National Identity Patches for Navy & Army Flight Uniforms

[Nick Komiya]

Nationality Patches for Navy & Army Flight Uniforms

In March 1945, mainland Japan was inundated by B-29 bombing raids, and one tragically tall fighter pilot, who flew up to intercept the bombers took a hit and had to bail out in his parachute.

He touched down safely in the suburbs south of Yokohama city, but because of his exceptional height and feature-concealing flight uniform, villagers tragically mistook him for a bailing B-29 crew member and clobbered him to death with farming hoes, etc.

This accident prompted the navy to introduce emblems that readily identified flyers as Japanese to their own countrymen.

This came out as an ordinance issued by the Minister of the navy on April 30th, which I show below.

This required military and Gunzoku alike in primary and secondary crew positions to wear nationality emblems on their flight helmet, parachute harness and float vest.

The emblem for the right arm was to be 10 square centimeters, and for the top (slightly toward the rear) of the flight helmet, 8 square centimeters. On the back padding of the parachute harness, it was to be 12 square centimeters. The emblem for the left chest of the floating vest was to be 4 cm high and 7 cm wide, and as an exception, was to feature the rising sun naval ensign, instead of the Hinomaru.

As a rule, these emblems were to be in cloth patches, but for the flight helmet and float vest, paint application was allowed. Those patch sizes expressed in square centimeters can be pretty small in actual size, so the ordinance allowed the sizes to be scaled up or down at the discretion of the unit.

The army also followed the navy’s initiative at this time, and started with Hinomaru patches on the arm of their flight suits.

If you have flight gear with such patches, they are last-ditch items from the last 3 months of the war, not for anything like rescue at sea, earlier in the war.

But calling preventing yourself from being killed by your own countrymen as "last ditch" probably is a gross understatement.

[Long Shot]

Wow! Many, many years ago I had an IJN pilots float vest which had the same "rayed spokes" flag painted in the same location as this document! I always thought it was post war because it was not a 16 rayed flag and it was clearly hand painted - how crazy to learn 30 years later it was a super rare original painted ID. I'll look for some pictures but back then digital cameras were extremely expensive and very low resolution so these vest photo's would be prints off of negatives. Wish me luck finding them

[Alan M]

This article is now included in Nick's Master Reference to be found in the "sticky" list located at the top of the forum under the Heading "Uniforms" .

[RussM]

Great information Nick, it will also help date the occasional photos seen with the ID on the float vest etc.

I hope you can find your photos Long Shot!

[RussM]

These items were donated to the Auckland War Memorial Museum by Flying Officer Nobuya Kinase.

[RussM]