Aircraft Carriers
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1979. Presumed First U. S. Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Format is approximately 8.5 inches by 12 inches. DJ is price clipped and has some wear and soiling. 192 pages. Technical descriptions of the ships themselves, and their aircraft, are illustrated through cut-away diagrams and line drawings. Illustrated with over 300 photographs in colour and black-and-white, together with cut-away drawings, charts and maps. Index. Traces the history of aircraft carriers from pre-World War I seaplane operations to the carriers of today. Antony Preston (26 February 1938 – 25 December 2004) was an English naval historian and editor, specializing in the area of 19th and 20th-century naval history and warship design. Antony Preston was the son of the 16th Viscount Gormanston. He was educated in South Africa at the University of Witwatersrand. On his return to England he spent some years at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, before becoming Editor of the periodical "Defence". During the 1970s he was employed by a specialist publisher, Conway Maritime Press, as editor of their Warship annual. He also produced the specialized newsletter Navint. In the early nineties he took over as chief-editor of the magazine Naval Forces at the German editorial group Mönch. He left to resume as editor of Warships in 1996. Antony Preston was a prolific author both of books and articles, and published on subjects ranging from the American Revolution to modern seapower; the bibliography given below illustrates the breadth of his expertise. He wrote on general military history, as well as most aspects of naval history and modern-day naval matters. An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a naval force to project air power worldwide without depending on local bases for staging aircraft operations. Carriers have evolved since their inception in the early twentieth century from wooden vessels used to deploy balloons to nuclear-powered warships that carry numerous fighters, strike aircraft, helicopters, and other types of aircraft. While heavier aircraft such as fixed-wing gunships and bombers have been launched from aircraft carriers, it is currently not possible to land them. By its diplomatic and tactical power, its mobility, its autonomy and the variety of its means, the aircraft carrier is often the centerpiece of modern combat fleets. Tactically or even strategically, it replaced the battleship in the role of flagship of a fleet. One of its great advantages is that, by sailing in international waters, it does not interfere with any territorial sovereignty and thus obviates the need for overflight authorizations from third-party countries, reduces the times and transit distances of aircraft and therefore significantly increase the time of availability on the combat zone. There is no single definition of an "aircraft carrier", and modern navies use several variants of the type. These variants are sometimes categorized as sub-types of aircraft carriers, and sometimes as distinct types of naval aviation-capable ships. Aircraft carriers may be classified according to the type of aircraft they carry and their operational assignments. Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, RN, former First Sea Lord (head) of the Royal Navy, has said, "To put it simply, countries that aspire to strategic international influence have aircraft carriers." Henry Kissinger, while United States Secretary of State, also said: "An aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons of diplomacy." Condition: Very good / Good.
Keywords: Aircraft Carrier, Naval Aviation, Warship, Capital Ship, Naval Architecture, Shipbuilding, Naval Aeronautics, Nagumo, Naval Operations
ISBN: 0448154730
[Book #81643]
Price: $55.00