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Nakajima Ki-116The Nakajima Ki-116 was a late-World War II kamikaze aircraft developed for the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. It was essentially a Ki-84 Hayate with the Nakajima Ha-45 engine replaced with a Mitsubishi Ha-112. The design was handled by Mansyu (満州) Aircraft, and thus it is often desginated Mansyu Ki-116. Background By mid-1945 the military situation in Japan was extremely bad, having lost almost all of its once vast empire, the Japanese prepared for the decisive and most likely the last battle of World War 2. Unable to totally starve the Japanese home islands out completely the Americans would have to invade Japan and defeat its remaining military. In order to do this American soldiers and marines would have to land on Japanese soil from landing ships, therefore the Japanese decided that one of their main weapons would be the use of suicide aircraft. However these suicide planes or Kamikaze, (divine Wind) had been used extensively in the Philippines and for the Battle of Okinawa using older but expensive Mitsubishi Zero fighters which were designed as first rate fighter planes and not suicide planes, therefore they were relatively few in number and an awful waste of precious military material, so towards the war's end the Japanese Military Aircraft Development Institute as well as companies such as Mitsubishi and Nakajima decided to design and build massive numbers of cheap, simple and fast-to-produce specially designed suicide aircraft which would not be a waste for a suicide aircraft. Aircraft design and Characteristics Along with planes such as Ohka and Nakajima Ki-115 simplicity was a high priority, unlike the Ohka flying bomb however speed was not neccesary, the resulting design was as follows: - 285 mph (460 km/h) at 10,000 ft (3,000 m)
- able to carry one 1000 kg bomb, (powerful enough to destroy any ship)
- construction time of 100 man hours
- 124 miles (200 km/h) range at 285 mph (460 km/h)
The design was also highly simple and even cruder than the Nakajima Ki-115, capable of being produced at a rate of 12,000/month If the invasion of Japan had taken place these planes would have swarmed the American Invasion fleet with possibly upwards of 10,000 successful hits, resulting in the annihalation of the American invasion of Japan. In the end the aircraft were never used as the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war in August 1945.
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