How did they know what it was called?

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Japanese aircraft seemed to be more troubling to the allies, recognition wise, compared to European aircraft? Sometimes pure fiction.
Try this one...:)

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With Japanese maritime aircraft if you shot one down it was over water, nothing to recover or for people to discuss, or photograph, just pilots fleeting memories a long time after the event.
 
There's a fascinating thread on another forum I visit on Western observers' take on new Soviet aircraft designs post war, featuring aircraft such as the MiG-29, Su-27, Su-24 etc and their interpretation of blurry satellite images and hurriedly snapped pictures at May Day flyovers, in books and magazines. Some real beauties.

Prior to the war, nations wanted to sell their aircraft to foreign buyers and advertised them in magazines (the Italians because they had no money and wanted hard currency, but that's another story) and extrapolations were made from these ads and eyewitnesses that had spied the aircraft at airfields and events they took part in. The saga of how the Bf 109E got its centreline engine cannon came from an interpretation of different sources in an issue of Aeroplane magazine, where the enthusiastic artist drew a cutaway of an aircraft that vaguely resembled a Bf 109 but really looked nothing like one. Nonetheless, folklore took over and its been repeated in books and magazines for years that the Bf 109E had a centreline gun when it didn't. Although to be fair, it was intended on doing so, but no production aircraft were so fitted.

The legend of the He 113 came from a propaganda exercise and evolved into a new Heinkel fighter spotted by RAF fighter pilots in the heat of battle, with entries in official RAF Air Publications, recognition models and various other things, although it was fictional. Drawings look like the He 100 and the Germans used it as the basis of their propaganda effort.
 
Along the lines of misidentification, I recall many years ago, a late-war report by a P-47 pilot encountering an He280 during a scrap with Me262s.
I have never been able to find out more but for an Allied pilot to discern an He280 from a Me262 in the heat of battle, especially when the He280 never went to production and therefore not a priority in Allied ID charts was extremely interesting to me.
 
There were several that were assigned an Allied code name that either didn't exist or were not in military service.
The one pictured looks to be an Aichi 104, code name "ione".

That's him Dave. :)
I also have it as the KT-98.


Jap.jpg
 
There's a fascinating thread on another forum I visit on Western observers' take on new Soviet aircraft designs post war, featuring aircraft such as the MiG-29, Su-27, Su-24 etc and their interpretation of blurry satellite images and hurriedly snapped pictures at May Day flyovers, in books and magazines. Some real beauties.

Agreed - we had a vivid imagination back then.

From 1954...

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If you convince people something exists, sooner or later they will see it. If military pilots have it on good authority that a type exists they will believe that it does.

The RAF told its pilots that the He 113 existed and sure enough it was soon showing up in combat reports.
 

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