German Battleship SMS Posen (Super Drawings in 3D) Paperback – September 25, 2017

An absolutely superb installment in a long series of equally superb books. This one has the most clear illustration of German heavy gun ammunition handling arrangements I've ever seen. It is very clear from the illustrations how the shells and cartridges were stored and elevated to the guns and is very clear that firing the guns involved a shell, a starter cartridge in a bag, and a main cartridge in a brass casing. One thing that is a little less clear relates to how the used cartridges were extracted and dropped onto the deck below. In any event, this book is absolutely the best I've seen of this series thus far.

The 53rd book in Kagero's Super Drawings in 3D series is an 8-1/4" x 11-3/4", 80 page, stapled card cover. It covers the SMS Posen, a ship of imperial Germany's first dreadnought class. In these respects the book is much like the others in the series but once one delves inside important and welcome differences become apparent.The first difference that jumps out at the reader is the extent of the text. This is spread over 12 pages shared with some overall views of the ship. The description and table of specifications are average fare but the operational history is very detailed, documenting every movement of the ship throughout its life.But the meat of every book in this series are the computer renderings. These are outstanding as always but, unlike most books in this series, the captions are fairly detailed and helpful. Another helpful technique was omitting canvas windbreaks and boats on many pages to allow more detail to be seen. The ship is shown primarily in the as completed state but there are also some views with wartime modifications - torpedo nets and 88mm removed and machine guns and aircraft added. There are also nice illustrations of procedures like subcalibre practice barrel installation and torpedo loading. This last is only for the forward torpedo room. Nothing is mention of the aft room and similar fitting are not present on the drawings. Presumably a ladderway served the same purpose aft.Besides this there are many views of some interior details. There are the periscopes and rangefinder mounted on the conning tower, the entire propulsion train from boilers all the way through to screws, interior views of a turret, and a steam engine with a figure alongside for scale. These are all very welcome and I hope they find a place in later volumes as well.The centerfold is a computer rendering of the ship at anchor. It would look nice framed but the aforementioned propulsion train is on the reverse which would be too great a sacrifice for me.Even the unbound foldout differs from the norm. This is given over to a plan view of firing arcs, a longitudinal inboard profile, and 27 transverse cross sections.This book is highly recommended; it's one of the best in the series. About the only reservation I have is the thicker, uncoated paper stock, which limits the page count of books with stapled bindings that use it. This ship doesn't seem to have suffered thereby, though.

This is Kagero's latest edition & in my opinion the best yet. Marsden Samuel has done an outstanding job in his rendering of the POSEN. What makes this unique is the use of cutaways & detailed views of the FC position, turrets , the handling rooms & hoist machinery. CAD makes this possible & he uses it to it's fullest. What Kagero books have lacked is interior rederings & this is a step in the right direction. The text is by Gary Staff who is again in my opinion the best English speaking authority on the WWI German Navy. His recent works on German Battlecrusiers & Jutland, "Skagerrak" so ably points out. He does not come with a RN bias which many authors do. Sadly, Gary Staff passed away this past July. I hope someone steps up to continue his excellent history of the Kaiserleicher Marine. This is a great volume for any warship enthusiast.