Monday, 29 January 2024

IJAAF & IJNAF wrecked aircraft - Kawasaki Ki-61 "Hien" (Tony) - 19 Sentai

There is one more 19 Sentai "Hien" that some sources say was photographed in the Philippines, but things are a bit muddled on this one and we'll try to clear them up. 
Apart from the 19 Sentai marking, we can clearly see it has previous sentai markings on its tail, those of the 55th Sentai.

The older Aircram publication features two photos of the aircraft mentioning that they were taken in Okinawa.

But the later Schiffer publication and some Japanese publications, mention that the aircraft was photographed at Clark Field.

But I believe that the photo above, featured in both Aircam and Schiffer publications, shows that the location is highly unlikely to be Clark Field, the background clearly suggests Okinawa. Furthermore, as we saw in the unit history of the previous post, the 19th Sentai was joined by the 55th Sentai while in Taiwan, and together they took part in the battle of Okinawa, not the Philippines.

The aircraft was often photographed and the captions of the photos below mention that they were taken in Okinawa.

On our FB page, Mateusz Pytlik (thank you) contributed the photo below and commented:
"Thank you for clarifying the disputed Clark/Okinawa Tony. I can further confirm your conclusions with the following photo. The Corsair in the background appears to be 422 "Palpitatin' Pauli", belonging to VMF-441's captain Floyd C. Kirkpatrick. The unit fought only on Gilbert/Marshall Islands and Okinawa, where it landed (Yontan) on April 7. What's more, the US source on this one claims this Ki-61 is the very plane that later on became the Yontan Tony."

Just last week two "new" photos of the "Yontan Tony" came up on sale on ebay.

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