Description
The first edition of How The Battleship Maine Was Destroyed, inscribed by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover.
Octavo, xv, [1], 173pp, [3]. Blue cloth, title stamped in gilt on the spine, Navy emblem on the front cover. No additional printings noted. Light sunning to the spine. Solid text block. Includes numerous photographs, diagrams and charts of Havana Harbor. Not issued with a dust jacket.
This copy is signed on the front free endpaper: “To Joe Campbell / with best wishes / H.G. Rickover.”
How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, published in 1976, is a detailed technical and historical analysis of the 1898 explosion that sank the USS Maine in Havana Harbor-an event that helped precipitate the Spanish-American War. Drawing on modern engineering knowledge and forensic evidence, Rickover’s study concluded that the explosion was likely caused by an internal coal bunker fire igniting nearby ammunition, rather than a Spanish mine as widely believed at the time. This important history was reissued in 1995 by the Naval Institute Press, with a new foreword and additional material.
