Japanese Spitfires!

[Spinners 15,986]

Nakajima-Dornier Ki-101 'Heavenly Lion' - Imperial Japanese Army Air Force, 1945

In February 1943 the unfortunate Pilot Officer P. Lonker of No.64 squadron descended through the fog to land his brand-new Spitfire IXc at the Luftwaffe airfield near Brest in the mistaken belief that it was his home base of Hornchurch. Whilst the Spitfire was no secret to the Germans this pristine example of the relatively new IX was gratefully received and sent to the Dornier factory in Altenrhein (Switzerland) where it was studied in detail with production drawings made and tooling fabricated for the proposed production of the Spitfire for the Swiss Air Force.

However, during the early Spring of 1944 the decision was made to ship the drawings and tooling to the Nakajima Aircraft Company in Japan for production of the Spitfire for defence against American bombers including the B-29 then just coming into service in forward bases in China and India. Designated Ki-101 production started quickly enough but disaster struck when the Ota factory was bombed (ironically by B-29's) in December 1944 with only a handful of aircraft completed and all without engines as Aichi Atsuta had failed to deliver a single example of the licence-built Daimler-Benz DB605 engine. Miraculously, production restarted in February 1945 with the first Aichi built engines arriving in March allowing the first squadron to re-equip in May 1945. Production records indicate that only 45 Ki-101's were manufactured and there were no recorded incidents of air combat between the 'Heavenly Lion' and allied aircraft.











N.B. The tail numbers are from Wrench's 'George' skin from the SF1 download section.
 

Edited December 21, 2014 by Spinners

[ShrikeHawk 384]

Looks great, Spinner! And the background story was well worked out. Kudos!

[Wrench 9,848]

harder than hell to find an unused Kitai number, ain't it!!!???

 

So, this is an IJN Spit from 343 Kokutai (wonder what code name ATIU would have assigned it??)

 

edit: missing the yellow ID stripe in the leading edges. those went into effect mid/late 42

 

wrench

kevin stein

Edited April 6, 2011 by Wrench

[dsawan 624]

Looks better in jap markings. Nice backgound story though

[+paulopanz 2,876]

Wov! I

[SayethWhaaaa 245]

I do dig the background you do Spinners.

[Spinners 15,986]

Thanks guys. It was a bit of a rush job as I wanted to watch Chelsea v. Man Utd last night but did anyone notice the pilot's name? (Might be a Brit thing)

[Wrench 9,848]

forgot to mention, if its IJAAF, the squadron markings would be completly different (ie: the Sentai) Japanese naval aviation used completly different styles and types than army aviation. (see the Pearl/Midway Zekes, Kates, Vals I've done, as well as any Oscars, Tonys, and etc)

 

I've got several (read: MANY!) books on PDF on the subject!

 

wrench

kevin stein

[Spinners 15,986]

Nakajima Ki-101 'Heavenly Lion' - 101st Sentai, Imperial Japanese Army Air Force, 1945

 

 

 

 

 

Pedants please note that this is just a bit of fun!

Edited April 9, 2011 by Spinners

[+Baltika 85]

Nice work

[Spinners 15,986]

On 4/8/2011 at 8:56 PM, Baltika said:

Nice work

 

Cheers mate!

RAF HAWK III.01 by Spinners1961, on Flickr

Edited July 1, 2020 by Spinners
Testing Flickr

[Wrench 9,848]

that's more like it brother!!!

 

wrench

kevin stein

[Spinners 15,986]

[dsawan 624]

You are a demi-god. Thanks.