The broken and rusted engine of an Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) Mitsubishi Ki-51, also known as a Type 99 attack aircraft, was recovered from a construction site in Toa Payoh in 1988 and was recently put on display at Fort Siloso in Sentosa.
The engine, which once powered a plane from Japan’s 27th Hiko Sentai (Flying Regiment) that threatened Singapore’s defenders, now sits on a porch outside the old Fort Siloso store.
Although it has an aerial shelter, the steel piece is exposed to direct sunlight as well as rain.
Kevin Peter Blackburn, an associate professor of history at the National Institute of Education, said it’s preferable for the engine to be displayed indoors to extend its lifespan.
“It would have less of a tendency to get worse if it was done indoors. However, most of the damage appears to have been caused during the war and remained buried until 1988. “
Compared to the abundant literature on the 1941 Japanese bombing crusade against Singapore and Malaya, which targeted strategic sites such as ports, airfields, and defensive strongpoints, little attention has been paid to the role played by their other aircraft in directly offering the invading troops.
Still, the Type 99 attack aircraft is one of the key aircraft in Japan’s crusade to capture the Malay Peninsula, Australian War Memorial (AWM) curator Garth O’Connell said.
He described the missions flown through those aircraft as complicated tableaux at low altitudes, where the threat of enemy anti-aircraft fire is far more dangerous than in high-altitude missions.
“The Type 99 took part in low-level reconnaissance missions and ground attacks with guns and bombs from northern Malaysia to Singapore, and flew daily missions harassing Indian, British and Australian ground forces to maintain the general’s ‘engine load’. Yamashita,” O’Connell said.
He told The Sunday Times that an Australian soldier in the Australian 8th Division protecting Tengah airfield in February 1942 told him that nearby Japanese planes were constantly overhead us looking for targets of opportunity.
General Tomoyuki Yamashita, also known as the Tiger of Malaysia, the commander who led the IJA’s conquest of Malaya and Singapore.
Thanks to British anti-aircraft fire, this fighter plane met its demise.
When structural paints from the engine and a bent propeller were discovered in 1988, ST interviewed a 56-year-old resident who lived in an apartment next door to Jalan Rajah and said he had noticed a Japanese plane shot down in the war when he was just 8 years old. old man.
“It crashed into what was then a swamp and collapsed,” said devoted instructor Panna Dhipo.
Although not saluted, the 27th Regiment and its attack planes played a fatal role in the invasion of Singapore. A report on fuel and ammunition expenditures from the Japan Center for Asian Historical Archives at the National Archives of Japan showed that the 27th Regiment expended 93,000 devices. Bullets from guns the Malay campaign.
It is the second-largest IJA air unit involved in the campaign, eclipsing even the Japanese fighter sets involved in dogfights against the British-led Commonwealth air forces protecting Malaya and Singapore.
Lately, there have been no complete examples of the Type 99 attack aircraft known in the world. A salvaged and restored specimen, containing refurbished pieces, is in a museum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
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