(Image: via Wikipedia, public domain)
This forlorn collection of Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters and other redundant planes, abandoned by Japan at the end of World War Two, offers a fairly typical depiction of the aircraft graveyards that existed in many countries when hostilities came to an end. Pictured is a scene at Naval Air Station Atsugi, a facility established by the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1938 and today the largest US Navy base in the Pacific.
The historic photo was taken after Atsugi had been captured by American forces in 1945. Battered the decommissioned, the abandoned warplanes await their fate, most likely mass scrapping and recycling of their parts for other, more peaceful purposes. When the war came to an end aircraft of all types were scrapped in their thousands, some of them fresh off the production line, while the gutted hulks of others clung to life in corners of lonely airfields for years to come.
Today, the scene at Naval Air Station Atsugi is rather different (see below). But its wartime history will never be forgotten. It was from here that the 302 Naval Aviation Corps – one of Japan’s most feared fighter units – operated, shooting down over 300 American bombers during the incendiary attacks of 1945, which helped bring Japan to the negotiation table. Seventy years later, the old adversaries share the base as allies.
(Image: US Navy, public domain)
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