''Jane's Fighting Ships'' by Janes Information Services is an annual reference book of information on all the world's

warship A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is built and primarily intended for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the armed forces of a state. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster a ...

s arranged by nation, including information on ships' names, dimensions, armaments,

silhouette A silhouette ( , ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhou ...

s and

photograph A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now create ...

s, etc. Each edition describes and illustrates warships of different national naval and paramilitary forces, providing data on their characteristics. The first issue was illustrated with Jane's own ink sketches--photos began to appear with the third volume in 1900. The present title was adopted in 1905. It was originally published by

Fred T. Jane John Fredrick Thomas Jane (6 August 1865 – 8 March 1916) was the founding editor of reference books on warships ('' All the World's Fighting Ships'') and aircraft ('' All the World's Airships'') and the namesake of what would become Jane's In ...

in London in 1898 as ''Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships'', in order to assist naval officers and the general public in playing naval wargames. Its success eventually launched a number of military publications carrying the name "Jane's". It is a unit of Jane's Information Group, which is now owned by

IHS IHS may refer to: Religious * Christogram IHS or ΙΗΣ, a monogram symbolizing Jesus Christ * ''In hoc signo'', used by Roman emperor Constantine the Great Organizations * Indian Health Service, an operating division of the US Department of Hea ...

. 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 oblong or "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. Beginning in the early 2000s, ''Jane's'' has also been published online, on CD and

microfiche Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...

Editors

:1898–1915:

:1916–1917: Maurice Prendergast :1918–1922: Oscar Parks with Maurice Prendergast :1923–1929: Oscar Parkes with Francis E. McMurtrie :1930–1934: Oscar Parkes :1935–1948: Francis E. McMurtrie :1949–1973: Raymond Blackman :1974–1988: Capt. John Moore (RN) :1988–2000: Capt. Richard Sharpe (RN) :2000–2017: Commodore Stephen Saunders (RN) :2018–present: Alex Pape

References

Brooks, Richard. ''Fred T. Jane: An Eccentric Visionary''. Coulsdon, Surrey: Jane's Information Group, 1997.

External links

* {{cite web , url= http://www.janes.com/ , title=Defence & Security Intelligence & Analysis , work=IHS Jane's 360 1898 non-fiction books 1898 establishments in the United Kingdom Book series introduced in 1898 Publications established in 1898 Books of naval history Nautical reference works

Editors

See also

References

External links