The story culminates in the Iowa class , which sacrificed heavy armor for 30-knot speeds to keep pace with modern aircraft carriers, a decision that allowed them to serve through the Gulf War. The Technical "Deep Story"
The book tracks the development of the U.S. battle line across three distinct eras: U.S. Battleships: An Illustrated Design History
The "deep story" of by Norman Friedman is less about the battles themselves and more about the secret, bureaucratic, and technical wars fought in design offices and across treaty tables . It is widely considered the definitive reference on American battleship evolution because it was the first to use formerly classified internal U.S. Navy records to explain why ships were built the way they were. The Core Narrative: A Century of Evolution The story culminates in the Iowa class ,