Originally comprising five ships in two related classes, Conte di Cavour and Duilio classes entered service at the beginning of the Great War. As designed, they were powerful examples of the second ge
Unlike the United States, which has preserved a number of battleships as museums or memorials, not a single British dreadnought survives in the country that invented them. This book is an ambitious attempt to achieve the next best thing--a level of documentation in plans, photographs and words that portrays every aspect of the ship, albeit in two dimensions. Although the ship was chosen primarily because of the wealth of source material, Duke of York enjoyed a distinguished wartime career that included sinking the German battleship Scharnhorst in 1943 and serving as the flagship of the British Pacific Fleet in 1945, so is a fitting subject for such in-depth treatment. The core of the book is the reproduction in full color of a complete set of as-fitted plans of the ship, including many details and close-ups. These are complemented by an unusually thorough set drawn after the ship's major refit in March 1945, showing all the modifications undertaken to prepare the ship for service along