The Imperial Japanese Navy's Special Landing Force units enjoyed a reputation out of proportion to their small size. Often wrongly termed “Imperial Marines”, they were in fact sailors led by Naval officers, and traced their origins directly to landing parties from warships. Their true combat debut was at Shanghai in 1932; thereafter the SNLF expanded and fought in the assaults that followed Pearl Habor in 1941, and were dispersed as island garrisons during the Pacific campaigns. This book describes their uniforms and equipment in unprecedented detail, including color photos of original items from private collections.

The Imperial Japanese Navy's Special Landing Force units enjoyed a reputation out of proportion to their small size. Often wrongly termed “Imperial Marines”, they were in fact sailors led by Naval officers, and traced their origins directly to landing parties from warships. Their true combat debut was at Shanghai in 1932; thereafter the SNLF expanded and fought in the assaults that followed Pearl Habor in 1941, and were dispersed as island garrisons during the Pacific campaigns. This book describes their uniforms and equipment in unprecedented detail, including color photos of original items from private collections.

This long awaited title provides a fantastic reference resource on the uniforms, dress, flight gear and personal weaponry of the Imperial Japanese Navy airmen of World War II. It includes detailed descriptions of flight gear, including manufacture information, and interviews with IJN pilots such as Sakai, Komachi, Tanimizu, Kawato and Saito regarding the use of a variety of equipment are integrated into the text. Packed with great contemporary illustrations, photographs of original items, and colour pictures, this title provides a meticulously detailed examination of the dress and equipment of the Imperial Japanese Navy's aviators in World War II.

For the first time in English, this book offers a concise but fact-packed account of the organization, equipment, and all operations of Japan's small but elite wartime parachute forces. Correcting and amplifying previous accounts based on wartime intelligence, it traces the Imperial Army's Raiding Regiments and the Imperial Navy's parachute-trained Yokosuka 1st & 3rd Special Naval Landing Forces from the first trials units, through their successful assaults in early 1942, to the last desperate battles and raids of 1944–45. Thetext is illustrated with rare photographs, and meticulouslyreconstructed color artworkof the men and their gear.

In this book, expert author and tactician Gordon L Rottman provides the first English-language study of Japanese Army and Navy tank units, their tactics and how they were deployed in action. The Japanese army made extensive use of its tanks in the campaigns in China in the 1930s, and it was in these early successes that the Japanese began to develop their own unique style of tank tactics. From the steam-rolling success of the Japanese as they invaded Manchuria until the eventual Japanese defeat, Rottman provides a battle history of the Japanese tank units as they faced the Chinese, the Russians, the British and the Americans.