The threat of torpedo attack by enemy destroyers was so serious that it was assumed that battleships and cruisers would fire at any destroyer they saw, without taking too much time to be sure of its identity. Initially there was no thought of including destroyers in a British battle fleet. We often think of them as fleet escorts, but for most of this time they were anything but. The Royal Navy’s choice of weapons can be understood in terms of what its destroyers were expected to do. The weapons shown in this book armed British destroyers built between the period before World War I and 1945.
The drawings are backed by introductory essays by Norman Friedman, an acknowledged authority on naval ordnance, while a selection of photographs add to the value of the book as visual reference. This first volume in a series covers all such weapons carried by British destroyers of this era, with additional appendices devoted to earlier guns still in service, and destroyer-caliber weapons only mounted in larger ships. Lambert’s interest was always focused on smaller warships and his weapons drawings tend to be of open mountings-the kind that present a real challenge to modelmakers-rather than enclosed turret guns, but he also produced drawings of torpedo tubes, underwater weapons, fire-control directors, and even some specific armament-related deck fittings. By the time of his death in 2016 he’d produced over 850 sheets of drawings, many of which have never been published-until now. John Lambert was a renowned naval draftsman, whose plans were highly valued for their accuracy and detail by modelmakers and enthusiasts. “For anyone wishing to super-detail any British destroyer of this era, this book looks to be a real must-have.” - Nautical Research Guild's Model Ship World
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