Some Comments on Malcolm Murfett's book "Naval Warfare 1919-45"

I have been struggling with this book [1] now for some time, continuing to read it because the approach and topic are interesting but always on the verge of throwing it across the room because of oddities which make me doubt the authors qualifications as an author and a naval historian.

I don't want to go through this page by page listing the things that have annoyed me, but I will describe those that I encountered this morning reading pages 402-408.

1. Page 407. Introduction of the Tallboy bomb: Mass of bomb given in both pounds and kg. Nothing wrong with that but it would have been nice to see a bit more about this bomb, mention of Barnes Wallis and 617 squadron at this point.

2. Page 407. "Despite the impenetrable gloom that settled over the fjord as a result of the smokescreen, one of these 'Tallboy' bombs managed to find the quarry striking her about fifty feet (15.2m) from the forward stem of the ship." (my emphasis) I don't like the language of this sentence in general, but that is just a stylistic preference but the part in bold indicates either poor proof reading or a significant lack of familiarity with marine terminology. The latter is a significant warning sign in a work on naval history.

3. Page 407. We have reference to 5.4 ton bombs, leaving us to do some arithmetic and cross referencing to establish that this is a reference to Tallboy (which we have been told is 12,000 pounds or 5,443 kilo previously).

I suppose these are not very serious annoyances in themselves and limited to two pages out of the six I read, but they are just things that I note in passing. Similar annoyances occur every few pages when I am reading stuff I am familiar with, this leaves the suspicion that there are comparable problems in material that I am not particularly familiar with.

References:

1. Murfett, M., Naval Warfare 1919-45; An operational history of the war at sea, Routlege, 2009