New Books

It was only be accident that I found out a new book was published by author Ian Johnston called 'Clydebank Battlecruiser - Forgotten Photographs from John Brown's Shipyard'

In a word a stunning book, it takes you on a journey in photographs and some informative text of the life of 5 great ships, they are as follows - Ship No 374 Inflexible, Ship No 402 Australia, Ship No 418 Tiger, Ship No 443 Repulse and Ship No 460 Hood.

The whole book is well worth the £20 I paid from Amazon.co.uk, loads of wonderful construction shots dating back to 1908, I bought this solely for the Hood, but  seeing all the other ship it really is a great early Christmas pressie for any historian or modeler.
The Hood section is just outstanding on its own, I'm really impressed with the quality of the photographs shown here, considering the size of the ship and the early life of photography at the time. The sheer size of Hood just needs to be seen in these pictures to be fully understood.

For example on page 167 there is an awesome shot showing the arrangements of the plating strakes at the bow and the thickness of the plates. A view I've never seen before and in such clarity and so close.

Next up is the not so popular Polish book 'Profile Morskie' number 63 HMS Hood in her 1941 configuration, I know this has many inaccuracies and is widely available via pdf download or from the 'Profile' site but I wanted this as an addition to my other projects I'm doing in 1:400 scale, I'm quite happy with it, since I only paid £5 on ebay I reckon its money well spent. As the Hood Association web site does recommend this be a 'hit and miss affair' meaning some inaccuracies, but along side many other great plans and books I think for me it will be used quite a lot.

Visit the Profile Morskie home page for other great titles, or look around and you may pick up one on ebay.