The Falklands Factor

The Battle that Changed the Shape of Ships

Author:	David Laurent Giles
Published:	2025
Format:	Hardback, 360 pages
Size:	234 × 156 × 29 mm

£30⁰⁰

Tax included

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The untold naval design controversy

A meticulously documented account of how one designer's revolutionary warship concept was rejected, then covertly adopted following the harsh lessons of the Falklands conflict.

After the failure of Britain's latest air-defence destroyers in the 1982 Falklands War, a public controversy began over an alternative: The S90 'Short Fat' frigate designed and proposed by Peter Thornycroft and David Giles.

This is the almost incredible but well-documented story of the author's 40-year-long hard-fought battle with naval authorities and governments on both sides of the Atlantic, to prove the virtues of his designs which they had rejected on the basis of theory rather than fact, and then eventually to win substantial compensation after they covertly infringed his patents in two new classes of warship.

With a Foreword by the late Admiral Lord Hill-Norton, Former Chief of the Defence Staff; Technical Appendices; Glossary and Dramatis Personae.