It dives into the high-stakes chess match of the Washington Naval Treaty , which limited ship size to 35,000 tons. Friedman reveals concepts that never sailed, like hybrid carrier-battleships and "Nelson-style" designs with all guns forward, showing the radical compromises made to stay within legal limits.
The book tracks the development of the U.S. battle line across three distinct eras:
The story culminates in the Iowa class , which sacrificed heavy armor for 30-knot speeds to keep pace with modern aircraft carriers, a decision that allowed them to serve through the Gulf War. The Technical "Deep Story"
The "deep story" of by Norman Friedman is less about the battles themselves and more about the secret, bureaucratic, and technical wars fought in design offices and across treaty tables . It is widely considered the definitive reference on American battleship evolution because it was the first to use formerly classified internal U.S. Navy records to explain why ships were built the way they were. The Core Narrative: A Century of Evolution
Starting with the USS Maine and USS Texas , it details the "Pre-Dreadnought" era where designers struggled with stability and low freeboard—most notably in the Indiana class , which are often cited as some of the worst battleships due to these flaws.