French Armoured Cruisers 1887–1932

This is an excellent book and an excellent companion to the book French Battleships of World War One by the same authors. Both books are highly recommended. This books has excellent detail photos, line drawings, plans and section veiws of various ships including details of the turrets and QF guns and ship technical data. Book begins with an excellent photo and introduction.Chapter 1 covers Dupuy-De-Lome and Amiral Charner class.Chapter 2 covers Pothuau and D'EntrecasteauxChapter 3 covers Jeanne d'ArcChapter 4 covers station cruisers of Dupleix class - my personal favoriteChapter 5 covers Fleet Cruisers of the Gueydon classChapter 6 covers Fleet Cruisers of the Gloire classChapter 7 covers the Leon Gambetta classChapter 8 covers the Jules Michelet and Ernest RenanChapter 9 covers the Edgar Quinet and Waldeck-RousseauChapter 10 covers French Naval organizationChapter 11 covers World War One yearsChapter 12 covers the post war yearsAll photos, drawings and tables are excellent. The text, from what I've read, is excellent. This is the first book of its type that I have seen so I cannot comment on completeness or correctness. It looks great to me is all I can tell you and covers a subject too long ignored. Some operational history is included in the text. Highly recommended and well worth the money.

Very pleased with this book. In it I found a detailed account on the development of the French armoured cruiser classes from Dupuy de Lome to Waldeck Rousseau accompanied by as many quality photos and plans. Books by John Jordan never disappoint so I've just ordered the French Battleships of World War One and I am sure it will be just as great as this one.

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The French poured huge resources into their armoured cruisers, which were expected to undermine British battlefleet superiority by attacking her trade routes as well as being able to support their own battlefleet. The Navy also acquired dedicated ‘station’ cruisers’ designed to meet requirements overseas, though these were often heavily criticised for inadequate fire power and protection (viz, Dupleix class).In this book, most of the criticisms of the companion battleship book have been corrected. Most particularly, it is not ‘of World War One’ and gives equal coverage to the earlier ships that had long been obsolete before 1914, each class having about twenty pages coverage. The war and after occupy 35 pages, which is reasonable in a work of 270 pages. Dupuy du Lome was the first really ‘modern’ armoured cruiser and provides the logical starting point for the book. For each class, hull, armament, protection, machinery and service record are covered in turn. In this book there is more about machinery, than in Jordan and Caresse’s earlier book, which is of particular interest given the many boiler variations and layout peculiarities of French ships. The narrative style is very factual and rather dry - but I suppose the entertaining anecdotal content found in Oscar Parks and Ballards near contemporary books are not to be expected in 2019.There is a large amount of detail, showing extensive use of the ‘Conseil des Travaux’ and other bureau records. Unfortunately only metric measurements are given in the text: true, these are correct for French ships, but I would at least expect accessible conversion charts, the few conversions given on page 9 being quite inadequate. I can cope with straightforward centimetres and kilos, but such details as a boiler pressure of ‘17kg/cm2’ means nothing to most anglo saxons. Consequently, direct comparison with the published measurements of contemporary British cruisers becomes rather difficultThere are some unexpected revelations, such as the original plan to include a sailing rig for the ‘Amiral Charner’ class! The armament detail gives reasonable coverage of mountings, magazines and supply arrangements, these often being problematical on French ships, especially the earlier ones which were much too small for their ambitious specifications. My ‘metric’ complaint above notwithstanding, the data tabulations do help make sense of the various quick firing gun types. When dealing with protection there are tabulations for some ships that detail the weights allocated to the various belts, turrets, hoists, conning towers, etc. This shows how complex the competition for armour allocation on ships of modest size could be. At the end of each ship section comes an ‘evaluation’. These could be longer and more detailed but nevertheless we learn interesting facts. For example, the very first of these ships, Dupuy de Lome, proved to be very poor in almost every way when in service, but the technical ideas she introduced proved hugely influential and were developed in France and abroad on larger and better designed cruisers. There are a few comparisons with contemporary British, and some German ships, the best being between the last french design, Edgar Quinet, and Minotaur/Scharnhorst, but I would have liked a much greater focus on this subject.There are numerous superb line drawings, especially cross sections revealing internal layout at various points along the hull. There are also excellent drawings showing turret working and ammunition supply - those of Dupleix and Jules Michelet being especially fine. The one weakness is the small size and lack of annotation on the full length profile and plan drawings. The authors have avoided passing drawings across the binding, which is in general a good thing, but larger hull drawings could have been provided by turning them through 90 degrees (landscape format). The photographs are outstanding, some of these pass across two pages but the superb detail they reveal excuses this (see Edgar Quinet, pages 204- 5). The paper quality is doubtless the best economics would allow, though it is not ideal for the very best photo reproduction.All considered this is a really excellent book and purchased for around £25 it is truly outstanding value for money. Once again enthusiasts should thank both the authors and Seaforth Publishing for supporting a rather specialist interest in this way.

I preordered this book around four months ago and received it yesterday. Obviously, this is a topic that I am interested in and an author that I trust. So far I paged through it from beginning to end plus I read some sections. This is not a book to read in a day as it is very rich in technical details and superb drawings. If you liked the previous books by the author, you will love this. If your looking for a light read or a book that concentrates on naval operations, this is not for you. It is so nice to get a book on the design of a group of ships that have not been a popular subject previously. As a note, I only paid about $30 for this book and it was a very good deal at that price.