Warfare At Sea

The book I read to research this post was Warfare At Sea edited by Peter Darman which is a very good book which I bought at a car boot sale. This book was published in 1997 so you might see it for sale secondhand and I think is probably a good buy. It looks at the various technologies used by the major navies around the world. Stuff like Exocet missiles which were responsible for causing the Royal Navy problems during the Falklands War. They went on to become one of the top selling surface to surface missiles due to their effectiveness. Also it looks at things like the Super Aircraft Carriers like USS Nimitz & SSN Submarines which were so expensive only five countries had the latter in their navies. This book came probably before China started to emerge as a potential superpower. In fact in 1991 she only had 4 SSN's. It also looks at Trident and Polaris and how Britain replaced the ailing rocket motors on her Polaris missiles in order to keep them in service although has since purchased Trident. It looks at the amphibious assault ships like HMS Fearless which are designed for landing troops and equipment complete with helipad although rather ugly to look at. Obviously priority goes on it being functional. Apparently a Trident submarine in one missile can deliver more kilotons of damage than was dropped on Kuwait & Iraq during the First Gulf War & the payload of the submarine in total is more deadly than the total bombing of World War 2, Korean War & Vietnam War combined. One thing that concerns the various navies is the airspace will be saturated with missiles in a time of war that will overwhelm there defences so that whatever they do some will get through. Something that will partly deflect this is the ability of the ships to fire chaff to confuse the missiles incoming. I really enjoyed this book which is quite interesting and if I had to pick a fault it would be it is somewhat short at only around 90 pages. The technology in the book is quite fascinating.