The idea of creating such an album dedicated to the battleships of World
War Two had been born in the last dozen or so years. During this period,
various concepts appeared in print, which were meant to present those
beautiful ships in the form of a "condensed pill." Most of the
contributions have been made by foreign authors who had had greater
access to photographic references. It was not easy, because it was
difficult to choose several photos illustrating the entire history of
the battleship, starting from the moment of the keel laying and ending
with its sinking. Then, in some cases it has a further history as a
wreck resting on the seabed until today.
Initially, we selected over 1,000 photos, which we had to give up
because of the size of such an album. In the end, it was divided into
two volumes, thanks to which the number of photos remained only slightly
reduced. In the case of vessels with a large or interesting combat
history, we tried to put more photos illustrating their operational
activities.
Some ships have a very limited number of photos included. The best
example of this is the Japanese battleship "Musashi", of which only few
photographs exist. Most of them come from private collections and it was
very difficult to get permission to publish them. Despite these
difficulties, it was possible to gather unique photographic material
enriched with the brief combat records of individual battleships, which
will hopefully allow the reader to trace their story. In the first
volume, the author describes all the most important battleships from
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Greece, Spain, Japan, France, and Germany.
