Carrier; A Century of First-Hand Accounts of Naval Operations in War and Peace

London: Conway, 2010. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Fair/Fair. 448 pages. Illustrated endpapers. Occasional Footnotes. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. The book has been exposed to some moisture (presumed to be only briefly). There is some staining and rippling of the DJ, minor impact on the outer cover and some top edge staining. All pages separate, including the photograph inserts. Jean Hood is a maritime author and historian. Jean Hood began her professional career working as an advertising copywriter. Advertising soon led Hood to Lloyd's Register of Shipping where she became Information Officer during the 1980s. Her job at Lloyd's Register of Shipping inspired a love for maritime history. She became an authoritative figure and consultant in this field. Her subsequent research on the 18c East Indiaman, ‘Winterton', spanning two decades, became the subject of her first non-fiction book, Marked For Misfortune. In 2006, Hood released Come Hell and High Water, an examination of several infamous or less well-known shipwrecks, to critical acclaim. Warship International Fleet Review wrote that it ‘reads like the best fiction, yet they are all true stories'. In an interview with The Sentinel in August 2010, Hood explained the intention of her latest work, Carrier: A Century of First-hand Accounts of Naval Operations in War and Peace: ‘my book tells the human, rather than the technical, story of aircraft carriers and naval aviation, using eye-witness stories from those who served.' Navy News described it as ‘probably the definitive book on life in the capital ship of the past seventy or so years... pretty much everything involving carrier operations, full stop, is covered.' The history of the aircraft carrier, one of the most revolutionary innovations in the history of naval warfare, is explored here in vivid detail. Featuring firsthand accounts by carrier pilots and crews who fought in World War II, this authoritative volume provides compelling insight into what life was like for the men who served on these huge ships, and embraces the entire carrier story, from the earliest experiments in launching planes at sea, to the Falklands War and beyond. An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a naval force to project air power worldwide without depending on local bases for staging aircraft operations. Carriers have evolved since their inception in the early twentieth century from wooden vessels used to deploy balloons to nuclear-powered warships that carry numerous fighters, strike aircraft, helicopters, and other types of aircraft. While heavier aircraft such as fixed-wing gunships and bombers have been launched from aircraft carriers, these aircraft have not landed on a carrier. By its diplomatic and tactical power, its mobility, its autonomy and the variety of its means, the aircraft carrier is often the centerpiece of modern combat fleets. Tactically or even strategically, it replaced the battleship in the role of flagship of a fleet. One of its great advantages is that, by sailing in international waters, it does not interfere with any territorial sovereignty and thus obviates the need for overflight authorizations from third-party countries, reduces the times and transit distances of aircraft and therefore significantly increases the time of availability on the combat zone. There is no single definition of an "aircraft carrier", and modern navies use several variants of the type. These variants are sometimes categorized as sub-types of aircraft carriers, and sometimes as distinct types of naval aviation-capable ships. Aircraft carriers may be classified according to the type of aircraft they carry and their operational assignments. Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, RN, former First Sea Lord (head) of the Royal Navy, has said, "To put it simply, countries that aspire to strategic international influence have aircraft carriers." Henry Kissinger, while United States Secretary of State, also said: "An aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons of diplomacy."