Australian Spitfires

[Jim Oxley]

According to Dr.SHINDO Hiroyuki the most accurate primary sources of information on the Japanese air units involved in the attacks on Darwin may be found in the military history archives of the library of the National Institute for Defense Studies (Bôei Kenkyûjô), the research institution of the Japan Defense Agency (Bôeichô). This is located in Tokyo and is open to the public.

To quote him:
By far the best and most impressive set of primary sources concerning the Japanese operations against Australia are the action reports (kôdô chôsho) of the naval air units involved. The action reports of the 1st, Kanoya, Takao and 3rd Air Corps from December 1941 through October 1942 are complete, as well as those of the 753rd Air Corps from November 1942 through July 1944 and the 202nd Air Corps from November 1942 through October 1943. In addition, the action reports of the air units on the aircraft carriers Akagi, Hiryû and Sôryû, which took part in the initial 19 February 1942 raid on Port Darwin, have also survived; the reports of the Kaga are missing, however. These contain the daily action reports of each air corps in great detail, listing in a series of tables the action which occurred (e.g. reconnaissance, aerial combat, bombing); date; mission; commander; number of each type of plane (e.g. fighter, bomber, scout) taking part; ordinance carried; results (e.g. shot down, forced landing, types of targets bombed); timeline for each mission, including the bases flown from, times of departure and return; the times certain objectives were flown over or actions occurred; and damage and casualties incurred. In addition, the name and rank of each pilot and aircrew involved, the formations of the flights, and the fate of each aircrew (such as killed in action, wounded, or missing) are given in a separate table. While these reports are also handwritten in Japanese, they fortunately are quite legible. The action report for each day was written up at the end of the day, except in a few cases where the original was lost and had to be recreated later, usually from memory. These are all on microfilm, and every mission flown by naval aircraft against Australia through the fall of 1943, when such attacks ceased, may be reconstructed in nearly every detail by using these records. As is the case with any such records, however, it is probably preferable to check the results of the aerial combat or bombing reported therein with Australia records for greater accuracy.

Now if only we can find someone on the Japanese side to write their story, get together with an author who can combine it with the detailed records already available on the Australian side, put it all together in English, and we would have the ultimate story of the air conflict over Darwin. Not only would we have the personal side of things for each side, but we would have how each side saw the conflict based on what they observed and thought they saw, and what actually did happen.

It could be the ultimate book. Ahhhhh......if only.