A very interesting and extremely well researched reference book concerning the loss of Royal Navy and other Commonwealth naval ships from 1920 through to the Falklands War. Each entry provides the ship's details, date of loss, commanding officer, and a narrative detailing how the vessel was lost.
World War II losses make up the bulk of the book and describe the campaigns fought such as Norway, Dunkirk, and the Atlantic through to the final fighting in the Pacific in 1945. Some entries are quite lengthy, others less so. While many losses were from enemy action, rock, tempest, and fire also took its toll as well as the foe. In some cases, blue-on-blue actions occurred, such as the first Royal Navy loss of the war, on 10 September 1939, when the submarine Oxley, operating on the surface, was mistaken for a German U-boat by the submarine Triton and torpedoed with the loss of fifty-two of the ship's company.
The well-known losses such as Hood, Repulse, Prince of Wales, and other capital ships are covered, but so are the small trawlers, motor torpedo boats, and mine-sweepers. The losses of the minor landing craft, known only by their number, during actions such as the Dieppe raid, Operation Torch in North Africa and D-Day, are also included, but with less detail about how they were lost and personnel killed or missing. The sheer number of landing craft lost on D-Day is quite sobering.
The pre-war period, 1920-1939, had, as would be expected, far fewer losses but of the thirty-eight vessels lost, ten were submarines. Post-World War II losses were also minimal, with less than a hundred vessels lost due to various reasons. Again, submarine incidents took their toll, as did bad weather. Training incidents also saw several losses, most notably that of the Australian destroyer Voyager, sunk by a collision with the aircraft carrier Melbourne during nighttime flying exercises in February 1964 with the loss of eighty-two of the ship's company.
The book ends with the analysis of the Royal Navy losses in the 1982 Falklands War: two destroyers, two frigates, a landing ship, and a landing craft medium in this short but sharp conflict. Several other RN ships were damaged in this short war.
Overall, this is an excellent reference book for the naval historian and those with an interest in the war at sea during World War II. Highly Recommended.
