welty@algol.crd.ge.com (richard welty) (06/30/89)
From: welty@algol.crd.ge.com (richard welty) _Jane's Fighting Ships of World War II_, Military Press, New York, 1989 I ran across this in a Publishers Central Bureau catalogue, and at around $20, decided to go ahead and order it sight unseen. When it arrived, I noticed that the original price was $80, which as it turns out is a little steep, given what the the book turned out to be. In essence, this is a reformatted version of the 1946/47 edition of Jane's; converted from landscape to portrait in a cut and paste job, and with the notes from the war loss (and the other late update section) pasted into the correct spot. Material from earlier wartime editions of Jane's is also added in, resulting in a somewhat more convienient book (I have copies of several of the wartime Jane's, and fliping from book to book can be rather annoying at times.) The result is good and bad -- the information given is only as good as the 4 or so represented editions of Jane's were, and many errors are not corrected. There are other glitches as well -- for example, many war losses are correctly listed, but the state of Oklahoma is not mentioned anywhere. Likewise, Jane's of this era often omitted pendant numbers, so coverage of this useful information is often lacking. A quick check of the Japanese section reveals that a number of erroneous ship names are corrected, but at least two aircraft carriers, completed during the war and lost before its end, have slipped through the cracks. Likewise, there is no mention of the flight deck modifications made to Ise and Hyuga. On top of all of this, the conversion to portrait format doesn't really work -- this book deserved to be landscape, like the original edition. All in all, a mixed bag. Worth $20, but not $80, and you have to be careful when using it, just as you have to be careful using the original wartime editions of Jane's. richard -- richard welty welty@lewis.crd.ge.com 518-387-6346, GE R&D, K1-5C39, Niskayuna, New York