Janes Fighting Ships

Janes Fighting Ships is an annual reference book of each country's navy and coast guard, along with their weapons and aircraft.

Included are ship names, construction data, size, speed, range, complement, engineering, armament, and sensors.

Jane was a struggling commercial artist and journalist with an interest in naval affairs.

Initially Brassey's Naval Annual and various Royal Navy periodicals were the source of inspiration for his drawings.

[1] Jane's book was the first naval almanac/encyclopedia to put the illustrations alongside the technical data, which simplified the reference.

As a result, the editors reverted to the 1898 order, conceding that it was more logical as well as handier for the user.

[3] Warship types are listed in a subjective order of importance, which is generally related to size.

An exception to this is the submarine, which is now highly regarded, despite tending to be smaller than many surface ships.

The Jane Naval War Game was produced in 1899 and advertised in that year's edition.

[6] With the 1997-98 edition color photographs began to appear in individual country listings and soon predominated.

At the end of the war, demobilization and redistribution of naval assets was rapid and complex.

The publication's success launched many popular, military and commercial reference titles that carry the name "Janes".

Ten early editions of Jane's (those of 1898, 1905–06, 1906–07, 1914, 1919, 1924, 1931, 1939, 1944–45, and 1950–51) were reissued in facsimile reprints by Arco Publishing starting in 1969.

All of these appeared in the landscape format that characterized the series until the 1956-57 edition, while from 1957-58 the present portrait layout was adopted, thus matching the sister Jane's publication on aircraft.