Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2014

 

The Japanese Navy's Early Aerial Warfare in China and Its Effects (1931-1932)    

(Abstract)

 

Yuan Chengyi

 

In the early 1930s, Japan's air power grew rapidly as the Navy's air arm expanded. At the time of the Mukden incident (the September 18th Incident of 1931), the Navy's air corps under the command of the Kwantung Army were thrown into combat in Jinzhou and elsewhere in the northeast, ushering in the indiscriminate bombing of Chinese targets. During the January 28th Incident in 1932, the air corps engaged the Kuomintang air force on several occasions in Shanghai and nearby Suzhou and Hangzhou in tandem with ground operations, carrying out large-scale, indiscriminate bombing of many civilian facilities and civilians, including foreign concessions. Although such actions were condemned by international society, the condemnation was neither forceful nor consistent, so it did not provide an effective restraint on Japan. Japan’s initial experience of aerial warfare with China stimulated its desire to develop Japanese military aviation and fostered its widespread use of savage and indiscriminate bombing once the all-out war of aggression against China had been launched. The Kuomintang government, keenly aware that this new mode of fighting would pose a threat to China's defenses in future, began to take measures to set up anti-aircraft defenses to deal with Japan's aerial invasion.