This major Arawasi publication, the result of more
than ten years of exhaustive research in Japan by the authors George
Eleftheriou and Kiri Domoto-Eleftheriou, includes hundreds of newly discovered,
photos, most of high quality, and original material and information never
covered in any publication before.
Contents:
* Pre-Manchukuo aviation in brief
* Manchukuo Airline
* Manchukuoan Air Force
* Manchukuo Maritime Police Air Unit
* Gliding in Manchukuo
One day short of a month later, Japan’s 2nd Air Brigade, in
conjunction with the Manchurian Air Force, staged a massive raid on the Red Air
Force base at Tamsak-Bulak in Mongolia. Numerous Soviet aircraft were caught on
the ground before they could get airborne, and those that did were mostly shot
down. Manchukuoan-flown Nakajimas came in low to strafe the airfields, setting
fuel dumps ablaze and holing bombers parked out in the open, defying intense
and accurate ground fire. Dai Manshu Teikoku Kugun fighters suppressed enemy
opposition for the arrival almost immediately thereafter of their comrades
flying Kawasaki Ki-32s. Just previous to the attack on Mongolia, these more
modern light-bombers replaced the Manchurians’ Kawasaki Army Type 88/KDA-2
biplanes. Code named “Mary” by the Americans, the Ki-32 carried 990 pounds
of bombs used by DMTK airmen to virtually obliterate the Soviet air base. The
Red Air Force defenders of Tamsak-Bulak suffered heavy damage, with more than
twice as many Russian warplanes than Japanese-Manchurian lost.
The effective strike had been ordered by Kwantung Army
commanders without permission from Imperial Japanese Army headquarters in
Tokyo, which grounded any further air raids. Henceforward, the battlefield
situation went from bad to worse for the Japanese, who were decimated by waves
of heavy armor attacks against which they had little defense, and forced to
accept an armistice on August 31.
The very next day, Germany’s invasion of Poland precipitated
World War II, an event that promised greater significance than the Nomohan
Incident. Soviet forces halted at the Manchurian border, as Stalin concluded a
neutrality agreement with Japan, then turned his attention to Europe. Fearing
an inevitable resumption of hostilities in the uncertain future, the Japanese
began seriously outfitting more Manchukuoan squadrons.
In July 1940, Japan’s Air Defense Headquarters worked in
conjunction with the Dai Manshu Teikoku Kugun’s 1st Air Unit at Xinjing. At
first, only Japanese pilots and ground crews served in Air Defense, but Manchus
underwent specialized flight training soon after. A flight school was
established on August 30, 1940, in Fengtien to teach both military and civilian
pilots. The following January, some 100 cadets, unused to strict discipline and
incited by Communist agent provocateurs, murdered their instructors, then fled
Manchukuo.
By 1941, the Dai Manshu Teikoku Kugun’s 1st Air Unit at
Xinjing had 5 Japanese and 6 Manchurian officers, 14 NCOs of similarly mixed
backgrounds, and about 90 pilots. They were joined by a 2nd Air Unit at
Fengtien, a 3rd Air Unit Ordnance Depot of 15 Japanese and 30 Chinese officers
from the National Government of China Air Force at Harbin, the Aircraft Arsenal
Air Unit (supply), and the Tongliao Independent Air Unit Flying School, which
increased the following year to three squadrons. In September and October 1942,
the school was issued more than 20 training aircraft. These included the
Tachikawa Ki-9, a two-place biplane rigged for blind-flying with a folding hood
over the rear cockpit for the student. Powered by a 350-hp Hitachi Ha-13a
radial engine, the Spruce, as it was known to the Americans, topped 149 mph,
making the Ki-9 a respectable intermediate trainer. Staff officer transport
versions featured a glazed canopy.
Another Tachikawa was fitted was a 510-hp Hitachi Ha-13, a
ninecylinder, radial engine, that gave the advanced biplane an outstanding
maximum speed of 216 mph. Air Ministry officials were so impressed with its
performance, the Ki-55 was occasionally fitted with a single, fixed
forward-firing 7.7mm machine-gun to serve as a fighter the Allies called Ida.
The Tongliao Independent Air Unit Flying School was also
sent several examples of the Mansyu Ki-79 for advanced training. More
immediately significant, the Dai Manshu Teikoku Kugun received its first modern
warplanes. These were the Nakajima Ki-27 and Kawasaki Ki-32, known in the West,
respectively, as Nate and Mary. The former, as some indication of Japanese
regard for the Manchukuo Air Force, was Japan’s premiere fighter at the time,
and had been selected for production primarily for its outstanding handling
characteristics, by virtue of which it rapidly assumed ascendancy over all
other pursuit aircraft in Chinese skies.
K-27s were superior to their Red Air Force opponents at
1938s Battle of Khasan but roughly handled one year later during the Nomohan
Incident by Polikarpov 1-16 Ratas able to outrun them by 12 mph. A weaker
airframe additionally prevented the Nakajima from holding up under stress
during high-speed maneuvers, allowing the faster, sturdier, if more unwieldy
Soviet monoplane to escape in a dive the Japanese warplane could not follow.
Moreover, the Ki-27 lacked pilot armor protection or self-sealing fuel tanks,
and the 7.7-mm rounds spat by its twin Type 89 machine-guns were weak. Fortunately
for the Japanese, Nate was replaced as their leading fighter by Mitsubishi’s
more famous and altogether superior A6M Zero in time for the attack on Pearl
Harbor.
The Dai Manchu Teikoku Kugun received fewer numbers of
Kawasaki’s Ki-32. Vulnerable to flak and a sitting duck for enemy interceptors,
the sluggish, low-wing monoplane with its non-retractable, drag-inducing
landing gear, would have been butchered in any confrontation with the Red Air
Force. Instead, an 850-hp Kawasaki Ha-9-llb liquid-cooled, V-12 engine enabled
the tough, reliable light-bomber to deliver its 990pound payload over a
1,220-mile range, rendering Mary ideally suited for the antipartisan role to
which she was assigned. In the hands of Manchurian pilots, her interdiction of
distant enemy truck convoys and supply concentrations often came as an
unpleasant surprise for both Communist and Nationalist opponents.
When Manchukuo came within range of USAAF heavy bombers, the
Japanese 2nd Air Army assumed direction of the Dai Manshu Teikoku, augmenting
it with the 104th Sentai (“Group”), plus the 25th and 81st Dokuritsu
Chutai (“Squadron”). These units were equipped with the Kawasaki
Ki-45, known appropriately as the Toryu, or “Dragon Slayer;” for the
many American Superfortresses it claimed since four night-fighter sentais were
established to defend the home islands in autumn 1944. One sentai alone scored
8 “kills” during their first engagement with B-29s, going on to
destroy another 150.
Reorganization comprised the new Fangfu Air Corps of Manchu
pilots manning 120 fighters, mostly Nakajima Ki-27s. With their service ceiling
of 32,940 feet, they could not even approach incoming waves of B-29s operating
660 feet higher. More powerful 710-hp Ha-lb, nine cylinder, radial engines were
installed to carry the Nates just above the Superfortresses’ operational
altitude and boosted maximum speed to nearly 300 mph, but that was still 65 mph
slower than the strategic bombers. Even if the old fighters were able to
maneuver into firing position, their twin, 7.7-mm machine-guns were outmatched
by-per B-29-10,12.7-mm Browning machine-guns firing from remotely controlled
turrets.
Yet, odds against the defenders were not as hopeless as they
appeared. The Superforts were unable to open their bomb bay doors above cruising
speed at 220 mph, giving the Nates a temporary nearly 80-mph speed advantage.
But the huge silvery enemy’s real Achilles’ heel was his oxidized aluminum
skin, which was prone to fire in the worst way, consuming the entire aircraft,
fore and aft. Japanese and Manchu pilots found that hits of even their puny,
7.7-mm rounds just about anywhere along the frame of a B-29 could sometimes set
it entirely alight. But getting close enough to do so was made extremely
hazardous by combined defensive fire thrown up by the Superfortresses, and many
would-be interceptors paid with their lives before they could get within range
of their own guns.
B-29s first struck Manchuria three years to the day of
Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor. Their anniversary raid was not coincidental but
deliberately timed to encourage the more than 1,600 American prisoners of war
incarcerated near Mukden. The mission’s tactical objective was destruction of
the city’s aircraft factories.
Of the original 108 Superforts that set out with the XX
Bomber Command, no less than 17 were forced to drop out, due to unforeseen
problems caused by extremely low temperatures. Inside and outside surfaces of
canopies iced over, and the big warplanes struggled, not always successfully,
to gain altitude in the thin air. These worsening conditions forced another 10
B-29s to haphazardly jettison their payloads over a railroad yard long before
reaching Mukden, utterly missing this secondary target, before banking away for
home base. When the remaining 80 Superfortresses arrived over the city, flight
crews found it entirely obscured by a heavy smokescreen. Undeterred, they
unloosed their combined 800 tons of bombs, which fell mostly within residential
districts, killing about 1,000 civilians, injuring several thousand more. The
primary targeted aircraft factories escaped unscathed.
USAAF commanders had anticipated no enemy interdiction,
regarding the Manchukuoan Air Force as nothing more than a propaganda joke,
while all Japanese fighters were believed to have been recalled to defend the
home islands. But the Americans were to be deceived as much about opposition
over Manchuria, as they had been concerning its climate conditions.
As they approached Mukden, Sergeant Shinobu Ikeda of the
25th Dokuritsu Chutai attacked one of the monstrous bombers from behind with
his Kawasaki interceptor. Before he could draw a bead on the B-29, a stream of
.50-inch caliber rounds found and shattered his canopy and set his right engine
alight. Wounded in a damaged airplane on fire and spinning toward the ground,
Ikeda eventually regained control of the Dragon Slayer, climbed back on one
engine after the same target, and deliberately collided with its tail section.
The Superfortress nosed over into a steep dive from which only one gunner parachuted
to safety. Like the other 10 men aboard the big bomber, Ikeda perished in the
collision.
Another Japanese pilot died when the B-29 he rammed with his
Nakajima was consumed in a terrific explosion that fortuitously ejected a pair
of surviving crew members uninjured into space. Two more Superforts fell under
conventional attacks, one each shot down by Japanese and Manchurian pilots.
Three B-29s, trailing debris and smoke, escaped the combat zone, but were so
badly damaged they had to be written off. For the Superfortresses’ first raid
against Manchukuo, they missed all their targets, losing 7 aircraft and 44 crew
members for 1 Japanese and 2 Manchurians killed in action.
Fourteen days later, 40 of the survivors returned to
inaccurately and ineffectually raid Mukden, veiled once more under its
obscuring smokescreen. Eighty-eight tons of high explosive intended for the
earlier targeted aircraft factory yet again fell wide of the mark. This time, a
Manchurian Air Force pilot, 1st Lieutenant Sono-o Kasuga, crashed his Nakajima
fighter into one of the Superfortresses, which exploded for the loss of its
entire crew. Another B-29 was similarly destroyed by 2nd Lieutenant Tahei
Matsumoto, a Japanese pilot serving with the Dai Manshu Teikoku Kugun.
To oppose both December raids on Mukden, the Japanese and
Manchurians lost 7 pilots and planes against 12 American bombers destroyed with
121 men killed and captured. Instead of taking heart at the appearance of USAAF
warplanes high overhead, Allied POWS had watched in horror, as one
Superfortress after another tumbled out of the sky in flames. Pilots of the Dai
Manshu Teikoku Kugun, together with their Japanese comrades in the 104th Sentai
and the 25th and 81st Dokuritsu Chutai, achieved a real defensive victory, when,
following the December 21 raid, XX Bomber Command terminated all further
operations against Mukden as too costly for the negligible results achieved.
Thereafter, the war shifted away from Manchuria and virtual
peacetime conditions prevailed there throughout most of 1945. By late summer,
however, a buildup of Soviet forces along the Mongolian border made invasion
from that quarter evident, and Manchukuo Air Force personnel underwent
intensive training for ground-attacking armored vehicles. Between the Imperial
Japanese Army Air Force and Dai Manshu Teikoku Kugun, they were able to muster
1,800 aircraft, mostly trainers and obsolete types fit only for self-destruct
missions.
Just 50 Nakajima fighters were on hand, without, however,
enough fuel to operate them all against the 5,368 Red Air Force warplanes they
faced. Manchukuo’s Defense Force comprised 40,000 troops in 8 divisions,
insufficiently supplied and poorly equipped. Supporting them were more than
600,000 men in the Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army, but they, too, were
threadbare. Their armor consisted of 1,215 light tanks and armored cars,
together with 6,700 mostly light field pieces, opposed by 5,556 Red Army heavy
tanks and 28,000 artillery.
On the morning of August 9, one-and-a-half-million Russian and
Mongolian troops inundated the Manchurian border. Impossibly outnumbered, both
the Manchukuo Defense Force and Kwantung Army melted away. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a
revisionist historian at the University of California (Santa Barbara), has
shown that this Red Army offensive, not the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, prompted Japan’s capitulation.’ Japanese leaders knew that the
Red Army juggernaut would not stop with the easy conquest of Manchukuo, but
roll on into Japan itself.
Indeed, Stalin was ready to implement the invasion of
Hokkaido long before U.S. commanders intended to put their forces ashore at
Kyushu. Despite Emperor Hirohito’s broadcast surrender on August 15, the
Soviets refused to halt their offensive, sweeping across northeastern China
into Korea, coming to a halt at the 38th Parallel, where they met their
American allies. It was also the place where the next war would erupt just five
years later, in Korea.
Meanwhile, occupied Manchukuo was handed over to Mao Zedong,
who, after a bloody purge of the country’s intellectual and propertyowning
classes, used Manchuria as a headquarters for his ultimately victorious
revolution.
Three fighters squadrons were formed in 1942 from flying
school cadets, with the typical strength of a squadron being as follows: 11
officers, 12 to 14 non-commissioned officers, and 90 enlisted men.
The organization of the air force in 1941 was as follows:
1st Air Unit
(Hsinking)
2nd Air Unit
(Fengtien)
3rd Air Unit
(Harbin)
Tongliao
Independent Air Unit
Flying School
