Mike Goodwin

A Valiant Effort Worthy of Purchase

The authors and their supporting team are to be congratulated on a superb effort in producing this book.
Readers maybe disappointed by some gaps within the book and the description of the book on Amazon freely acknowledges the difficulties in gathering, collating and presenting the information. Read the description carefully before you buy this book. The presentation of the information in the book is very, very good if not a touch dry. (This is not a H. Smith or B. Gunston style book. Although to be fair, there might be some translation issues as the contributors and editors brought English, Polish, Italian,and Japanese into the fold. Also consider the fact that the primary author died some time before this book went to press)

Edit: I've been rereading the book. My comment about the writing being dry was a bit harsh.

The first clue to the level of difficulty faced by the writing team in the tabular data is presented as "Known Characteristics". Given the state of production, cooperation and destruction at the end of WW II, the authors have done a great job of combing through the influences of different people, academia, the Zaibatsu and of course the usual inter-service rivalry between the IJ Army and Navy. I can heartily recommend this to anyone with a serious interest in the subject. Modelers will be ill-served by this volume and I would recommend the Herschel Smith volume over this book for those with a casual interest in Japanese engines.
https://www.amazon.com/History-Aircraft-Piston-Engines-Continental/dp/0897450795...
This volume although small at 240 pages does have a great amount of tabular data and written technical/historical details. A nice surprise was the authors briefly touching on gas turbines as well.
The aircraft installations are covered, but additional references will be needed to find illustrations of the the aircraft. It is not heavily illustrated except for ATAIU/manufacturers pictures of the engines in the second half of the book.
This book will require a few revisits to get the most out it.
Also, it may really have been deserving of being split into two volumes, however that would have driven up the price point and the market for this level of specialized writing may not be large enough to justify the costs and be profitable for the publisher.

This is a very welcome addition to my library.… (plus d'informations)