Italian Heavy Cruisers: From Trento to Bolzano

This is a book on the 7 heavy cruisers built by Italy in the inter-war period. It does NOT whitewash the ship designs. It discusses in detail their shortcomings and notes they were built to face the French. It also discusses the French designs as well. Consider it a slightly shorter book in a 3 book series. Hopefully the authors will follow this with one on the Italian light cruisers.I am sure virtually all English language only readers will find much new information here. Loaded with well reproduced photographs and ship plans this oversized book is recommended.

THIS TITLE IS FOR RESEARCH AND IS AN INVALUABLE ADDITION TO MY COLLECTION OF NAVAL BOOKS.

Very nice reference for modellers.

The details of the design and equipment fitment is excellent. Combined with lots of photos, most of which I had not seen before. A superb book, well worth the money.

Books on the ships of the Regia Marina have always been rather few and far between, and with last year's deaths of Erminio Bagnasco and Maurizio Brescia, it looks like that'll be the case in the near future. This book is apparently the first major English-language reference to focus on the seven Italian heavy cruisers (two "Trentos," four "Zaras," and the "Bolzano") built in the wake of the Washington Naval Treaty. While it isn't QUITE as good as "The Littorio Class" (then again, few ship monographs are), this is nonetheless a pretty solid work.After an introduction that focuses on Italian naval policy in the wake of the Washington Naval Treaty, and the design and construction of their heavy cruisers, the majority of the book is divided into technical and operational sections. Individual chapters focus on the details of the hull (internal layout, armor, steering gear, ground tackle, machinery, auxiliaries, etc.), weapons and fire control, aviation facilities, and camouflage. The ship's careers are covered in two fairly large chapters which mainly focus on important battles and other events. The eighth chapter presents some concluding remarks and comparisons with contemporary heavy cruisers. There are also a number of substantial appendixes, including descriptions of damage incurred in battle, tabulated data on movements and deployments, the arrangement of the ships' bridge towers, speed and range trials, and a wartime document on nighttime gunfire.As a Seaforth title, the illustrations are generally to a high standard, even if it lacks the fold-outs that many of their recent books have. Although some of the wartime images are a little rough, the majority of them are quite good. There's a surprisingly large number of original schematics included, such as deck plans, hull lines, machinery arrangements, armor layouts, and traverse views. We also get a few rare color photographs and a series of color profiles showing how the ships' paint schemes evolved, while the section on bridge towers includes exterior diagrams and models of the superstructures of the "Zara" class built by Roberto Maggi.The authors have streamlined the section on the ships' wartime careers by repeatedly referring the reader to the two books Augusto de Toro co-authored on Italian battleships, presenting full-length descriptions only for those engagements that the heavy cruisers were major players. While this does reduce the potential for repetitiveness or rehashing, it presents an issue for people (such as myself) who might not own both of this book's predecessors. The English translation occasionally comes across as stiff and awkward.Although it's not perfect, this book does a fine job of complementing Seaforth's other books on the wartime Italian navy and would make an excellent companion to John Jordan's works on French warships of the era. At a time when traditional naval reference books seem to be a dying breed, it's nice to have something like this from time to time.