Astute Class Nuclear Submarine Owners' Workshop Manual: 2010 to date - Insights into the design, construction and operation of the most advanced attack submarine ever operated by the Royal Navy

Premium quality paper and graphics. If you have anything more than a passing interest in submarines, then this book should be in your collection. I ordered it here on Amazon from a U.K. bookseller, and it actually shipped to Cali from Sweden, as there were none to be found here in the States. FIVE Stars.

Muy buen material

My husband is a kid of the generation that grew up buying car manuals to work on junkers and as a career Submariner found this fantastically amusing ... great purchase =)

This book was originally due out in early 2016, and I feared it would go the way of "vaporware" and would never actually be published. I enjoyed the author's previous "manual" on the Type 45 destroyer, and despite the painfully inconsistent nature of previous Haynes naval manuals, I eagerly anticipated its arrival. Was it worth the wait? For the most part, yes. The tone and format of this book are extremely similar to the Type 45 Destroyer manual , which it's essentially a companion volume to. Once again, Dr. Gates serves up a healthy serving of technical and operational details, accompanied by a large number of excellent photographs and diagrams. Unlike many recent Haynes titles, it's basically a straightforward technical reference, without any of the first-hand accounts, potted histories, or fluffy asides which tend to serve as padding. After a brief introduction, the first section focuses on the design and development of the Astute-class, the oft-delayed and painfully convoluted procurement process, and the boat's unique unit/module construction process. After a look at Astute's launch and sea trials, we get to the technical meat of the book - three chapters focusing on the boat's hull (pressure hull, ballast tanks, domestic facilities, etc.), nuclear power plant, and combat systems (management systems, sonar, communications, sensors, and weapons). The final chapter briefly explains how the boats would operate in combat, covering subjects such as underwater sound propagation, TLAM strikes, and special forces deployment. As the first "Astute" was commissioned only eight years ago, this book has a few grey areas. There are no photographs of the machinery spaces (no surprise there!), not much in the way of "hard" specifications (which tend to be exaggerated in most books of this type anyway), and some of the descriptions of sensors and weapons are purposely vague. Setting aside the necessary classification barriers, this "manual" is still surprisingly in-depth and informative in numerous areas. The descriptions of, for example, the fresh water and air purification system, magnetic and acoustic signature reduction, reactor operation, electrical system, and communications equipment, are more detailed than I'd actually expected. The many improvements incorporated into the follow-up "Astutes," or intended to be retrofitted into earlier boats, are also described in some detail. There are dozens of color diagrams, all very clearly illustrated and labeled, depicting subjects as varied as the construction sequence, the interior of a modular mast, the arrangement of a shock-proof 'X-mount,' and the layout of the aft high-pressure air system. Although the "Astutes" are still too new to be described in the kind of detail seen in Haynes' HMS Alliance manual , I'm still impressed by how much technical information made it through the classification process. As a submarine geek, I got a real kick out of this book - "official" information on modern nuclear submarines is still hard to come across, and this one delivers a solid portion of it. It's also rather fascinating to see how British SSN design differs from American - perhaps a Virginia-class manual is due in the near future?

Very good book! Not only gives you information about the Astute submarine but also very good information on nuclear submarines as well. A very good working knowledge. A must for professional submariners or hobbyists.