JAAF deployments, Dec 1941 - Mar 1942

One of the best resources I had in writing Flying Tigers was the 1970 Japan Defense Agency history of the air war in Southeast Asia, Nanpo shinko rikugun koku sakusen. The maps were especially useful. Now these maps have been reproduced and annotated by Kameta Junichi and Jeffrey Stickley, who are researching a Flying Tigers war game based on that time period:

23 December 1941

22 January 1941

18 February 1942

3 March 1942

In the pages that follow, Jeff and Jun use literal translations of Japanese military terms. For my part, I prefer to translate hikoshidan as theater air force, hikodan as area air force (I generally skipped this command level in my book), sentai as group, and chutai as squadron. (Note that the Japanese units were generally smaller than their American or British equivalents.)