Also useful were Yohei Hinoki's books, Tsubasa no kessen (Desperate Winged Combat, 1984) and Hayabusa sentotai cho Kato (Commander Kato's Falcon Corps, 1987), translated by Miyuki Rogers. Where appropriate, I have fleshed out the Japanese accounts with information from English-language sources. There's a follow-up link at the bottom of each file, so you can read them as a continuous story.

• 1. December 1941: the early skirmishes
• Updated: 2. Ordeal of the 62nd Sentai, Dec. 23
• 3. The 7th Hikodan to Rangoon, Dec. 23
• 4. Rangoon: the Christmas raid
• 5. The January air battle for Rangoon
• 6. Putting the pressure on Mingaladon
• 7. January 26-29: furballs over Mingaladon
• 8. 'Numbers are not important'
• 9. Putting the squeeze on Rangoon, February 1942
• 10. Rangoon occupied by the Japanese
• 11. Magwe airfield under attack
• 12. Werewolf Hurricanes of the 64th Sentai
• 13. Last battles in Burma: Chiang Mai and afterward
• 14. Duel at Loiwing, April 8-10
• 15. Duel at Loiwing, April 10 afternoon
• 16. Last days in Burma: the great Lashio Turkey Shoot
• 17. Last days in Burma: Kato meets Sgt. McLuckie
• 18. Sgt. McLuckie gets lucky (artist's conception)

A word from Don Fodo :)

When we got to page 122 of Burma Air War, I was astonished to hear Difei relate that a certain Don Fodo—"an American air and space history expert"—had found information in a newspaper that the author wasn't able to locate. There followed my story of an army cooperation aircraft being shot down by the AVG. (I got the story from a 1942 issue of Japan Times and Advertiser, an English-language daily published in Tokyo throughout the war.) Such are the hazards of working with secondary sources—you might find yourself quoting somebody who, it turns out, is actually quoting you!

For those interested in such things: ideograms can't render foreign words with much accuracy, so the Japanese developed katakana characters for this purpose. Reading from the top, there's a hard doh sound followed by nn to create "Don" (Dan). The dot separates the two words. My family name (Ford) is more complicated: the first two characters are eff and oo, but they're followed by a pronunciation character that causes the syllable to be pronounced as "foh". Then there's a repeat of doh, so it comes out as "Fodo".