British Aircraft Carriers: Design, Development and Service Lists

摘要

If I travel from St Andrews to Edinburgh I can, when crossing the Forth, get a glimpse of the recently launched, and inordinately expensive, aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, the largest ship ever built for the Royal Navy and the latest of the warships described in this book. The author, having been a naval pilot of long experience and later Curator of the Fleet Air Arm Museum, is certainly well qualified to write such an account. It covers 76 ships, which were specially built or converted for the principal purpose of carrying aircraft, but not the others of the period (battleships, for instance), which carried a few of them as a subsidiary feature. Aircraft carriers of Commonwealth navies (nearly all of British origin) are included, and there are descriptions, to allow comparisons to be made, of the most important such ships in foreign navies. The usual technical details are provided of each ship, together with historical accounts of their careers (more detailed for the most recent ships). Not much technical description is given for the aircraft the ships carried, although there are chapters summarising their development and methods of operation over the years.