The Warships of the Kriegsmarine is a series of books devoted to the types and class of German warships in the Second World War. There are six highly detailed reference books from these authors; German Destroyers, German Light Cruisers, Battleships of the Bismarck Class, Pocket Battleships of Duetschland, Heavy Cruisers of the Admiral Hipper Class and Battleships of the Scharnhorst Class. Each of these books in themselves are packed front to back with a tremendous amount of technical data, plans and photographs.

German Destroyers of World War II

Series: Warships of the Kriegsmarine
By Gerhard Koop and Klaus-Peter Schmolke
This edition first published in Great Britain in 2014 by Seaforth Publishing
Copyright © Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn, 1995
English Language Edition © Lionel Lenenthal Ltd, 2003
ISBN 978 1 84832 193 9
MSRP - £16.99 UK / $27.60 US
Soft Cover – 224 pages

The German Destroyers of World War II book, as part of the Warships of the Kriegsmarine Series, is a comprehensive technical resource on the German Destroyers.

Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• Technical Data
• Differences, Modifications, Conversions
• Armament
• Machinery
• Flotillas, Flotilla Commanders and the Führer der Zerstörer
• The Second War
• Individual Ships’ Careers
• Photo Gallery: The Zerstörer
• Photo Gallery: Requisitioned Destroyers
• Photo Gallery: Zerstörer Life
• Camouflage Schemes
• Conclusions
• Index of Ships

The first seven chapters of this book are jam-packed with an immense amount of technical data all supported by charts, plans and photographs. Every aspect of the Zerstörer’s are covered in these sections. From weights of individual pieces of equipment, form values, armament including individual specifications on the weapons themselves, ships machining such as boilers and the engine rooms and more as well as the Flotillas and commanders the ships sailed under. Along with the complete technical aspects of the ships, the chapter titled Individual Ships’ Careers covers the timeline careers of each of the forty or so destroyers build from 1934 to 1944 including acquired destroyers along the way.

Along with the several maps, plans and diagrams included in this publication, the book offers around two hundred highly detailed photographs of the various destroyers including which surmount to one giant walk around of the destroyer showing may of the fine details historians and modelers alike, are looking for.

Conclusion

I will have to say that German Destroyer of World War II is the go to technical reference guide on German destroyers. The amount of information covered in this book on the subject is just shy of incredible. For a historian or the fan of this class of ship from German in the Second World War, this book has it all; Data, individual ship history and an amazing collection of photographic references. The section on camouflage at the back-end of this book is invaluable to the modeler as it gives five pages of profiles to most of the camouflage schemes used on these ship. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject matter.


 

We would like to thank Pen & Sword Books Ltd for this copy for review.