ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Western depreciation of Japan's air strength was not entirely unjustified, and that the contribution of Japanese aviation to the conquest of Malaya, Burma and the Philippines was on the whole more apparent than substantial. The Army Air Force, pardy utilizing airfields seized by subsidiary landings in the opening days of the campaign, was to operate north of demarcation line, the Navy Air Force to the south. Evaluation of Japanese successes and failures in the air has been hampered by the wartime habit, maintained in much of the postwar literature, of referring to the Japanese Air Force as a single entity. The British were struck by the Japanese Army Air Force's failure to protect its ground troops, and also by their lack of anti-aircraft weapons. The most striking results achieved by the Japanese Army Air Force, in Burma at least, were against what might be called the civilian infrastructure of the British ground forces.
