Featured battle : Venzone 2

Part of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Date : 12 May 1809

The Voltigeurs of Dessaix's Advanced Guard met an Austrian force of equal strength. However the French had the advantage of 3 guns to the Austrian nil. A reversal of the first meeting at Venzone in April.

Battleship Bismarck

W.H.Garzke Jr., R.O.Dunlin Jr. & W. Jurens
This is a most remarkable book. The three authors have done an incredible research job in pulling together probably all there is to be known about the Bismarck. The bibliography includes over three hundred items ranging from previous Bismarck books, interviews with authorities, to American, German and British government documents. The result is encyclopaedic with the narrative covering the first concept of the design within the German navy’s developmental path to the survivors stories and on to the exploration of the wreck site. The political inputs to the saga particularly from Hitler and Churchill are covered. Other German military assets and actions as well as their parallels in the Royal Navy are given good coverage so as to place the design and operation of the Bismarck in its full context. Supporting the written word are masses of photographs, suitable maps and technical drawings. The index is most comprehensive and makes this a superb reference work.
What raises the book to an even higher level is the extensive forensic analysis of the wreck site bringing the story right up to date. Physically this book is impressive weighing in at 7lbs [just over 3 kg] measuring 310mm by 240mm and 40mm thick.
However the book is not without some faults. The annotation to some drawings is so tiny that a magnifying glass is necessary for reading them. The way the book is laid out under different headings results in a large amount of repetition of particular facts. I found it irritating when occasionally this occurs within a couple of pages. Also, while one recognizes that the authors are American and we must accept some strange spellings e.g. maneuvers for manoeuvres, it is annoying to see the measure ‘metre’ written as ‘meter’. But to the British naval enthusiast worst of all is the metrification of British gun sizes. We had 16 inch, 15 inch, 14 inch etc. and the gun was named by its measurement in Imperial size, it is simply a misnomer to call it otherwise.
This work will sit well on the bookshelf of everyone with an interest in the amazing Bismarck saga both as a jolly good read and as an important reference work.

Seaforth Publishing, 2019