BATTLESHIP

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The Good Book Guide describes this new edition thus:

An interesting and well-researched history of the nautical leviathan that was the battleship. Padfield begins in the 1850s and ends with the demise of the Yamato under an American aerial assault less than a century later. In between he focuses on the progress of the battleship; as it increases in size, so did its armour and the guns needed to penetrate it. The improvement in gunnery fire control and accuracy, and the naval arms race before the Great War are proficiently explored, as are many of the naval encounters since 1850. The book explains why naval superiority was so essential in a time before radar and long-distance aircraft, contributing decisively to many of the conflicts.
         The human element is also explored, from admiral to able seaman, the fascinating references from all ranks interspersed with technical information and battle accounts such as Jutland and Tsushima. A worthy addition to anyone's library...

Reviews of the original edition:

The Times Literary Supplement

...well written and balanced in judgement and makes good use of the primary material in the Naval Library at Earls Court, which has been too little exploited by other writers. Above all, it deserves particular attention for its author's specialized knowledge of the development of naval gunnery and fire control, previously displayed in his biography of Admiral Sir Percy Scott and his Guns at Sea...
         Because of this special interest, the most important section of the book is that dealing with the evolution of the capital ship and its main armament between 1870 and 1914. It concentrates on the Royal Navy but the policies and building programmes of other countries, especially the United States and Germany, are treated paranthetically. The connecting thread is the challenge to naval architects and ship-builders to produce vessels combining the sometimes conflicting requirements of speed, sea-endurance, defensive strength and hitting power...
         Mr. Padfield's account of Jutland concentrates on the gunnery side and is particularly interesting in its treatment of the development of British fire control instruments necessary for accurate fire at the long ranges which fear of torpedo attack imposed on fleet tactics...

(Peter Padfield comments: since the original edition, new research on Royal Naval fire control before and during the first world war has painted a somewhat different picture of one vital aspect of development; this has been incorporated into the text of the revised edition and is described in the new Introduction thus:

The historian chiefly responsible [for the new light on gunnery fire control] is Professor Jon Tetsuro Sumida; he has been ably backed by Anthony Pollen, son of the polymath genius Arthur Pollen, true father of naval fire control. Between them, Sumida and Pollen have transformed the picture of the great 'Jackie' Fisher presented by his principal supporters and the late Professor Arthur Marder...
         What the new scholarship has thrown up is a new interpretation of [Fisher's] policies. Astonishingly, contra Marder, Sumida has shown that it was not HMS Dreadnought , the revolutionary all-big-gun battleship, but the Invincible class of all- big-gun battle cruisers which followed her that Fisher originally saw as the cornerstone of his new fleet policy. The Dreadnought was in the nature of a dramatic mask to conceal his intentions from rival nations...

In the operational field, probably the most illuminating, certainly the most intriguing, works to come out since the original editions of this book have been those by the late Patrick Beesly on naval intelligence and cryptography. The mastery of German cyphers achieved by 'Room 40' at the Admiralty from the earliest days of the First World War was more complete and probably of greater importance than the more spasmodic breaks-in to the German naval Enigma codes in the Second World War...)

American Librarians' Association Booklist

A detailed history of 80 years in which the battleship reigned as a major weapon until its obsolescence when it was outranked in effectiveness by submarines and aircraft. The warship and Great Britain as a maritime power are historically intertwined, and Padfield's study retraces English naval strategy from the late-eighteenth century to the 1940s...A fascinating documentary account of particular interest to the armchair strategist...

Lloyd's List

The Battleship Era will enhance the author's reputation as an authority on naval affairs. It describes the evolution, use and eclipse of the battleship and is mainly about the period that began with the Crimean War and ended with the destruction of Japanese battleships by United States air power and battleships during the 1939-45 war.
         Track charts show the evolutions of fleets in battle and there are many impressive photographs of damage caused by guns through which the author brings home the horror of naval battles such as Jutland when great ships blew up and sank within minutes...

Books and Bookmen

...a great many people over the age of 40 can remember...the now extinct fleets of steel battleships that ruled the world for less than a century. These were the dinosaurs of fighting ships, the natural products of evolution, and, like those prehistoric monsters, out-growing their capabilities and vanishing within a few years.
         Peter Padfield has written a splendid book about their archaeology and again makes one wonder whether such things really did roam the seas. With crisp scholarship, he traces the development of the battleship from sailing ships - much like Nelson's - which had been fitted with auxiliary steam engines and had iron armour hung on their sides, to the ultimate: the Japanese battleship Yamato, a giant of more than 70,000 tons, firing 18-inch shells more than 20 miles.
         The Battleship Era not only describes this bizarre naval ironmongery but vividly recounts what happened to it all. The terrible battles, in which these ships, often with upwards of 2,000 men on board, fought to the death by explosion or capsizing, are recalled in chilling detail.