Ki. 62 "Inline Hayate"

[frank2056]

The color scheme looks great and the plane looks both elegant and brutish at the same time.

[ChernayaAkula]

Gorgeous bird and fantastic build!

[NARSES2]

Nice 

[sequoiaranger]

>Wonderful! Makes you wonder why didn't they produce it for real at the time...<

I suspect that Nakajima had the radial-engined Ki.84 Hayate in mind for later and the Ki.62 was just an interim "paper project". I do feel that most likely the actual Ki.84 would have been a better fighter anyway, ESPECIALLY given the unreliability of the inline engined used.

>The color scheme looks great...<

Thanks, Frank. I didn't want yet-another "dark green" Japanese fighter aircraft. I had considered NMF, but I have had only mild success getting it right.  I definitely wanted the "Blue Wave" to be visually prominent, so wanted the main top color to be light and uniform (no mottle, etc). In truth, I "stumbled" upon this scheme. That is, the scheme is rather ordinary, but the visual effect came out better than I had envisioned.

BlackEagle, Narses, and Taiid---thanks.

[sequoiaranger]

The actual Nakajima Ki.62 came from the same Koko Hombu (Air Ministry) requirement as the more famous Kawasaki Ki.61 Hein (Swallow)—a  "heavily armed" fighter to equip the Imperial Japanese Army to go along with or supersede the "lightly armed" Ki.43 Hayabusa then in widespread use. No prototype of the Ki.62 was actually produced; just some drawings exist of the craft. Intrigued by this "inline-engined Hayate", I decided this was a perfect "extrapolation" project for me to create a fictional operational Japanese Army fighter, which I named "Mozu" (Shrike). (Drawing courtesy of Francillon's book, and coloration by me)



Nakajima was not really "ready" to compete for this fighter project, as they had an even more advanced fighter in the planning stages---the Ki.84 Hayate (Gale), but duly put forth the Ki.62 prototype using many of the future Hayate components. The Hein won the competition and production began, but 36 "pre-production" Mozus were made by Nakajima to try out the relatively new concept of inline engines in fighters while also flight-testing the Hayate components. These were assigned to training and evaluation units in the Home Islands.

The inline engine used (in the Ki.61 "Hein", and presumably the "Mozu" as well) was the Kawasaki Ha-40, a license-built copy of the Daimler-Benz DB 601 fuel-injected 12-cylinder inline engine being used successfully in the Messerschmitt fighters of Germany. The Japanese engineers, however, had used different alloys and specs to lighten the engine's weight without sacrificing power. Power was OK, but the engine showed weaknesses in its metallurgy, and were notoriously unreliable, and the Hein's success in the field was often limited. Many aircraft were lost without taking a bullet in combat. The Ha-140 engine, a copy of the uprated DB 605, saw similar failings. Many Heins were given a make-over with a radial engine late in the war, to become the potent Ki.100, but the Ki.62's gradually broke down and became "hangar queens" or "put out to pasture" in outside storage while the squadron awaited replacement Ki.84's, designed from the start to take a powerful radial engine in a wider fuselage.

Argentina had also acquired manufacturing licenses for the DB series of engines, and prior to Pearl Harbor the Japanese government had contracted for 200 engines and spare crankshafts and bearings (the main failure point of the Japanese copies), to be put aboard a ship, and the crates labeled "Portable Commodes" on the ship's manifest as a ruse. Unfortunately, the ruse was carried too far, for when the shipment made landfall in Japan, the "commode" crates were warehoused as labeled among other "non-essential war items" and forgotten. It was only in 1944, when a new factory being built needed portable commodes, that the shipment of engines was discovered.

Unable to get portable commodes on the factory building site, the factory boss contacted the Yazuka (Japanese mafia) to supply him. The Teyika (branch dealing with stolen goods) raided the warehouse, taking crates from the middle of the batch hoping no one would notice a few missing. Upon discovering the engines, patriotic duty overcame the shame of illicit pilfering, and the Teyika boss notified authorities of his find. Though chastised for his "dishonesty" by officials, (and losing a joint of his left little finger in penance to his Yazuka boss for bringing the deed to light), he was rewarded with the actual commodes as the Army and Navy fought over who got the engines.

The new engines, now named Ha-240 to differentiate those from the previous "lemons", re-vitalized many Army and Navy aircraft (the IJN using the similar Aichi Atsuta series of engines) that had been sitting idle for lack of engines. The pre-production batch of Ki.62's were among the recipients, and inline-engined Hayates now named "Mozu-II" were re-worked as dedicated "bomber-destroyers".  They joined their radial-engined cousins for the defense of Formosa.

The wing guns were replaced with detachable underwing gondolas, each with two 20mm cannon, and the nose armament was replaced by two 30mm cannon, a small bulge being needed to accommodate the breech block. These heavy weapons proved themselves against the four-engined B-24 and B-29 bombers, but aerodynamically the airframe was less "clean" and there was a performance penalty to be paid in increased drag. Like their German counterparts, the ungainly Mozu-II's were too juicy a target to keep from getting shot down once American escort fighters appeared in abundance.



Mozus were not seen or even known to Allied intelligence until late in the war. Knowing that Japan had acquired manufacturing licenses to build Messerschmitt fighters, all Me-109 derivatives were code-named "Mike" for the Pacific. On several occasions throughout the war "Mikes" were reported erroneously, but none substantiated by photos. The Mozu was mistaken for a license-built Messerschmitt Me-109G with their obvious inline engines and bulged cowlings. Inline-engined "Mikes" and their radial-engined cousin "Franks" (Allied code-name for the Hayate) of the 29th Fighter Sentai were often seen together over Formosa teaming up to repel bombing raids. The Mozu's attacked the bombers while the Hayates fended off the fighter escort. A common radio phrase by Allied pilots was "Frank and Mike are coming to meet us." The fierce fighting over Formosa when the Allied carrier armada attacked in October of 1944 reduced the never-numerous "Mikes" to a mere handful and the 29th Fighter Sentai subsequently re-equipped strictly with Ki.84 Hayates.



About the Model: This real "paper project" of the Japanese Army was done as a resin model kit by Unicraft, but I elected to kitbash my own in styrene and make "improvements". Of the available radial-engined 1/72 Hayate models (Revell, UPC, and Hasegawa), the Hasegawa one was the slimmest. The old Nichimo Ki.61 Hein was wider than the Hasegawa Ki.61 and better for the fuselage match-up, so I used it. I had to narrow the wing-root and eliminate the wheel wells of the original Ki.84, and added on similarly-shaped wing tips from the Supermodel Fiat G.55 to bring the wingspan up to Ki.62 specs. My Mozu-II is about three feet longer than the original specification, but I figured that would have been done had the "inline Hayate" prototype been built and flight-tested. The "blue wave and arrow" motif of the 29th Fighter Sentai was done with a combination of mask (tail) and clear decal sprayed the same color (arrow) and carefully cut out and matched up.

[Pablo1965]

I like all.  Colours finishing, marks, are superb

[RotorheadTX]

Stunning! Fantastic piece of work there!!