Review by Felix Bustelo

The four battleships of the Kongo class were initially the first modern battlecruisers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. They were designed by Britain's Sir George Thurston, and strongly influenced the design of the forthcoming Tiger-class battlecruisers. Kongo was actually built by Vickers (and was the last Japanese capital ship to be built outside of Japan), while the remaining three were built in Japanese yards. During the inter-war years, all of them were upgraded in terms of propulsion and protection, and were re-rated as battleships. They were good ships, fast, well armed and excellent escorts for carriers, but even after their upgrade their protection left much to be desired which was the legacy of the battlecruiser design.

The Warship Pictorial series of books have become extremely popular with ship modelers and naval enthusiasts as being excellent yet inexpensive references. The Kongo Class Battleships is the 13th volume in the series and there are many more in the works.

The pervious volumes in this series could be classified into two types based on format. Some are dedicated to one particular ship, with lots of photographs and detailed plan and profile renderings of that ship, with a few having painting guides in color. The other titles in this series are called "Photo Albums" and cover a class rather than one individual ship. These volumes are aptly named, as they contain dozens of photographs providing a variety of views and detail shots.

The Kongo Class Battleships can be considered a hybrid of these two formats as it is a thorough photographic reference on this class and several plan and profile line drawings of these ships in their different fits are also included. The 72-page soft cover book is jammed with a total of 114 black and white of the four ships in this class (37 of the Yorktown, 21 of the Hiei, 18 of the Kirishima and 36 of the Haruna). In addition to these photos are several plan and profile drawings and colorized photos of the Haruna on the front cover and the Kirishima on the back cover. A large number of these photos are printed on a full-page, which certainly helps bring out those details.

The volume begins with a brief general history of the Kongo class and the rest of the book is broken down basically into four main sections, one on each ship. A rather detailed record of movement during World War II for each battleship starts off their respective chapter, which is followed by the collection of relevant photos. At the end of the book, one page of detailed line drawings of the different type of floatplanes carried aboard these ships is included. The next page provides the general statistics for these ships and summarizes the armament and aircraft fitted on each ship and at what time. Again, this is an enormous help for modelers wishing to build an accurate model.

The Warship Pictorial series have earned the reputation of having the best possible resolution for the photos presented and this volume is not exception. The photos for the most part are extremely crisp and the few that are a bit fuzzy due to the condition are presented in the best resolution possible. Each photo is annotated with a very descriptive caption, which helps to explain exactly what you see. While each ship was slightly different in certain aspects (and these are noted where appropriate), some of the photos are general enough to be applicable for all ships.

I will admit that I am not very knowledgeable on Imperial Japanese Navy ships, so I was pleased in that I personally found this volume to be an excellent introduction on this subject and on this class of battleships. Whether you are an expert or a novice on Japanese ships, I think that you will find this book to be a very valuable reference if you are planning to build a model of one of these ships. The quality of the content and the quantity of the photographs are extraordinary, especially with a suggested retail price of $11.95 US. My thanks to Warship Books for providing this review copy.