Quickly filling in some gaps for our nautical friends, this is #18 in the Warships series and covers the third combatant of WWII's fast torpedo attack boats (the others being the US PT and British MTB). Only the Italians to go to finish the lot as I don't think the Japanese operated boats like this.

The book follows the usual in Action practice of providing a lot of photos and just enough written historical background to cover the subject. These are not meant to be full, in-depth histories, but to provide a basic on the subject for those who want a good, all round primer on the subject and in that respect, it fills the bill completely.

As with others in the series, it covers the main classes of boat as well as the various differences between them. The selection of photos is quite good and provide a good basis for modelers when building their own S-boats. There are the usual well done profiles and art work which show representatives of the different classes and their colors.

One thing I notice is missing from this book is much in the way of operational use information. There are a couple of short pieces on specific incidents, but not much else in the way of 'in action'.  This isn't to single out this particular book as I have noticed a dearth of this material in many others. A lot of operational info can be gleaned from image captions, but nothing hard and fast. I've also noted a tendency to repeat info in the captions that was in the short background pieces, sometimes several times.

Perhaps it is the nature of the beast that nothing original can be found for photo captions or it may be that the author has no control over the photo captions and it is the rush to get things to print that encourages the editor to reuse info, but it is a bit of an irritant to those of us who actually read each section's historical background. I don't have to be told  multiple times that the hull numbers were over-painted after the war started. Once or twice would suffice.

Other than that, the book is an excellent resource for those who want to know something about these boats and have no other reference on them. Perfect for the recently released Revell AG S-boat and the older Airfix E-boat.

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