AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 161 / 326

Plate 161 of 326 · Second World War · Fighter

Nakajima Ki-84-Ia Hayate

Ki-84-Ia c/n 1446, painted as Nakajima Ki-84-Ia Hayate (Allied name ‘Frank’) manufacturer’s number 1446, the only surviving Hayate, captured in the Philippines in 1945, test-flown in the United States as FE-302 and returned to Japan in 1973, now displayed at the Chiran Peace Museum in Kagoshima: a single-seat Imperial Japanese Army fighter with a close-cowled Nakajima Ha-45 radial, a four-blade propeller, a deep oil-cooler intake under the cowling, a bubble-topped sliding canopy, a low-set tapered wing with rounded tips and a tall rounded fin and rudder, shown tail down on its main wheels and tail wheel: dark green upper surfaces and fuselage sides over light grey undersides and lower cowling, yellow-orange identification strips on the inner wing leading edges, red hinomaru on the wings and a white-ringed hinomaru on each side of the fuselage, a white lightning bolt across the fin and rudder, a dark red spinner and dark brown blades with yellow tips, as the aircraft is displayed at Chiran today (no Ki-84 is in a UK museum; shape from a published three-view checked against photographs of 1446; the bolt on the starboard side of the fin and the upper-wing hinomaru are not shown in any photograph used and are assumed to match the port side and the undersides).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Nakajima Ki-84-Ia Hayate (Allied name ‘Frank’) manufacturer’s number 1446, the only surviving Hayate, captured in the Philippines in 1945, test-flown in the United States as FE-302 and returned to Japan in 1973, now displayed at the Chiran Peace Museum in Kagoshima: a single-seat Imperial Japanese Army fighter with a close-cowled Nakajima Ha-45 radial, a four-blade propeller, a deep oil-cooler intake under the cowling, a bubble-topped sliding canopy, a low-set tapered wing with rounded tips and a tall rounded fin and rudder, shown tail down on its main wheels and tail wheel: dark green upper surfaces and fuselage sides over light grey undersides and lower cowling, yellow-orange identification strips on the inner wing leading edges, red hinomaru on the wings and a white-ringed hinomaru on each side of the fuselage, a white lightning bolt across the fin and rudder, a dark red spinner and dark brown blades with yellow tips, as the aircraft is displayed at Chiran today (no Ki-84 is in a UK museum; shape from a published three-view checked against photographs of 1446; the bolt on the starboard side of the fin and the upper-wing hinomaru are not shown in any photograph used and are assumed to match the port side and the undersides). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.2 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Ki-84-I (Allied name ‘Frank’)); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Ki-84-Ia c/n 1446 modelled here.

History

The Ki-84

By 1942 the Imperial Japanese Army knew that its nimble Ki-43 Hayabusa was too lightly armed and too slow for the new American fighters, and it asked Nakajima for a successor that could fight and climb with them. Yasumi Koyama’s team built it round the company’s new Ha-45, a compact eighteen-cylinder radial of nearly 2,000 hp, closely cowled behind a four-blade propeller, with a low-set wing, armour for the pilot and self-sealing tanks. The first prototype was finished in March 1943 and flew in April from Nakajima’s airfield at Ojima, and the army ordered it into production as the Type 4 Fighter, Hayate: ‘Gale’.

Service-test aircraft went to the 22nd Sentai, which took them to China in August 1944, and from October Hayate units were sent to the Philippines to meet the American landings on Leyte. With two 12.7 mm machine guns in the nose and two 20 mm cannon in the wings, it was fast, well armed and good in a climb, and the Allies, who called it ‘Frank’, rated it the best Japanese army fighter they met. It fought over the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan itself, against B-29s, Mustangs and carrier-borne Hellcats and Corsairs, and some were expended in suicide attacks.

It rarely flew as well as it had in trials. Factories were bombed and dispersed, skilled workers were replaced by students, and steel and other materials grew scarce; the Ha-45 suffered from low fuel pressure and poor fuel, and undercarriage legs of brittle steel broke on landing. About 3,500 were built, at Ota and Utsunomiya, more than any Japanese army fighter except the Ki-43, but too few were serviceable at any one time to turn the tide. Only one survives, in Japan; none is in a UK museum.

This airframe

Ki-84-Ia c/n 1446

1446The airframe modelled

Manufacturer’s number 1446 is the only Hayate left in the world. It was captured at Clark Field in the Philippines in 1945, made airworthy and flown by the Allied Technical Air Intelligence Unit, then shipped to the United States, where it was tested as FE-302, later T2-302. Declared surplus, it passed to Ed Maloney’s Air Museum in California, later Planes of Fame, which kept it flying into the 1970s. In 1973 it was sold back to Japan. It was displayed for many years at the Kyoto Arashiyama museum, and since 1995 it has been at the Chiran Peace Museum in Kagoshima, which remembers the army’s special attack pilots who flew from Chiran in 1945. The model shows it as it stands there today: dark green upper surfaces and fuselage sides over light grey undersides and lower cowling, yellow-orange identification strips on the inner wing leading edges, red hinomaru on the wings and a white-ringed hinomaru on each side of the fuselage, a white lightning bolt across the fin and rudder, a dark red spinner and dark brown propeller blades with yellow tips. Its shape was taken from a published three-view and checked against photographs of the aircraft at Chiran. The bolt on the starboard side of the fin and the upper-wing hinomaru do not appear in any photograph used, so they follow the port side and the undersides.

Where to see one

Not on charge

The only survivor is displayed at the Chiran Peace Museum in Kagoshima, Japan.

All 326 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.