Japanese Aero-Engines 1910-1945

MMP Books breaks new ground with this book covering Japanese aircraft engines from the beginning through the end of World War II. It is a comprehensive book that covers all aspects of the subject. The engines developed by the major manufacturers take pride of place and space but the pioneers and minor manufacturers are not neglected nor are the engines built under license. There is a natural chronological bias as well with engines in production during the war getting proportionally more attention than prewar types.Japanese designation systems are gone into in great depth but it is very easy for even the long time enthusiast to get confused by the bewildering number of systems in use at any given time. One gets the impression that the joint system started in 1943 did little more than add to the confusion. With Japanese aircraft one can pick a designation system (short designation for Navy and kitai number for Army works best for most of us) with little chance of confusion since the Army and Navy rarely used the same aircraft. But that's not the case with engines.The book is a laminated hard cover with decorated boards, an 8-1/4" x 11-3/4" text block, and 216 pages, all put to good use. There is no color to be found in these pages. The book has illustrations but they are all photos of completed engines so are of limited value in discerning details. Engines are not the most photogenic of subjects. Drawings are to be preferred but there are none to be had. A strong point of the book is the comprehensive tables and indexes that allow the reader to extract data with minimum effort. Another strong point is the focus on the aircraft the various engines powered.There are a few minor complaints. There was a word processing breakdown that left a lot of words hyphenated mid line like "pro-duction". Also, the decision to break up the Mitsubishi and Nakajima companies into prewar and war chapters was ill considered as many engines (some of the more widely used ones) straddled both chapters adding confusion to an already confusing subject.Highly recommended. The book has a wealth of information and should do for Japanese engines what the two Putnam volumes did for Japanese aircraft decades ago.

I had many web conversations with Mike Goodwin about Japanese engines and aircraft, produced or planned in the J-aircraftdotcom site that we were both volunteer moderators. He was extremely knowledgeable and very enthusiastic about Japanese aircraft and engines and had the right technical background to make sense of the details. Like Mike, Peter Starkings is an enthusiast/expert on aviation history uncovering details and information you'll never hear on History Channel. I had to take a break from the website and lost contact but when I saw this book on Amazon, I immediately ordered it. I had very high expectations on the book (I am en engineer, I expect all details) and the authors delivered them all and much more.Unfortunately, my joy and enthusiasm turned into sadness, when I saw on the first page that Mike passed away and did not see his book published.Therefor I have this to say to the readers; This is not a book that is written in short time by collecting information here and there. This is product of decades of diligent and painstaking work of collecting, filtering and compiling information. Believe me, I know, I still have Mike's emails from 15 years ago that he was working on excel spreadsheets to make sense of variants and hunting for technical information lost so that one day obscure history may be uncovered.To Mike; Wherever you are now, well done my friend. History of Science and Tech owes you and Peter big one on this. You'll be missed.

Not enough photos and/or pictures, and too many of those came from one junkyard...

This book has almost too much information... listing models of engines that were only experimental or didn't reach production... Because of that, it is sometimes difficult to follow--- and not helped by all the names and numbers the Japanese used to identify their aircraft engines!... It would have been improved if the authors spent a little more time in separately-identified sections discussing the merits and demerits of each engine instead of burying that information in the ultra-dense text... But clearly a reference book I will re-read many, many times!