US Cold War Aircraft Carriers: Forrestal, Kitty Hawk and Enterprise Classes (New Vanguard, 211)

I received this book in the mail today, and within five minutes of leafing through it am disgusted, and I've only gotten to page 18.The first color plate, USS Ranger, shows her with all four 5"/54s aft and a Mk 29 NATO Sea Sparrow forward. She never had this configuration. She was down to two 5" aft before Sea Sparrows were installed, and the guns were removed in the same 1977-78 overhaul when the Mk 29s were installed. The painting is actually a line-for-line color version of the A.D. Baker drawing in Friedman's  U.S. Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History , labeled "November 1973," and either the artist or author misinterpreted the drawing to imagine a Mk 29 where there was none. The first production Mk 29s were not produced until 1975 in any case. I gave the erroneous painting a little bit of a pass, as in painting-oriented books like these (also Squadron/Signal books) the artists routinely don't know anything about the ships they are painting, and often appear to have had no contact with the authors, so I generally don't blame the author (also see UPDATE below). But as Osprey books used to be thought of as references for modelers, this sloppiness is not acceptable. They really need to make a better effort to create new art that can be trusted.But then on page 18 the author asserts that the Forrestals were originally built with "eight Mk 12 single-mount 5in/38 caliber guns." No, everyone knows that they were built with eight Mk 42 5"/54s, I knew that when I was a little kid. (Also there is no such thing as a "Mk 12" mount. "Mk 12" is the designation for the 1934 gun by itself.) If you don't know the difference between 5"/38s and 5"/54s you have no business writing books about ships. The author then goes on to claim that when the guns were removed they were replaced with Terrier guided missiles, a preposterous engineering assertion, not to mention plain wrong. Forrestals never carried Terriers, only the K Hawks did. (This is comparable to writing about the 1968 Ford Mustang Station Wagon with Z71 suspension package.)With that kind of appalling, inexplicable error, there is no way I can recommend this book. Any other statement in the book I would have to double-check before I accepted it, so why own this book?I have been a big advocate and defender of Osprey books in these Amazon reviews. They're small and cheap but full of lots of good information and pretty pictures, but come on, this is only a 48 page book, and it's only about 9 ships. Is it that hard to get it right? This was researched about as well as a throw-away magazine article.Osprey, are you really in such a hurry to crank out these titles that you can't hire authors or editors that know their subject matter? This is pathetic. I will say this for the author, he does know how to correctly refer to a ship, by her name, without constantly cramming "the" in front of it. He does insist on calling them "it," however.DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. Unless you're looking for untrustworthy information that you have to buy other books to compare it against, then knock yourself out.UPDATE: Fearing that I might have been too hard on this book due to my irritation, I went back and flipped through the rest of it. Some of the highlights: The color plate of JFK has catapult 3 running from the waist off the bow, the centerfold cutaway does not show Forrestal's third rudder mentioned in the text, the VF-103 F-14 from Saratoga lost in Desert Storm is misidentified as being from VF-101 (the Oceana Fleet Replacement Squadron), reference to Operation Desert Fox has the wrong year, misidentifies the "CV concept" as "CVW concept," misstates the difference between 600 and 1200 psi steam plants, refers to the Gallery Deck as "Galley Deck." The photograph captions are particularly awful. They consistently misidentify Mk 29 NATO Sea Sparrow launchers as "Mk 25" (Mk 25 is the BPDMS launcher), misidentify a CCA dome as SATCOM, and don't know how to name aspects of a ship, inventing tortuous terms like "forward-quarter starboard" for starboard bow, and "forward-quarter port-side" for port bow. Finally, on page 19 the 5"/54 guns on Ranger are TWICE more misidentified as 5"/38s (for a total of three times in two pages).Interestingly, the text claims that Enterprise's original ECM dome (which it calls "ECM radar," there is no such thing) rotated. I've never heard that before, and given the trouble they took to install the non-rotating phased array SPS-32 and 33 think it is unlikely, and given the poor quality of the rest of the book's information, see no reason to take the author's word for it. My earlier assessment is unchanged: This book is an amateurish mess, and the "information" presented in it us utterly unreliable.

The United States Navy came out of the Second World War with considerable expertise in carrier warfare. The demands of the Cold War led to the creation of new classes of "supercarriers", large enough for jet aircraft and lots of them. The Forrestal, Kitty Hawk, and Enterprise classes would see the U.S. through the Cold War and even the follow-on wars in the Middle East..."US Cold War Aircraft Carriers" is an Osprey New Vanguard Series book, well authored by Brad Elward, who provided a detailed but high readable narrative. This is a short book at less than fifty pages, but there is lots of interesting information here, along with period photographs, diagrams, and modern illustrations. The discussion of changing deck configurations was especially interesting to this reviewer. Highly recommended as a good introduction to the topic.

I was serving on the USS Randolph and walked across the pier to see a brand new ship. I feel really old, now that she and others in the class are being scrapped! A small but well written and illustrated book.

The quality of the original illustrations in this book are usually very poor. The CV-67 graphic leaves off cat 3 and its JBD as well as one of the arresting wires and then there is the landing zone markings – yikes. The text may not be much better. The only part I read so far was about CVN-65 and its section about reactor core refueling is error-full to the absurd. Probably the only useful informational value is in the US Navy supplied imagery. All in all, a pretty simple compilation of Wikipedia info.

Great book, very informative. May not be as in depth as some people would like, but very well rounded.

Great book, told about the newer carriers. If you like to read about carriers you'll like this one.

Well-organized, great source of info for a naval history buff and/or model builder. This will continue to be an excellent resource for years to come!

Good book . Addresses my interest on the subject

have had 2x copies of this book delivered, first copy had been subject to what appears now to be the common Amazon Osprey packing issues of 'sling in without a care and present to the customer dog eared', second copy has been printed with pages out of sequence, page 38 starts after page 25 and then pages countdown, doesnt make easy reading!Awaiting a third copy now but as Amazon will not provide a replacement I will have to wait until order totals more than £10!

nice short summary of type.

I'm a fan of the Osprey Series (New Vanguard, Duel, Combat Aircraft, Air Vanguard) and I think their quality has been constantly improving. I like them, not because their depth of analysis, but because they are handy references.I was really looking forward to get the book since it was announced last year; I got the ibook in mid March ordered from Amazon.it The initial impression was good.Unfortunately, when reading it, several mistakes popped up:page 4: the Gerald Ford Class arrangement is substantially different from the Kitty Hawk Class: CVN78 has only three elevators and is the major departure in layout since the Forrestalpage 12: the outbreak of the Korean War occurred June 25th, 1950 (not the 22nd)page 38: the captions for the pictures are invertedpage 40/41: the aircraft on USS America are incorrectly identified (A3 and E2)It really appears that the book was prepared in a hurry and not sufficiently rechecked. Several more mistakes are likely. Because of the above, no information the book provides can be fully trusted. The book fails its main purpose in being an handy reference for this specific and interesting subject.

Good read. Lots of helpful information.

tres bon livres belles photos tres interressant a lire pour les connaisseurs mai tres dommage qu il n existe pas en version francaise