Like Great Britain, Japan relied on the sea to provide for its people. Everything from food to most strategic materials had to be transported over the oceans. Once Japan opened up to Western ideas, they fully embraced the need to have a strong navy and looked to the British (who had the strongest nautical force at the time) to provide inspiration and guidance. Always willing to sell weapons, the British were more than happy to assist and many of Japan's early ships were British built or designed. Interestingly, Japan never had to go through the age of sail as did other European and American powers, but went straight into the age of steel and steam for its ships.

Knowing that they could not match their strongest adversary (the United States), in terms of numbers, the Japanese set out to be do what they could in terms of producing ships of superior quality. Thus, their first dreadnaught battleships were based on the British 'Lion' class, but upgraded to meet Japanese expectations. Up until actual combat in WWII, it was supposed by all navies that war at sea would mean battleships and to this extent, the Japanese wanted to have the best. And they generally did.

This book in the New Vanguard series looks at the five major classes of Japanese battleships; the Kongo, Fuso, Ise, Nagato and Yamato classes. Each class is provided a basic history of the ships as well as the design and modifications made to them as time progressed. There are a superb number of period photos of each type as well as cutaways and the excellent artwork of Tony Bryan to help us visualize what these ships were like in action.

It is fortunate for the US that the Japanese missed several opportunities to put their battleships to good use as the intervention of the Yamato at Guadalcanal, for instance, would have meant a failed invasion and a change as to how the war would have progressed. However, as we all know, the Japanese made little good use of these assets and for most of the war, they saw little to no action. It wasn't until the aircraft was in major ascendency that these ships were brought to battle and against air power at the time, they were no match.

An excellent book on a most interesting subject and one that I am positive you will find to be of interest. One that will be pulled from the shelves time after time and one I can highly recommend to you.

July 2008

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