[Milsurplus] WWII Japanese VHF?

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

On 5/19/05, Hue Miller <kargo_cult at msn.com> wrote:
> Dan, methinks you're kinda missing my point.
> What i want to see is some interview with the Japanese pilots from island bases,
> where they say, "Well, we were all going to sit this one out, but when we heard
> Pappy's insults over our radio, we got all riled up and decided we just weren't going
> to take it anymore,  so we all ran out and jumped in our Zeros."

Hue - 

I agree in principal with what you're saying about it seeming pretty
'movie-esque' in appearance, I thought the same sort of thing until
hearing accounts from one or two of the original squadron pilots. They
did indeed state that Pappy would get on the radio and harass the
Japanese to get them to come up and fight. I took this to mean that
the Japanese were normally airborne to intercept them before they got
to the area, and on these occasions they were not until prompted.
Whether this was due to Pappy's comments or just not knowing they were
coming is unknown to me. But there are indeed statements on record
from on scene witnesses that it did happen, and did have the desired
result.

> BTW, i recalled that Hans Rudel, in his book "Stuka Pilot", mentions on the
> Eastfront hearing Russian ground-air fighter direction communications over
> his aircraft's radio. I tend to believe this account, because the Stuka radio, at
> least the early model radio was the FuG3, which was a TRF, and it wasn't totally
> unheard of for some Germans and Russians to be familiar with each other's
> language. 

There are also some accounts of the germans doing this with allied
pilots, either radar operators from the Kammhuber Line or perhaps
ground operators after D-Day. Certainly plenty of Brits and Germans
were very familiar with each others languages as well as aircraft,
geography, and so on.

As far as the original topic, I often wonder how many fighter pilots
would know if their radios were HF or VHF? More likely to me, only
whether they worked or didn't, a specific channel number they used and
so on. I would suspect that radio operators in bomber crews knew much
more about their gear simply because that was their main job, not
flying and shooting down enemy aircraft with radio as an ancillary
item.

~ Todd,  KA1KAQ