Aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Volume 2: Land-Based Aviation, 1929-1945 Paperback – August 26, 2010

A nice book, but I admit one that generated a few mixed feelings. Here are some of the pluses and some of the limitations and simply some descriptive details:• there are absolutely NO statistics or specifications whatsoever about the aircraft themselves. So, this book is not for learning about the aircraft (except from illustrations)• thus, the book is less about the aircraft than about the units, the Dai Kaigun Kokutai, to which the aircraft belong. So, very first line of book is “Dai 1 Kaigun Kokutao” and the author moves forward from there to conclude with Dai 938 Kaigun Kokutai. By the way, that does NOT mean there are entries for 938 units! There are not, of course.• so, to me, a more accurate title for this book is “Aircraft Units of the Japanese Imperial Navy”• the length of the entry for each unit varies a lot. Some are long and quite detailed, some short. There’s always information about the dates of operation, basic geographic region, types of aircraft used, identification codes used, some details of actions, etc. But other details found in more details in some entries than in others, e.g., quantitative data (like the number of personnel or aircraft, losses in engagements), names of flyers.• virtually nothing talked about at the level of STRATEGY. Most info is just about individual units, each unit is usually treated more or less in isolation from the other units, and mostly without any explicit handling of overall strategic goals guiding decisions about these units.• the illustrations are very nicely done! And printed on good quality paper• no photographs or maps or charts• problem: no index. Given that the book is organized around units, this was especially disappointing. So, there’s no easy way to get information on particular things, such as a certain area in the theatre of war (e.g., Marianas or Philippines), particular battles, particular actions (e.g., Yamamoto ambush mission), associated naval units, Japanese airmen and commanders, enemy units and commanders engaged, tactics (e.g. “kamkikaze”). It’s not that the info isn’t there. You just have to page through many, if not all, pages to find it!• no references: I guess in a book of this size references were considered excessive, but here is the real problem: there is not even an Introduction or Afterword in which the author tells the reader the source(s) of the information presented in the book. That’s a historical no-no.• translation usually fine, but writing at times quite quirky. One example, hyphenating the word “these” at the end of a sentence to “the-“ and then, at the beginning of the next line, “se” !So, although the book could have been better (especially, for me personally, with greater attention on strategy), I’m still glad I bought it. Not quite a book you would sit down and read from beginning to end straight through, but nice to just sit down and peruse, jump about and read about different units.

Outstanding purchase and resource

The book is ok in it's artwork but the text is wanting. The english translation is not the greatest. There are better books out there. A little disappointing.

High quality artwork covering the subject. The JNAF unit structure is not covered and this makes research difficult.

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