In the original dustsheet. Blue cloth binding with silver title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

Jane’s Fighting Ships, the World’s premier naval reference source, has been published annually since 1897. To mark the centenary of this remarkable title, Jane’s War at Sea 1897-1997 reviews the full range of technological developments charted in the pages of Jane’s Fighting Ships.

From the beginning of the 20th century, when Britain was the world’s greatest naval power, through the World Wars and into the long era of American maritime supremacy, Jane’s War at Sea also reveals the latest ideas in warship construction: radical designs which may make many of today’s warships as obsolete as the Victorian Royal Navy’s battleships originally described by Fighting Ships’ founder, Fred T. Jane.

Jane’s War at Sea 1897-1997 is profusely illustrated with photographs and line drawings from Jane’s unique archives. The text is written by two international authorities on naval warfare, Bernard Ireland and Dr Eric Grove.

‘Jane’s’ has recorded over a hundred years of data since 1897 – chartering the developments of the submarine, the big gun, the impact of aviation and more. In “Jane’s War at Sea 1897-1997” we have provided the essential text to accompany it, explaining not only the developments but also the evolutionary forces that drove them.

A CENTURY OF NAVAL WARFARE – In its hundred year history, ‘Jane’s Fighting Ships’ has chartered the rise of the US Navy from a coastal defence force to the greatest naval power in the world. Its pages recorded the meteoric career of the Imperial Japanese fleet and the last and most dramatic campaigns of the Royal Navy. ‘Jane’s War at Sea’ reveals how warships have changed since Fred Jane’s first book: how battleships lost their dominance to aircraft and submarines; why German U-boats nearly won both World Wars and weapons the warships of the next century will carry into battle.

• Aircraft Carriers
• Battleships
• Carrier Aircraft
• Destroyers
• Torpedo boats
• Attack submarines
• Amphibious assault ships
• Ballistic missile submarines

Fred T. Jane published the first edition of ‘Fighting Ships’ in 1897. The first authoritative encyclopedia of warships, it listed all the fighting of all the world’s navies. As an index of naval power it was in enormous demand at the beginning of this century when the Anglo-German naval race fuelled a world-wide enthusiasm for battleship construction. Successive annual editors charted the expansion of the German navy and the British retaliation, the revolutionary battleships ‘Dreadnought’ and ‘South Carolina’ and the appearance of increasingly capable submarines in the leading navies of the day. Although publication of ‘Jane’s Fighting Ships’ was interrupted during both World Wars, its pages recorded the enormous development in naval technology during the twentieth century. ‘Jane’s War at Sea’ explains how warship design developed from the latter days of the Victorian navy to the nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft that dominate today.

Dr Eric Grove teaches at the Centre for Security Studies at the University of Hull and is the author of numerous articles on naval warfare and technology as well as ‘Three Naval Battles’

Bernard Ireland has written many books on warship and naval warfare including ‘Jane’s Battleships of the 20th Century’, ‘The Mediterranean Campaign 1940-43’, ‘Crusaders of World War II’.