The Ship Model Forum

A couple months ago, I bought Osprey’s then newest book on small combatants, US Patrol Torpedo Boats of World War II. I’ve been through it several times since receiving it and am still amazed at how incredibly error-filled it is. Aside from being a typical pirate and parrot (a rehash of previously-published material), it is rife with factual errors and sloppy editing. Based on the material presented, neither the author, editing staff, nor the illustrator appear to have any more than an extremely limited familiarity with boats in general and PTs in particular.

In the body of the text, the author consistently uses naval terms incorrectly, misidentifies weapons, makes totally unsupported statements about construction and camouflage, and even gets the previously-published (correct) material wrong. The photo captions are a morass of misidentifications (ELCOs as Higgins, Higgins as ELCOs, a patrol boat built for the Royal Netherlands Navy as a 70’ ELCO PTC, SO radar as SC, 40mm guns as 37mm types, etc., etc., etc.). The cutaway illustration of an 80’ ELCO is disproportionate and flat-out wrong. None of the errors cover items that only a specialist would know. Rather, they are substantive screw-ups of common, basic material.

Sad.

Al Ross