In retrospect, it seems blatantly
obvious that the control of the air was a vitally important aspect of the
Imperial Japanese Navy's operations in World War Two. However, this was
not fully appreciated by either side until after the debacle at Pearl
Harbour and the naval battles of Coral Sea and Midway. Before these
battles, many top-ranking officers on both the Japanese and the American
sides felt that the battleship--studded with anti-aircraft guns and
protected by a steel armour belt at the waterline several feet
thick--would be invulnerable to attack by aircraft.
It is also noteworthy that the aircraft carrier remained an unusually
vulnerable type of ship in relation to its size. Without cruisers and
possibly a battleship or two as escorts and a screen of destroyers, the
aircraft carrier was a lightly protected, high priority target--an
impossible combination in any war.
The Pacific War was a long war. Japanese aerial strategy and tactics in
the war, particularly during its first year or so, are almost impossible
to understand unless it is appreciated that Japan was counting on a short
war, lasting a year or less until the "inevitable" armistice and
recognition of Japan's "right" to a sphere of influence in the Far East on
the part of the United States.
The Origins of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force
The Japanese military carefully and methodically followed military and
technical developments in other countries from the Meiji Restoration in
1868 on. Therefore, it isn't especially surprising that the airplane was
investigated as a potential weapon by the Japanese military at a very
early stage in its development. In 1910, a Japanese national acquired a
primitive airplane, a type similar to that designed and flown by the
French aviator Henri Farman. This machine was flown in Japan and the
design was put into limited production at the Tokugawa Balloon Factory in
1911, this being the first Japanese aircraft production of any type.
During World War One, Japan joined the conflict on the British side and
also acquired examples of several wartime allied aircraft types, including
some French Nieuport fighters and Salmson 2A-2 bombers.
During the 1920s, as a consequence of its military treaty with Great
Britain, Japan received a naval aviation delegation from the Royal Navy.
The British delegates made recommendations for the establishment of a
well-organized Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force and even helped to train
some of its officers. The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force was very
conservative and, consequently, many of their operating practices and
tactics in World War Two were those which they had adopted from the Royal
Navy twenty years before. But while these had changed in Britain over that
period, they did not change in Japan.
A typical example was the widespread use of floatplanes and flying boats.
During the First World War and '20s, the Royal Navy made extensive use of
such aircraft and found them to be very useful. If no water-based aircraft
could then exceed 100 mph, then at that time, few multi-engined,
land-based aircraft could exceed 100 mph either. But this situation
radically changed over the next few years. The Short Sunderland not
withstanding, the British had found that, with the escalation of aircraft
speeds in the '30s, the floatplanes and flying boats became too slow to be
worthwhile. If the maximum speeds of water-based aircraft had reached 200
mph, then those of the land-based types had soared to over 300 mph.
Prototypes of the British Spitfire were flown with floats but it is
significant that they were never operational. By contrast, the Japanese
relied on a substantial number of floatplanes and flying boats, including
two floatplane fighter types comparable to a Spitfire on floats--the
Kawanishi N1K1 and the Nakajima A6M2-N. The British had changed with the
times, but the IJN hadn't.
Kawanishi N1K1 Kyofu "Mighty Wind"
Nakajima A6M2-N
With the debut of the first Japanese aircraft carrier in the 1920s, the
IJNAF was initially tied to the battleships as some sort of reconnaissance
and attack element, but like the U.S. Navy, the IJN had real difficulty
integrating them into their tactics. A person in either country who
alleged--back then--that future fleets would instead be built around the
aircraft carrier, with the battleships simply providing anti-aircraft
cover and mobile artillery against land targets, would have been
immediately dismissed as a crank in any country back then.
During the '20s, there was a second foreign aviation delegation which
arrived in Japan. This one came from Germany and they trained the
fledgling Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. Like the German Air Force in
World War One, the IJAAF was closely tied to the Army and its movements,
performing those operations which would later be called interdiction and
close support in the United States. Like the IJNAF, the IJAAF reprised
these tactics during the Second World War, but in 1940 the Luftwaffe was
beginning to find its own role independent of the German Army and its
immediate needs. For all practical purposes, the IJAAF never did so.
At this time (say, the late '20s), it is remarkable to note that at least
two major elements of Japanese aviation as it stood in the Pacific War
were not in place. There was no element capable of conducting long range
operations inside enemy airspace nor was there any explicit arrangement
for protecting air bases and air strips themselves from aerial attack. In
addition, the IJAAF and the IJNAF had different--and even
incompatible--sets of tactics and operating practices.
Changes in the IJNAF in the '30s, the China Incident
Up until the early 1930s, the two Japanese air services, the IJAAF and the
IJNAF, were mainly equipped with obsolescent foreign aircraft types either
imported or built in Japan under manufacturing licenses. At about this
time, Japanese aircraft designers began to produce home-designed aircraft
types that were better adapted to their own operational requirements--and
they were by no means primitive given world standards at the time. Because
of the distances involved and the general secretiveness of the Japanese
government and society, this important change was not recognized in the
West, and not fully appreciated by the Americans, even at the start of the
Pacific War in 1941.
In fact, when the United States was on the verge of war against Japan in
1941, it was assumed that the air services of Japan would be, at most, a
few hundred aircraft, mainly copies of older British, German, Italian and
American designs. This was not simply an example of racist thinking. The
widely respected Jane's All the World's Aircraft for 1941 showed current
Japanese types as being a flea market of older, foreign designs with a few
obsolescent indigenous designs on the side. There seemed no reason to
suppose that the Japanese would make particularly good pilots.
Consequently, it must have seemed to American airmen and aviators--whether
they were in the USAAF or the U.S. Navy--as if the force facing them would
be comparable to, say, the Polish Air Force in 1939. On the basis of
numbers, equipment and pilot quality, American airmen and naval aviators
expected that the result of combat would be a series of one-sided American
massacres. And that expectation was more or less reasonable in terms of
the picture which they had. But that picture was very wrong.
In 1937, Japan began a campaign to conquer China and, in fact, rather
quickly overran its then-capital city of Nanking, the coastal provinces
and many of its larger inland river valleys. When the war in China began,
the IJNAF found itself with new tasks. With long-ranging Type 96
Land-Based Attack Bombers (Mitsubishi G3Ms, later code-named "Nells") the
IJNAF bombed targets in the Nanking area from bases on Taiwan, then a
Japanese possession. (Note: Just before these flights, the Nells were
retrofitted with the autopilots imported from the US. They were not fitted
to any operational American military aircraft at that time presumably
because they were either too new or too expensive.) To support both Army
and Navy operations in China, fighter aircraft of the Imperial Japanese
Navy were also assigned to land bases on the Chinese mainland. The Nells
followed a little later on. As the "senior service", the IJN was able to
have a remarkable spread of duties assigned to it along with, hopefully,
the "assets" (planes, factories, personnel, etc.) necessary to perform
them. Since they had long-ranging twin-engined bombers and the best
fighters, the IJNAF was assigned to bomb targets on land with its own
land-based bombers and to protect all Japanese air bases--both those of
the Army and its own--from enemy planes. In addition, the Imperial Navy
had primary responsibility for the defence of the Home Islands. During the
"China Incident" this imposing spread of duties--while it might have
created some problems--seemed to be a source of strength for the IJNAF.
From the middle of the Pacific War, on the other hand, this extraordinary
spread of duties impacted the IJNAF very severely. The central problem was
that while the responsibilities had been assigned to it years before, the
needed assets simply were not available.
It shouldn't be assumed that the IJAAF was doing very well, either. It had
fewer responsibilities, but it also had fewer assets than the IJNAF. In
addition, the IJAAF had been assigned--without Navy support of any
type--to face the enemy air forces in China, India and Burma. By contrast,
the IJNAF had responsibility for almost all of the rest of the war,
including the defence of the Japanese Home Islands. A high level meeting
to resolve these discrepancies and to make the most of the assets which
each service really had would have been a reasonable response to the
situation. But this never happened.
Even as the Japanese Empire staggered toward total collapse a couple of
years later, the preponderance of duties and assets still went to the
IJNAF. During the last few months of the Pacific War, the remaining units
of the IJAAF outside of the Home Islands were mainly isolated and
impotent, their planes parked near their runways or airstrips without any
prospect for deliveries of aviation gasoline, spare parts or ammunition.
By that time, the planes of the IJAAF in the Home Islands were also parked
near their respective runways as well, being saved along with stocks of
aviation gasoline for the anticipated Allied invasion of Kyushu.
The Pacific War from Pearl Harbour to Midway
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Imperial Japanese Navy
During the first six months of the war, the brilliant, if very
complicated war plans of Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, brought Japan and the
IJNAF a succession of stunning victories. It was a heady time during which
the Japanese fleet swept all before it. The establishment of a permanent
Japanese hegemony in the Far East seemed to be an accomplished fact. After
the war, a Japanese woman admitted, "we just couldn't imagine why the
Americans were fighting us, here we were extending the divine rule of the
Emperor to them that is, the Americans and their Asian allies] and they
didn't seem to appreciate it...". In the context of the war which followed
and a democratic society's notable distaste for hereditary monarchs, her
statement seems bizarre today, but it was probably heartfelt at the time.
Then came Midway
Burning oil tanks blacken Midway's sky during the raid by Japanese
bombers, a prelude to a planned invasion
The Imperial Japanese Navy lost over 300 pilots and four of its largest
aircraft carriers in a battle which lasted only two days. It was a
catastrophe from which the IJNAF never entirely recovered. In addition,
the prospect for a short war was gone. It was becoming clear that the
Americans, roused to fury by the Pearl Harbour attack, would not seek any
type of negotiations with the Japanese government, short of accepting an
unconditional surrender. This had been apparent to the organizer of the
Pearl Harbour attack, Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, even before the attack had
been launched. So there was no realistic prospect for a short war. Equally
bad, Japan had no plans for a long war. A number of new or experimental
aircraft types were made operational as the war progressed, but most of
the operational types with which the IJNAF began the war in December,
1941, were still first line equipment when the war ended in August, 1945.
In the USAAF, the U.S. Navy and the RAF, new types replaced older ones. By
contrast, in the IJNAF the new aircraft types, at best, supplemented the
older types.
During 1942, the Japanese Navy concentrated on production of existing
types and introduced just three new aircraft types--the Nakajima J1N1-C
recon plane ("Irving"), the Type 2 Flying Boat ("Emily") and the Aichi
D4Y1-C carrier recon plane ("Judy") were introduced.
Nakajima J1N1-C
At no point in the war had the Gross National Product--the net value of
all goods and services produced in the Japanese Empire--ever exceeded 10%
of the American GNP. America's fundamental ability to produce advanced war
goods--especially combat airplanes--was always much greater than Japan's.
Japan's wartime aircraft were produced using machine tools imported from
the United States and often had flight instruments imported from this
country, as well.
During the latter part of 1942 and early 1943, continuing battles for
Guadalcanal and the other islands in and around the Solomons slowly ground
up the IJNAF's supplies of aircraft, experienced pilots and mechanics. The
Japanese slowly lost territory in the South West Pacific and elsewhere,
but the losses of men and materiel were at least equally serious.
Flight and Combat Training
At an early stage in the Pacific War, the IJNAF had made a decision about
the conduct of the war which was to have far reaching consequences.
Training of new pilots was cut back. This put all of its aerial strength
"up front" and enabled it to compete with the Americans and their allies
on more even basis. The U.S. embargo on petroleum had been the most
immediate cause of the war for the Japanese and they remained short of it
for the rest of the war--even after the capture of Dutch oilfields in
Indonesia. (The gasoline was not where it was needed. American submarine
captains understood this situation and deliberately sought out oil tankers
as high-priority targets.)
The Americans, by contrast, chose exactly the opposite strategy after the
war was just a few months old. After a short period of trying to put their
own strength "up front", they deliberately retained their best pilots as
flight instructors for future waves of candidate pilots. They invested
large quantities of gasoline in the training of new pilots. They built
large numbers of training aircraft and retained increasing numbers of less
capable combat planes in the continental U.S. for training purposes as
more advanced types became available. To be sure, this meant that during
the first year or so of the war, that the U.S. Navy and USAAF would have
fewer men and fewer planes "up front".
On the other hand, once this much larger system began to deliver newly
trained pilots and new aircraft to the theatres of war, the IJNAF would
have no hope of fighting them off. From being sworn in, put through boot
camp, put into primary flight training and then into advanced flight
training, it took about one year for the U.S. Navy or USAAF to train a
pilot and assign him to an operational unit. Significantly, a little over
a year after the start of the Pacific War, the pilots of the Imperial Navy
began to find themselves outnumbered. It seemed to the front line pilots
as if the Americans had inexhaustible sources of warplanes and pilots. And
this was somewhat before the Americans were able to introduce newer
aircraft types.
Alleged American racial superiority was dangerous nonsense in the life and
death situations of aerial combat, but there was an area in which the USA
did have a human or manpower advantage. The USA, at that time, had a
population of about 150 million, versus Japan's population of about 90
million. However, the age composition of the American population favoured
young men, so the actual pool of them was substantially larger than the
comparable Japanese pool. Of course, the output of American pilots would
have to be divided between the Pacific War (South Pacific Theatre, South
West Pacific Theatre), the CBI Theatre and the European Theatre of
Operations (the ETO).
Bad as this situation might have seemed to be from the Japanese side, it
was actually worse.
To be sure, this didn't quite make them qualified aviation mechanics or
pilots, but most young American men of that generation had driven or
maintained an automobile and many of them had also handled guns. In
pre-war Japan, individually owned automobiles were a rarity and so were
private firearms. In training aviation mechanics and pilots, American
instructors could take many things for granted.
In the pre-war years, the IJNAF had chosen to train a very small number of
pilots to a very high degree. The modern air force which most closely
follows this path is the Israeli Air Force. Note how seriously the
Israelis were affected by the loss of about 100 aircraft and pilots in the
Yom Kippur war of 1973. The Japanese were at least equally vulnerable to
attrition prior to the Pacific War. How could the Japanese have
compensated for the loss of 300 pilots at Midway by pre-war standards? If
they had had no further losses at all, it would have taken them two or
three years to train that many pilots at pre-war rates.
By the middle of 1943, the IJNAF was frantically attempting to overcome
all of these disadvantages with tools wholly inadequate to the purpose.
The training of pilots was pushed as high as it could be, but there were
serious problems. Instructor pilots were still scarce and many potential
flight instructors had died at the Battle of Midway, in the Solomon
Islands or elsewhere. In the United States, comparable experienced pilots
were alive and instructing other pilots. Shortening the amount of training
was tried and, by the last year of the war, Japanese pilots were being
pushed into combat missions with as little as 100 hours of flight time.
(By contrast, American pilots at that stage of the war [1944] would have
had more than 300 hours of flight time.) When these pilots entered combat
they were terrified novices, easy marks for American pilots. Even rookie
American pilots were better off than this. As for experienced Japanese
pilots, those who were still alive were also gradually being killed off in
combat. Nor did a Japanese student pilot have to die in combat--many of
them died in flying accidents, particularly when they were pushed into the
cockpits of fast, unforgiving fighters. Flying accidents and training
fatalities were common enough in the continental United States, but
anecdotes give the impression that they were much more common in Japan.
1943: The Introduction of New American Fighter Types
In mid-1943, the U.S. Marine Corps introduced a fearsome new fighter
plane, the F4U "Corsair" and in August, carrier units began to use the new
F6F "Hellcat", a fighter that had been built to manoeuvre against the
Zero. With better planes, skilled mechanics, more experienced pilots and a
good supply of replacement pilots, these units could approach combat
against the IJNAF with a certain degree of self-assurance. Later model
P-38s, while less manoeuvrable than the F4U or the F6F, used their
superior speed and ceiling to blast Japanese aircraft out of the air.
The Imperial Japanese Navy, it should be noted, introduced some newer,
more capable aircraft types during 1943, including the J2M Raiden
(code-named "Jack") and the B6N Tenzan (code-named "Jill").
J2M Raiden
B6N Tenzan
The Raiden was armed with four 20-mm. cannon firing
Oerlikon (explosive)
shells and deliberately sacrificed manoeuvrability for armour, climb rate
and speed. Designed mainly as a bomber interceptor, the Raiden--on the
rare occasions when it was flown by a competent, experienced pilot--was a
respectable opponent for most Allied fighters, which the Zero clearly was
not by the last year of the Pacific War. Production of the Raiden had been
planned for a rate of 660 fighters per month, but in about two years of
production a total of 480 were rolled out, an average of about 20 planes
per month! The Tenzan was a torpedo bomber which improved on the earlier
and slower "Kate". Significantly, the Raiden did not replace the outmoded
Zero (to compare the relative abundance of the two types, total wartime
production of the Zero came to a little over 10,000 units) and the Jill
did not entirely replace the Kate. A new dive bomber variant of the Judy
was introduced in 1943.
The Battle of the Philippine Sea and Its Aftermath
The next major Naval engagement, coming two years after the Battle of
Midway, was the Battle of the Philippine Sea. In June, 1944, a large
American task force approached the Marianas Island group and covered
amphibious landings on Guam, Tinian and Saipan. Iwo Jima was attacked by
Naval aircraft, but not invaded at that time. These were potential bases
for bomber missions against the Home Islands and the Japanese Navy had no
choice but to respond with a carrier force of its own. Even though the
newer Japanese aircraft types were well represented, the Judys, Jills and
Zeros of the Japanese force were hacked out of the air in a one-sided
engagement that was called the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" by the Americans.
After this catastrophe, the Japanese could only brace themselves for the
aerial attacks which would be staged from these new bases. The cabinet
headed by Hideki Tojo which had begun the war was removed because of this
humiliating defeat. One of the Japanese cabinet ministers commented that
"hell is upon us". His words proved to be prophetic.
In the wake of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the IJNAF had a strategic
picture which could best be described as grim. The IJNAF hadn't really
recovered from the Battle of Midway in 1942 and for the second time in two
years had lost over three hundred pilots and aircraft in a single
engagement. The IJNAF would have to take on the defence of the Home
Islands and the IJAAF couldn't be of much help. The total number of planes
which the IJNAF had in the Home Islands for this purpose came to about
400. I don't know how large the comparable IJAAF force was nor just how
closely it was tied to the IJNAF command.
Then there was a brief delay. It is hard to believe today, but there was
only a single raid (in late November) by Mariana-based bombers (B-29s)
during calendar 1944 and the determined series of attacks on Japanese
targets would not begin in earnest until January, 1945. The Navy CBs
assigned to build the bomber bases in the Marianas were somewhat slow in
this task. This, combined with some difficult flying weather, which gave
the IJNAF as much respite as it was to enjoy during the war.
B-29 in the Marianas
As the B-29 raids began in earnest, they initially concentrated on
airframe and aircraft engine plants in the Home Islands. The Japanese
pilots concentrated on the unescorted bombers, and, while they were able
to inflict some casualties, the Superfortresses were successful in
destroying most of Japan's aviation industry. By May, 1945, delivery of
new aircraft and spare parts from it had slowed to a trickle. Starting in
March, the B-29s were escorted by P-51s staged from new bases on Iwo Jima
and the Home Islands during that month were scourged by Corsairs and
Hellcats operating from an American carrier task force off of the eastern
coast of Kyushu for the first time.
The Imperial Japanese Army Air Force fought with the IJNAF up until about
mid-Summer, but then their remaining aircraft in the Home Islands were
mostly grounded and kept in reserve against the expected invasion of the
Home Islands.
And from here, things got even worse. With American fighters overhead on
an unpredictable basis, just taking off in a Japanese airplane was a
courageous act during the last five months of the war. In mid-March, the
B-29s began to bomb at night and from low altitudes, peppering Japan's
cities with incendiary bombs. The resulting firestorms killing many
thousands. The first such raid on March 18-19 killed 130,000 Japanese in
Tokyo and made another one million homeless. Japan's cities were crowded
and highly combustible. This raid was worse, in terms of immediate
consequences anyway, than either of the two atomic attacks which concluded
the war. The incendiary raids continued right up until the end of the war,
although after the first few months, there was a shortage of large,
built-up areas because most of these target areas had already been
destroyed.
The Japanese were, by this time, attempting to disperse their war
industries into small neighbourhood machine shops, particularly those
connected with military aircraft production. The incendiary raids have
been portrayed as a response to this dispersal.
The record is at all clear on this point. The
incendiary raids can equally be taken as psychological warfare (that is,
to force a surrender by breaking Japanese morale) or as a scourging of the
civilian population (that is, to inflict death, injury and destruction on
the Japanese people as punishment). Like many of the post-war generation. But after three years of savage warfare with no quarter
asked and no quarter given on either side, the Americans of that
generation had no such qualms. Nor is it clear to me whether the
technology of the time would have supported the type of precision daylight
attacks on industry with which the B-29 raids began.
The American propaganda of the time reported that a bombardier in a B-17
or B-29 with a Norden bombsight could land "a bomb in a pickle barrel from
30,000 feet". The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported after the war
that 50% of all bombs dropped from 25,000 feet from B-17s in the European
theatre landed within a one-kilometer(0.62 land miles) diameter circle
around the aiming point. That is a bit larger than a pickle barrel. The
remaining 50% could land almost anywhere, even miles away from the aiming
point.
Also given that lack of accuracy, one can speculate about three possible
ways of improving the situation--bomb from low altitudes in daylight,
improve accuracy with guided bombs or drop a bomb so destructive that
being a kilometre or more from your aiming point wouldn't matter. The
first idea was only useful if you had aerial supremacy and if the
ground-based anti-aircraft fire wasn't too thick. The second idea was
tried during the war, but didn't yield substantial results until well
after its end. The third approach worked at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Battle of Okinawa and the Surrender
USS Intrepid at Okinawa
On the morning of April 1, 1945, American naval and ground forces began
landings on the coast of Okinawa, about three hundred land miles south of
Kyushu. Okinawa was needed for airbases to support the planned landings on
the island of Kyushu. The Japanese land forces adopted tactics very
reminiscent of those employed by the Viet Cong and the Viet Minh
twenty-odd years later in Vietnam. They "dug-in" into caves, tunnels and
machine nests on the southern end of the island and waited for the
American marines and soldiers to come. This web of defensive positions was
called the "Shuri Line" after a historical building that had been
fortified there.
As the land forces were "tied down" by the Shuri Line, the naval forces
supporting them were also tied down and the Japanese threw gradually
increasing aerial attacks against them throughout early April. On April
12-15, these aerial attacks became very heavy and substantial numbers of
ships were hit, some being sunk. Most of the ships sunk were destroyers
and supply ships. With very little current aircraft production, the
Japanese planes thrown against the American fleet were a mix of both
obsolete and modern types. Pre-war types which hadn't been seen in combat
for years reappeared in the skies over Okinawa, an example being the "Alf"
(Type 95 Reconnaissance Seaplane). They had presumably been taken from
storage or second-line duties for this operation. By contrast, one of the
latest Japanese types which was used at Okinawa was the "baka bomb", a
manned, flying bomb which was to be hauled to a target area under a
Betty (Type 1 Land Attack Bomber or G4M2-J, Model 24-J). While large
numbers of ships were damaged, including some carriers, most of those
ships sunk were small and no carriers were sunk.
By the end of June, the last Japanese emplacements on the island of
Okinawa had been overrun and the air attacks had tapered off to an
occasional raid. By the end of July, the Army Air Force fighters and
bombers were beginning to attack targets on Kyushu in preparation for the
next amphibious assault. The American plan was for a landing near Sasebo
on November 1, 1945. The Japanese had deduced both the date and the
location of the landings. They were holding a further aerial force of
about 1,000 planes and had one million gallons of aviation gasoline to
fuel them with. This was the final Japanese air force. It was composed of
both IJAAF and IJNAF aircraft including many trainers and obsolete types.
Given the shorter distances involved, this final force might have done
somewhat better against the Americans and their allies at Kyushu than the
Japanese air forces at Okinawa had done seven months before.
The Americans also had plans for an additional landing on the Kanto Plain,
near Tokyo and this had been planned for March 1, 1946. There would have
been no Japanese aircraft available to oppose this landing,
nor any remaining stocks of aviation gasoline.
With the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
severity of the war situation was at last brought home to the Emperor and
his cabinet. At the Emperor's personal insistence, the war was ended with
a Japanese surrender effective August 15, 1945. While Allied (United
Nations) policy had demanded unconditional surrender from an early stage,
the Japanese were in fact able to negotiate a single set of
conditions--the Emperor Hirohito would remain in titular authority during
the occupation and he would not be prosecuted for war crimes.
As a fighting force, the Imperial Japanese Navy force ceased to exist with
the surrender, although there were a few aerial skirmishes over Japan
after this, but before the occupation forces arrived on Japanese soil two
weeks later. A condition of the surrender was that all Japanese aircraft
were to be grounded and disabled. This was typically done by removing the
propeller and if you see a photo of a single-engined Japanese plane
without a propeller or of a twin-engined plane with one propeller removed,
it was probably taken shortly after the American occupation forces arrived
in September, 1945.
The Post-War Consequences and Myths
With the end of the war, substantial numbers of Japanese aircraft were
left over, most of them in the Japanese Home Islands. A few of these were
flown or shipped back to the United States for inspection, but almost all
of them were burned and thus converted into scrap aluminium within days of
the arrival of American troops. The Americans had quite enough experience
with Japanese military airplanes during the preceding four years.
In the years immediately following the war, small numbers of Japanese
warplanes were salvaged and flown by a number of forces or air forces in
what had formerly been Japanese-occupied territory. Some of the IJAAF's
"Oscars" survived in service in Thailand until the 1950s (Thailand had been
an ally of Japan during the war) and a few Oscars were flown--over the
complaints of their pilots--by the French in Indochina against the
guerrillas there. Some similar machines were also used by the Nationalists
and the Communists in the Chinese civil war from 1946 to 1949. As can be
seen above, these airplanes had spent months or years parked beside their
runways before this and that alone meant that they were not safe to fly
without extensive refurbishing. In addition, there were no aviation
mechanics with experience on these types nor were there any maintenance
and repair manuals which the mechanics could read. The men who were forced
to fly these salvaged machines did not like or trust them and it is easy
to see why.
But in the United States there were still some flyable Japanese warplanes
for a couple of years after the Japanese surrender. In the Spring of 1946,
a Ki. 84 "Frank" was restored, flown and clocked at a very respectable 427
mph at 20,000 feet. This work was performed by the Middletown Air Depot in
Pennsylvania and I would like to know more about it.
Several dozen Japanese warplanes were put on display at airbases in this
country or at American airbases in Japan. Over the years and decades that
followed, they gradually deteriorated in the sun and the rain. Plexiglas
turned white. Shiny aluminium was filmed and pocked with dusty white
aluminium oxide. Rubber hardened and then broke up into black crumbs over
the years.
Also, with the end of the war, myth-making began, often by those who had
never fought the Japanese, particularly during the first six months of the
war when the IJNAF had seemed to be nearly invincible. In these myths,
Japanese aircraft were held to be fragile toys and their crews were
stooges. If that had been true, then the men who had beaten them--the
Allied and American pilots and aviators--would have acquired little
distinction in doing so. Indeed, one of the prime reasons for an accurate
appraisal of the IJNAF today is to remember that it was once a formidable
force and that the men who beat them were extraordinary in courage,
competence and endurance.