Ships of World War Two
Battleships, Aircraft Carriers, Cruisers,
Destroyers, etc.
Typical first page: Typical second page:
Using the pictures from a 1943 U.S. Naval Recognition Manual as a base, this section covers the five major naval powers of the war: United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, and Italy. As the manual was designed specifically for recognition, it includes plan views of classes of warships, not individual ships. Thus, all the ships presented here are lead ships of their class.
In the precise prose of the era, "The basic principle of Surface Vessel recognition as with aircraft is familiarity with the total form of the object observed. The true character of a ship is not determined by a single feature or features, but by the familiarity we may have with the total mass of the hull and the superstructure, when viewed from great distances. ... The salient recognition characteristics are shown in their simplest form by silhouettes. ... In ship recognition, the use of beam, or side view silhouette, is by far the most important. If the beam silhouette is thoroughly known, the ship can be recognized from either the surface or the air."
"Preceding each group of vessels of each nation represented in this manual is a chart of these simplified silhouettes representing a vessel of each class. These are arranged at the same scale for ease of comparison with each other and with other ships in the same class in other navies. Large instructional charts of these simplified silhouettes are ebing prepared and will be distributed in the near future."
Each ship (or class of ship) has two pages in the manual. The first page typically shows a profile view and a top view, and below a diagram of the density of fire from its main battery, armament, protection, and speed, illustrated in the thumbnail of the Japanese cruiser Nachi at left. The second page typically shows two or three photographs of the ship.
Below is a random page from the 1943 Naval Recognition Manual, which includes plan views, profiles, and photographs of the ships.