Zero loss, 23 October 1943

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Between 17 and 25 March 1944, US troops from Kwajalein visited several nearby islands to gather informations about the Japanese presence. One of these islands was Namu Atoll, where no Japanese military personnal was encountered but a crashed Zero was found on the beach at Namu Island. This aircraft came down out of gas on 23 October 1943. The pilot was taken off the same day by a Japanese seaplane, while the aircraft was abandonned there.

Source:
http://www.wwiiarchives.net/servlet/...age/1184/114/0

I know that there are Japanese war diaries online now (at http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/MetaOutServlet), but I can't read Japanese and automatic translation is often useless (and by the way files are stored as Jpg, so no automatic translation possible). I see that the war diary of 252 Kokutai for October 1943 to January 1944 is available, and it is the only unit I know was in the area at the time. Can someone check if this loss is listed in the war diary ?

Edited: here is the first page of the diary for 23 October
http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/imag...S_LGC_S35=AND&

The page just before (for 22 October) seems to have a little more info as usual so maybe something happened this day.

Thanks in advance