Pearl Harbor Attack Relic #3: Data Stencil from D3A1 'Val' s/n (3)171
January 22, 2026
Sometimes you find something so historically important that you have to pinch yourself. This is one of those finds. My late friend Jim Lansdale spent much of his life studying the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941). It was his obsession. If there existed some little scrap of metal from one of the aircraft shot down that day, he knew all about it. He'd touched it. He had a folder in a file cabinet packed with photos of it. But the piece pictured here, that I just acquired from the grandson of the U.S. Navy Commander who salvaged it from Pearl Harbor the day after the attack, was not known to him. I wish Jim were alive to see this.
Described in family lore as a piece of 'Japanese Zero', it is actually from one of the eleven Japanese Type 99 D3A1 'Val' dive bombers that were shot down over Pearl on Dec. 7th. Of those eleven, six were recovered after the attack and evaluated by American intelligence. Of those, four have been identified by their serial numbers (3133, 3141, 3183, and 3185). Now we have documented a fifth - 3171, pictured here.
A translation of the stencil on the inside of this piece of aluminum skin reads: Type 99 艦爆 kanbaku Aichi Kokuki serial number 3171.
Much research remains to be done, but when a fragment such as this is re-discovered, after pinching myself, I have to share it
This piece will soon be on display in Zanesville, Ohio, along with our original A6M2 Model 21 Zero Fighter.
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