Griffith, and the narrative skill of author Vincent P. O’Hara, is more than an enticing, relishingaccount of a major British victory and enormous enemy loss. It is testimony to the power ofbattleships in WWII. She, more than any other Axis warship, with the exception of the Japanese70,000-ton battleship Yamato, the largest battleship ever built, sunk on 7 April 1945 in the EastChina Sea by our carrier boys, needed to die by drowning. Both giants influenced American andBritish deployments and resources in ways no other enemy ships could, including theinvolvement of all the combined ships of Mussolini’s Mediterranean fleet. In short, “BattleshipTirpitz” is the story of battleships as a individual weapon systems. Author O’Hara concludeswith a sharp, penetrating historical observation: “Had Germany built nothing but submarines,Hitler’s navy could not have protected the nation’s vital maritime traffic; Hitler could not haveprojected power overseas, as in the invasion of Norway; he would have threatened Britishtraffic in only one dimension, and one-dimensional threats are the easiest to counter.”Readers are encouraged to peruse other USNIP Naval History Special Editions, designed tooffer studies of the key vessels, battles, and events of WWII armed conflicts. Building upon theexpertise of excellent writers, authors, and historians, the Special Editions employ image-heavy,magazine-style, formats that appeal to all military readers from scholars, enthusiasts, andgeneral buff readers alike. Visit, www.usni.org/press/books. Just a few of the titles offered are,“Aircraft Carrier Intrepid”, “Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen”, “Battleship Bismarck” “Admiral
Hipper”, “Breaking the Bismarck’s Barrier”, plus a host of other neat books.
