This years edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships, edited by Commodore Stephen Saunders RN, is now available to purchase from IHS for approximately £580.
Virginia Class SSN “Missouri” of the US Navy exiting Faslane. This image is in Fighting Ships 2014/2105
Fighting Ships was first published in 1898 by John Fredrick Thomas Jane. Mad on miniature wargames, he created Fighting Ships as a reference for a Sea Battle game that he devised. He wanted to ensure everyone that played the game had the correct information on World Navy fleets, armaments and other information. From this start, the book has evolved into what it is today
From only line-drawings that were in the early editions, now the yearbook contains well over a thousand excellent quality photographs and I’m very pleased to see again that it contains some of mine, at least 22 that I’ve found so far
Swedish Navy Gavle Class Corvette “Sundsvall” (K24) is one image in the 2014/2015 edition of Fighting Ships
Along with images, I also do my best to provide Stephen with information on the Russian Navy, mainly with data on Project deliveries, upgrades and commissions/decommissions. This isn’t always the easiest task as my Russian isn’t exactly fluent and it does sometimes bring out some quite confusing data. That said though, it is good fun going through everything, analysing the data and compiling it into something that hopefully gets included in this great publication
Most people will say that £580 is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a book, and I would tend to agree; however, Fighting Ships (and other IHS Jane’s yearbook publications) are not aimed at the general public as such, but more at the Armed Forces of the World and Defence Industries that provide technology, weapons etc to the Forces. As I’ve said previously, the quality of information, photos and data is second to none in my opinion. I have most of their yearbooks myself
C-2A 162164 of VRC-30 turning final at NAS North Island, one of the images included in this years Fighting Ships
Don’t forget though, if £580 is too rich for you, I sell older copies of most of Jane’s publications. Further information is available on my Jane’s sales link at the top of this blog, going there will also provide you with PDF examples of most books available
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