"ship data books" Topic

If you could only add one book to your collection, would choose Conway's Fighting ships 1906-1922 or Jane's fighting ships WW 1? Let me hear your pros & cons and let me know which book I should go with? I look forward to your help.

Conway's. It has a description of each ship that puts it in context, and gives a brief summary of what happened to the major ship classes. Jane's really only gives you data. I look at my Conway's every few days, but only pick up Jane's every month or two. The only advantage Jane's has is, depending on the edition, it may have overhead views which are sorely lacking from Conway's.

Conway's. Jane's is a contemporary publication. If a country had a successful disinformation campaign that was only discovered later, Jane's will have printed the false information.

Conway's for its more accurate info. But, I have a copy of Jane's, as it is useful: some of the pics, especially of British and German ships, show ship recognition details such as stripes painted on their stacks, and Jane's has some rather detailed maps of various harbors around the world.

Conway's.

The drawings in Jane's are not particularly accurate in terms of relative scale, and occasionally the overhead for a ship does not even accurately match the side view.

Conway's. Jane's was contemporary in every respect meaning that a fair amount of the 'data' that went into the ship information was hyperbole or misinformation coming from that nation's naval intelligence people or fluff from the builders looking for customers.

These guys have it on target. Jane's is fun for the "period" feel and background data but Conway's is much more accurate.

For the period post 1906 I'd have to agree with the other posters that Conway is the better source but, for the period before 1906 you really need both because Conway lacks details of the effectiveness of armour and weapons that Jane's gives (at least to some extent). There was also less secrecy and misinformation around then so the data in Jane's is somewhat more reliable.

Conway's is more accurate. Jane's gives you top views of the deck plan and more photos. Also, Jane's is often sold at a major discount (I paid $10 USD at Borders), so why not go for both?

Buy Conway's first. It's research seems better than Janes for all the above reasons.

Then look through the discount book stores. I picked up Janes for $5 USD at Half Price Books a few years back.

Conway's. Jane's is good for odd bits of information that were left out of Conway's ("Where exactly was that twelfth tertiary gun mounted?") but I always reach for Conway's first.

Put me down for Conway's too, greenie, for all of the above explainations.

LOVE my set of Conway's. My wife made fun of me because I lugged them around of vacation a couple times while working on Naval Thunder. LOL.

Gee, that makes it 12-0 in favor of Conways. I would make it 13-0 except that, having Conways, I have never seen the need to buy a copy of Jane's.

-- Jeff

For me it's hard to say since i like both Jane's and Conways for different reasons which has been stated above.

I also like the set of books that Doubleday did many years ago,i think i have the whole set including the Austro-Hungarian Navy of WWI which i've nbeen told it's very hard to find.

Captain Gideon

I have a .pdf electronic copy of Conways 1906-1922; it is much more useful than Jane's

MortyVA,

Can you send me a link to where you got your .pdf? I'm don't have that Conways and I can't afford the prices/shipping most are asking.

My email is bluebear@uniserve.com

-- Jeff

MortyVA,
Ditto for me. PDF would be great!
hamackcf at bmi.net

its almost 300 MB; so it wont go via email. I can try to put it up on rapidshare tonight or after historicon.

MLR

megaupload.com/?d=P4W1DO8G

Try this link

MortyVA,

Thank you. However, now that I've downloaded this file, my computer (a Linux system) does not recognize the .rar extension.

What do I need to read a file with the .rar extension?

-- Jeff

.rar is a compressed file like a .zip file and generally requires a special program to "unzip" it.