Japanese Battleships 1905-1942 (Hard Cover Series) Hardcover – April 3, 2017

Excellent book! It probably contain all the information that is available on Japanese battleships and battlecruisers.The first 200 pages duplicate the author's previous book "Japanese Battleships - Volume 1" published in 2010. This text is now called "Part I" in this book. Part II comprises pages 213 - 385 in this new book.The book contains many photos and line drawings of the battleships and battlecruisers being discussed. Each class or even individual ship is discussed in detail. The book describes every battleship or battlecruiser built or purchased (mostly from Britain) from the 1880s through the 1940s. The text discusses every aspect of the ships: armor, armament, propulsion machinery, speed, dimensions and displacements, and hull layout and design. In many cases (especially regarding the battleships built in Japan) the various alternative concept designs are also discussed. Some fairly esoteric features such as dewatering pumping systems are also sometimes described.The new Part II discusses the design and construction of the Yamato class battleships in great detail. It is in Part II that the very detailed discussions of the armor layouts of all the battleships from the Kongo class through the Yamato class appears. A 40-page appendix in Part II discusses the alternative design developments for the various battleship and battlecruiser projects that were considered.Parts I and II combined provide the most thorough discussions that I have yet encountered regarding the scrapped or never-started ships such as the Kaga, Tosa, Amagi class, Kii/Owari class, and the Number 13 class. Apparently very little information on the Number 13 class fast battleships exists, but what material is available is presented here.For additional information on this subject, I recommend the following books:> "The Yamato Class and Subsequent Planning" by Lengerer and Ahlberg (2014). It is a 542 page book that describes the concept development, design, construction, and operational histories in the ultimate detail. The conceptual development of the "Super Yamato" class to be armed with 510 mm guns is discussed in pages 535 - 540.> "Warship Volume VII" edited by John Roberts and published in 1983 contains a three-part discussion on "The Japanese Super Battleship Strategy" (written by Hans Lengerer) that is well worth reading.

First thing to straighten out. Product information states this is a paperback. It isn't - rather hardcover (indeed the book forms part of the Kagero Hardcover series!). The book is actually two earlier books rather than a brand new publication. It joins two earlier titles from the same author. The first half of the book was originally released in English as 'Japanese Battleships Vol 1' in 2010. At that time the publisher flagged it was to be part of a three volume set. The second part of the book - is actually Vol 2 of that series - however it was only released in Polish as far as I am aware of. Oh... and the dust cover artwork of this book is identical to that used on the 'Polish only' Vol 2. The flagged Vol 3 has yet to be seen in either language - well, at least not yet it hasn't! And my last gripe... the quality of the paper stock of this book is not as good as the original Vol 1 and this impacts adversely on photographic quality. Now leaving aside all that confusion, the good news is that the information contained in the second half of the book alone is worth the price of the combined volume and why I rated it 4 stars. It provides you with a solid technical view of Japan's battleships built from 1905 to 1942, as well as technical tables of planned ships. While the paper/photos are not of as good a quality as the original Vol 1, they are still quite reasonable (at least to my aging eyes). So buy the book and enjoy the details - while being bemused at the strange publishing methods of Kagero.

Very good. It provides context and process development for the 12 Japanese dreadnoughts, battlecruisers and fast battleships. Definitely a good purchase. BTW! This is a history book and not one of the image and 3D profiling titles by the same author. It is lavishly illustrated, though

Very nice book, packed full of information and pictures but the flow of the information seems "disjointed, scattered". Without an index it does make it hard to use the book as a quick reference source. I am glad I purchased the book, and I do recommend it.

Great book on the design, especially on the earlier battleships, and what the IJN did to meet the limitations set by the treaties to the ships. I like the information that showed the people involved in the different classes of the battleships.

nicht nur für Modellbauer sehr informativ.

Great book lots of rare photos and details in large format superb for this litttle covered topic

Excellent research, too many typos.Good read, technical data should also be provided in metric system. A must for everybody interested in IJN history.

A very frustrating book - or pair of books - that somehow misses the target despite its large format and 390 pages. Part 1 rambles to a conclusion over 210 pages and then part 2 goes back to 1921 and starts again, only with a bit more detail and the addition of projects that led nowhere (although some of these are very interesting). There are many excellent photographs, though sadly most are spoiled through being curiously over - exposed (I have seen many of the same pictures reproduced elsewhere to a much higher standard). Moreover the photos and plans usually have no obvious connection with the text at all. Why, to give one of numerous examples, do we find turret layout plans of Yashima (1896) on page 132, when the text on page 133 is dealing with the Washington Treaty of 1922.?A book this size could easily have given comprehensive coverage to the whole story, going back to the French designed Matsushima class of the early 90's and of course the six British built battleships that comprised the corestrength of the navy during the Russo Japanese war. The later are covered in photographs and captions, but the text does not even mention them! Instead it drones on about the numerous reorganisations and endless political intrigues from about 1856 onwards. You may find this interesting but I thought I was buying a battleship book. The authors only really take interest in those when covering the ships built in Japan from 1905 onwards and this information then comes as a continuous narrative. In part 1, technical details are given in the text, but there are few data charts, making the information tedious to read and hard to follow: drawing comparison with other ships is thus pretty difficult.There is more tabulated data concerning the later super Dreadnoughts in part two, but this is drawn from a variety of sources and in some cases we are now overwhelmed with technical minutiae: what, exactly, is the average reader supposed to make of Nagato's communication shaft being '280lb VC to 120lb VNC'? Of course, armour distribution is best understood by reference to sectional diagrams but there are few of them until we reach the designs of the 1930's in part two. However these are inconsistent and difficult to compare - especially when reduced from the original so that written data becomes illegible. By far the best detailed plans are the longitudinal sections of the Vickers built Kongo on pages 82/3 and these are the only ones to stretch wider than a single page width.The dislocation between the text and the photographs continues in part two. I counted 65 photographs of Japanese ships, and also 65 of US Navy battleships, yet the later hardly get any mention at all beyond the photo captions. In fact you can read all the text without reference to the photographs and all the photo captions without reference to the text!Despite all this criticism there is much of interest here, especially concerning the politics of the time as a background to navy programs: the logic behind the Vamato and 'replacement Kongo' plans is well discussed. However the impression given is that material has been gathered from many sources and 'thrown in', without a logical plan or sequence - there is thus much repetition and 'jumping about': one minute we may be in 1936, the next back in 1923. For example, having discussed plans to replace the aging Kongo and 'projects for Yamato type battleships', we suddenly find ourselves reading a technical description of the Kongo's hull using Vickers data from from all the way back to 1910!If you have the stamina to plough right through this book you may eventually make sense of it all, despite the authors efforts to utterly confuse the reader. There has been rumour of a volume 3, but goodness knows what will be found in that - maybe the conspicuously missing coverage of the RJN's pre dreadnought ships? I would like to see that, but I will not hold my breath......On a positive note, this is a lot of book for around £25, and it is not a softback: it features laminated boards and has a good dust cover.