AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 97 / 165

Plate 97 of 165 · Second World War · Fighter

Kawasaki Ki-100-Ib

Ki-100-Ib, painted as c/n 16336, the RAF Museum’s Kawasaki Ki-100-Ib, the only Ki-100 left in the world, one of the late-production fighters built in 1945 with the cut-down rear fuselage and all-round-vision canopy, brought to Britain after the war for evaluation, displayed for many years at Cosford and now in Hangar 5 at the RAF Museum in London: a single-seat army fighter of 39 ft 4 in span, the liquid-cooled Ki-61 Hien airframe re-engined with a Mitsubishi Ha-112-II fourteen-cylinder radial in a broad cowling with exhaust stacks in the gap behind it, two 20 mm Ho-5 cannon over the engine and two 12.7 mm Ho-103 machine guns in the wings, a bubble canopy and wide-track main wheels that retract inwards, shown standing tail-down with the hood closed: dark olive green over the upper surfaces and the whole fuselage, light grey under the wings and tailplane, yellow-orange identification strips on the inner wing leading edges with small red patches over the gun ports, plain red hinomaru without white borders on the fuselage sides and both surfaces of the wings, red walkway outlines on the wing roots, no codes or serial, light grey drop-tank racks under the wings and a red-brown three-blade propeller and spinner with yellow tips.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as c/n 16336, the RAF Museum’s Kawasaki Ki-100-Ib, the only Ki-100 left in the world, one of the late-production fighters built in 1945 with the cut-down rear fuselage and all-round-vision canopy, brought to Britain after the war for evaluation, displayed for many years at Cosford and now in Hangar 5 at the RAF Museum in London: a single-seat army fighter of 39 ft 4 in span, the liquid-cooled Ki-61 Hien airframe re-engined with a Mitsubishi Ha-112-II fourteen-cylinder radial in a broad cowling with exhaust stacks in the gap behind it, two 20 mm Ho-5 cannon over the engine and two 12.7 mm Ho-103 machine guns in the wings, a bubble canopy and wide-track main wheels that retract inwards, shown standing tail-down with the hood closed: dark olive green over the upper surfaces and the whole fuselage, light grey under the wings and tailplane, yellow-orange identification strips on the inner wing leading edges with small red patches over the gun ports, plain red hinomaru without white borders on the fuselage sides and both surfaces of the wings, red walkway outlines on the wing roots, no codes or serial, light grey drop-tank racks under the wings and a red-brown three-blade propeller and spinner with yellow tips. 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 (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Ki-100-Ib modelled here.

History

The Ki-100

The Ki-100 was born of an engine shortage. Kawasaki’s Ki-61 Hien, the only Japanese fighter of the war with a liquid-cooled inline engine, was being built in its improved Ki-61-II form with the Ha-140, a licence-built development of the Daimler-Benz DB 601, but the engine was unreliable and production fell far behind. When American bombing destroyed the Akashi engine plant in January 1945, Kawasaki was left with some 275 finished airframes and nothing to put in them.

The army ordered them fitted with the Mitsubishi Ha-112-II, a fourteen-cylinder radial of 1,500 hp that was in good supply. The radial was far wider than the slim fuselage it had to meet, and Kawasaki’s engineers worked out the join by studying a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A that had been sent to Japan for evaluation in 1943, fairing the cowling into the fuselage and using individual exhaust stacks behind it. The first conversion flew on 1 February 1945, and it proved lighter, easier to fly and more dependable than the inline-engined fighter it replaced. Production was ordered at once as the Ki-100.

About 272 engineless Ki-61-II airframes were converted as the Ki-100-Ia. Kawasaki then built about 118 new Ki-100-Ib with a cut-down rear fuselage and an all-round-vision canopy, before bombing stopped production, and three Ki-100-II prototypes were flown with a turbocharged engine for combat at high altitude. Units defending the home islands flew the type from the spring of 1945 against B-29s, Mustangs and carrier-borne Hellcats, and it was regarded as one of the best Japanese army fighters of the war, though there were never enough of them, nor enough fuel and experienced pilots, to make a difference.

This airframe

Ki-100-Ib c/n 16336

16336The airframe modelled

Kawasaki Ki-100-Ib c/n 16336 is the only Ki-100 left in the world. It is one of the late-production aircraft built new in 1945 with the cut-down rear fuselage and bubble canopy, and it was among the Japanese aircraft brought to Britain after the surrender for technical evaluation. It passed into the care of the RAF Museum, spent many years on display at Cosford, where around 1989–90 it carried a white “24” on the fin, and is now shown at the RAF Museum in London. Its record before it reached Britain is not well documented. The model shows it as displayed in London: dark olive green over the upper surfaces and the whole fuselage, light grey under the wings and tailplane, yellow-orange identification strips along the inner wing leading edges with small red patches over the gun ports, plain red hinomaru without white borders on the fuselage sides and on both surfaces of the wings, red walkway outlines on the wing roots, light grey drop-tank racks under the wings and a red-brown propeller and spinner with yellow tips. No codes or serial appear in photographs of it in its present scheme, so none are painted. The exhaust stacks are modelled from drawings, as photographs show only the dark gap behind the cowling.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum London

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Ki-100 in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 165 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.