ALL THE WORLD'S FIGHTING SHIPS 1922—1946

This volume is the second of a series begun by Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905, which dealt with a period for which there was little existing published material. Therefore it was only necessary to explain how - rather than why - the subject was covered.

For the 1922-46 period there are already many reference books on warships, and so a few words about the aims of this volume are in order. Available published works fall into three basic categories, all of which have some positive disadvantages from the point of view of the student or enthusiast: 1 - Yearbooks and annuals. These have virtually no access to primary sources; they are also subject to security restrictions and, often, intentionally misleading official information put out for propaganda purposes. Yearbooks naturally concentrate on what is new, and so there is rarely any incentive to correct data in retrospect. 2 - Pocket-books on navies or ship types.

These are little more than fleet-lists, with no space to devote to the design background or general naval developments. 3- Monographs and detailed studies. This category contains many fine works of extreme importance in their own right, but by no means all navies and ship types have benefited from such studies (very few of the smaller navies have been covered, and even US cruisers are still without a definitive technical history). Therefore, even if an avid enthusiast could afford to collect all available books, there would still be gaps in their coverage... Three other books in this series cover the periods 1860-1905, 1906-1921 and 1947-1995.