ERMANNO MARTINO was a founding member of Italy’s first small group of naval historians, formed in Genoa in the late 1950s. Since the early 1960s he has been active in naval journalism and research and has published numerous articles, including many dedicated to the Imperial Japanese Navy. Since 2011 he has been a regular contributor to STORIA Militare, the leading Italian journal in the field, and is a member of the magazine’s scientific committee. He has published two other titles in the same series as this book, on Japanese battleships (in 2019) and Japanese cruisers (in 2023).