Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945

Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference for the IJN
Review: An excellent reference. This book contains listings for nearly every IJN ship up to the end of WWII. This book does not have pages of descriptive info concerning ship types, instead this book's info is listed in short tabular layouts. All in all a great book to have if you are interested in the IJN.

Rating:
Summary: A very complete review on Imperial Japanese Navy's warships
Review: The book is very complete, listing almost EVERY warship, of every size and type, manned by the IJN during the covered period. The data are quite detailed and the book is filled with a lot of fine drawings. The photos are not so numerous but all of them are of good quality. Every class is briefly described in all respects: technically, historically and as regard the operational career of each ship till her life's end (scrapped or lost, it doesn't matter). If you are looking for a complete reference on the IJN's warships, you can't miss this book: I own a good warship library, comprising other books dealing with the IJN, but I regard this one my true reference on the matter!

Rating:
Summary: The most complete single reference on the IJN
Review: Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945 is the culmination of three German naval historians in ttempting to document every combatant to serve in the Imperial Japanese Navy. This is the most complete book on the IJN available and contains excellent data on all major and minor warships.

A useful reference for the modeler, the only weakness is the size of the illustrations, which are mostly in 1/1200 scale. The original German edition had better line drawings, but few photos. The strength of this English edition is the collection of photos, many not seen outside of Japan until now. I would rate this as a 4 1/2 star effort and definitely superior to the book by Watts on the same subject.

Rating:
Summary: The most complete single reference on the IJN
Review: Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945 is the culmination of three German naval historians in ttempting to document every combatant to serve in the Imperial Japanese Navy. This is the most complete book on the IJN available and contains excellent data on all major and minor warships.

A useful reference for the modeler, the only weakness is the size of the illustrations, which are mostly in 1/1200 scale. The original German edition had better line drawings, but few photos. The strength of this English edition is the collection of photos, many not seen outside of Japan until now. I would rate this as a 4 1/2 star effort and definitely superior to the book by Watts on the same subject.