One of the most impressive sights in my memory was the arrival of USS Missouri in Long Beach back in about 1986. As she maneuvered to dock near the Spruce Goose museum, I was reminded that there is nothing naval so impressive as an all-big gun warship; they bristle with power and menace. Another thing i found surprising was to realize how small the Missouri was in comparison with a modern super-carrier.

For this modeler, seeing the Missouri come into harbor, and a later tour of the ship as a museum was about as much knowledge as I had about the Iowa-class battleships. I am the proud owner of a Tamiya 1/350 USS New Jersey kit that I have long wanted to turn into a model, but have held back until now due to lack of knowledge. A model like that, you want to do it right.

David Doyle's latest contribution to Squadron-Signal's "On Deck" series is thus very welcome. The book covers all four ships of the class: Iowa (BB-61), New Jersey (BB-62), Missouri (BB-63), and Wisconsin (BB-64), concentrating on their modernized form after they were brought out of mothballs in the early 1980s as part of Ronald Reagan's "600 ship Navy" expansion.

A good half of the photos are in color, which is extremely useful to a modeler, while the different details of each of the four ships are pointed out in text and photos, which will allow a modeler to make any one of the class from the Tamiya kit. Photos range from full-ship portraits that provide inspiration for underway dioramas to detail shots of the individual items of the weapons suite.

Fora ship modeler like yours truly who is not an expert on the subject, this book provides as much information as anyone could hope for in guiding a project through to a successful conclusion and the creation of a model that even the experts would find interesting. You can't ask more than that from a book like this, and this one delivers the goods. Excellent value for the investment and highly recommended.