Warship Pictorial 43 - Alaska Class Cruisers by Steve Wiper (2015-09-16)

Fast, armed with 12-inch guns, and functionally battlecruisers (though the USN could never decide what to call these ships), the WWII Alaska class ships formed an odd niche. Only three were laid down, and of those only two were actually completed late in the war. Alaska had a service career of just 32 months, and sister ship Guam an even shorter 29 months. Both were relegated to reserve status almost immediately after the war and both had been sold for scrap by 1961. Conceived as cruiser-killers, by the time they entered service there were few cruisers left to hunt, and they served mostly as super-escorts for the aircraft carriers. This thin paperback provides numerous good-quality photos of these ships, mostly during construction and shakedown. There is a brief (3-page) recitation of their development and service careers, but no plan or profile drawings. Four stars for giving good visual coverage of these handsome yet seldom written about ships, but one star off five for lack of drawings.

I was impressed enough by this book to want to buy others in the series. The digest biographies of the two large cruisers is uncluttered by minutia. You will find all you want to know before deciding to do serious in depth research on the GUAM and ALASKA. You will find some small bits of data the, at least for me, are just not prominently out there. For example, did you know that there were four other hulls in the series though only one was more than a gleam in an admiral's eye.Is there a weak point in the book? I would have loved it had there been some color shots of the dazzle camouflage paint schemes.

I guess that outside the United States the large Cruiser " USS Alaska " ( and her sister ship " USS Guam " ) are almost unknown. But I like these ships. The design is much more European style than American style. In my opinion " USS Alaska " and " USS Guam " are the most beautiful ships of the US Navy. What a pity that both ships have been scrapped.This book offers great photographs of these classic ships and I am very glad that I could get it.

Good photo book of these ships, if your a fan of them its worth it, alot of rare shipyard and Shakedown cruise pictures

The Alaska Class had a very short service life, so the images are correspondingly generic with very few unpublished photos. That being said, this book in the Warship Pictorial series would be a welcome addition to any collector's library. I especially liked the factoid on the last page: the cost to construct these unique ships and how much was paid when they were sold for scrap. The difference will surprise you.

EXCELLENT BOOK,GREAT PHOTOS & INFO

A really nice book with many rare photos on this class of WW2 large cruisers, plus additional information on their deployments during WW2. It really added to my other reference sources on these ships.

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