Merchant & Military Vessels of WWII

Vol. 1 (CD-ROM)

Review by Greg Rice

This CD ROM is a re-publication of two late-war documents issued by the Office of Naval Intelligence, with a dozen pages of introductory material by Mr. Harms. These documents have not been generally available, and the introduction helps place them in the context of their time. Editorial comments have been included in the text. The documents are in pdf format, so they are accessible to those with Wndows, Macintosh, Unix, or Linux operating systems. The text has been reset, not scanned, so it is searchable. The photographs and illustrations have been scanned with considerable care, and are reproduced well.

“Far Eastern Small Craft,” originally issued in March, 1945, covers minor combatants and merchant vessels under 1000 tons in about 200 pages. Included are subchasers, torpedo boats, gunboats, landing ships, and landing craft, as well as chapters on passenger, cargo, fishing, and utility vessels, barges, and native craft. Many have small line illustrations of the vessels, with one or photographs, a description, and data. Available information varies with the type of vessel.

The smaller civilian craft generally lack drawings or detailed data, as the variety is overwhelming, but are instead treated via a dozen or two photographs representative of a type. There are exceptions: if you want clearing rates for a sea-going Japanese dredge, along with a sketch plan, this is your source. The landing craft information is clear enough to inspire me to start scratch-building some 15 mm boats for Command Decision games.

“Merchant Ship Shapes,” from 1944, is a shorter document, which was intended to improve recognition and reporting. It includes brief sections on recognizing ship types and identifying specific classes, estimating size and speed, aerial recognition, painting and camoflage, and how to make and interpret a descriptive report. It is full of drawings illustrating the points under discussion, and has a 10-page section of silhouettes of representative merchant ships of many nations.

These documents provide not only information on the ships they cover, but on the U.S. intelligence community’s understanding of their opponent at the time of release. Good stuff. This is intended to be the first volume in a series, with the next to be ONI 222-J, “The Japanese Navy. By Norman E. Harms ISBN 0-944539-03-3. Available from Scale Specialties, PO Box 4996, Anaheim, CA 92803-4996, www.ss-sms.com $40.00 plus shipping.

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