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Prisoners of war: the Japanese Buffs

The Japanese captured a herd of Buffaloes in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia
(more or less), and in Malaya, now Malaysia. Above, a Japanese airman poses in
front of one of the wrecks, which has lost its wheels and engine. And below is a
remarkable color photo of a field full of wrecked Buffaloes, taken from the book
Japan's War in Colour by David Batty.
One of the regulars on the now-disused Warbird's Forum message board posted
images from the Japanese magazine Aviation Review for August 1942, showing
further images of the same Brewsters, abandoned near what he guessed to be
Senbawan, Malaya.

At left is the cover of that same wartime magazine, showing a fairly complete Buffalo
front, along with an RAF Hurricane in the background. Writes Mark Haseldon: "I'm
still puzzling why the aircraft appears to have a dark underside colour. I had an
initial theory it was one of the Buffalos converted for night fighter operations by 151
MU in Singapore, particularly because it also lacks the Sky-painted spinner markings
worn by virtually all RAF Buffalos. However, that idea is contradicted by the
presence of the standard engine exhaust rather than the 5-pipe fishtail arrangement
that was fitted to these aircraft."

Mark reckons that at least three of the Buffs belonged to the merged 21/453
Squadron, including AN206, W8156, and AN195. "These aircraft are also shown in
the now-famous colour pic of wrecked Buffalos that first appeared in 'Japan's War in
Colour'. W8156 is particularly visible in the colour photo, while the nearest Buffalo in
that colour shot looks like W8207."

When I was researching the American Volunteer Group Flying Tigers in the 1980s, I
acquired a bunch of Japanese newsreel and feature films from WWII. A staple of
these movies was a sequence showing the destruction of the Rangoon docks in the
winter of 1941-42, including the "bombing" of a Brewster Buffalo wearing a crudely
 painted RAF roundel on its flank. I
guessed at the time that this was a
Dutch or British Buffalo captured in the
Dutch East Indies, and this indeed
seems to be the case. There's an
interesting page at Dave Pluth's
Japanese Aircraft & Ship Modeling site,
which shows images taken at Tachikawa
naval airfield, near Tokyo, and
published in the Asahi Shimbun
newpaper in May 1943.

The photo at left was credited to

Kazetagawa-san and Gohyakki-san, as
shown in the reproduction, which was
taken from the newspaper archives and
digitally enhanced. NAMBU Ryutaro
provided these photos to Dave, who
gave me permission to repost them
here. And below is an even more
dramatic photo of Buffalos captured in
the Netherlands Indies. I count at least
nine Buffs in this photo. Though they don't have the hinomaru on the flank, as in the
photo above, they evidently carried it on the port upper wing surface, at least, to
judge by the wing in the foreground. (After posting these photos, I received an email:
"The nine Brewster Buffalos with those horizontal 3-colored markings on the sides
are indeed of the Dutch air force in the Indies. Only, these markings were to my
knowledge used after the orange triangle used in the 2nd world war." Sure enough,
all other photos of the Dutch Buffaloes do show the inverted triangle.)

Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

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