64th Air Regiment (Hiko Sentai)

War record

Jul 1937, its forerunner the 2nd Air Battalion deployed to north China (the 1938 air battles over Guide made the Army fighter arm's reputation at a stroke)→1 Aug 1938, the 64th Hiko Sentai formed→1939, Nomonhan (52 confirmed kills; the commander and company leaders themselves shot down and wounded)→Apr 1941, Major Tateo Kato took command→Dec 1941, war: Malaya, Singapore, the Palembang airborne operation, Java — citation after citation→Apr 1942, ambushed by the Flying Tigers over Loiwing, Burma, losing four→22 May 1942, Kato, hit while chasing a Blenheim off Akyab, rolled his burning fighter into the sea→carried the Burma air war to the end: night B-24 kills, ramming attacks→26 Apr 1944, flight leader Miyabe, alone, fought a B-29 — the Army's first→1945, to Indochina as the Southern Army's last remaining fighter unit→24 Aug 1945, flew a final formation of its 18 serviceable aircraft and closed its history (full-war record: 283 shot down, 25 of them unconfirmed, 144 destroyed on the ground; 122 pilots killed)

The unit song boasts of "citations seven times over" — but by the war's end the count had reached nine. No unit was so decorated, the book notes, printing the full list of all nine.