Aichi E13A Jake
The Aichi E13A, known to the Allies as the Jake, was a three-seat twin-float reconnaissance seaplane that became the Imperial Japanese Navy's standard shipboard scout of the Second World War. Designed by Aichi and first flown in 1938, it entered service in 1941 and flew from cruisers, battleships, seaplane tenders and shore bases until 1945, scouting for the Pearl Harbor attack force and searching at Midway. Production totalled 1,418 aircraft, kept in separate accountings by builder: 133 by Aichi, 1,237 by Kyushu Hikoki and 48 by the 11th Naval Air Arsenal at Hiro. Long-ranged but unarmoured, it also flew rescue, transport, anti-shipping and, at the end, kamikaze work, and a handful of surrendered aircraft were taken over by other navies after the war, France in Indochina among them.
Why It Mattered
The E13A was the Imperial Japanese Navy's standard long-range reconnaissance floatplane of the Pacific War, embarked in cruisers, battleships and seaplane tenders and flown from shore bases as well. History of War calls it the most important Japanese floatplane of the Second World War. A total of 1,418 were built, most of them not by Aichi but by Kyushu Hikoki, which produced 1,237. With an endurance of up to fifteen hours, the Jake gave the fleet its long-range eyes, scouting for the Pearl Harbor attack force and searching for the American fleet at Midway. It entered service in 1941 and was still flying reconnaissance, transport and attack work when the war ended in 1945.
Design Notes
In 1937 the Japanese Navy issued specifications for a new shipboard reconnaissance seaplane to replace the Kawanishi E7K2, first for a two-seat aircraft and then for a three-seat one. Aichi's design team, led by Kishiro Matsuo, answered the three-seat requirement with a larger development of its two-seat E12A, and the E13A prototype flew late in 1938. The result was a single-engine, twin-float monoplane with a crew of three, powered by a 1,060 hp Mitsubishi Kinsei 43 radial. In Aichi's own trials the bigger aircraft proved more stable and manoeuvrable than Nakajima's rival design, despite its greater size and weight. Naval pilots then tested it against Kawanishi's E13K during 1940, and that December the navy declared the E13A the winner and ordered it into production as the Navy Type 0 Reconnaissance Seaplane. Defensive armament was a single flexible machine gun in the rear cockpit, with up to 250 kg of bombs or depth charges carried externally; the design had no armour and no self-sealing fuel tanks. Late-war variants added air-to-surface radar, and some aircraft carried a flexible 20 mm cannon firing downwards through the fuselage for use against American PT boats.
Operational History
The first production aircraft joined cruisers and seaplane tenders off the coast of China in 1941, and the type's first combat missions were bombing raids against the Canton-Hankow railway. In December 1941, aircraft of the 8th Cruiser Division scouted for the Pearl Harbor attack force, and a couple of Jakes flew reconnaissance during the operations against the Hawaiian Islands on 7 December. At Midway the following June, E13As were embarked in the battleship Haruna and the cruisers Chikuma and Tone. Tone's No. 4 search plane found the American fleet on the morning of 4 June but failed to report its carriers, a failure History of War links to the confusion aboard the Japanese carriers shortly before three of them were set ablaze. As production stepped up in 1942 the E13A spread throughout the navy, and it could soon be found wherever the navy was operating. Alongside reconnaissance it flew air-sea rescue, staff transport and anti-shipping work, and bombing missions where Allied fighters were unlikely to appear. Its lack of protection left it very vulnerable when American fighters were encountered, yet it remained in use until the end of the war. In the last phase of the war many of the remaining aircraft were expended in kamikaze attacks.
Afterlife
The surrender left a handful of intact Jakes to other operators: at least eight were flown by the French naval air service in the First Indochina War between 1945 and 1947, and others are believed to have been operated by the Royal Thai Navy. One surrendered aircraft from Rabaul was flown to Jacquinot Bay by a New Zealand pilot; it was to have been shipped to New Zealand as a museum piece, but a lack of shipping space saw it abandoned there instead. What survives is mostly wreckage: examples have been located at Kavieng and Jacquinot Bay in New Guinea, and another wreck lies on land at an abandoned seaplane base on Lenger Island, off Pohnpei. One airframe was raised from the sea off Fukiage in Japan in 1992, largely intact, and is now displayed at the Bansei TokkÅ Peace Museum at Kaseda, set on sand to suggest the sea floor where it had rested.