Somers Class Destroyers CD Review

By Michael Benolkin

Review

For those of you that believe that one photo is worth 1,000 words, here is a new photo CD with about 164,000 words in high resolution. These are high quality images that were taken at various periods from construction through service of each of the five Somers class. These included:

• DD 381 USS Somers
• DD 383 USS Warrington
• DD 394 USS Sampson
• DD 395 USS Davis
• DD 396 USS Jouette

The CD-ROM is set up to be navigated by a web browser. According to the instructions, it was optimized to work with Mozilla, but it worked just fine with MS Explorer 6. My browser automatically resizes the images to fit within the display window, but you can also browse through the directories using an image tool (I use JASC Paint Shop Pro) and browse the images. From there you can see that the images were stored in high resolution (most greater than 2000 pixels).

Between the five members of the Somers class, there are an excellent selection of shots of the overall vessel in different camo schemes, key details such as the torpedo tube mounts, and from a wide variety of surface and airborne angles. Clearly someone was really digging through the archives to bring this collection together!

In addition, eight color profiles like the example to the right are provided to illustrate the placement and colors ued for each of the camouflage patterns applied to this class. This example shows the USS Sampson in its Measure 16 camouflage, though the CD also provides the Measure 32 scheme worn by the Sampson as well.

This title is recommended!

This title is available directly from the publisher at AA Military Research.

My sincere thanks to AA Military Research for this review sample!