World War II
It is perhaps best known as a term used during World War II by the military of the Empire of Japan, for Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF) and Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service (IJNAS) military aviation units equivalent to a group or wing in other air forces. However, the term had slightly different meanings in the IJAAF and the IJNAS.
An IJAAF Sentai was made up of two to four squadrons (chūtai). In the IJAAF, two or more Sentai comprised a hikōdan (air brigade). In the later stages of World War II, the IJAAF abolished chūtai and divided its sentai into hikōtai (flying units) and seibitai (maintenance units). A sentai commander (sentaichō) was generally a Lieutenant Colonel.
In the IJNAS, a sentai was a larger unit: a kōkūtai was the equivalent of an IJAAF sentai. Several sentai made up a kantai (air fleet). In the IJNAS, a Sentaichō was usually a Naval Captain.
Read more about this topic: Sentai
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice—is often the means of their regeneration.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)