Review by Felix Bustelo

The British County Class ships were the Royal Navy's most numerous interwar cruisers. Limited to 10,000 tons by the Washington Treaty, the ships in this class served with great distinction in World War II.

When I read that a Polish language book dedicated to these ships was available, I was very excited. However, after going through it, I must admit that I was disappointed. Polish publications on naval subjects are famous for the quality and number of highly detailed plans and line drawings that are crammed into them. These make up for the fact that most of us cannot read a word of the text. This book falls seriously short in that respect. Also, the book covers only the 7 Kent class ships and makes no reference to the 4 London class and 2 Dorsetshire class ships. All of these ships collectively are considered County Class cruisers and differed primarily in only internal aspects and in some measurements.

The 46-page book contains a foldout 1/400 scale profile and overhead plan of the HMAS Canberra, one of the two ships in the Kent group built for the Royal Australian Navy, which was lost at Guadalcanal. While this plan is very detailed, it is the only plan of a ship included in the entire book. The back of the foldout has 18 small profiles of the various Kent cruisers at different points in their careers. These are interesting to see, but are not good enough for modeling. There are no close-up or sectional drawings, like those found in the Profile Morskie and Monografie Morskie volumes, which provide tremendous help with superdetailing a model. You do get detailed drawings of the twin 8-in turrets, the secondary and antiaircraft guns, the catapults, cranes and Supermarine Walrus airplane and the gun directors and radars utilized on the various ships. The book also has 29 black and white photographs with captions in both Polish and English.

The inside front and back covers have simplified color profiles, some showing camouflage schemes, of the Berwick, Suffolk, Cumberland, Kent and Cornwall (the latter ship is also shown in an overhead view).

I was expecting a book with plenty of plans and drawings showing the details and differences between the various County Class ships. The Airfix Suffolk kit can provide the basis for numerous conversion projects (click HERE to see an article on building the HMS Cumberland). Personally, I am planning on building one of my Suffolk kits as the Canberra, so the plan included in the book is a help. However, my expectations were not met by this book and to be fair, perhaps my expectations were set a little too high.