Lyons Press, 2000, $22.95, ISBN: 1-55821-759-2, 439pgs., softback

Originally published in 1986, Jutland tackles the WWI sea battle in excruciating detail using what I call an “alternating chapter pairing.” One chapter provides a minute-by minute description of the battle, while the next provides a shell-by-shell description of damage.

The battle chapters offer an excellent compendium of which ship was where and did what. The prose sparkles and the different aspects of the battle take shape under Campbell’s detailed descriptions. The damage chapters prove a different beast because shell-by-shell analysis can become overwhelmingly repetitious. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all terrific analysis, but unless you need such, you’ll end up skipping through these chapters.

The diagrams showing the battle are the usual mix of solid, dotted, and dashed lines parading around the page. I’ve seen these before and while better than nothing, they cover too much time per illustration and appear vague.

The damage illustrations come in two types: hits on British ships, which re generally clear and easy to understand; and hits on German ships, which I have yet to figure out, and seem more like a child’s refrigerator art than naval architectural studies. I suppose they come from naval archives, but two thought occur to me.

1. The British diagrams show armor thickness in “pounds” not millimeters or inches. I can find no table correlating the two or a formula for conversion. This renders them somewhat useless if you’re trying to figure out how a particular shell performs against portions of a ship--sort of the whole point of this shell analysis exercise.

2. The German diagrams are absolutely useless. OK, maybe not absolutely useless, but pretty darn close. A few illustrations are of use, but the rest... If they needed to be included, they should have been reworked extensively.

A variety of tables are included at the end, and though I’ve seen some of these in other books, this collection seem the most complete and thorough in analyzing hits and misses.

All in all, this is a book for a devoted Jutland buff. It’s too detailed for the casual read--it demands to be read carefully and thoroughly. Although the diagrams could be better, I can still recommend this study of the battle of Jutland.