Military Model Scene

Title: Fighting Ships of the U.S.Navy 1883-2019
Author: Venner F. Milewski Jr
Publisher: Stratus
ISBN: 978-83-66549-63-0

Volume 4, Part 2, Destroyers, from Polish based publishers Stratus, distributed here by Casemate. A 221-page hard-cover book.
This is the first book I have seen in this series of books from the author. Not really a text book to be simply read from start to finish, but the most amazing reference book on the ships of the US Navy, and in this case Destroyers. The author is a US Navy veteran of 32-years, a combat veteran of tours in the Vietnam War and so clearly a very knowledgeable man who has dedicated a great deal of time in assembling this amazing reference. Every class of warship is covered in this series, with basic details of procurement, dimensions and characteristics of every individual vessel, and a summary of the history and development of each one, The whole book is also profusely illustrated with archive images of the ships, some with individual pictures but others with multiple images showing the ships at different times/camouflage schemes. In this book we have details of the Destroyers of the Clemson Class (over 156 vessels!), the Farragut Class (8 vessels), Porter Class (8 vessels), Mahan Class (16 vessels) and Gridley Class (10 vessels). Added to all this there are also notes on camouflage colours/schemes plus series of the original US Navy Camouflage Design Sheets, which in themselves will be invaluable to warship modellers.
As a detail reference, this is quite superb. When you look at the sheer number of ships the US Naval yards were able to produce it gives a good impression of just how powerful are the capabilities of the US shipbuilding capacity, and this is just a small selection of just one type of warship. For naval historians, and from my personal point of view, for modellers, this is a really first class reference work.
Thanks to Casemate for the review copy.

Robin