Tuesday, March 3, 2015

The Ki-100


The Ki-100, which was a development of the Ki-61 "Tony". Due to difficulties in keeping up with engine production late in the war (resulting in large numbers of engineless airframes kept in storage), engineers at Kawasaki fitted a Mitsubishi air-cooled radial to a basic Ki-61. The results were outstanding and orders were immediately given to convert all the airframes in storage to the radial engines.

This new fighter was so good that purpose built production was then begun with a cut down rear fuselage and "bubble" canopy ... called Ki-100-I-Otsu, this was possibly the best Japanese fighter to reach service. 271 of the conversions were built as well as 118 of the Otsu model.

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