Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869-1945

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Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869-1945

By Hansgeorg Jentschura, Dieter Jung, Peter Mickel

Publisher: Naval Institute Press 1986 284 Pages

ISBN: 087021893X

PDF 144 MB

Язык: Английский

The origin of this book, and the gathering of material to he used for it, goes back over thirty years. The idea was that of Erich Grdner, historian of the German navy, and author of Die Deutschen Kriegschiffe, I HI5-1945, (Lehmanns, Munich).

In October 1942, thanks to a special request by Hitler, the German Naval Attache in Tokyo, Admiral Wenneker, was permitted to pay a short visit of inspection to a Yamalo class "super-dreadnought" in a dockyard, and then to cable a very detailed description of the ship to Berlin. On 22nd August 1943, Grdner was shown this report at the Fiihrer HQ for the purpose of interpretation and preparation of a design sketch drawing, under security supervision. Later, at the time of the collapse of the Third Reich, he rescued a copy of this sketch intending to use it as the frontispiece in a volume on Japanese warships. And after the war, hoping to put his plan into practice, Grdner embarked on an enthusiastic exchange of material with Shizuo Fukui, a Japanese naval constructor who planned similar publications in Japan.

Following Grdner's death, we decided to follow up the project. As Peter Mickel had already drawn a large number of plans of Japanese warships and discussed them with Grdner, continuity in this respect seemed assured. In the completion of this enormous task, he was later joined by F. Mrva. to whom special thanks are due for his utterly reliable assistance.

The task of preparing the text was undertaken by Hansgeorg Jentschura and Dieter Jung in the face of considerable difficulties. Original documents were not available for research, enquiries could not be made of individuals involved and no visits could be made to builders. Particular attention was paid to problems arising from varying transcriptions of Japanese characters — and which have led to the appearance in many publications of "phantom" ships. We give our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Wolfram Miiller-Yokota of the University of Bochum for his help in clarifying these anomalies.