Customer Reviews

Japanese Aircraft, 1910-1941 (Putnam Aviation Series)

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This is a nice resource book that covers many aircraft and manufacturers that I have never heard of. It includes text, photos or drawings and basic specs for each. A thorough listing & review of 400 aircraft from little known civilian and experimental one offs, to more major aircraft used by the Japanese military. This is one of a very few books (maybe the only one?) that will even mention most of these aircraft - so it's great to see them listed. It also includes foreign types that were made under license in Japan.

Just keep in mind this book does NOT cover the aircraft used by the Japanese during World War II. The book states there are too many aircraft with so many versions they could not be included. It refers the reader to the book "Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War".

Overall it is a nice book to have if you like pre WWII aviation in general, but more specifically Japanese aircraft. If WWII aircraft are your only interest then skip this one and buy the other book mentioned.

While as with most Putnam books, there is a wealth of information that has never before been published in the West, the larger page format that Putnam adopted for its later books simply does not work well here.

Putnam's earlier books (including "Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War"), with their 8-3/4 x 5-3/4 page size, were much better at presenting the data in "encyclopedic" books like this one; the larger page size should be reserved for books with a running narrative. At the very least, the three-column-per-page format should be replaced with one or two columns.

I hope that, if someone puts the Putnams back in print, that they re-format this book, and similar Putnams with encyclopedic listings of aircraft, in the 8-3/4 x 5-3/4 page size, which would make this book much more pleasant to use!