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xj900uk -> RE: Ki61 Hien / Tony (3/16/2009 2:33:41 PM)
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The Ki61 Hien/Tony was actually a rough copy of the Me109, in fact when it first appeared US observers were convinced the JAAF was actually using Messerschmitts! Actually the airframe is pretty much Japanese design, but the engine was a direct licenced copy of the inverted fuel-injection Daimler so used by the Me's, I do also believe this was the only water-cooled in-line fighter to go into large-scale service with the JAAF during WWII, but I could be wrong.
The Ki61 Hien is also an example of why the Japanese were doomed to loose the production war with the US. They had a fairly good engine there with a proven track-record, but they could never reproduce it properly in their factories with a result that the Tony always had loads of problems with it's 'unreliable' in-line engine and was never popular with either pilots or ground-crews, who hated the idea of a streamlined water-cooled engine. Also the planes tended to be delivered in a poor, unfinished or unreliable state from the factories so most went straight to the dump to await 'spare parts' which arrived at a trickle. It also goes to show that the Japanese had a very crude grasp of stockpiling spares and supplies, as once a plane was deemed 'unservicable' the Japanese always grounded it until the spares arrived from the Homeland, which could be months. nobody ever came up wtiht he idea of taking an inventory of what might be needed in advance and mass-advance order, or even keep a list of which planes were unreliable and waiting for which spares, and swap items around between planes (if necessary, canniabalise) to keep as many in the air as was possible.
For the record, I think the last production models (aka Swallows I think) were finished off with radial engines after the factory producing the in-line engines on mainland Japanes was bombed flat by B29's, & finally somebody had the good sense to marry up engineless airframes with a stockpile of old radial engines that were lying around somewhere in order to get somethign in the air
For the record, the Hien/Tony was an unpopular mount that never quite deserved its bad publicity or aura constantly sorrounding it. With the in-line engine it was quite fast, and unlike many other Jap fighters of the period actually had some armour plate, bullet-proof glass & self-sealing tanks from the word go. Also its in-line fuel-injection engine (when working) gave it a distinct edge above 25,000 feet particularly when up against US planes that still used the old-fashioned but more reliable float-carburettors.
Armament was quite good - early models had 4 x 12.7mm MG's (rough equivalent of the US 50's), later ones were able to take wing-mounted cannons.
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