USN Battleship vs IJN Battleship: The Pacific 1942–44 (Duel)

Between the World Wars, the major navies of the world invested heavily in battleships. Japan and the United States expected battleships to be the arbiters of the next war at sea. In the event, aircraft carriers were the dominant force at sea in the Pacific. U.S. and Japanese battleships met only twice, off Guadalcanal in 1942 and at Surigao Strait in 1944...Author Mark Stille provides an exceptional amount of information and analysis in this Osprey Duel Series book, with illustrations by Mark Gilliland and Paul Wright. He traces the development of the respective battleship classes, sets the strategic situation, and notes technical specifications. Of note, the author includes an examination of the respective fire control systems.For this reviewer, the most interesting part of the book was the reconstruction of the battleship fights off Guadalcanal and at Surigao Strait. Two confusing combats are presented in a systematic manner, supported by a couple of well-done battle diagrams. The concluding analysis is very worthwhile. The narrative is nicely supported by period photographs and modern illustrations. Highly recommended as concise coverage of a fascinating element of the Second World War at sea.

While it was a good general history of the evolution of battleships, on both sides, a lot of the detail, specifics on the guns, and their ballistics, the weight of the individual rifles and their turrets and mountings. I can get more details about the specific armaments from Wikipedia, and other internet sources, it’s still a nice book for a WW2 reference library, because it describes some battles, and some of the competing schemes for armament and armor design, I need to confess, overall, I was disappointed, and won’t buy any more from the series.

A good book with some excellent illustrations. Also, I learned much more than I had from other sources, particularly on the Second Battle of Guadalcanal. I would have liked more information on the "modern" battleships that never engaged in ship to ship combat (particularly the Iowa and her sisters and the Yamato and Musashi) - probably outside the scope of the book, but a few more paragraphs of assessment would have been interesting.

Good quick reference book for the 2 Battleship v Battleship fights in the Pacific between the USN and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Will provide some help to the modeler but there are better books out there for that....

There could have been more photos of the various battleship classes as they were updated. The book breaks down the training and tactics of the American and Japanese navies in regards to their battleships. The book also touches on the commanders from both sides, what their training involved as well as what their practical experience was.

An excellent book very well written amazing art work in photos

Nice easy read book history of battleships in the Pacific WWII

Fast but detailed information worth reading

An interesting read, with good pictures and diagrams. Handy reference book.

Like all the Duel books, an excellent reference work with good illustrations.

very interesting

Like all duel books on naval units, there’s far too much to cover in terms of design and development of individual classes, so here they are largely skimmed over providing details to why ships where improved in what ways, and the technical specifications of each class. The Japanese ships are slightly better covered, probably due to there being less class’s to cover, but this is all the only large downside to the book. Otherwise I very much enjoyed this one, particularly the combats sections, Suriago Strait being very nice to read about as it’s usually not covered in much detail elsewhere. It’s hardly fair for the 2 occasions Japanese battleships squared up against US equivalents they were outnumbered, and both times it featured one of their oldest designs. Still the battles are interesting nonetheless, and Mark Stille is doubtless the best author for the duel books on naval forces, so he does a great job here. The importance of radar and other technology is mentioned as largely being the deciding factor in both engagements, for god reason, and the possibly of the new Iowa class squaring up against Yamato is also looked, with insight to the capabilities of both sides against each other.

As customary with this series of books this one crams a lot of information in to one volume. It is very readable and keeps technical descriptions from bogging down the narrative too much. Similarly the accounts of the two battles covered give the reader a good idea of what happened without getting too encumbered by small details.Are their more complete works out there? Yes, but at much greater expense and requiring a great deal more reading and technical understanding.It terms of bang-for-the-buck I can't think of a better work at this length.