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Title: Great Naval Disasters: U.S. Naval Accidents in the 20th Century by Kit Bonner, Carolyn Bonner, Kermit H. Bonner ISBN: 0-7603-0594-3 Publisher: MBI Publishing Pub. Date: September, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Enjoyable, but Uneven, Treatment
Comment: On the one hand, this book is a very enjoyable introduction to the subject of naval disasters. The text is very readable, the authors do a good job of walking the reader through the basics of the ship's history and the particular disaster history, and the book is well illustrated.

On the other hand, there are some painfully obvious mistakes that led me to question the accuracy of other information in the book. When describing the history of the U.S.S. Missouri, the authors state that, in early 1945, the Missouri was in a task force that included the Lexington, CV-2. Of course, most students of naval history know that this Lexington sank in the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942, so it would have been quite challenging for it to have been a member of a task force in 1945. The authors undoubtedly were thinking of the later, Essex-class Lexington, but this simple mistake is a bit unnerving. Similarly, in the space of a few paragraphs descibing the World-War-II-era turret explosion on the U.S.S. Mississippi, the authors switch repeatedly from 1943 to 1944 as the year in which this incident took place. Again, its a simple mistake that makes the reader question how well the authors did their homework.

I was also disappointed by some gaps in the book's coverage. When describing the fire onboard the carrier Constellation, the authors briefly note a similar dockside fire onboard the liner Normandie. However, at the time the Normandie burned, I believe she had already been taken over by the U.S. government for use as a troop transport and re-named the U.S.S. Lafayette. Why wasn't this famous naval disaster discussed in detail?

Finally, I found the book's organization somewhat confusing. Incidents are grouped by type of disaster (i.e., grounding, explosion, fire, etc.), but within those groupings there is no apparent order to the sub-chapters, either chronological or otherwise. So, the reader finds himself/herself jumping from the grounding of the Missouri in the 50s, then back in time to the grounding of a destroyer squadron in the 20s, and then back again to more modern times.

These concerns aside, I enjoyed this book on a somewhat obscure, but very interesting, subject.

Rating: 5
Summary: A very good book.
Comment: From the grounding of the Missouri in Chesapeake Bay to the disapearance of the Cyclops to the sinkings of Thresher and Scorpion, Great Naval Disasters covers in detail, both written and illustrated, the great disaters the navy has suffered in the 20th century. Among them include Destroyer Squadron Eleven, The loss and rescue of the Squalus and the mysterious explosions onboard the Iowa and the Mississippi. They should revise this so they can include the Greenville collision in it.

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