The Japanese military aircraft designation systems for the Imperial period (pre-1945) are rather difficult to keep track of, primarily because multiple designation systems were in use by each armed service. This is what led to the Allies' use of code names during World War II, and these code names are still better known in English-language texts than the real Japanese names for the aircraft. The confusion is not so much that any of the designation schemes are difficult, but that a number of different schemes were simultaneously in use.
Read more about Japanese Military Aircraft Designation Systems: Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, Imperial Japanese Army Air Service, Designation Table
Famous quotes containing the words japanese, military, designation and/or systems:
“I am a lantern—
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“In a period of a people’s life that bears the designation “transitional,” the task of a thinking individual, of a sincere citizen of his country, is to go forward, despite the dirt and difficulty of the path, to go forward without losing from view even for a moment those fundamental ideals on which the entire existence of the society to which he belongs is built.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)
“No civilization ... would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)