Review by Felix Bustelo

The publisher’s goal for the Warship Perspective Series is to offer naval enthusiasts and ship modelers a through photographic and historical reference. The 80-page, softbound Atlanta Class volume, the second title in this series, certainly achieves that goal.

This book is chronologically laid out and Glen Arnold’s text is well written and concise, which makes for quick read without sacrificing information. The first section covering the development of this class, explaining the challenges the London Treaties size restrictions placed on naval designers and official in developing an effective cruiser. The influence that the British Dido-class cruisers had on the Atlantas is also mentioned. There is a table of class specifications as well as a table listing each ship built and key dates.

Eleven Atlanta-class cruisers were commissioned during the course of three building programs and the book covers each program and each ship, highlighting the differences among the ships built under each program and what worked and what did not work as the class evolved. The differences from program to program were substantial enough to consider each group as a sub-class. A history of each ship is also provided, covering deployments, actions they were involved and interim refits.

The real strength of this book, at least from a modeler’s viewpoint, is the 172 photographs compiled here that cover the ships in just about every aspect and angle. Most of the photos are from official sources, but some are from the private collections of veterans of some of the ships. The book also contains 16 diagrams of such components as the various radars and guns used on the ships. The center six pages contain color artist’s renderings of ship profiles in different camouflage schemes and a six-color palette. This is an excellent plus for a modeler as it adds a color perspective to what is normally seen in black and white photos. My one criticism here is that not all of the camouflage schemes show, or at least state, what color(s) were used on the decks.

As a bonus, a highly detailed foldout set of plans for the USS San Diego, as she appeared after her 1944 refit, is glued inside of the back cover. The sheet, which opens up to about 37” by 23”, has plans in 1/192 scale (1” = 16 feet), that were drawn by Alan Raven, the book’s publisher. The plans are highly detailed, with a profile, annotated deck plans showing the exact layout of each exposed deck, a detail of the fore and main masts with radar arrays, and cross-sectional body plans. This set of plans are a modeler’s dream and include everything you would need to super detail a kit with photoetch or even attempt to scratch-build a model. I don’t know of any kits for Atlanta-class in scales other than 1/350 and 1/700 (if you do, drop me a line), so if you prefer another scale, the latter is an option and can be done with the help of these plans.

This book is one of the better references that I have seen and was obviously developed with the modeler in mind. This is a must for any naval library. If future WR Press publications are of this caliber, I certainly will be looking forward to them.