Today’s reel offers a rare sound-on-film interview of a pilot that crawled from the wreckage of a captured Japanese aircraft. The pilot, Lt. Bernard D. Dyrlands, was apparently ferrying a captured Japanese Army “Nate” fighter for analysis by Technical Air Intelligence personnel. The plane developed fuel system problems and had to land immediately. He crashed upside down near an Army Air Forces (USAAF) airfield in Burma and emerged without a scratch! The second half of the film shows the crash site. The plane has seen better days!
The AAF cataloguers described the film as follows:
Clearly, the AAF cataloguers, probably working after the war, without access to the photographers “dope sheets” totally missed the context. Almost certainly, they never listened to the recorded audio!
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