The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922 [Paperback]

This is the third book in the author's series charting the design and development of British warships since 1815. It is said that old wines improve with age and it is evidently true of authors as well since, in this reviewers opinion, this rates as David Brown's best book yet. "The Grand Fleet" charts the development of RN design from the Dreadnought of 1905 to the Washington Conference of 1921, and falls neatly into three main parts.

Part 1 sets the scene, with discussions on the resources, what is a good design, design drivers, pre-war development in naval architecture, marine engineering, armour schemes and armament. The extensive series of pre-war trials (armament, armour, shell design, propellant) is well covered - and indicates the gaps in the trials programmes which may have led to serious flaws being missed. Part 2 examines pre-war ship designs in more detail, with chapters on battleships cruisers, destroyers and early aviation vessels, and submarines. Part 3 goes o to covers wartime design and development. Chapters again examine the various of ships, followed by additional chapters which discuss action damage and lessons learnt, the inevitable post mortem on the many magazine explosions suffered by the RN and on to the abortive designs cancelled as a result of the Washington Conference. An interesting aspect not fully appreciated before is the extent to which the RN contributed to the design of US, Japanese and French carrier designs immediately after the war and in the aftermath of the Washington Conference - the influence of FURIOUS is seen in Akagi and Lexington, ARGUS in Hosho whilst EAGLE formed the basis for Bearn. In each case drawings and other technical data for the RN vessels was passed to the nations concerned to asist with their development of their own carriers.

The book is illustrated throughout. Some pictures are familiar, others rarely seen in print, whilst a few come from the author's own collection and have never been seen before. There are also a number of general arrangements and outline plans from the official sets of ships drawings of the period. It is evident that the author has had access to an extensive range of primary sources. The text is accompanied throughout by graphs and tables comparing nearly every aspect of warship design, from weight breakdowns and comparisons of armour schemes to cost analyses, studies on ship motions and incidents of sea sickness. There is a risk that a work of this sort could become a very dry technical piece, but the author has done very well in keeping the technical detail relevant yet easy for the less technically minded reader to understand. At last we have an accessible book which explains the complexities with which the naval architect has to contend and which goes a long way to explaining, particularly to those who think purely in terms of number of guns, thickness of armour and speed, what makes a "good" or "bad" design. For this the author is to be warmly congratulated. "The Grand Fleet" is a grand piece of work!

I have all three books in this series and I consider them essential to anyone interested in the development of Royal Navy warships. All three books are well illustrated and the text is consise. However, the real joy for me was reading the sidenotes to the text. I thoroughly recommend this book and its companion volumes.

In this work, David Brown provides a fascinating and compelling explanation of the British side of an arms race in which he includes the developments in - and lessons learned from, a wide variety of ships and submarines - not just battleships.

The pace of change in warship design which gripped the world's major navies in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries remains the greatest arms race of all time. As an example of the changes which came into force, in 1903 the British Duncan class battleship came into service. These ships sported four 12 in. Guns and were powered by 2 x four-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines. Only three years later, however, HMS Dreadnought was commissioned. This ship was so revolutionary in terms of battleship design she immediately made all ships in all navies obsolete. The Dreadnought class carried ten 12 in. guns and her steam turbines drove four propellers at a much improved speed. From this point forward, all battleships throughout the world became classed as either `Dreadnought' or `pre-Dreadnought.'

The introduction of HMS Dreadnought now created a renewed arms race in which the world's navies sought to replace all their major warships - or risk being blown out of the water. As each new class of ship was then launched - so new innovations were introduced - all of which served to perpetuate the extraordinary competition which then existed.

Author David K. Brown had a distinguished career as a naval architect and rose to become the Deputy Chief Naval Architect of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors prior to his retirement. For the next 30 years he wrote widely on warship design and became known as a trusted authority on the subject. In this work, he traces the history of warship design and development - as it applied to the British Grand Fleet, from 1906-1922.

Divided into three parts in relation to WW1; Part One of this compelling work is headed Pre-War Developments with chapters on; Preparations for War and Attack and Defence (Pre-War Trials). Part Two is Pre-War Designs and covers; Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers & Early Naval Aviation and Submarines. Part Three is Wartime Experience and Design and includes; Major Developments, Wartime Destroyers & Aviation Vessels, Wartime Submarines, Smaller Vessels & Shipbuilding, Action Damage & Experience of War, Warship Design from the Armistice to Washington and finally (Chapter 13) the Achievement.

Well supported with a plenty of quality images and drawings spaced throughout the book, this is an historical work which explains much to those with an interest in the period and does so with supreme clarity on subjects as diverse as warship displacement and submarine hull designs.

NM