New Photos From Croydon

Amazing images from April, 1937 as the Kamikaze-go landed at Croydon, London. From my new friends at the HCAT Archives, Peter Skinner and Ian Forsyth.

Record breaking flight from Tokyo. Can you spot Tsukagoshi climbing out of the airplane in the first picture? That's the easy one. Finding Iinuma in the last image may be more difficult, what with all the London policemen escorting him. He smiles a lot, holding on to a bunch of flowers, and is rather sun burnt from the long flight over the desert. Don't you think he was the happiest man on earth, that day. It inspired my wish to write about his long flight from Japan to Europe.

And you can order my novel about it here, Kamikaze to Croydon.

Bonus image: I took this photo of Iinuma Masaaki's pilot licence at his museum in Nagano:

Comments

lidolani said…
I love the pic of the Ki-15 from the front. So sleek. Beautiful design.
Seeing Iinuma's license is cool. Big as a passport and very fancy. All I got from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 1978 was a printed paper card with my name and other details typed in. Now they make them out of plastic - like credit cards and driver licenses.
Great set of pictures. Iinuma looks like he just landed in Hawaii and got burried in leis. ;) No doubt he felt as though he was walking on clouds at that point.

Thanks for posting these, and thanks to your new friends at HCAT Archives.
9:29 am, November 30, 2018
Martin J Frid said…
Love the design, and that they had the courage to fly it all the way.

Flying that far, back then, must have been amazing. That is what I hope I managed to capture in my novel. Such a spirit.
12:55 am, December 05, 2018
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