AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 121 / 339

Plate 121 of 339 · Second World War · Carrier dive-bomber

Aichi D3A1 Type 99 Carrier Bomber

D3A1 AI-208, painted as Aichi D3A1 Type 99 Carrier Bomber ‘AI-208’ of the aircraft carrier Akagi, Imperial Japanese Navy, as photographed in 1941–42: a two-seat carrier dive-bomber (Allied reporting name ‘Val’) with a Mitsubishi Kinsei fourteen-cylinder radial, a broad elliptical low wing spanning 14.37 m, a fixed undercarriage with the main wheels in streamlined spats, dive brakes under the wings, a long glazed canopy and a long dorsal fin, shown tail down on its wheels with a 250 kg bomb on its centreline crutch: light grey-green overall, a black cowling and anti-glare panel, plain red hinomaru on the fuselage sides and above and below the wings, Akagi’s single red band round the rear fuselage, ‘AI-208’ in black on both sides of the fin, and bare-metal propeller blades with red tip bands (no D3A survives; shape from a D3A1 three-view scaled to the published dimensions and checked against period photographs; the photographs are black and white, so the grey-green is the navy’s standard colour and the propeller bands follow standard practice).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Aichi D3A1 Type 99 Carrier Bomber ‘AI-208’ of the aircraft carrier Akagi, Imperial Japanese Navy, as photographed in 1941–42: a two-seat carrier dive-bomber (Allied reporting name ‘Val’) with a Mitsubishi Kinsei fourteen-cylinder radial, a broad elliptical low wing spanning 14.37 m, a fixed undercarriage with the main wheels in streamlined spats, dive brakes under the wings, a long glazed canopy and a long dorsal fin, shown tail down on its wheels with a 250 kg bomb on its centreline crutch: light grey-green overall, a black cowling and anti-glare panel, plain red hinomaru on the fuselage sides and above and below the wings, Akagi’s single red band round the rear fuselage, ‘AI-208’ in black on both sides of the fin, and bare-metal propeller blades with red tip bands (no D3A survives; shape from a D3A1 three-view scaled to the published dimensions and checked against period photographs; the photographs are black and white, so the grey-green is the navy’s standard colour and the propeller bands follow standard practice). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.1 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (D3A1 & D3A2 (Allied name ‘Val’)); engine, crew and dimensions are for the D3A1 AI-208 modelled here.

History

The D3A1 ‘Val’

In 1936 the Imperial Japanese Navy asked for a new carrier dive-bomber to replace its biplanes, and Aichi, Nakajima and Mitsubishi answered. Aichi’s design was a low-wing, all-metal two-seater with a long glazed canopy and a broad elliptical wing that owed a good deal to the Heinkel He 70, which Aichi knew well. To save weight and complication it kept a fixed undercarriage, with the main wheels in streamlined spats, and it had dive brakes under the wings and a swinging crutch that threw the bomb clear of the propeller in a steep dive. The first prototype flew in January 1938. It was underpowered and unstable in turns, so the second had a Mitsubishi Kinsei radial, a larger wing and a long dorsal fin, and it beat Nakajima’s design to be ordered as the Navy Type 99 Carrier Bomber Model 11, the D3A1, in December 1939.

The D3A1 first saw action from land bases in China, and by late 1941 it equipped the dive-bomber units of all six of the fleet carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December, where 129 of them took part. In the months that followed it bombed Darwin, Rabaul and Java, and in April 1942 the carriers raided Ceylon: on 5 April their D3As sank the heavy cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire south of the island, and on 9 April they sank the carrier HMS Hermes and her escort, the destroyer HMAS Vampire. Its crews were among the most accurate dive-bombers of the war, and the Allies gave it the reporting name ‘Val’.

Those crews could not be replaced. Heavy losses at the Coral Sea, Midway and in the battles around Guadalcanal cost the navy most of its experienced dive-bomber pilots, and from 1942 the D3A2, with a more powerful Kinsei 54 and more fuel, took over from the D3A1. The type was slow and lightly protected, and from 1943 the much faster Yokosuka D4Y Suisei replaced it on the carriers, leaving it to land-based units, training and finally kamikaze attacks in 1944 and 1945. In all 1,486 were built. No complete D3A survives: wrecks remain on Pacific islands, a few are in private hands for restoration, and none is in a UK museum.

This airframe

D3A1 ‘AI-208’, Akagi

AI-208The airframe modelled

AI-208 was an early D3A1 of the second dive-bomber chutai on the carrier Akagi, the flagship of the force that attacked Pearl Harbor, and the clearest photograph of any single D3A1 with a readable tail code shows it in flight in 1941–42. Its crew may have flown it to Pearl Harbor, though some records put them in AI-218 that day. No D3A survives and none is in a UK museum, so the model shows the D3A1 that the photographs record best, as it appears in that photograph, which is confirmed by another of its sister AI-207 during the Indian Ocean raid in April 1942: light grey-green overall, a black cowling and anti-glare panel, plain red hinomaru on the fuselage sides and above and below the wings, Akagi’s single red band round the rear fuselage and ‘AI-208’ in black on the fin. It carries a 250 kg bomb on its centreline crutch, as for a strike. Its shape comes from a D3A1 three-view scaled to the published dimensions and checked against period photographs. The photographs are black and white, so the grey-green is the navy’s standard colour rather than one matched to this aircraft, and the red tip bands on the propeller follow standard practice.

Where to see one

Not on charge

No complete D3A survives. Wrecks remain on Pacific islands and in private hands for restoration.

All 339 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.