Japanese Aircraft Carriers 1920-1945. By Ermanno Martino. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, 2025. ISBN 978-1-0361-3352-8 (Hardback). ISBN 978-1-0361-3353-5 (ePub)
Reviewed by David Hobbs
An English-language version of a monograph originally published in Italian by Storia Militare in 2021, this book was translated for Seaforth Publishing by Ruggero Stanglini and Michele Consention, two well-known Italian naval historians who have both written their own books for Seaforth. Ermann Martino’s work has been redesigned and includes coloured drawings which show the paint schemes applied to many of the carriers.
Other coloured images are used as a frontispiece. Martino is a leading Italian naval historian who has written extensively about the Imperial Japanese Navy for Storia Militare including books on Japanese battleships in 2019 and cruisers in 2023.
Japanese Aircraft Carriers is a welcome addition to Seaforth’s expanding range. It begins logically with a section on Japanese naval policy and construction programmes after which each class is described with a textual description of its development and design, technical details, photographs and a three-view drawing. Most photographs are black and white but some have been digitally coloured. Photographs of Japanese warships after 1941 are not common and the author has clearly succeeded in tracking down several that have not, previously, been published including some that show wrecked and damaged carriers in Japanese ports after September 1945. Details of the individual carriers’ operational service and, in most cases, their losses in action are contained in a separate chapter that follows the class details. In my opinion it would have been better to have included these details within the section dedicated to each class to deliver a single ‘package’ within which the author could have described specifications, describe design strengths and the consequences of any weakness together with the way in which they were operated, especially with regard to damage control arrangements and techniques. The split layout means that readers have to thumb through different parts of the book to follow individual ships from inception to the end of their careers and the relationship between design and survival after action damage. Interesting appendices list translations of the ships’ names, the types of guns fitted to IJN carriers, naval radars, paint schemes and technical data with photographs of aircraft operated from carriers during the period.
The one thing the book lacks is a description of the unique way in which the IJN operated aircraft from its carriers and the impact this had on both their design and operation. This would have explained the drawings which show the coloured, striped areas at the rear of the flight deck with outrigger structures to port and starboard of them projecting at right angles from them which distinctive features of all IJN carriers. Aircraft returning to the carrier joined a right-handed pattern on its starboard side until it turned into wind, indicating that it had done so by hoisting a black ball at the masthead with two numeral flags below it which indicated the wind speed. Once the ship was steady on the flying course pilots joined the visual circuit by turning to port ahead of the ship at 700 feet, flying a downwind leg and then turning port onto the final approach to line up with the flight deck 700 yards astern of it, still at 700 feet. Groups of red and green lights, known as ‘landing guidance lights’ were fitted on either side of the deck and when the pilot had both sets in view he was correctly aligned with the deck and at the correct point to begin his descent on the ideal glide-slope. The conspicuous red and white stripes at the after end of the deck and the outriggers next to them were intended to help pilots to maintain their line-up even when the nose of the aircraft began to obscure the deck straight ahead. There was no batsman as such but a sailor was positioned on the port side aft to make flag signals with hand-held flags if ordered to do so by the air operations officer. A red flag ordered a ‘wave-off’ and a white flag with an ‘H’ informed pilots that they had not lowered their tailhook. With the wind down the deck the flags’ edge was towards the pilot and so they had to be waved vigorously from side to side to be more obvious; something that was difficult to achieve in a strong wind. The Japanese technique differed significantly from those used by the RN and USN. It involved flying a larger circuit than the other navies that was both slower and added significantly to the time needed to turn-round aircraft with fuel and weapons in the hangar between sorties. This was thus a significant factor to be taken into account in any description of Japanese carriers’ design and operation. Worse, the slow turn-rounds had to be carried out on aircraft struck down into hangars which became congested with aircraft, fuel and ammunition and this proved to be a major factor in the Japanese carrier losses in the battle of Midway. More could have been made of the impact of IJN carrier operating techniques in my opinion.
That said, Japan was one of only three nations that carried out large scale carrier operations prior to 1945 and Japanese Aircraft Carriers provides a good and well-illustrated, single-source, introduction to IJN carrier fleet. It is a useful reference for those with an interest in the Pacific War who want access to technical descriptions of these interesting ships and a good idea of how they would have appeared in service.
