Roughly 100 American traitors, most of them within the U.S. defense establishment, are itemized in this book, the only such over-all review I have encountered. As I have said on several occasions that I believe we have at least 500-750 additional cases of espionage to discover, at least half of them controlled by our "allies", this book is for me a helpful reminder of the true pervasiveness of betrayal in a Nation where opportunism and financial gain often outweigh loyalty and principle.

The Walker family is the cause of nine Americans and five Montagnards to die in Laos. Any one in SOG will find out why the NVA had top secret limdis Information that was used to ambush Recon Teams and Helicopter Air Studies people, here is the answer !

It is a sin that this book is out of print. I am a history major specializing in 20th Century America, yet I learn something new every time I open this book. Over 2,000 entries in this encyclopedia, many of the articles are quite detailed. Authors come to reasoned judgments about the most controversial episodes of the war -- responsibility for Pearl Harbor, execution of Private Slovik, etc. Keep your eyes open for this one at used book sales.

An amusing read by this outsider observer of the community. I showed this book to an ex-member of the community and they "asked the right question." "Does it define the Intelligence Cycle?"

The one major short coming (4.5 stars) is that it could have said more about the role of Canada and the CSE and their other units. These have had documentation and this is one of those areas where the Web excells.

This book was written with the cooperation of the establishment. As a result it is somewhat biased. For instance we are not told in the article about Angelton that he was kicked out for being a failure at his job. During the last 10 years of his career, every Soviet defector that he claimed was genuine was a Soviet plant. Every one he claimed was a plant was genuine. After he was fired his safe was cut open and found to contain many year old evidence that he did not act on but when followed up was used to catch several Soviet spies.
The article on Agee, who was a despicable person, falsely claims that he was the one who first revealed the identity of the Athens CIA head of station. Several heads of station had lived in the same house. Every taxi driver knew the identity. The house was the worst possible choice for a CIA person to live in. It was at the end of a dead end street and was so secluded that any illegal activities such as kidnapping or murder would go un-witnessed by others.

The author gives misleading information to the effect that once the contents of a classified photo appear in some other public photo the classified photo should be declassified. This would allow the method of taking the photo to be deduced and future photos of equipment using that method would be blocked.

A book of information of people, places, code names, etc. relating to spying, including very early items with descriptions and history. A query once found, leads to cross references and provokes further reading in this book, and into other books. Names well known people and their contribution to spying, and the contribution of private citizens also. Each item is well written and full of unexpected, details, history, and information. Presents code names and describes the activity for which the code was used. Very useful for anyone interested in spies and spying preceeding war time, in war time, and in peace time also.

This book is a great book if you are looking for a certain piece of information. It isn't the type of book you sit down and read for an hour. It is very informative and contains a lot of entries about spy equipment, agencies, and operations of a spy.

I never read this book, but just wanted to comment on some of the comments given for this book. When you pick up an Encyclopedia, you don't expect to read it like a Novel. You want to look up a certain thing which you're interested in learning about. So, this is the Encyclopedia of Espionage. I hope none of you expected it to read like a Novel.

Sorry to those who thought I was going to comment on the book.

Steve

While there are some minor problems in the book: Polmar and Allen don't report that a German Commerce Raider intercepted an Australian freighter heading for London 4/42, inside a diplomatic pouch was proof that the US and England had decoded JN-25, the word wasn't passed to the Japanese until 8/42, after the Battle of Midway. The Japanese promptly changed their JN-25 codes. Also, it is now known that Nosenko and Fedora were both phoney Soviet disinformation defectors and that Dimitri Polyakov and Anatoly Golitsyn were bona fide Soviet defectors. But, overall this is the best spy reference book ever written. It includes the American Revolution, Civil War, the World Wars and even long forgotten information about the world's 2nd oldest profession. I found the item about Benjamin Franklin's secretary in Paris, fascinating. He was a spy for King George. By the way, the best wasy to read this, is to keep it on the back of your toliet. Read a little, day by day.

At the time this book was written it surely would have been the best source of information on Russian submarines. The book covers in depth every class of Russian submarine; included are long narratives, specifications, line drawings and photos you will not find anywhere else. About 2/3 of the book covers everything up to the end of WW2. The remainder covers the cold war years. Sadly, much of the information is quite out of date and most systems are referred to by their NATO codenames rather than their actual names, all of which is understandable considering the time it was written. Basically, every piece of information available at the time concerning Russian subs is in this book. If you're a fanatic about Russian/Soviet submarines, this book is well worth the price.

so many types, so many datas Im schocked! its the best book i have ever read

I find this a really rather interesting book which covers the subject well. The maps and illustrations are good. On the negative side I would like to point out a few comments made by Al Nofi on the subject of amphibious warfare - After searching the index only a single reference to General John Lejeune can be found. There is no reference to the walkie talkie or bazooka in the index. - I do not feel these are serious flaws, and I think the book rather good.

I'm a chinese translator.I want to know Mr Allen or Mr polmar's e-mail/telephone.I'm going to translate this novel to chinese.

Every time the Naval Institute press publishes a new edition of this book, I am astonished at the many errors that creep in. I am not sure whether the fault lies with the author or an editorial department that seemingly knows nothing about the Navy. Errors abound within this edition. A few examples:
On P.107, A photo of an aircraft carrier is described as being USS KITTY HAWK, when in reality it is USS INDEPENDENCE. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of carriers should have been able to identify the ship by class features alone--anyone who was not careless that is.
In the section on Navy organization, carrier air wings from both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets are described as being based at NAS Miramar (now a Marine Air Station) and NAS Cecil Field (closed 3 years ago). Obviously, the author could not be bothered to check the accuracy of his data and it makes the reader wonder how many other mistakes are contained within this VERY expensive work ...One would think that as the USN shrinks in size, so would a reference book on that subject, but Mr. Polmar succeeds in burying the reader in overblown and excruciating minutiae to pad his book so that it is even larger then his previous editions published at the height of the 1980s when the fleet comprised nearly 600 ships!
Everything contained within this book is available on the internet for free--with the exception of Mr. Polmar's usual egomaniacal State of the Fleet essay, which always predicts the sky is falling for the US Navy.
In sum, little here is new or useful, most of it is padded to expand the book and jack up the cost and errors abound. An amazingly average to below average work. Great pictures however--just with incorrect captions!

The 17th edition was just released (5/2001), so beware of the prior reader reviews dated 1999 & 1998. The 15th & 16th editions were excellent books, and this (the 17th) should be just as good (although sadly, it will chronicle the delisting of many major combatant vessels that projected power during the Cold War), but until reviewers actually read or scan the book, these reviews are not authentic.

this book is filled with litteraly everything you need to know about navy ships and other key elements.must by for naval buffs

Caution: large portions of this book are virtually identical to the declassified CIA history "The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-74" by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald Welzenbach, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998. See for example pp62-65 in Pedlow's Book and pp62-64 in Polmar. This CIA history is available through the US Government Printing Office and the works of Chris Pocock are more recommended instead.

"Spyplane" by Norman Polmar does not live up to its expectations, though a well-written and detailed history of the U-2 development and early operational history. "Spyplane," however falls short of its claim to provide new and unique details of the U-2 and its history, as it seems simply to a rehash of previously published information. In fact, entire paragraphs appear distinctly similar in strutcure and phrasing to the history detailed in Curtis Peeble's "Shadow Flights," published in 2000, which presents almost the exact same level of detail and information, alongside contextual and contemporary information regarding U.S. reconnaissance flights during the Cold War.

Furthermore, the majority of the information can be found in greater detail in Jay Miller's History of the Skunk Works, as well as his "X-Planes: X-1 to X-45" which details the development of the Bell X-16, a competing design to the U-2 contract. Furthermore, he draws heavily from Ben Rich's autobiography "Skunk Works." Not to say that Polmar plagerized these previous works, but one would expect a much more impressive offering, giving the wealth of information already available.

Polmar makes an unforgivable number of mistakes regarding dates, designations, and events, which indicates carelessness, if nothing else. Also, one wonders why publication was pushed back nearly five months, indicating perhaps a revision in light of information discovered by other authors. Furthermore, the lack of new and truly interesting illustrations and photographs and the anemic index make this book pale in comparison to those mentioned above.

Covering much the same material as Curtis Peebles's "Dark Eagles" and "Shadow Flights," but briefer, less chatty, and more complete, Norman Polmar's book on the U-2 program (both CIA and U.S. Air Force) brings some interesting perspectives (and further questions) to mind, such as:

* How badly Pres. Eisenhower was misled as to the detectability of the various reconnaissance systems CIA and USAF proposed sending over the USSR, and how badly Ike was torn between his desires to use "technical means" to obtain vital intelligence and, at the same time, to avoid provoking the Soviet leadership. His support of the "Corona" spy satellite program through a dozen failed launches becomes very easily understandable.

* The vital role of civilian scientist-consultants in birthing the U-2, a system neither the CIA nor USAF originally had the vision to develop.

* How badly Francis Gary Powers was hung out to dry by the CIA, especially the petty personal reactions of John McCone and John Kennedy.

* Polmar thinks well of "Kelly" Johnson, the Lockheed engineer who designed the semi-successful U-2, and such other splashy failures as the SR-71 and the F-104. I think it is time to reevaluate his reputation.

The worst point of the book is the index, which is only two pages long, badly incomplete and in teenytype. It is partially compensated for by thirty pages of chapter notes. (One correction: Chapter 11, note 11 -- LBJ did not become President on November 11, 1963. That would have been a coup!)

I had been waiting for this book since I first saw the title. It did not disappoint me.

Downfall is subtitled "the secret plan to invade Japan and why Truman dropped the bomb". Supposedly this account traces the US plan to invade Japan but starts back in the 1930s and runs out of steam covering the war in episode fashion. Incredibly, the authors employ a useless blow-by-blow summary of the Pacific War, including diversions on minor incidents like PT109. By the time the authors get to the planning for Operations Olympic and Coronet, the authors devote virtually their entire focus on various casualty estimates - were they too high and did this drive the decision to drop the bomb. However these casualty estimates, which range from well considered to wild guesses, do not constitute any sort of "proof" about the efficacy of the invasion plans. Readers should consider just how erroneous the casualty estimates for Desert Storm were (anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000, actual US killed in action 148) and reflect, if Iraq had backed down in 1991 could historians have accurately assessed the viability of coalition plans based on these estimates. Proper history begins with facts, not opinions.

For readers who expect a lengthy discussion and analysis of the US invasion plans, this book is a great disappointment since the authors never discusses the plan in detail. The two sketch maps that depict the US plans "Olympic" (the landing on Kyushu) and "Coronet" (landing on Honshu) depict only US corps-level invasion areas; neither inland objectives, scheme of maneuver or Japanese dispositions are depicted. The orders of battle in the appendix are very generic, listing only US corps and divisions, and no Japanese units are listed. Air units are ignored. The three US corps commanders for "Olympic," generals Schmidt, Hall and Swift, are never mentioned by name. This could have been a great book if he had discussed the units involved on both sides (eg. which units were veteran units and which were untried), the terrain (obstacles, key terrain, avenues of approach), the commanders on both sides, logistics, etc. and discussed the likely timelines of US progress using phase lines. However, the actual account of US invasion delivered by this limp account is overly generic and hence, virtually useless.

I must differ with the critic of this book's "failure" to analyze the mechanics of invasion and casualty estimates. Desert Storm is a poor analogy: we were frankly astonished by Iraqi incompetence, while with Japan we were all too familiar with their lethality and tenacity.

I do believe the book dwelled overly on the wildly varying estimates of casualties, but this entire futile pursuit misses the central point of whether the invasion would have been bloody enough to rationalize dropping the bomb. After Okinawa, Iwo Jima, and other island invasions where nearly every Japanese defender died rather than surrender, where kamikaze attacks were orchestrated rather than impulsive, it looked far more than likely. The unanswered moral question is how many American lives were worth how many Hiroshima or Nagasaki Japanese lives.

There are several points that the authors focus on refuting, the key one being that Japan was on the verge of surrender or a negotiated peace. The new piece in the puzzle, according to the authors, is the Japanese messages we decrypted during the war and did not declassify until the 90's, showing Japanese insincerity and duplicity in its peace feelers. Also, a negotiated peace may have been difficult for Americans to accept in light of bitterness over Pearl Harbor, an attack which may have ironically proved to be Japan's most collossal error.

Another interesting argument is that Truman did not see the bomb as an alternative to invasion, but a supplement. Although coupled with the Russian declaration of war, the bomb's success, and perhaps its cruelty, came as a surprise.

That said, this book falls short of the similarly-named but far more comprehensive Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank, which I recommend reading first.

While the overall argument of this title is to show why Truman approved the use of the atomic bomb, Allen and Polmar also show the strengths and weaknesses of the grand strategies pursued by the U.S. and Japan during World War II. The American failure to truly appreciate the massive national effort to defeat the Axis powers lead to a reliance on a bombing campaign to knock Japan out of the war, the apotheosis of which were the atomic bombs. The Japanese expected to exhaust America through heroic sacrifice and terror weapons. Code-name Downfall does a better job than most books on this period of the war in discussing the internal Japanese debate over surrender. My main complaint is that the book fails to consider the possible success of the continued American submarine campaign against the Japanese merchant marine. Nonetheless, highly recommended for all those interested in the Pacific campaigns in World War II and those debating the dropping of the atomic bomb.