and their munitions, "Naval Firepower" begins with notes on the units of measurement, abbreviations, and an informative introduction, followed by chapters on gunnery problems, range-keeping, shooting and hitting, tactics used in 1904 to 1914, the impact of World War I on battleship operations and developments during the years of 1914 to 1918, the era between the two wars, battleship gunnery during World War II, battles ships of the German navy, the Us navy and the US Navy at War, as well as chapters on the battleships of the Japanese, French, Italian, and Russian navies. Of special note is the appendices on "Propellants, Guns, Shells and Armour". Enhanced with extensive notes, a glossary, a bibliography, and an index, "Naval Firepower" is a model of military scholarship and a very highly recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library Military History and Naval History reference collections.
A fairly complete story April 18, 2008
R. Douglas Johnson (Canada)
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book examines fire control of battleships and lesser vessels, their development and use.
The book examines the problem of hitting a ship moving in two dimensions from a ship moving in three and how these problems were solved from just prior to WWI to just after WWII. The problem, it's associated terminology and solutions are examined from both a historical and developmental aspect with examinations of individual navy's systems and their use. Of particular value is the section on shell's and propellants.
On the negative side reading this work can be a bit of a slog as a lot of explanations are in the footnotes and for a novice a lot of page flipping results. Some of the sections will take someone new to the work a certain amount of re-reading (I am still re-reading the book!).
Overall this book is an excellent resource for big ship fire control and the related effects of the solutions. The historical description can give new insight in to some naval actions although some of the historical accounts do not agree with other histories. The effect of fire control systems on the Battle of the Denmark Straight are particularily interesting.
A lot of this information was available from a number of other sources but this book has a lot of it all in one volume and for that alone it is well worth the price and the time taken to read it. For any student of naval actions of WWI and WWII this is a must have! I would recommend this work unreservedly despite the previous paragraph's gripes.
Useful naval fire control book August 4, 2008
Mark Hinds (NE Illinois, USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Although I am not an expert on the subject matter, I have been reading naval history for 40 years, and I found this book to be well worth the purchase price. For one thing, it is full of interesting and useful pieces of information on the development and operation of naval fire control systems, both in general, and for most major navies up through through WWII. Most of this information I have not seen elsewhere, including information on non-anglo-saxon navies such as the Italians, French and Russians. Admittedly the level of detail is less on these latter navies. It would also have been nice to have more quantitive information on relative performance of these systems, but since the real navies didn't have this comparitive information either, I can't complain too much. The bibliography is mediocre, but the "Notes" section at the end is fascinating.
Rivetting history and discussion of naval fire control November 15, 2008
Jeremy (Madison, AL USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Friedman picks up the fire control story around 1900, when the British wanted to retain gunnery superiority over the rapidly expanding torpedo threat. From here until approximately 1943, the history is British-centric because the majority of fire control technology was British in origin until the Americans took the lead during WW2. Other navies are covered in detail, using the British systems as the benchmark, and Friedman carefully points out that spectacular results (such as that which the Germans achieved at Jutland) did not always require the most advanced equipment.
Friedman's stunning hypothesis is that the British sought long range technology with no tactical doctrine in mind. As the ranges went out, hitting rates went down, and the Royal Navy discovered that they did not have enough ammunition to sink a German ship at long ranges, nor enough time at short ranges before the torpedoes arrive.
Friedman works this into an explanation as to why British battlecruisers blew up at Jutland. It is by no means an excuse for the infamously shoddy armor, but it does attempt to share the blame with the confused rapid-fire-at-all-ranges doctrine that the BCF followed.
If you are interested in fire control, then you should consider this mandatory reading, alongside Brooks' Dreadnought Gunnery, and Gordon's Rules Of The Game for a more biographical perspective.
 Misleading Title April 21, 2008
Tony DiGiulian (SE PA)
14 out of 20 found this review helpful
A more appropriate title for this book might have been "Dreadnought Fire Control" as that represents at least 90% of the contents. Very little is devoted to "Gunnery" and almost nothing is said about "Guns" - and even that small amount is unreliable, even to the point of getting the caliber (bore size) of the weapons incorrect in at least two instances.
As in many of Dr. Friedman's works, this book has a good deal of nomenclature data on what model of equipment was carried by a particular warship, which may prove the most useful part of the work. It is in the area of how this equipment operated and worked with its crewmen that the work falls down. I now know what mark of rangefinder was used by British and USA battleships, for example, but if I relied totally upon this work I would know little about how well they performed under various conditions and what "sailor alts" were performed on them to rectify their faults.
I also have to note that secondary and AA fire control are virtually ignored, with the exception of listing what type/mark of rangefinders or analog computers were used to control them. However, there is pitifully little about how effective these were in performing their job.
In brief, this is a useful work for reference purposes, but it could have been much more.
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