Warplanes of Japan: Captured Allied aircraft in Japanese service
Captured Allied Aircraft in Japanese service during the Second World War
(IJAAF Photo via USAAF)
Curtiss P-40E Warhawk in Japanese markings, at Yokota Air Base in Japan. The photo was taken in front of the Base Operations building. (Andrew Shirey)
The Japanese appear to have had as many as ten flyable P-40Es. For a brief period, during 1943, a few of them were used operationally by the 50th Hiko Sentai in the defense of Rangoon. (Japanese military aviation historian Osamu Tagaya)
(IJAAF Photo via USAAF)
After the fall of Burma, Malaya, Netherlands East Indies (NEI), and the Philippines, all types of Allied aircraft were impressed by the Japanese. Several Curtiss P-40E Warhawks were captured by the IJAAF in the Philippines and Java.
When the Japanese invaded the Netherlands East Indies, Malaya, and Burma, they captured a veritable treasure trove of Allied aircraft. A whole squadron of Dutch Buffalos was impressed at Jakarta. Several crated Douglas attack bombers (DB-7 or A-20) were captured as well at Surabaya. One was tested by the IJAAF at the Tachikawa branch test center in Singapore and another by the IJNAF at Yokosuka. Three B-17s were captured by the Japanese in the Philippines and Netherlands East Indies. They were tested by the IJAAF Koku Gijutsu Kenkyujo (Air Technical Research Laboratory) at Tachikawa. Several Buffalos were captured and tested at Tachikawa. (Jim Lansdale)
(IJAAF Photos)
Curtiss P-40E Tomahawks captured by the Japanese.
(USAAF Photos)
Curtiss P-40E Tomahawk in Japanese colours, recaptured by US forces in 1945.
(IJAAF Photos)
North American P-51C Mustang "Evalina" in Japanese hands. The Japanese began to encounter the Mustang late in 1943. As Japanese losses due to the Mustang increased, evaluating it became a priority for the Japanese, in the hope that a tactically significant weakness could be discovered to even the odds. It is fairly safe to assume that the Japanese were able to study some wrecks and other Mustang-related material but this was not enough for a thorough evaluation of the type's performance. On 16 Jan 1945, Lt. Oliver E. Strawbridge of the 26th Fighter Squadron, 51st Fighter Group, was hit by enemy gunfire and landed at the Japanese-held Suchin airfield in China. Some sources indicate he made a wheels-up landing, while others contend he landed his airplane normally. Pictures of the aircraft in Japanese hands show no obvious sign of damage or repairs. Had Strawbridge made a belly landing, the damage to the propeller and belly intake would have been very complicated for the Japanese to repair. It is therefore likely that the P-51 was captured intact. His P-51C-11-NT nicknamed "Evalina", was quickly seized by Japanese troops. It was was flown back to the Japanese Army Air Inspection Center in Fussa (now Yokota Air Base) by Yasuhiko Kuroe, a 30-victory ace. Evalina was later transferred to the Akeno Flying Training Division for further evaluation and mock combat against fighters such as the Ki-43, Ki-61 and Ki-84. In mid-April 1945, Kuroe was placed in charge of a “flying circus” composed of captured Allied aircraft. The group toured Japanese fighter units to train pilots how to fight the opponent's aircraft. One of the pilots who benefited from this was a First Lieutenant from the 18th Sentai, Masatsugu Sumita, who recalled that he learned “how to take his aircraft out of the P-51's axis when being chased...”. At the time, the 18th Sentai was flying the Ki-100, one of the few Japanese types that matched the Mustang's general performances. Evalina was finally grounded by a burned-out generator. Two P-51Ds were reportedly captured in mainland Japan in 1945, but their fate is unknown.
(USAAF Photos)
Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat, with Japanese Hinomaru and coded E-801. This aircraft was captured in the Mariannas area.
(IJAAF Photo)
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress in Japanese markings.
(IJAAF Photos)
Douglas A-20 Boston III, RAAF in Japanese markings.
(IJAAF Photo)
LaGG-3 in Japanese markings.
(IJAAF Photos)
Brewster F2A Buffalo (B-339s) captured by the Japanese in either Singapore or NEI.
(IJAAF Photo)
Vought F4U Corsair being examined by the Japanese.
In 1945, a F4U Corsair was captured near the Kasumigaura flight school by U.S. forces. The Japanese had repaired it, covering damaged parts on the wing with fabric and using spare parts from crashed F4Us. It seems Japan captured two force landed Corsairs fairly late in the war and may have even tested one in flight.
The Japanese learned from the analysis of Allied aircraft they had shot down or captured. American intelligence analysts were examining aerial reconnaissance photos taken over the Japanese base Tachikawa late in May 1945 when they discovered a large four-engine bomber on what was code-named the "Tachikawa Field 104." After the war investigators discovered the plane had actually been an American B-17 Flying Fortress, modified and put into the air by Japanese air technical intelligence. Tachikawa happened to be the location of the Army's Aviation Technical Research Institute. Yokosuka housed the Japanese Navy's 1st Air Technical Research Arsenal. Both units sent specialized investigation teams to examine captured aircraft and equipment behind the Japanese assault troops. From Clark Field the Japanese recovered the turbo-supercharger of a B-17 plus other kinds of spare parts. Eventually an entire B-17E was put together from the collection. Another would be recovered in the Netherlands East Indies, put together from the remains of fifteen B-17s wrecked on airfields there, and a third was found in pretty good shape in the same area. Designer Kikuhara Shizuo, who had originated the Kawanishi H8K Emily flying boat, noted how impressed he was that the United States had perfected the B-17's subsystems to such a degree that a minimum of controls were needed in the cockpit.
What the Japanese did with the B-17 they tried with many other aircraft, studying crashed aircraft, making photos and drawings, salvaging parts, etc. This effort, like so many others, began as early as the China Incident, where the Japanese recovered a Curtiss P-40E Warhawk fighter and a Douglas A-20A Havoc twin-engine bomber. Within the JNAF these studies were conducted by the same people who did the design work for Navy planes. Thus, of 327 personnel at the Yokosuka main office of the Research Technical Arsenal and 186 at the branch office in Isogo, it has been estimated that roughly 10 officers, 10 civilian designers, and 150 enlisted men worked on studies of foreign aircraft.
Navy Lieutenant Toyoda Takago was one designer who worked in the foreign-technology program. He reports that the Japanese Army sent out most of the field teams, subsequently supplying the JNAF with copies of their reports and lending them aircraft as desired. The single team Takogo remembers the JNAF dispatching went to Burma to study a crashed De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito light bomber. But the Navy center would be sent aircraft recovered in the Southern Areas and would send teams to crash sites in the Empire area, including Okinawa, where a Grumman F6F Hellcat was recovered after raids in October 1944. British carrier raids in the Netherlands East Indies earlier that year yielded a Grumman TBM-1C Avenger. Yokosuka's specialists were surprised at the "extremely strong construction." When a Vought F4U Corsair was captured near the Kasumigaura flight school, "we were surprised there were places on the wing covered with fabric." The JNAF recovered the flight manual for the Consolidated B-24 Liberator in the summer of 1944, and flew a captured Grumman F6F Hellcat. The comparable Army unit also flew the Brewster Buffalo, the Hawker Hurricane, the Boeing B-17D and E Flying Fortress, and the Martin PBM Mariner.
Flying experience and ground studies were used to compile reports on the foreign aircraft, but because the specialists were preoccupied by their own design work, the studies of foreign planes were fairly basic. Only very late in the war was a special section of three officers and twelve to fourteen men formed just to track foreign technology, first under Commander Nomura Suetsu, then under Iwaya Eichi. (War Relics Eu)
Axis Warplane Survivors
A guidebook to the preserved Military Aircraft of the Second World War Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy, and Japan, joined by Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia; the co-belligerent states of Thailand, Finland, San Marino and Iraq; and the occupied states of Albania, Belarus, Croatia, Vichy France, Greece, Ljubljana, Macedonia, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Manchukuo, Mengjiang, the Philippines and Vietnam.
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