Outside of Japan, there is not as much on Japanese units of WWII as you'll find for the European theater or Allied Pacific units. Much of the reason for this is that when the war ended, Japanese systematically went about destroying much of the mountains of paperwork and photos related to the war. Some because they did not want these materials to be used as evidence against them for war crimes, but mostly because they did not want to be reminded of their defeat and did not want to provide any information to the victors.

This has made research into the Japanese side of things less than easy. Fortunately, not all was destroyed and much was captured outside the home islands as the Allies worked their way through vacated Japanese positions and bases. Much also came out from those survivors who were willing to talk of their exploits and those of their comrades.

This volume is on JNAF fighter units and is about as complete a body of work as you'll find on the subject. The two Japanese authors produced a very similar edition for Naval Institute Press about 20 years back. This volume contains much of their previous research, expanding on it with additional information that has come forth in the convening years. It is also a fine companion to their earlier JAAF fighter units book (which your reviewer has not had the chance to read).

The book commences with a comprehensive account of the operations of navy fighter units throughout the period covered by the book, from the initial conflict with the Chinese and later with the Soviets before the start of the Pacific war. After a well done overall history of JNAF operations, which covers the first quarter of the book, we then get into individual sections detailing the history and achievements of each unit involved, be it land-based or aircraft carrier-based. This section is the heart of the book and includes such things as their most successful pilots, aircraft types flown and codes carried on the aircraft. This section contains most of the images of the aircraft flown by the units as well as drawings of typical aircraft. The last major section contains biographical details regarding all pilots claiming eight or more aerial victories as well as photos of the pilots.

Of course, with this much research, you will have some pretty complete appendices. These include detailed listings of all pilots known to have claimed five or more victories (and thus considered to be ‘aces’); listings of the graduation from training of all Japanese Navy fighter pilots, and of fighter pilot casualties. There are also some color profiles of select aircraft flown by the aces.

This all makes for a very comprehensive reference book on the subject and is one of the reasons why it has taken me so long to read it prior to this review. I would have to say that this is the best source on the subject I have yet read and is very much a MUST HAVE for enthusiasts of the Pacific War.

July 2011

Review book courtesy of  Casemate Publishing, where you can order your copy of this and many other superb books and DVDs.

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