WesWorld

Aircraft Carriers of the World, 1914 to Present, An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Published 1984 by Arms and Armor Press, Lionel Levanthal Limited. 284 pages plus bibliography and index. Heaps o' photos and line drawings.

A second edition has come out more recently, but a cursory look suggested it didn't change much of the pre-1984 stuff. So I didn't buy it; there's not much I need to know about post-'84 CVs.

This is my "Holy Bible" of aircraft carriers. I refer to it constantly.

The book includes 22 pages on the evolution of carriers, touching briefly on things like flight deck design, catapults, hangers, and so on. There's then about 14 pages on carrier roles, which includes discussing armaments and air wings. This is fairly basic by necessity, but I think all the important stuff gets mentioned.

The meat of the book, however, is the listing of carriers. Every carrier to see service by 1984 has an entry; a number of classes that did not make it into service - the French Joffres, for example - are included. It's mostly basic stuff - the stats, some design notes, and service history, usually accompanied by one or more illustrations. But, like I said - every carrier is there. This is particularly helpful if you're looking for something not American, British, or Japanese.

I find the book particularly valuable as a drawing aid; the listings often discuss hanger and elevator dimensions, which help me plan aircraft storage on my own designs. The line drawings and photos are numerous enough that I can compare different armament or island layouts, see where ship's boats or gun directors are placed, and so on.

In some cases, entries will also include little gems like ordnance loads, elevator performance, air group bunkerage, etc. This is also good stuff to have handy.

Can't tell you the cost - my father bought this book twenty years ago, and I inherited it later on. But it's probably worth checking out if you're interested in going further than a springstyle design.

Given the fact that M.J.Whitley never did a CV book I've been looking for something very similar to his books specifically on CV's. This sounds like the book.

You´re right. Roger´s book is among the best on carriers I´ve seen so far. It holds most information one needs. Perhaps some more regarding effectiveness during operations, seakeeping, plane handling etc. would have been interesting - especially for the smaller (aux.) carriers.

One should also note that his book goes well with Clark G. Reynolds book about carriers in WW1 and WW2. The latter has more information about carrier development and operations and provides some nice "action" photos.

Maybe you need to give us a review of that one...?

For Italian projects I'd recomend La Nave Virtuale by Enrico Cernuschi. Its a 9 page article in Italian with extensive coverage of projects 1919-1926. I also have a similar article on Caracciolo. Does anyone want a copy? I have them as .jpgs

I won't be able to read the text, but any figures would be interesting to examine.

I have a copy of this book, and based on it I came up with the "Jutland" conversion, based on the fact that the style had been used on HMS ???? ( can't remember the name....DOH!), but a good book, why can't there be more like it for all other classes of vessel?

I guess we will have to write it then!

Quoted

Does anyone want a copy? I have them as .jpgs

Sure. I'd like a copy.

Me too, please!!

*waves hand* Me too!!!

Good idea. That way you can do something about that horrible feature on your carriers.
XD

Sent them. Quite a large size though. Rocky can you read French? Grammatically the languages are fairly similar. You can guess most of the vocab. The technical words are the same as English.

Here! Here! Me too please.

Can't read French, but if the techinical words are close enough, I can probably puzzle it out. Thanks for sending it.

Done.

http://www.marina.difesa.it/storia/Almanacco/Navi000.htm

On this Italian site there are lots of stats about ships so it acts as a sort of dictionary.

Thanks!