[Adriano Baumgartner]

Back in October 1996, I visited Herr Martin Drewes (former CO of III/NJG 1) here in Brazil twice. He showed me images of a delegation from Japan that visited Germany. If memory doest not fail me, they visited the NJG 3 airfield then at Stade. He told me that there was an Officer (probably from the Army) that had never flown before and so he took him to the air. The other guys from his Squadron wanted him to shake the "jap" with spins, loopings, etc...to make the guy sick....But Drewes told me he wanted to make the guy feel the same things he loved when flying....so he told me he did one of the smoothiest flights of his life....flying over rivers, at the end of the day (sunset) and showing the "jap" the beauty of Flying! I can never forget this statement, having done similar flights with youngsters that had never flown before or who wanted to become civilian pilots themselves...Probably with the same Japanese Delegation there were IJN or other japanese pilots...but am not sure. I have seen Drewes' privates photos and images of this Delegation and a couple others on a book about the NJG before...But surely they may have exchanged or managed one flight here or there....but probably not a FULL training Syllabus. I do not have documents to prove that...so it is only on the "theory" or "guess".

A.