Nakajima Ki-49 IId Hilda

[comrade harps]

Nakajima Ki-49 IId Hilda
105th Hiko Sentai, Army Flight Test Centre, Air Training Army Headquarters, Imperial Japanese Army (IJA)
Iwo Jima, 25 December 1944



From November 1944, the IJN and the IJA collaborated in waging a bombing campaign against the USAAF bomber bases in the Mariana island chain. Initially under IJN command, the first series of attacks achieved little and, as the IJN's units assigned to the campaign were attrited, the campaign's command was passed to the IJA's Air Training Army Headquarters from 6 December. This resulted in an increase in the number of IJA assets brought into the fight, including those from the Army Flight Test Centre's 105th Hiko Sentai. The 105th was a semi-operational unit, responsible for the testing and development of electronic warfare equipment and tactics, including radar and radio jamming and spoofing techniques. From September 1944, the 105th began deploying detachments to the Philippines to conduct combat evaluations of its capabilities, but these efforts were regarded as experimental and secretive, were not well coordinated with other activities and went practically unnoticed. The 105th Hiko Sentai (wing) consisted of a single flying chūtai (squadron), supported by a seibitai (maintenance unit) and a technical team; its aircraft flew without unit or individual aircraft markings.




The 105th was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shigeyoshi Suzuki, who was a maverick outsider to the dominant Bushido culture of the Japanese military. Suzuki was a pilot with an electrical engineering degree who had seen combat over China and during the Japanese advances through Malaya and Burma. Grounded due to an injury sustained in Burma during April 1942, Suzuki served as an electronic warfare subject matter expert for IJA intelligence before joining the Army Flight Test Centre on electronic warfare projects from May 1943. What stood out about Suzuki was his keen interest in Japan's historical Ninja, whose values and practices of Ninjutsu (which emphasised irregular warfare, stealth, deception and survival at all costs) were at odds with the Bushido Code which dominated contemporary Japanese life. Suzuki tried to apply these principles to modern aerial combat through the agency of electronic warfare. In private, he was a harsh critic of the Bushido-inspired kamikaze tactics and he was once reprimanded for telling his staff to "think like a Ninja."




Nevertheless, as the 105th Hiko Sentai was subordinate to the Air Training Army Headquarters, Lt. Col. Suzuki was brought into the planning for the campaign to bomb the B-29 bases. He argued for the creation of an electronic order of battle and recommended that this be used as the basis for deception, jamming and spoofing activities to support the bombing raids. He also advised against the IJN's practice of ordering bomber crews to make both bombing and staffing runs over the enemy airfields, pointing out that the losses associated with the second run were harmful to the campaign's longevity. Further, noted that the loss of scarce metals incurred by unsustainable rates of bomber attrition was high against the comparatively negligible use of metals in the production of chaff, which would lower losses by misdirecting the enemy's radar-directed anti-aircraft guns, searchlights and night fighters. His ideas were given tentative approval and the 105th was ordered to join the campaign.




As the IJA prepared to continue the campaign, the next fortnight saw the Americans record several reconnaissance flights by IJA's Ki-46s Dinahs and IJN C6N1 Saiun Myrts over the Marianas. Unknown to the Americans, their responses to these reconnaissance missions were being monitored by crews from 105th. On 20 December, a USAF P-61 Black Widow of the 6th Night Fighter Squadron attempted to intercept a plane that had slipped behind a B-29 returning from a mission over Japan, but the Japanese aircraft evaded interception and returned to Iwo Jima, which was being used as a staging base by the Japanese. That plane was a Nakajima Ki-49 IId from the 105th, the crew using their radar detection and jamming equipment to avoid contact.




At 10:10 pm on Christmas Day 1944, 25 low-level raiders struck Isley, East, and Kobler Fields on Saipan in an air raid lasting about an hour. The bombers (12 Ki-49 IIc, 7 Ki-80 IIa and 6 Ki-67) had snuck past several US Navy radar picket ships and weren't picked up by land-based radars until they were over land. Some of the radars that directed guns and searchlights malfunctioned and only 3 bombers received flak damage. Meanwhile, the Black Widow aviators of the 6th Night Fighter Squadron were kept busy chasing phantom radar contacts and only claimed 1 probable kill. The 105th, using 7 aircraft of various types, conducted radar detection and radar and radio jamming and spoofing, successfully avoiding, confusing and blinding the American defences. The only Japanese aircraft losses were 1 Helen that failed to return; the Japanese credited this to unknown causes, while the Americans later matched this with the probable claim made by pilot Lt. Bert Patenaude and his radar operator, Lt.  Joe Gaetjens, flying a Black Widow. For this, the Japanese destroyed one B-29, damaged three beyond repair and caused minor damage to a further eleven.




The next day, 26 December, a reorganisation deactivated the IJA's Air Training Army Headquarters and the bombing campaign against the Marianas was taken over by the new 6th Air Army. This formation did not include the 105th in its structure and the value of their classified contribution to the attack of the previous night was not adequately communicated to the staff of the new command. By then, the campaign had lost its attraction to the General Defense Command (GDC), which was reaching the conclusion that the losses, fuel expenditure and the effort in maintaining the staging facilities on Iwo Jima weren't worth the campaign's meagre returns. Only 3 further harassment raids were mounted, for the loss of 5 bombers from the 7 sorties dispatched.  On 10 February, the GDC directed that the offensive cease and that the 6th Air Army be held in reserve to be used against any Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands.



The 105th slid back into the obscurity of testing and it wasn't until October 1945 that they were brought into the planning against an Allied invasion of the home islands. By then, its aircraft inventory had been depleted by Allied air attacks and amounted to two Ki-49 IId, one Ki-46 II KAI three-seat radio and navigation trainer and an ex-Dai Nippon MC-20-II transport. By the time the Allies invaded Honshu on 1 March 1946, the 105th had no airworthy aircraft and was reduced to ground-based efforts to interfere with enemy radio.

The fate of Lt. Col. Suzuki remains a mystery. The Allies were told various stories as to his supposed death. One claim was that he was killed in a US Navy airstrike against a spoofing site on the Bōsō Peninsula in early April, 1946. Another story was that he survived that attack, but was killed in the RAF's 617 Squadron's Glam Slam bombing of the GDC headquarters that ended the war in May. Others have suggested that he survived the war, but chose to remain hidden, "like a Ninja." A persistence rumour told by conspiracy theorists is that Shigeyoshi Suzuki changed his name and assumed the identity of Masaru Ibuka after that man (allegedly) died late in the war; the significance of this is that Masaru Ibuka was the founder of the Japanese company that went on to become Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, Sony.

The aircraft depicted here was involved in the Marianas campaign and is modelled from a pair of photographs taken at Iwo Jima in December 1944. There is no surviving documentation as to the crew or the aircraft's fitout. According to Ryota Oshima, a civilian technician from the Akai Electric Company who worked as a contractor for the  Army Flight Test Centre and installed much of the 105th's radio equipment, the aircraft had a mission crew of 5. The core flight crew of pilot, navigator and flight engineer shared the forward compartment with a mission specialist whose job it was to monitor the radar warning system and operate the radar jammer. Alone in the converted bomb bay sat a radio operator, surrounded by radios for monitoring and spoofing enemy radio communications. Equipment included a microphone, a telegraph key and telephony cables to connect the devices so that the operator could produce a variety of interference effects, including whistles, tones and feedback, intermittent chirps and static. He also had a shortwave radio receiver that could be re-broadcast on Allied tactical radio frequencies as a noise jammer, or to infiltrate crosstalk from BBC, NHK or VOA broadcasts into the American radio nets. Oshima told US Navy investigators that the equipment wasn't cutting edge like the Americans and British had, but a combination of off-the-shelf and modified gear that was merely inventive in its combination and use. Post-action reports from USAAF ground control intercept personnel and 6th Night Fighter Squadron aircrew confirm that they were experiencing a variety of baffling, annoying and confusing radio issues during the Christmas Day attack that significantly hindered their operations. According to Oshima, the outer pair of underwing ordnance pylons were modified to work as bulk chaff dispensers.



The identity of the odd device attached to the left front canopy has not been confirmed. However, there has been speculation that the device was a continuous particulate air monitor to detect radioactive particles. The theory goes, that the Japanese were aware of the American atomic project and wanted to know if any detectable atomic activity was coming from the B-29 bases, such as those that might be caused by bomb assembling work. 



The Ki-49 was based on the Junkers Ju 88, an A-0 model being flown to Japan in August 1939 as part of a German marketing and propaganda campaign that also included a Bf 109E and a Bf 110 C. Evaluated against its Japanese equivalents, the Junkers outperformed them on most counts and, suitably impressed, the IJA supported  Nakajima in quickly negotiating a licensing agreement. Adapted to Japanese production standards and customised to IJA requirements (and later adapted for the IJN), the Ki-49 evolved into several successful series of bombing, torpedo bombing, reconnaissance, long-range fighter, night fighter and kamikaze versions, including the Mistel-like Tsunami. It remained in production until December 1945 and formed the basis of Ki-80 Lucy, which was essentially a modernised Ki-49 built with fewer strategic materials. Recognising its German origins, the Allies gave it the code name Hilda.

[philp]

Nice.

[zenrat]

Good job comrade.  Like the paintjob.

[comrade harps]

Good job comrade.  Like the paintjob.

It's a terrible paint job, but it's meant to be; a test plane (l skipped the orange) thrown into combat with a hastily applied pseudo-palm weave scheme. Crude but effective.

[zenrat]

I like it.  But I might have used a different colour for the underside squiggles.

[Dizzyfugu]

Nice! I like the paint scheme a lot, looks sexy! 

[PR19_Kit]

Recognising its German origins, the Allies gave it the code name Hilda.

Very clever, especially that bit. 

[NARSES2]

I must applaud both the model and the back story 

[Hotte]

Nice "Japanese" Bird 

Hotte

[Rick Lowe]

Recognising its German origins, the Allies gave it the code name Hilda.

Very clever, especially that bit. 

Ditto. 

Hogaaan!

[comrade harps]

I like it.  But I might have used a different colour for the underside squiggles.

Ah, well, but I didn't give you an underside view before; not different coloured squiggles, but something a little fancy, anyways, with the open spaces between the squiggles (hastily) slapped with some of my equivalent to the Japanese propeller brown.



With a cropped close-up because it's difficult to see:


By the way, the machine guns and the flame dampers are from the old tool Airfix He 111 H-20 kit. The added aerials are from various spares boxes and the rest of it is the Revell Ju 88 A-4 kit.

Thank you for your appreciation of both the kit and the backstory, which I have updated with the following after receiving additional information:

The fate of (the 105th's commander) Lt. Col. Suzuki remains a mystery. The Allies were told various stories as to his supposed death. One claim was that he was killed in a US Navy airstrike against a spoofing site on the Bōsō Peninsula in early April, 1946. Another story was that he survived that attack, but was killed in the RAF's 617 Squadron's Glam Slam bombing of the GDC headquarters that ended the war in May. Others have suggested that he survived the war, but chose to remain hidden, "like a Ninja." A persistent rumour told by conspiracy theorists is that Shigeyoshi Suzuki changed his name and assumed the identity of Masaru Ibuka after that man (allegedly) died late in the war; the significance of this is that Masaru Ibuka was the founder of the Japanese company that went on to become Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, Sony.

[zenrat]

...Masaru Ibuka was the founder of the Japanese company that went on to become Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, Sony.

And he was too.  I half expected to find he was another soccer player.

I have never built a Ju 88.  I should rectify that.