Naval book recommendations

BenBow

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Sure bet that someone has mentioned Jutland 1916, (1976) by John Costello & Terry Hughes?

ISBN: 9780860073628

 
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SunScream

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Crikey! I hadn't realised The Grand Fleet was up to £50. Mines out on loan - I shall have to ensure I get it back at some point. I am definitely not letting the RA Burt collection out of my sight.

Reading back through the old posts on this thread I spotted Bullethead wondering whether Andrew Gordon had published any fiction. To date The Rules Of The Game is his only book, and he is doing quite nicely on it, having recently returned from a stay in Annapolis. I agree that his writing style is very easy to get into and full of those odd quirky things that make you re-read the paragraph to check whether he had really written what you thought you read. "At Gibraltar they unshipped their rudder, looked at it, then put it back."
 

mbv

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I didn't think there was much content at first after visiting that weblink - then I found the Global Site Nav button and whoooooah :nuts: there's heaps of stuff from my favourite period in the late 19th century. Great website and thanks for the link :)
 

Ironhand

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I didn't think there was much content at first after visiting that weblink - then I found the Global Site Nav button and whoooooah :nuts: there's heaps of stuff from my favourite period in the late 19th century. Great website and thanks for the link :)
Heh, I thought the same thing when I first looked at it:cool:
 

efraimkarsh

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I'm still perusing the thread, so I can be mistaken, but I wonder if this book has been already mentioned:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Historical Dictionary of the Russo–Japanese War
Rotem Kowner
Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution, and Civil Unrest, No. 29

The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Oxford, 2006
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

which seems to be now de facto -if not de jure- in the public domain, because it can be very easily found on the web (as aa30.rar), and it is indeed quite relevant for Distant Guns' RJW (that I recently discovered runs in Linux better than in windows).

Also worth of download (of course -ça vas sans dire- only if legal in your country or in the country of the proxy server you are using) is
Osprey - Essential Histories 031 -The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905
which seems to have been spread everywhere, all over the web.


Some more books that may be of interest in order to get the right "mood" for DG_RJW (but are also more hard to find on the web):

"The battle of the sea of Japan: The official version of the Japanese general staff", translatedd by W.Y. Hoadley, USMC.
United States Naval Institute, Proceedings, Vol.40/4, 07/08-1914

"Eskadrennyi Bronenosets Retvizan", S.A. Balakin, Moscow, Arsenal Collection, 2005 (Retvizan, 1st Squadron)
"Eskadrennyi Bronenosets Borodino", V. I. Gribovskii, Moscow, Izd-vo Gangut, 1995 (Borodino, 2nd Squadron)
"Eskadrennye bronenostsy "Gangut" i "Navarin", M.A. Bogdanov, Leningrad, Leko, 2007 (Only the Navarin,2nd Squadron, is relevant for RJW)
"Eskadrennyi Bronenosets Sissoi Velikii", M.A. Bogdanov, Leningrad, Leko, 2004 (Sissoi Velikii, 2nd Squadron)
"Bronenosets "Admiral Ushakov": Ego put' i gibel'.", N.N. Dmitriev, Leningrad, Al'manakh Korabli i srazheniia, 1997 (Ushakov, 3rd Squadron)

"Armstrong Battleship built for Japan" P. Brook, Warship International, Vol. 22/3, 1985

"Technical Lessons of The Russo-Japanese war", D.K. Brown, Warship, London, Convay Maritime Press, 1996

"Aboard Orel at Tsushima", S. McLaughlin, Warship 2005, London, Convay Maritime Press, 2005

"Tsushima", A. Novoy-Pribikov, New York, A.A.Knopf, 1937

"The battle of Tsushima", V.I.Semenoff, New York, E.P.Dutton, 1907

"The Imperial Russian Navy" F.T.Jane, London, Conway Maritime Press, 1983.

"The Imperial Japanese Navy" F.T.Jane, London, Conway Maritime Press, 1984.

"Russian Battleship VS Japanese Battleship", Yellow sea 1904-1905", R. Forczyk, Osprey 2009 (most recent book related to RJW)

-----------------------------
Enjoy the search!
 
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Bullethead

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Book Review: Battle for the Baltic Islands 1917

Battle for the Baltic Islands 1917
by Gary Staff
Pen & Sword Maritme, 2008
ISBN 978-1-84415-7877

This book was supposed to have come out in early 2007. I pre-ordered it towards the end of 2007, but it had many delays and I only got it last week, finally.

The only other work of Gary Staff's I know about is the Osprey book on German WW1 BCs. That book is has a lot more detail in it than you usually expect from an Osprey product, and was well-written, so I decided to get Staff's book on the Baltic Islands campaign rather than one of the others already on the market.

For them as don't know, Baltic Islands covers the German operation in October 1917 to capture the islands of Osel, Dago, and Moon, strategically positioned at the mouths of both the Gulf of Riga and the Gulf of Finland. Taking the islands would not only break the German army's deadlock around Riga itself, but would allow it to advance towards St. Petersburg, thus hopefully bringing a quick conclusion to the war on the Eastern Front. In a well-conducted combined-arms operation, the Germans succeeded in all these objectives.

Battle for the Baltic Islands is very thoroughly researched. It's based on primary sources, including reports from many participants, on both sides. It provides a day-by-day account of the campaign, both on land and at sea, in fair detail, although the naval operations have more detail than the land fights. The book includes a number of good photos, although not quite as cool as those TBR posted.

The book has a lot of great info for wargamers interested in this campaign. It has the complete naval OOBs for each side, down to all the transport ships and trawlers. It also has the location, number and size of guns, and even arcs of fire and armor details for all the Russian shore batteries. And maps of the many minefields of both sides in the area, too.

All in all, it's a very useful book. It could have stood a bit more editing, however. On a given day, the focus sometimes shifts between widely separated land and sea actions with little transition, and follows them into subsequent days sometimes. The result is that it's sometimes hard to tell where things stood at a given time, and also somewhat difficult to page back and find a specific reference when you're trying to figure this out. IOW, the information could have been better organized. Still, it's great info, so is worth the trouble :). Overall, I'd give it 9 out of 10.

BTW, don't expect SES to do this any time soon. The fighting on and around these islands would required many new game features to model accurately. I got this book for my own information, not as part of an SES project :).
 

TBR

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I've got MDV 352 Heft 10 "Der Artillerieoffizier eines Großkamfschiffes im Kriege 1914-18" for you, scanned at Blutarskis request by yours truly. It's a initially classified wartime experience report by RADM Mahrholz, 1st artillery officer on "Von der Tann" and "Hindenburg". Be warned it is in German and there are no photographs and few drawings.



I've uploaded the pdf here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9SDUQ590

It's now in the public domain, so no copyright issues.
 
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igor7111

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Haven't seen it mentioned, but excellent is "The Kings Ships were at Sea"
by James Goldrick.
 

Kadett

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Kaigun By David C. Evans, Mark R. Peattie



Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941
By David C. Evans, Mark R. Peattie
Contributor Mark R. Peattie
Edition: illustrated
Published by Naval Institute Press, 1997
ISBN 0870211927, 9780870211928
661 pages


Just finished this, really excellent for the RJW player.
 

TBR

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Kaigun By David C. Evans, Mark R. Peattie



Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941
By David C. Evans, Mark R. Peattie
Contributor Mark R. Peattie
Edition: illustrated
Published by Naval Institute Press, 1997
ISBN 0870211927, 9780870211928
661 pages


Just finished this, really excellent for the RJW player.
second that :)
 

GerritJ9

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Arthur Marder's "From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow" (5 volumes) would certainly rank as "must have". I managed to find Volume 3 (second edition) and Volume 5 at Foyle's in London in 1982. Sadly, the other three have proved to be unobtainium.:upset:
Also: "Geschwader Spee" by Arno Dohm, Bertelsmann Verlag Gutersloh. Don't know the year, but my copy (in German) is almost certainly a pre-WW2 copy as it is printed in Gothic.
The German Marine-Arsenal series are also worth obtaining, especially relevant are Band 17 (Nassau and Helgoland classes), Band 25 (Kaiser class), Band 26 (König class) and Band 29 (Bayern class). Author is Siegfried Breyer, publisher Podzun-Pallas-Verlag. There are probably more in this series featuring German WW1 ships, but I have not come across them yet.
 

Hartford688

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Reading back through the old posts on this thread I spotted Bullethead wondering whether Andrew Gordon had published any fiction. To date The Rules Of The Game is his only book, and he is doing quite nicely on it, having recently returned from a stay in Annapolis. I agree that his writing style is very easy to get into and full of those odd quirky things that make you re-read the paragraph to check whether he had really written what you thought you read. "At Gibraltar they unshipped their rudder, looked at it, then put it back."
He wrote another book - "British Seapower and Procurement Between the Wars: A Reappraisal of Rearmament". I just finished "Rules of the game" and was much impressed. Very well done. Maybe once I run out of WWI books I'll try this one...

http://www.amazon.com/British-Seapower-Procurement-Between-Wars/dp/0870218948/ref=sid_av_dp

Mind you - Bullethead - I'm afraid he is a professional historian http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/defence/staff/acad/agordon.html
 
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