Kawasaki
3 types · 0 airframes
Pre-1950 Narrative
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Aircraft Types
Kawasaki Ki-100
The Kawasaki Ki-100 was a Japanese Army fighter created in early 1945 by fitting a Mitsubishi radial engine to Ki-61 airframes left engineless by their unreliable liquid-cooled engines. Intended as a stopgap, it proved manoeuvrable, rugged and reliable, and Allied pilots found it a formidable opponent in the war's final months. Only one survives, on display at the RAF Museum London.
Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu Nick
The Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu ("Dragon Killer"), known to the Allies by the reporting name "Nick", was a two-seat, twin-engined heavy fighter built by Kawasaki for the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service in the Second World War. Conceived in the late 1930s as a long-range fighter in the class of the Messerschmitt Bf 110, it reached combat only in the autumn of 1942 after a long and troubled development, and proved unable to match agile single-engined fighters. It served instead in ground-attack and anti-shipping work, and, fitted with upward-firing cannon, as the Army's only night fighter to see action, defending the Japanese home islands against B-29 raids in 1944–45. Of the 1,700 built, a single example survives, at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center.
Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien
The Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien ("Swallow"), known to the Allies by the reporting name "Tony", was a single-seat fighter built by Kawasaki for the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service in the Second World War. Unusually for a Japanese design it was powered by a liquid-cooled engine, the Ha-40, a licence-built Daimler-Benz DB 601, and its long nose led Allied intelligence to mistake it first for a German and then for an Italian aircraft. Fast and well protected by Japanese standards, it fought from New Guinea in 1943 to the defence of Japan in 1945, but the Ha-40 proved unreliable and hard to maintain in the field. Only a handful of airframes survive.