The Tankers: From a A.w. Peake to Z Zephyrhills Hardcover – Import, 1 June 2008

Great book for referencing

Very comprehensive book on WW II American tankers. I thought the best chapters were:* Chapter 2 "American Tankers" describing the tanker designs and construction programs.* Chapter 3 "The Shipyards" describing the ship building companies and yards.* Chapter 4 "The T1."* Chapter 5 "The T2."* Chapter 6 "The T3."* Chapter 7 "The T5 and T6."The remaining chapters discuss WW II losses, post-war losses, and histories of the specific ships owned by various entities: US Government, foreign governments, commercial shippers, and so forth. These chapters are incredibly detailed.Some other very good books on related subjects are as follows:* "The Hog Islanders -- The Story of 122 American Ships" by Goldberg (1991). It discusses the freighters built as part of the US WW I ship building efforts;* "Caviar and Commissars -- The C3 Passenger Cargo Ships" By Goldberg (1992);* "Wartime Standard Ships" by Robins (2017). It describes the massive standard ship construction programs of the US and Britain during WW I and WW II. It also describes the somewhat lesser programs of Canada, Germany, and Japan.

This book lists every tanker built for the U.S. Martime Commission during and just before World War II. It lists details of the service life and fate of each tanker. There are photos of many of the ships. It is, in short, as complete a history of a vital type of ship produced in the U.S. as possible.

Say you've gone down the rabbit hole on WWII auxiliaries. If you're into hot T2 action, this is your guide, baby.

An excellent technical reference with many high quality photographs and brief histories of tankers constructed during the Second World War in American ship yards..