SNAPPY PERSONAL NAMES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 16 April 1945, Page 6

SNAPPY PERSONAL NAMES

JAPANESE AIRCRAFT N.Z. MEN FIGHT OSCAR AND LILLY (R.N.Z.A.F. Official News Service) Burma Front. April 2. “Six Spitfires on patrol engaged eight Oscars, destroying two and damaging three.” "Eight P-47’s and six P-38’s engaged the raiders, destroying tffree Sallys and one Lilly.” “A Dinah was seen to disintegrate when engaged at 28,000 feet.” Operational reports of this kind are handled daily by Eastern Air Command. All Jap aircraft are officially known by snappy, personal names. Fighters get masculine names; all bombers and transport aircraft are feminine. • In the early days of the Jap war all Japanese fighters were “Zeros”; all bombers “Mitsubishis.” There was no differentiating. The official Japanese names were equally confusing. What is now known as “Zeke,” was known to the Japs as type Zero Mark One carrier-borne fighter model, or as type “O” carrierborne fighter model two, manufactured by either Mitsubishi or Nakajima. There was nothing so simple as the Spitfire Mark Four or the Messerschmitt 109 F. * The Japs numbered their aircraft types by the year the Army or Navy accepted them. "Sally” is the type 97 Mark One. two or three, twin-engine, medium bomber. She was accepted by the Army Air Force in the Japanese year 2597. equivalent to our 1937, the year 1940 being 2600 in the Showa calendar. When Allied intelligence had sifted out the various types, they started giving them nick-names to avoid confusion. The stock fighter on the Burma front now is the Oscar (type one, mark one. and two. fighter). The Japanese use it as a fighter-bomber as well. The two bombers operating over Burma are the “Sally” and the “Lilly” (type 99. mark one and two, twin engine, light bomber). “Sally” carries a crew of seven; “Lilly” four. Neither “Sally” nor “Lilly” can carry the bombload of a B-25.