50th Air Regiment (Hiko Sentai)

War record

Sep 1940, formed at Pingtung, Formosa, around the fighter company of the 8th Sentai→Dec 1941, the Philippines campaign (convoy cover from the cramped Basco strip on Batan Island)→Jan 1942, switched to Burma; the Rangoon air battles→Apr–Jun 1942, re-equipped at home with the "Hayabusa"→26 Jan 1943, Sergeant Satoru Anabuki made Burma's first daytime B-24 kill→8 Oct 1943, Anabuki alone downed three B-24s (one by ramming) and two P-38s in a single fight, receiving a rare individual citation while still alive→5 Dec 1943, joined the only joint Army–Navy strike on Calcutta→raided the India–China air-supply route (the so-called "crossroad killings")→1944, carried the Imphal campaign from the air; unit citation from the 3rd Air Army→Aug 1944, re-equipped with the Type 4 fighter→28 Mar 1945, commander Major Tatsujiro Fujii and his flight of four died shielding a convoy with their own aircraft; an individual citation and a second unit citation followed→Jul 1945, to Formosa; still standing by to escort Okinawa special-attack sorties at war's end→demobilised Feb 1946 (the citation credits 237 aircraft destroyed or damaged over Burma, against 82 aircrew killed)

In late October 1943, on word that Admiral Mountbatten, the Allied supreme commander, would fly from India to China, eight picked crews lay in wait at Myitkyina for three days in relays. They downed several transports — but Mountbatten's own aircraft slipped through, to the airmen's dismay. The book calls this unit "a plain, little-known presence" beside the famous 64th, "though its record was in no way inferior."