<div>&ldquo;This magnificent book reinforces Norman Friedman&#39;s unparalleled reputation as a peerless author of maritime topics.&rdquo;&mdash;Australian Naval Institute Gradually evolving from the masted steam frigates of the mid-nineteenth century, the first modern cruiser is not easy to define&mdash;but for the sake of this book, historian Norman Friedman takes as a starting point Iris and Mercury of 1875. They were the Royal Navy&rsquo;s first steel-built warships; were designed primarily to be steamed rather than sailed; and formed the basis of a line of succeeding cruiser classes. The story progresses with the last armored cruisers, which were succeeded by the first battlecruisers (originally called armored cruisers), and with the last Third Class Cruisers (Topaze class), all conceived before 1906. While dovetailing precisely with the author&#39;s previous book on British cruisers, this one also includes the wartime experience of the earlier ships. The two central themes are cruisers for the fleet and cruisers for overseas operations, including (but not limited to) trade protection. The distant-waters aspect covers the belted cruisers, which were nearly capital ships, intended to deal with foreign second-class battleships in the Far East. The main enemies contemplated during this period were France and Russia, and the book includes British assessments of their strength and intentions, with judgments as to how accurate those assessments were. Deeply researched, original in its analysis, and full of striking insights, this is another major contribution by Norman Friedman to the history of British warships.</div>

Buy From US

Kobo

Google

Barnes & Noble

Apple

Amazon

British Cruisers of the Victorian Era

<div>Winner of the John Lyman Book Award for Naval and Maritime Science and Technology. &ldquo;A compelling and convincing historical analysis of World War I.&rdquo; &mdash;Navy News While the overriding image of the First World War is of the bloody stalemate on the western front, the overall shape of the war arose out of its maritime character. It was essentially a struggle about access to worldwide resources, most clearly seen in Germany&rsquo;s desperate attempts to counter the American industrial threat, which ultimately drew the United States into the war. This radical new book concentrates on the way in which each side tried to use or deny the sea to the other, and in so doing, describes rapid wartime changes not only in ship and weapons technology but also in the way naval warfare was envisaged and fought. Melding strategic, technical, and tactical aspects, Friedman approaches the First World War from a fresh perspective and demonstrates how its perceived lessons dominated the way navies prepared for the Second World War. &ldquo;Friedman is a master of the evolution of naval strategy, tactics and technology . . . a rewarding read that will leave many wanting to return again and again just to see what they might have missed the first time.&rdquo; &mdash;Australian Naval Institute &ldquo;Dr. Friedman&rsquo;s research credentials are impeccable, and the huge amount of factual detail he has unearthed will be sure to delight many . . . there is nothing comparable in either depth or scope out there, and for this reason, if no other, this book is likely to become a standard work on the naval aspects of the Great War.&rdquo; &mdash;Naval War College Review</div>

Fighting the Great War at Sea

<div>&ldquo;An extraordinarily detailed account of the development of Royal Navy cruisers . . . a towering work&rdquo; from the author of Fighting the Great War at Sea (Warship 2012). For most of the twentieth century, Britain possessed both the world&rsquo;s largest merchant fleet and its most extensive overseas territories. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Royal Navy always showed a particular interest in the cruiser&mdash;a multipurpose warship needed in large numbers to defend trade routes and police the empire. Above all other types, the cruiser&rsquo;s competing demands of quality and quantity placed a heavy burden on designers, and for most of the interwar period, Britain sought to square this circle through international treaties restricting both size and numbers. In the process, she virtually invented the heavy cruiser and inspired the large 6in-armed cruiser, neither of which, ironically, served her best interests. This book seeks to comprehend, for the first time, the full policy background&mdash;from which a different and entirely original picture of British cruiser development emerges. After the war, the cruiser&rsquo;s role was reconsidered, and the final chapters of the book cover modernizations, the plans for missile-armed ships, and the convoluted process that turned the &ldquo;through-deck cruiser&rdquo; into the Invincible class light carriers. With detailed appendices of ship data, and illustrated in depth with photos and A.D. Baker&rsquo;s specially commissioned plans, British Cruisers truly matches the lofty standards set by Friedman&rsquo;s previous books on British destroyers. &ldquo;Wow! . . . Lavishly illustrated with a photograph or line plan on almost every page. The text is packed with technical information, detail, and description of design, construction and application of these important ships.&rdquo; &mdash;Clash of Steel</div>

British Cruisers

<div>A tactical and technical history of the development of British, American, and Japanese naval air defense from the 1920s to the 1980s. This is an account of the evolution of naval fighters for fleet air defense and the parallel evolution of the ships operating and controlling them, concentrating on the three main exponents of carrier warfare: the British Royal Navy, the U.S. Navy, and the Imperial Japanese Navy. It describes the earliest efforts from the 1920s, but it was not until radar allowed the direction of fighters that organized air defense became possible. Thus, major naval-air battles of the Second World War like Midway, the Pedestal convoy, the Philippine Sea, and Okinawa are portrayed as tests of the new technology. This was ultimately found wanting by the Kamikaze campaigns, leading to postwar moves towards computer control and new kinds of fighters. After 1945 the threats of nuclear weapons and standoff missiles compounded the difficulties of naval air defense. The second half of the book covers R.N. and U.S.N. attempts to solve these problems, looking at the American experience in Vietnam and British operations in the Falklands War. It concludes with the ultimate U.S. development of techniques and technology to fight the Outer Air Battle in the 1980s, which in turn point to the current state of carrier fighters and the supporting technology. Based largely on documentary sources, some previously unused, this book will appeal to both the naval and aviation communities. &ldquo;Fighters Over the Fleet provides more information about fleet air defense than any other work currently available. It is recommended for specialist as well aviation-minded readers.&rdquo; &mdash;Naval Historical Foundation</div>

Fighters Over the Fleet

<div>A history of the early days of Royal Navy destroyers, and how they evolved to meet new military threats. In the late nineteenth century the advent of the modern torpedo woke the Royal Navy to a potent threat to its domination, not seriously challenged since Trafalgar. For the first time a relatively cheap weapon had the potential to sink the largest, and costliest, exponents of sea power. Not surprisingly, Britain&rsquo;s traditional rivals invested heavily in the new technology that promised to overthrow the naval status quo. The Royal Navy was also quick to adopt the new weapon, but the British concentrated on developing counters to the essentially offensive tactics associated with torpedo-carrying small craft. From these efforts came torpedo catchers, torpedo-gunboats and eventually the torpedo-boat destroyer, a type so successful that it eclipsed and then usurped the torpedo-boat itself. With its title shortened to destroyer, the type evolved rapidly and was soon in service in many navies, but in none was the evolution as rapid or as radical as in the Royal Navy. This book is the first detailed study of their early days, combining technical history with an appreciation of the changing role of destroyers and the tactics of their deployment. Like all of Norman Friedman&rsquo;s books, it reveals the rationale and not just the process of important technological developments.</div>

British Destroyers

<div>&ldquo;A comprehensive survey of the design history and development of the Royal Navy&#39;s greyhounds of the sea.&rdquo;&mdash;WARSHIPS Magazine Since World War II, the old categories of destroyer and frigate have tended to merge, a process that this book traces back to the radically different &ldquo;Tribal&rdquo; class destroyers of 1936. It deals with the development of all the modern destroyer classes that fought the war, looks at the emergency programs that produced vast numbers of trade protection vessels&mdash;sloops, corvettes and frigates&mdash;then analyzes the pressures that shaped the post-war fleet, and continued to dominate design down to recent years. Written by America&#39;s leading authority and featuring photos and ship plans, it is an objective but sympathetic view of the difficult economic and political environment in which British designers had to work, and benefits from the author&#39;s ability to compare and contrast the US Navy&#39;s experience. Norman Friedman is renowned for his ability to explain the policy and strategy changes that drive design decisions, and his latest book uses previously unpublished material to draw a new and convincing picture of British naval policy over the previous seventy years and more. Includes photos</div>

British Destroyers & Frigates

<div>An in-depth reference to the naval weapons used by Britain, Germany, the US, and the other combatants in the Great War, with photos: &ldquo;Superb&hellip;invaluable.&rdquo;&mdash;History of War Although the Great War might be regarded as the heyday of the big-gun at sea, it also saw the maturing of underwater weapons, the mine and torpedo, as well as the first signs of the future potency of air power. Between 1914 and 1918 weapons development was both rapid and complex, so this book has two functions: on the one hand it details all the guns, torpedoes, mines, aerial bombs and anti-submarine systems employed during that period; but it also seeks to explain the background to their evolution: how the weapons were perceived at the time and how they were actually used. This involves a discussion of tactics and emphasizes the key enabling technology of fire control and gun mountings. In this respect, the book treats the war as a transition from naval weapons which were essentially experimental at its outbreak to a state where they pointed directly to what would be used in World War II. Based largely on original research, this sophisticated book is more than a catalogue of the weapons, offering insight into some of the most important technical and operational factors influencing the war at sea.</div>

Naval Weapons of World War One

<div>An in-depth history of naval battleship firepower from before World War I to the end of World War II, by America&rsquo;s leading naval analyst. For more than 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 &ldquo;firing solution&rdquo; was a significant problem exacerbated when gun sizes increased, fighting ranges lengthened, and seemingly minor issues like wind velocity had to be considered. To speed up the process and eliminate human error, navies sought a reliable mechanical calculation. This heavily illustrated book outlines for the first time in layman&rsquo;s terms the complex subject of fire-control, as it dominated battleship and cruiser design from before World War I to the end of the dreadnought era. Covering the directors, range-finders, and electro-mechanical computers invented to solve the problems, author Norman Friedman explains not only how the technology shaped (and was shaped by) the tactics involved, but also analyzes their effectiveness in battle. His examination of the controversy surrounding Jutland and the relative merits of competing fire-control systems draws surprising conclusions. He also reassesses many other major gun actions, such as the battles between the Royal Navy and the Bismarck, and the U.S. Navy actions in the Solomons and at Surigao Strait. All major navies are covered, and the story concludes at the end of World War II with the impact of radar.</div>

Naval Firepower

<div>A winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature gives &ldquo;an excellent overview of the problems involved in shooting at airplanes from ships.&rdquo; (Coast Defense Journal). This book does for naval anti-aircraft defense what the author&rsquo;s Naval Firepower did for surface gunnery&mdash;it makes a highly complex but historically crucial subject accessible to the layman. It chronicles the growing aerial threat from its inception in the First World War, and the response of each of the major navies down to the end of the Second, highlighting in particular the widely underestimated danger from dive-bombing. Central to this discussion is an analysis of what effective AA fire-control required, and how well each navy&#39;s systems actually worked. It also takes in the weapons themselves, how they were placed on ships, and how this reflected the tactical concepts of naval AA defense. Renowned military historian Norman Friedman offers striking insights he argues, for example, that the Royal Navy, so often criticized for lack of &ldquo;air-mindedness,&rdquo; was actually the most alert to the threat, but that its systems were inadequate&mdash;not because they were too primitive but because they tried to achieve too much. The book summarizes the experience of WW2, particularly in theaters where the aerial danger was greatest, and a concluding chapter looks at post-1945 developments that drew on wartime lessons. All important guns, directors and electronics are represented in close-up photos and drawings, and lengthy appendices detail their technical data. It is, simply, another superb contribution to naval technical history by its leading exponent.</div>

Naval Anti-Aircraft Guns & Gunnery

<div>&ldquo;For anyone wishing to super-detail any British destroyer of this era, this book looks to be a real must-have.&rdquo; &mdash;Nautical Research Guild&#39;s Model Ship World John Lambert was a renowned naval draftsman, whose plans were highly valued for their accuracy and detail by modelmakers and enthusiasts. By the time of his death in 2016 he&rsquo;d produced over 850 sheets of drawings, many of which have never been published&mdash;until now. Lambert&rsquo;s interest was always focused on smaller warships and his weapons drawings tend to be of open mountings&mdash;the kind that present a real challenge to modelmakers&mdash;rather than enclosed turret guns, but he also produced drawings of torpedo tubes, underwater weapons, fire-control directors, and even some specific armament-related deck fittings. This first volume in a series covers all such weapons carried by British destroyers of this era, with additional appendices devoted to earlier guns still in service, and destroyer-caliber weapons only mounted in larger ships. The drawings are backed by introductory essays by Norman Friedman, an acknowledged authority on naval ordnance, while a selection of photographs add to the value of the book as visual reference.</div>

British Naval Weapons of World War Two, Volume I

<div>An &ldquo;indispensable&rdquo; guide to the Royal Navy&rsquo;s submarines through 1945, with numerous photos and original plans (The Naval Review). The Royal Navy didn&rsquo;t invent the submarine&mdash;but in 1914, Britain had the largest submarine fleet in the world, and at the end of World War I it had some of the largest and most unusual of all submarines&mdash;whose origins and designs are all detailed in this book. During the First World War they virtually closed the Baltic to German iron ore traffic, and blocked supplies to the Turkish army at Gallipoli. They were a major element in the North Sea battles, and fought the U-boat menace. During World War II, US submarines were known for strangling Japan, but lesser known is the parallel battle by British submarines in the Mediterranean to strangle the German army in North Africa. Like their US counterparts, interwar British submarines were designed largely with the demands of a possible Pacific War, though that was not the war they fought. The author also shows how the demands of such a war, fought over vast distances, collided with interwar British Government attempts to limit costs. It says much about the ingenuity of British submarine designers that they met their requirements despite enormous pressure. The author shows how evolving strategic and tactical requirements and evolving technology produced successive types of design. British submariners contributed much to the development of anti-submarine tactics and technology, beginning with largely unknown efforts before World War I. Between the wars, they exploited the new technology of sonar (Asdic), and as a result pioneered submarine silencing, with important advantages to the US Navy as it observed the British. They also pioneered the vital postwar use of submarines as anti-submarine weapons, sinking a U-boat while both were submerged. Heavily illustrated with photos and original plans and incorporating much original analysis, this book is ideal for naval historians and enthusiasts. &ldquo;Sure to become the standard reference for British submarine development for years to come&rdquo; &mdash;Warship</div>

British Submarines in Two World Wars

<div>“Lambert was a drafter of no mean skill . . . his drawings are concise, clear, and invaluable to scratchbuilders and super-detailers. Very highly recommended!” —Nautical Research Journal John Lambert was a renowned naval draftsman whose plans were highly valued for their accuracy and detail by modelmakers and enthusiasts. By the time of his death in 2016 he had produced over 850 sheets of drawings, many of which had never been published. Now they have become available in these remarkable collections, with expert commentary and captioning included. The initial volumes concentrate on British naval weaponry used in the Second World War, thus completing the project Lambert was working on when he died. His interest was always focused on smaller warships and his weapons drawings tend to be of open mountings—the kind that present a real challenge to modelmakers—rather than enclosed turret guns, but he also produced drawings of torpedo tubes, underwater weapons, fire-control directors, and even some specific armament-related deck fittings. Following the earlier volumes on destroyer and escort armament, this one covers the multitude of weapons carried by Coastal Forces, many of which were improvised, ad hoc, or obsolescent, but eventually led to powerful purpose-designed weaponry. An appendix covering the main deck guns carried by British submarines of this era is included, along with an introductory essay by naval ordnance authority Norman Friedman and a selection of photos.</div>

British Naval Weapons of World War Two, Volume III

<div>The first comprehensive technical history on the subject, with photos: &ldquo;A must-read for all professionals, designers and scholars of modern submarines.&rdquo; &mdash;Australian Naval Institute The Royal Navy&rsquo;s greatest contribution to the Allied success in World War II was undoubtedly the defeat of the U-boat menace in the North Atlantic, a victory on which all other European campaigns depended. The underwater threat was the most serious naval challenge of the war, so it was not surprising that captured German submarine technology became the focus of attention for the British submarine service after 1945. It was quick to test and adopt the schnorkel, streamlining, homing torpedoes, and, less successfully, hydrogen-peroxide propulsion. Furthermore, in the course of the long Atlantic battle, the Royal Navy had become the world&rsquo;s most effective anti-submarine force and was able to utilize this expertise to improve the efficiency of its own submarines. However, in 1945 German submarine technology had also fallen into the hands of the Soviet Union&mdash;and as the Cold War developed it became clear that a growing Russian submarine fleet would pose a new threat. Britain had to go to the US for its first nuclear propulsion technology, but the Royal Navy introduced the silencing technique that made British and US nuclear submarines viable anti-submarine assets, and it pioneered in the use of passive&mdash;silent&mdash;sonars in that role. Nuclear power also changed the role of some British submarines, which replaced bombers as the core element of British Cold War and post-Cold War nuclear deterrence. As in other books in this series, this one shows how a combination of evolving strategic and tactical requirements and new technology produced successive types of submarines. It is based largely on unpublished and previously classified official documentation, and to the extent allowed by security restrictions, also tells the operational story&mdash;HMS Conqueror is still the only nuclear submarine to have sunk a warship in combat, but there are many lesser-known aspects of British submarine operations in the postwar era. </div>

Norman Friedman
Follow this author

Books By Norman Friedman (13 Books)