Imperial Japanese Navy Battleships 1941-45 (New Vanguard, 146)

This work takes a subject with comparatively little written on it and casts a fairly clear light on it.The book is good balance between a technological and a operational history of Japanese battleships of WWII. Each class and ship is given a short, but clear history concerning initial development, subsequent refits and operational use. The effects of other nations development on these ships is also given comment. From an operational standpoint it sheds light on the tactical and strategic views that spawned the ships. The colour plates and pictures are well placed in the text and give these ships some much needed attention in English. For the most part these ships are only mentioned in US accounts as ships sunk, with good reason admittedly.While the book does not shine any new light on the subject it does examine Japanese battleships clearly and thoroughly for the size of the book. For this reason alone it is a worthwhile purchase and will hepl readers of WWII naval battles more thoroughly understand the participating capitol ships of Japan.

The japanese combined fleet possessed the largest battleships ever built by human beings. The Yamato and the Musashi were the biggest in the world. If you add in the Kongo, Fuso, and Nagato classes, the japanese possessed a formidable fleet of capital ships. However, the problem was the manner in which the japnese used these ships. Because of the japanese militaries belief in the one decisive battle concept, the battleships were kept out of many of the wars opening battles. By the time the japanese decided to use these powerful vessels, they were bereft of air cover, because most of japans carrier fleet had been sunk. The 18 inch guns of the Yamato and Musashi were ineffective in their roles, they were both sunk, never having achieved the goal of their creation. JRV

Very good book. Touches on the Imperial Japanese Battleships fleet. If the Yamato was not sunk by US Naval aircraft. Its safe to say it would have been one hell of naval battle if it came up against Iowa Battleships

Could not put the book down. Full of information on the Japanese Navy before and during WWII. All of the Japanese battleships except the last two super battleships were of WWI design and construction. The taxes needed to build the two super battleships about destroyed Japan's economy. How the military leaders of Japan thought that one big sea battle would end the war was insane when many of their leaders knew that we could out produce them in military arms.

Each Mark Stille and Paul Wright collaboration provides the enthusiast with an extremely well-organized, concise and visually appealing summary of a historically significant class or classes of warships. Stille's lucid writing and Wright's fine artwork consistently place their entries among the best in the New Vanguard series.

This book goes into a reasonable amount of detail considering its size. It is good for an overview of the Japanese battleships. If you want more in depth analysis of the individual ships, this is not the book for you. Overall, an interesting and good read.

Love these books. Battleships rock and the Japanese had some of the deadliest on the 7 seas. Good info for someone who is looking for cursory info.

This book is rather overpriced for what you get. I was expecting something similar to the books on American battleships where there are graphic layouts of all of the ships compartments as well as listing of the armor thicknesses. This book merely provides a brief sketch of the main Japanese battleships of World War II and how they met their demise. At $17, I was expecting something more than a 48 page slightly oversize paperback

While I had knowledge of the British, American and German WWII Fleet of Battleships and Battle Cruisers, I had scant knowledge of the opposing Japanese ships. This book is an excellent book giving good detail of the ships specifications as well as their parts in the numerous fleet actions with the American and British ships. It's good value for the price and well presented. Recommended to any student of the history of these former goliaths of the oceans.

Good book easy read and has good detail with great illustrations.

Enjoyable read, enough detail for me without being over the top.

Excellent book !!

Good overview of the Japanese battleships classes and doctrine behind them. Most of the test obviously focuses on the ships themselves and their various rebuilds between the wars, given that they saw relatively little action, their combat careers take up little space. That being said I would have liked to see more time devoted to their various fates, but there is little room to spare. My biggest complaint would be the colour plates, each ship class gets a profile plate, (2 for the Ise, one before and one post aircraft carrier conversion) but the colour plates consist of a profile shot and an odd front-side view with them at sea. This artist depiction of them offers very little, and I would far prefer to see a plan view from above instead of these, as most books of this series have. The Yamato class also lacks a profile shot all together because it gets the cut away view, which given the cut away and being focused on 2 pages, is missing various parts of the ship. Also the ship specifications tables includes 3 lines of basically no information, a larger table of useful numbers and specs would be far preferred. Overall good overview read, not a ton of new information, good companion for the duel series book Japanese battleships vs USN battleships, which covers in more detail the 2 surface actions they fought.