YOSHITOSHI TOKUGAWA 1884-1963

Yoshitoshi Tokugawa "Tokugawa at the controls of a Farman, possibly taken in France or Japan." Photo & legend from Gordon Andreassend, 7-24-06

 

TOKUGAWA GOES TO FRANCE, 1909       In 1909 the Japanese Army recognized the importance of aviation research. Thereupon, the Japanese Army sent Captain Yoshitoshi Tokugawa to France and Captain Kunazo Hino to Germany. Their purpose was to learn to fly and to purchase suitable airplanes.      In the second half of 1910, Captain Tokugawa purchased a Henry Farman biplane. Captain Hino purchased a Hans Grade monoplane, which was built by the Grade Company of Germany. After they both returned home. the planes were assembed and glide tests were carried out. Next, both airplanes were flown successfully at the Yoyogi Parade Ground in Tokyo on December 19, 1910. These flights were made only seven years after the Wright Brothers flight in December, 1903.      Officially, the first powered flight in Japan was made by Captain Tokugawa in the Henry Farman biplane. Captain Kunazo Hino flew the Hans Grade monoplane successfully during the same period. It is reported that Captain Kino flew his plane a distance of 2,300 feet in 20 seconds, a speed of 27 kilometers per hour.      Incidentally it is said that the price of the Hans Grade monoplane at that time was 6,569 yen 1 unit.   Editor's Note: These paragraphs were taken from the complete article on the Hans Grade monoplane which was found on the website of the Kakamigahara aerospace museum. Unfortunately the website seems to have disappeared from the net. (10-17-03)

 

TOKUGAWA SETS RECORD IN JAPAN, 1911      On April 23, 1911, Captain Yoshitoshi Tokugawa, a twenty-seven-year-old first lieutenant in the Japanese engineer corps, set a Japanese record with the Blériot, flying 48 miles in 1 hour 9 minutes 30 seconds. These pioneer flights antedated by many months the appearances of Thomas Baldwin and other American flyers who began touring Japan for exhibition purposes in the latter part of 1911.

 

The Rise and Fall of The Imperial Japanese Air Forces by Alvin D. Coox Courtesy of the Aerospace Historian, Vol 27, NO. 2, Summer/June 1980      Japanese military aviation history begins with the construction of primitive balloons in 1877-1878 and the purchase of a French model. The first successful Japanese-manned balloon went aloft in 1901. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 a provisional Army balloon unit operated against Port Arthur.      Interest in heavier-than-air machines was stimulated by the seminal study brought out by an Army General Staff (AGS) captain (Akiharu Kawada) in 1909, dealing with air ordnance and three-dimensional warfare. Within a year, a joint army-navy-civil research committee had sent one civilian engineer to Europe to study airfields.      By early 1910, the Japanese Army had tried to put together a domestic monoplane (Type Hino; wingspan 8 meters, length 3 meters); it did not fly. Later that year, the Nakahara biplane (powered by a 25 hp French engine) was finished; it, too, did not fly.      The Japanese Army decided to send two officers to Europe and America to evaluate purchase possibilities and to study flying techniques. Capt. Kumazo Hino looked over the German situation; Capt. Yoshitoshi Tokugawa, the French and American. In due course they rcommended that the Army purchase two French models (Farman and Bleriot), one German (Grade), and one American (Wright). Back home in Japan, by the end of 1910 Hino flew the German plane over the Yoyogi training grounds in Tokyo for 1 minute, 20 seconds, a distance of 1,000 meters at 20 meters' altitude. Tokugawa flew the assembled Farman for 3 minutes at 70 meter's altitude for a distance of 3,000 meters.      Continued

IJN, Maurice-Farman Seaplane, 1912 Courtesy of the Aerospace Historian, Vol 27, NO. 2, Summer/June 1980

Rise of Japanese Naval Air Force      Like the Army, the Japanese Navy began its aviation history by building unsuccessful observation balloons ca. 1877. A Navy General Staff (NGS) officer, LCDR Eisuke Yamamoto, in 1909 made the pioneering recommendation that the Navy enter the field of fixed-wing aviation development as soon as possible. After the creation of the Naval Aeronautical Research Committee in 1912, six IJN officers were dispatched to France and the United States. They were to recommend purchase of seaplanes, and were to learn to fly and maintain them. Two of these IJN officers flew Farman and Curtiss seaplanes from the new Naval air station at Oppaman near Yokosuka (November 1912). Domestic training of IJN pilots proceeded on a small scale.      In 1913 the first Japanese seaplane tender, Wakamiya Maru, entered service. It saw combat action against the Germans at Tsingtao in the fall of 1914, when four of the IJN seaplanes conducted reconnaissance and bombing sorties, in the course of which a little German minelayer was sunk.      Continued

 

I have been advised that the date was April 17, 1963, via the Yahoo website. I am now making a search to locate his grave site. via email from Gordon Andreassend, 5-25-06

 

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