AP 118 · No. 11 Section II · Aircraft Plate 137 / 356

Plate 137 of 356 · Second World War · Heavy fighter and night fighter

Kawasaki Ki-45 KAI Toryu

Ki-45 KAI ‘40’, painted as Kawasaki Ki-45 KAI Toryu ‘40’ of the Shinten Seikutai, the B-29 air-to-air ramming flight of the Japanese Army’s 53rd Hiko Sentai, photographed at Matsudo, near Tokyo, in 1945: a two-seat twin-engined heavy fighter with two Mitsubishi Ha-102 fourteen-cylinder radials driving three-bladed propellers, a 37 mm cannon in the nose, a long glazed canopy over the pilot and radio operator and a wing spanning 15 m, shown tail down on its wheels: dark green all over the fuselage, nacelles and upper surfaces, a white home-defence band round the rear fuselage carrying the red hinomaru, three white forward-pointing Shinten chevrons ahead of it, the 53rd Sentai’s white ‘5’ emblem across the fin and rudder with ‘40’ below it, yellow identification strips on the inner wing leading edges and brown spinners and propellers; the grey-green wing undersides, which the photograph does not show, follow standard practice (shape from a Ki-45 KAI three-view scaled to the published span, checked against a second three-view, a wartime US recognition silhouette and photographs).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Kawasaki Ki-45 KAI Toryu ‘40’ of the Shinten Seikutai, the B-29 air-to-air ramming flight of the Japanese Army’s 53rd Hiko Sentai, photographed at Matsudo, near Tokyo, in 1945: a two-seat twin-engined heavy fighter with two Mitsubishi Ha-102 fourteen-cylinder radials driving three-bladed propellers, a 37 mm cannon in the nose, a long glazed canopy over the pilot and radio operator and a wing spanning 15 m, shown tail down on its wheels: dark green all over the fuselage, nacelles and upper surfaces, a white home-defence band round the rear fuselage carrying the red hinomaru, three white forward-pointing Shinten chevrons ahead of it, the 53rd Sentai’s white ‘5’ emblem across the fin and rudder with ‘40’ below it, yellow identification strips on the inner wing leading edges and brown spinners and propellers; the grey-green wing undersides, which the photograph does not show, follow standard practice (shape from a Ki-45 KAI three-view scaled to the published span, checked against a second three-view, a wartime US recognition silhouette and photographs). 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 (Ki-45 KAI (Allied name ‘Nick’)); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Ki-45 KAI ‘40’ modelled here.

History

The Ki-45 KAI ‘Nick’

In 1937 the Japanese Army, impressed by the long-range twin-engined ‘destroyer’ fighters being built in Europe such as the Messerschmitt Bf 110, asked Kawasaki for a two-seat twin-engined fighter of its own. The first Ki-45 prototype was finished in January 1939, but its Nakajima engines were unreliable and its nacelles caused so much drag that it was barely faster than the single-engined fighters it was meant to outclass. Kawasaki’s designer Takeo Doi reworked it with new engines, a slimmer fuselage and straight-tapered wings, and this Ki-45 KAI was ordered into production as the Army Type 2 Two-Seat Fighter. It was named Toryu, and the Allies called it ‘Nick’.

The Ki-45 KAI went into action in 1942 in China, Burma and New Guinea, and proved more useful against bombers and ships than in dogfights with Allied fighters. Later versions carried a 37 mm cannon in the nose, and some had two 20 mm cannon firing upwards and forwards from behind the cockpit to attack bombers from below, the method Japanese night fighters copied from the Germans.

From 1944 the Ki-45 was the Army’s main defence against the Boeing B-29 Superfortress over Japan. Ki-45s of the 4th Sentai met the first B-29 raid on the Japanese home islands, against the Yawata steelworks on the night of 15–16 June 1944, and as the raids grew, some units formed special flights, the Shinten Seikutai, whose stripped-down fighters tried to ram the bombers. About 1,700 Ki-45s were built, and the only one to survive, a Ki-45 KAI-Hei, is in the store of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in the United States.

This airframe

Ki-45 KAI ‘40’, Shinten Seikutai, 53rd Sentai

40The airframe modelled

‘40’ is a Ki-45 KAI of the Shinten Seikutai, the ramming flight of the Japanese Army’s 53rd Hiko Sentai, a night-fighter unit defending Tokyo from Matsudo airfield in Chiba, photographed side-on there in 1945. It is modelled because the only surviving Ki-45 is stored, incomplete, in the United States, and ‘40’ is the Ki-45 KAI whose own markings are most clearly photographed. None is in a UK museum. The model shows it standing tail down on its wheels: dark green over the fuselage, nacelles and upper surfaces, a white home-defence band round the rear fuselage carrying the red hinomaru, three white forward-pointing chevrons ahead of it, the mark of the Shinten flight, the 53rd Sentai’s white ‘5’ emblem across the fin and rudder with ‘40’ below it, yellow identification strips on the inner leading edges and brown spinners and propellers. It has the 37 mm nose cannon of the KAI-Hei, but no upward-firing guns, which the Shinten aircraft gave up to save weight. Its shape comes from a Ki-45 KAI three-view scaled to the type’s 15.02 m span, checked against a second three-view, a wartime US recognition silhouette and photographs; the drawings all give a length of about 10.6 m rather than the 11 m often quoted. The photograph shows only the port side, so the starboard side mirrors it, and the grey-green undersides of the wings and tailplane, which it does not show, follow standard practice.

Where to see one

Not on charge

The only survivor is held by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in the United States.

All 356 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.