Aces of the Republic of China Air Force

[RCheung]

Originally Posted by Antoine

Out standing AOTA volume, in many ways.
Excellent reading so far.

What was the fate of IJN A5M pilot YAMASHITA Shishiro (page 30)?

According to ace and later ROCAF general Y. T. Loh, Yamashita was living in Lanchow (Lanzhou) with his Chinese wife at the end of the war. He taught maths and crypto-analysis(!) in a school there. As far as we know, he did not leave China for Taiwan when the Communist took over in 1949.

Loh kept his promise to not reveal Yamashita's defection to the Chinese for 30 years - and more. By the time the story was published in the Chinese Air Force Magazine in the 1980's - almost 50 years had elapsed,

Loh clearly wanted to avoid trouble for Yamashita during the turbulent years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It is unclear whether Yamashita was able to hide his identity during those crazy years ...

[RCheung]

Originally Posted by Antoine

Out standing AOTA volume, in many ways.
Excellent reading so far.

What was the fate of IJN A5M pilot YAMASHITA Shishiro (page 30)?

According to ace and later ROCAF general Y. T. Loh, Yamashita was living in Lanchow (Lanzhou) with his Chinese wife at the end of the war. He taught maths and crypto-analysis(!) in a school there. As far as we know, he did not leave China for Taiwan when the Communist took over in 1949.

Loh kept his promise to not reveal Yamashita's defection to the Chinese for 30 years - and more. By the time the story was published in the Chinese Air Force Magazine in the 1980's - almost 50 years had elapsed,

Loh clearly wanted to avoid trouble for Yamashita during the turbulent years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It is unclear whether Yamashita was able to hide his identity during those crazy years ...

[GuerraCivil]

Of the some aircraft employed by ROCAF:

One small but nevertheless interesting detail in the Aces of the ROCAF book was the use of French fighter Dewoitine 510 by the ROCAF.

Patrick Laureau´s book on Legion Condor - Condor, the Luftwaffe in Spain, 1936-1939 (Hikoki 2000) - claimed that the only known attributable air victory to Dewoitine 510 anywhere was on 21.3.1938 over Valencia during Spanish Civil War. Even that has been put in doubt because German (?) sources claim that the downed Heinkel 59 was actually destroyed by its own bombs which were dropped at too low level.

It seems that Laureau had no access to ROCAF information on Dewoitine 510 when he was writing his book - the Dewoitine 510 was not a great success in China but the air victory claim of 17 PS of ROCAF (Chen, Tse-liu) with Dewoitine 510 on 4.11.1939 over Chengtu appears to be more confirmed and less disputed (?) than the one in Spain (as there has been confirmation by both the testimony of other Chinese pilots and Japanese loss records).

Although the diversity of the types and some rather "obscure" planes like Dewoitine 510 must have been complicated for the technical maintenance and combat operations of ROCAF, it afterwards makes ROCAF interesting subject for military aircraft historians and for modellers seeking for "less common" history.

One thing which I would like to note on I-16 type 5 fighter is that although the colourplates in the book show the aircraft with closed cockpit, these planes were almost always flown with opened cockpit. Of the Polikarpov fighters it could have been pointed out that Chinese type spesifications meant (to my knowledge):
I-16 "I" - I-16 early type 5 (with the litte used option of closed cockpit)
I-16 "II" - I-16 later type 5 (or "type 6") with standard open cockpit
I-16 "III" - I-16 type 10 and probably also later I-16 types (?)
I-15 "III" - I-153 - I guess that I-15bis ("I-152") was "I-15 II"?

When it comes to original I-15 it probably was I-15 "I"? However to my knowlegde I-15 "I" saw not action in China and it probably was used only in training units by the ROCAF (?).

[knusel]

Good evening Gentlemen,

what is the story behind Lo Chi, a guy who is listed as the ranking Chinese ace:
http://www.aces.safarikovi.org/victories/china-ww2.html
May it be be that he and Lie Shi-Sheng are on and the same person ?

Cheers,

Michael