DEATH OF THE BATTLESHIP

Submarines and aircraft spelled the end of the era of armored battleships ust as surely as the introduction of gunpowder terminated the age of armored knights. rmcharir seadogs will appreciate Mr. Hough's vividly detailed account of this nautical tterdammerung, which surveys the experimental phases of these deadly enemies of capital ships and the welter of bitter words expended by Admiralties and their visionary antagonists between World Wars I and II, and then concludes with a blow-by-blow depiction of the gory debacle which finally punctuated a precarious eighty-year reign: the destruction of Britain's Prince of Wales and Repulse-- dispatched to the Far East in 1941 by Churchill as the ""one key weapon"" by Japanese bombers and torpedo planes. Anglophobes will also appreciate this book for its incidental chronicle of Britain's loss of ""a sense of self-esteem with manifestations that were not always attractive"".