Armor behind pilot

Armor of Zero

^{Ikari p.165}

Date	Type	Equipment
1944 Apr	52-otsu(A6M5b)	armor glass canopy, fire extinguisher
1944 Sep	52-hei(A6M5c)	armor behind pilot, inner self-sealed fuel tank

Fighter Nate(Ki-27) of IJA fought with I-16 of Russia, when Nomonhan Incident ocurred. IJA Air Force lost a lot of pilots on the battle. So the next type Oscar(Ki-43) was equiped with armor behind the pilots and self sealing fuel tank. Although Morimoto wrote that IJA did not learn modern war at all, It is not true about armor of fighters. But I admit IJA did not have very serious concern about loss of pilots. Osaka Asahi Newspaper wrote it was necessary to mobilize IJA for modern wars on 4 October 1939^[1].

IJN also fought with I-16 in China, otherwise Fighters of IJN did not equipped armor or self-sealed tank. IJA thought cool that it was diffcult to grow pilots in a short time than IJN. IJN realized armor of fighters in the air battle of Solomons. Zero equipped in 1944 as the table shows. As for bombers, Betty eqipped armor plates and self-sealed tanks in 1943. While B-17 had been already equipped with both in 1941.
Betty

Genda insisted the necessity in his report about Battle of Britain in fall of 1940. Genda p.238

Is it true?

Armor for Children's day

Decoration for Children's Day	Flower called ayame

I do not know when commons of Japan began to decorate miniture of armors of lord class samurai. The photos show my son's decoration which my wife decorated this year. The right photo shows flowers called ayame which my wife arranged. The ayame were grown in my backyard. Japanese people loved it as the flower of May. The flower appears in tradtional card game. Ogata Korin painted ayame in his style

[1] Nomonhan Jiken Senbotsu-sha su