JAPAN: TOO LITTLE TOO LATE

Just like its axis partner, Japan was seeking a ‘wonder weapon’ that could counter the overwhelming power of the AlUed forces. When Japanese military attaches first saw the Me 163 on a visit to Peenemiinde West in 1943 they were mightily impressed and recognized in the revolutionary aircraft a means of halting the expected onslaught of American bombers. The attaches had seen the devastation bombing had caused in Germany and knew that soon Japan would be facing a similar fate. The high-flying Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, already in production, would surely soon darken the skies over Tokyo. Still struggling to develop turbo­superchargers to enable their conventional propeller airplanes to reach the altitude at which the B-29 would cruise, Japan was desperate to find an alternative defense measure (turbo-superchargers compress the thin air at high altitude, so that sufficient oxygen gets into an aircraft’s piston engine for proper combustion).

Commander Eiichi Iwaya (who went on to play a crucial role in this story) saw a Komet demonstration at the Rechlin airfield in April 1944, then wrote in his diary: “The roar, and the blue-green flame from the Walter motor, with its immense 1,500 kg of thrust, was evidence that German technology was still ahve here, even if the combat situation was steadily getting worse.”

In early 1943 the Japanese had negotiated licences to manufacture the Me 163B and its engine, although this did not come cheap: the rights and information to build the HWK 109-509A rocket motor alone cost them 20 million Reichsmark, which is equivalent to something like $100 million today. The Japanese were allowed to study the aircraft’s production in Germany, as well as the operational procedures of the Luftwaffe. Documentation on the Komet was sent to Japan by the German submarine U-511, which left Lorient in occupied France on 10 May 1943. It was then put into service with the Japanese navy under the name RO-500. To enable Japan to build its own forms of the aircraft, Germany later agrees to supply complete blueprints for the Me 163B and the HWK 109-509A, as well as a complete Komet, two sets of sub­assemblies and components, and three complete rocket engines.

This equipment and documentation is loaded onto two Japanese submarines, one of which leaves the German harbor of Kiel on 30 March 1944 and the other leaves from Lorient just over a fortnight later. The first, RO-501, is sunk in the mid­Atlantic by the destroyer USS Francis M. Robinson. The second boat, the 1-29, reaches the harbor at Singapore. Soon thereafter, Allied intelligence intercepts a message from Berlin to Tokyo that lists all the strategic cargo carried by the 1-29. Before leaving Singapore the 1-29 commits the mistake of radioing a detailed itinerary for the final part of its journey to Japan; the message is intercepted and decoded by US Navy’s Fleet Radio Unit. The Navy sends three submarines to hunt the 1-29 and on 26 July the USS Sawfish finds the enemy boat running on the surface near the Philippines. The Navy submarine launches four torpedoes: three hit and sink the 1-29. With all the Me 163 parts and plans on the ocean floor, the Japanese would not have received any of the material sent from Germany in 1944 were it not for a Japanese naval mission member who left the 1-29 in Singapore soon after it docked. Unaware that the 1-29 is doomed by sloppy communications security, Commander Iwaya flies to Japan with a briefcase containing only twenty pages of the design manual, a photo of the Me 163B and another of its wing, a document describing the production and handling of the dangerous propellants, and data for several types of valves used on the plane. It is by no means sufficient to build a copy of the Komet and its advanced rocket engine, but this is all that reaches Tokyo.

For the Japanese aeronautical engineers the scarce information, together with what they received from the U-511 the previous year and radio telegraph communications with the air ministry in Berlin, actually turns out to be sufficient to develop their own forms of the Komet. The project is set up as a joint effort by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and the Navy Air Service, but they argue about how to proceed. The Army proposes to develop a new, completely Japanese rocket interceptor that can carry more propellant than the Me 163B in order to increase the duration of its powered flight. The Navy seems to better understand the urgency of Japan’s gloomy military situation, and proposes to stick as closely as possible to the already proven design of the German Me 163B. The Navy Air Service wins the dispute, and in July 1944 specifications are issued. Aircraft manufacturer Mitsubishi Jukogyo KK wins the contract to develop and produce two models of the new plane: the J8M1 ‘Syusui’ (Autumn Water) for the Navy and the almost identical Ki-200 for the Army.

However, the Army secretly decides to develop its own concept, independently of Mitsubishi, at its aero technical institute Rikugun Kokugijitsu Kenkyujo at Tachikawa (as in Germany there is considerable rivalry between the different military services, even although by now the desperate situation of the war leaves little time for such a divergence of effort). This Ki-202 is to be a better plane than the Me 163B, the J8M1 and the Ki-200, but it never leaves the drawing board. It was to have had a stretched fuselage to carry more propellant and used a KR20/Toku-Ro 3 dual­chamber rocket engine similar to the HWK 109-509C, with the large chamber and nozzle producing 20,000 Newton of thrust for take-off and climb, and the smaller one 4,000 Newton for cruise flight.

Work on the J8M1 and Ki-200 rocket plane versions quickly gets underway with Mitsubishi manufacturing the Japanese form of the HWK 109-509A engine, which is known variously as the KR10 and the Toku-Ro 2, and joining forces with Nissan and Fuji to develop the airframe. The Naval Air Technical Arsenal in Yokosuka develops the MXY8 glider ‘Akigusa’ (Autumn Grass), which will initially be used to study the handling characteristics of the Syusui and later to train its pilots. On 8 December, Lieutenant-Commander Toyohiko Inuzuka makes the first flight in an MXY8 glider after being towed into the air from Hyakurigahara airfield, and finds that it closely matches the described handling characteristics of the German Komet. Two additional gliders are made in Yokosuka, one of which is delivered to the Army for evaluation at its own aerotechnical institute.

The resulting J8M1 rocket plane looks very similar to the Komet (as intended) but it has a take-off weight some 430 kg (940 pounds) lighter due to a reduced propellant volume, less ammunition, and the deletion of the armored cockpit glass (the lack of armor protection for pilots and engines was a common feature of Japanese fighter aircraft, resulting in a weight reduction and hence increased agility at the cost of a higher vulnerability to enemy bullets). However, the weight reduction does not fully compensate for the fact that the KR10 engine produces less thrust than the original Walter engine: 14,700 instead of 17,000 Newton. The Syusui will therefore not be as fast as the Komet and will have a slower rate of climb. Nevertheless, its top speed of 900 km per hour (560 miles per hour) will still be more than sufficient to outrun any Allied propeller fighter aircraft, and its rate of climb of 48 meters per second (156 feet per second) is still phenomenal. The German Komet could achieve 960 km per hour (600 miles per hour) and had a rate of climb of 61 meters per second (199 feet per second). The distinctive power-generation propeller of the Komet is omitted from the J8M1, which instead has a longer nose section housing a battery. It is

The Japanese J8M rocket interceptor.

armed with two 30-mm Type 5 cannon that can each spit out 500 rounds per minute. A J8M2 is planned that will differ only in that it sacrifices one cannon for a small increase in the propellant capacity for slightly longer endurance. The Army’s Ki-200 is very similar to the J8M1, the most important difference being that it is equipped with two 20-mm Ho-5 cannon or two 30-mm Ho-155 cannon, each of which can fire as many as 600 rounds per minute.

A production plan is put together that should lead to having at least 3,600 rocket interceptors in operation by March 1946. The first J8M1 prototype is used for load testing on the ground. The next two are for flight testing, and on 8 January 1945 one of these is towed into the air by a Nakajima B6N1 (Allied designation ‘Jill’) bomber from Hyakurigahara airfield. The aim is to test the low-speed aerodynamics, so the plane has no engine or propellant. Water is used as ballast to obtain a realistic total weight and mass balance. The test shows that the design is very good for gliding and should handle well under rocket power at high speeds.

Development of the engine is not going well. The first KR10 prototype explodes immediately upon being started, as does a modified engine known as the KR12 (the KR12 design does not offer any real advantages over the KR10 and its development is halted). Since the Japanese engineers have little experience with liquid propellant rocket engines and have only a limited amount of design and production information on the German technology, they are having difficulty designing the equivalent of the Walter engine and especially the small, high-speed turbopump. The resulting delays mean that by mid-1945 the engine is still not available and the J8M1 still cannot be flight tested under power. Time is running out because the Allied forces are virtually banging on the door of the Japanese home islands. Captain Shibata, commander of the Navy air group which is to be the first to operate the J8M1, tries to speed up the development by agreeing with the development team that the engine will be deemed ready for flight if it can operate for at least 2 minutes without failures; desperation is clearly becoming a driving factor in the plane’s development.

In the meantime, another submarine is dispatched from Germany to deliver Komet documentation and equipment to Japan. Also on board are Messerschmitt engineers Rolf von Chlingensperg and Riclef Schomerus. The U-864 leaves Bergen in Norway on 5 February 1945 but a couple of days out is obliged to return due to trouble with one of its two diesel engines. On the way back her periscope is spotted by a British submarine, HMS Venturer, which has been dispatched to intercept the U-864 and its cargo in response to the interception of German radio transmissions. On 9 February the submerged Venturer fires four torpedoes in a spread pattern at the U-864, which crash dives but suffers a hit by one torpedo and breaks in two. With it the last load of Komet equipment sent to Japan disappears into the depths.

The date for the first Syusui powered flight slips further when another engine prototype blows up. In addition, relocating the KR10 and Syusui development teams lest they be bombed by B-29s results in even more delays. Only in June 1945 does the engine meet the 2-minute thrust requirement. In fact the KR10 development team working in the Yamakita factory runs an engine for 4 minutes. The Mitsubishi J8M1 group at the Matsumoto research center runs another engine for 3 minutes. The striped pattern in the exhaust flame caused by the shock waves in the supersonic gas flow leads the engineers to dub the thrust plume the “tail of the tiger”. Unpowered glide tests of one of the Syusui prototypes with an engine installed, and tests running the engine within the plane’s fuselage, are quickly organized and successfully completed. On 7 July the first J8M1 with an engine of doubtful trustworthiness finally stands ready at Yokoku airfield for its first flight under rocket power. Following the procedure established for the Komet, Lieutenant Commander Toyohiko Inuzuka rolls 320 meters (1,050 feet) down the runway and takes to the air after only 11 seconds, successfully jettisoning the dolly. He then flies horizontally to gain speed prior to climbing at a 45 degree angle. All is well up to this point, but at an altitude of some 350 meters (1,150 feet) the engine sputters, puffs black smoke and quits. The speed of the plane carries it up a further 150 meters (500 feet) whereupon Inuzuka levels off, dumps the remaining propellant and banks to the right intending to glide back to the airfield. However, the maneuver makes the plane lose speed at an alarming rate and causes it to drift off in the direction of a small building. Inuzuka pulls the nose up in a desperate attempt to avoid it but nevertheless clips the side of the structure. The aircraft comes down in a terrible crash. Inuzuka is extracted from the wreck severely injured, and dies shortly after.

It was soon realized why the engine had cut out. For the test flight the propellant tanks had been only half-filled for safety reasons and when Inuzuka started his steep climb the liquids sloshed to the back of the tanks. But the feeds to the engine were at the front of the tanks. This deprived the engine of propellant. The reason for the feed points being at the front of the tanks was that during actual combat operations it was expected that the Syusui would climb above the enemy bombers and then attack in a powered dive. Such propellant as was left in the tanks would then slosh forward, and this had prompted the designers to put the feed lines there. The incompatibility of this system with a powered climb instead of a dive with half-filled tanks had not been noticed before the test flight. It is decided that the propellant supply system from the tanks to the KR10 must be modified, and in the meantime all powered

flight testing is stopped. While the crash investigations are underway, two new KRIOs blow up on the test stand indicating that the engine still has other issues in need of resolution.

However, less than a month after the disastrous test flight the first atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. Another incinerates Nagasaki several days later. In response, Japan surrenders unconditionally.

Component production for the new airplanes had already begun in preparation for mass production of J8Mls and Ki-200s. After the three prototypes, four machines had been produced (one of them the first Ki-200). Training courses for Army and Navy pilots were also being organized using the Ku-53, an engineless glider with the same configuration and flight characteristics as the actual plane. However, even more than in Germany, the revolutionary rocket interceptor came too late to make a difference and was never used in combat.

Only two examples of the J8M1 survive today. One is on display at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California. It is one of two aircraft taken to the US aboard the USS Barnes in November 1945 and which, after evaluations, were sold for scrap. One was apparently turned into pots and pans but 19-year-old Ed Maloney found the other one in a southern California storage yard. The owner of the facility thought it was some kind of boat but Maloney recognized it for what it was and bought it for the cost of its unpaid storage charges. It became the first plane in the museum that he was planning and is now the Planes of Fame Museum. Another Syusui fuselage was discovered in 1961 in a cave in the Yokosuka area south of Tokyo, badly damaged and incomplete. Until 1999 it was on display at a Japanese Air Force Base near Gifu, then it was restored and completed with replica parts by Mitsubishi, whose archives contain 80% of the original blueprints (additional information for the restoration was obtained by studying the Planes of Fame Museum example). This plane can now be viewed at the company’s Komaki Plant Museum, bearing its original bright yellow-green paint.

Towards the end of the war the Japanese Navy were also working on a completely home-grown rocket attack aircraft called the Mizuno ‘Shinryu’ (Divine Dragon). The project started as a fairly conventional-looking design for a simple kamikaze glider that could be launched from the shore using a trio of 1,300 Newton Toku-Ro Type 1 solid propellant rockets with a 10 second burn time. This plane was to crash into and thereby destroy Allied ships, or even tanks if these managed to get onto the beaches of Japan. A prototype for the glider was tested without the rocket engines, and these flights showed that the rocket propelled version could be expected to be difficult to fly. But experienced and well-trained pilots were too valuable to sacrifice in suicide attacks. A revised design was therefore proposed for a nimble attack aircraft powered by four 1,500 Newton thrust Toku-Ro Type 2 solid propellant rockets burning for 30 seconds. Armed with eight unguided air-to-ground rockets it would be able to attack ships and tanks, or even intercept B-29 bombers at a top speed of 300 km per hour (190 miles per hour) without the need for a suicidal collision. The Mizuno Shinryu was a canard design with large swept wings, small vertical stabilizer wings on the nose, and a vertical tail fin; the rocket boosters were to be fitted inside the tail part of the fuselage.

As explained earlier, the vertical stabilizers behind the wings of a conventional airplane push the tail down and compensate for the tendency of the main wings to push the nose down. An obvious disadvantage of this balancing technique is that the vertical stabilizers effectively provide negative lift, which has to be compensated by additional lift from the main wings. On a classical canard design the stabilizers are put in front of the wings, creating balance by pushing the nose up rather than the tail down; both the wings and the horizontal stabilizers provide positive lift, resulting an aerodynamically more optimal design. However if the plane pitches up, the angle of attack on the canard stabilizers increases and this gives them more lift, which in turn makes the plane’s nose rise even faster. A canard airplane can thus be rather unstable in pitch. In the hands of a skilled pilot this translates into high maneuverability but for an inexperienced pilot tends to produce a crash. There are several other pros and cons regarding canard airplanes and different effects depending upon the location of the center of gravity relative to the center of pressure (lift), but it is interesting that a number of highly maneuverable modern jet fighters have shapes remarkably similar to the Shinryu; notably the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Sukhoi Su-30 and the Dassault Rafale.

To enable it to attack B-29 bombers flying at high altitude a pressurized cockpit was proposed for the Shinryu, but a pressure suit for the pilot in combination with an unpressurised cockpit was also possible. The plane would take off with the help of a two-wheeled jettisonable dolly, and it would land using fixed skids under the wings and nose. It seems that other ways of getting the plane into the air were considered, likely involving towing or carrying by other aircraft in order to extend the range and preserve the rocket motors for the actual attack (as was proposed for several German rocket interceptors). Although some sources claim the vehicle was also designed to be used for kamikaze attacks with a warhead fitted into the nose, the complexity of the aircraft, its innovative aerodynamics for high maneuverability, and the presence of landing skids make this improbable. The plane never even reached the prototype stage before Japan surrendered, and even the earlier glider design never flew under power due to problems in developing the required rocket motors.

The only Japanese rocket airplane that actually did see action near the end of the war was the Yokosuka MXY-7 Type 11, which was more of a manned suicide anti­ship missile than a plane. It had a torpedo-shaped fuselage fitted with small, straight wooden wings and a horizontal wooden stabilizer that had a vertical fin at each end; there was also one experimental version built, the Type 21, that had thin steel wings manufactured by Nakajima instead of the standard wooden wings. The cockpit was positioned behind the wings and just behind the 1,200 kg (2,650 pound) bomb which occupied most of the fuselage. The pilot was protected by armor plating beneath as well as behind his seat because it was expected that the plane would encounter anti­aircraft fire from ships as well as from interceptor fighters. Instrumentation inside the cockpit provided the bare minimum of information required for the short flight into oblivion. Five fuses where installed to ensure the warhead would go off after impact. At least one of these was expected to be triggered by the impact shock, then detonate the bomb 1.5 seconds later so that the explosion would occur inside the target ship and cause maximum damage.

An Ohka suicide missile found by US soldiers.

The kamikaze piloted bomb was carried partly inside the modified, doorless bomb bay of a Mitsubishi G4M (‘Betty’) bomber, and dropped within striking range of its target (interestingly, the later X-l in the US would start its mission in a very similar manner, also with the pilot entering the rocket plane inside the bomber shortly prior to the drop). The pilot would start by gliding towards his target and then ignite a trio of Type 4 Model 1 Mark 20 solid propellant rocket motors, each delivering a thrust of 2,600 Newton. He could choose to fire the motors sequentially or simultaneously depending on the range and speed required. In a sharp dive firing the rockets together in combination with gravity could smash the aircraft into a ship at about 930 km per hour (580 miles per hour). This tremendous velocity made it virtually impossible for the ship to aim its anti-aircraft guns and shoot the little plane down; something the gunners often succeeded in when attacked by much slower, conventional kamikaze planes.

The Japanese called their kamikaze weapon the ‘Ohka’ (Cherry Blossom) but the Americans referred to it as the ‘Baka’ (Idiot). The plane was conceived by Ensign Mitsuo Ohta, a transport pilot of the Japanese navy who made the first design aided by professor Taichiro Ogawa and students of the Aeronautical Research Institute at the University of Tokyo. Within weeks of contacting the university, Ohta was able to send plans to the Naval Air Technical Arsenal in Yokosuka complete with drawings, wind tunnel model test results and performance estimates. The Navy was sufficiently impressed to tell the Yokosuka engineers of its First Naval Air Technical Bureau in

Ohka dropped by a Betty bomber.

August 1944 to develop the design into an operational machine. The first variant, and the only that was put into service, was the Type 11. As it would not need to take off by itself, land or fly at low speeds, its wings were kept very small to minimize drag and thereby maximize attack speed. In part because of this, the maximum range of the rocket propelled Ohka when dropped from an altitude of 6 to 8 km (20,000 to

27,0 feet) was only 36 km (23 miles). The slow and vulnerable transport bombers laden with their heavy Ohkas were therefore obliged to fly close to the targets (which often included well-defended aircraft carriers, themselves prize targets) before they could release their Ohkas. Many bombers were shot down by defending fighters long before they could get near enough to the enemy fleet to deploy their Ohka.

Solid propellant rocket motors are simple, cheap and expendable, and therefore a natural choice for a single-mission kamikaze plane. However, the disadvantage of the short range led to several Ohka proposals powered by jet engines for longer flights. None of these alternative designs could be put into operation before the war ended.

Unmanned tests of unpowered and powered prototypes were followed by the first manned Ohka flight on 31 October 1944. On that day Lieutenant Kazutoshi Nagano straps into the prototype of the Ohka K-l trainer, a version that had water tanks in the nose and tail instead of a bomb and rocket motors. For this test it has been equipped with two small solid propellant rocket boosters, one under each wing. Nagano is dropped by a Betty carrier plane at an altitude of 3.5 km (11,500 feet), pursues a stable glide for a few minutes and then fires the two motors. Immediately the machine begins to yaw, so Nagano quickly jettisons both rockets and manages to find a stable glide position once more. It is later found that the two rockets had not yielded the same amount of thrust and their positions on the wings caused the stronger rocket to attempt to turn the plane around its vertical axis (a similar problem had plagued the German Natter). Shortly prior to landing Nagano drains the water tanks in order to reduce the plane’s weight and make it possible to fly and land at a relatively low speed on skids fitted beneath the fuselage and the wings (the operational Ohkas would of course not have an undercarriage, since they were not supposed to come back). Other than during its brief moment under rocket power the airplane handled well. It is decided not to use wing-mounted rocket motors anymore, and only equip the Type 11 with three in the tail, very close to the centerline so that any difference in thrust between the boosters will have little effect on the control of the vehicle. Subsequent test flights established how the Ohka should be operated. After being released from the bomber, the Ohka pilot would enter a shallow glide at a speed between 370 and 450 km per hour (230 and 280 miles per hour). Between 8 and 12 km (5 and 7 miles) from the target, and at an altitude of about 3.5 km (11,500 feet), he would ignite all three rocket motors and accelerate to a speed of 650 km per hour (400 miles per hour), then put his machine into a 50 degree dive to scream down at 930 km per hour (580 miles per hour), at the last moment pulling up the nose in order to hit the targeted ship at the waterline.

A navy flight unit was set up to operate the Ohka. Soon nicknamed the ‘Thunder God Corps’ it drew hundreds of volunteering pilots in spite of the nonexistent career prospects. After rejecting those who were married, were only sons, had too important family responsibilities, or were simply too old, some 600 remained. They trained first with a conventional Mitsubishi A6M ‘Zero’ fighter, practicing the attack profile with the engine off. Several pilots were given some flight instruction in one of the MXY7 prototypes of the K-l two-seat trainer, but most were only able to rehearse using an Ohka while it sat on the ground.

It appears that some 751 Ohka Type 11 aircraft were built at two production sites but only a small number were deployed against the Allied fleet before the war ended, with poor results. The first time they are used is on 21 March 1945. Sixteen Betty bombers carrying Ohkas and two Bettys to provide navigation and observation are sent to attack US Navy Task Group 58, which includes the aircraft carriers Hornet, Bennington, Wasp and Belleau Wood. The bombers were to have been escorted by a force of 55 Zero fighters but owing to technical problems 25 of these either did not take off or had to turn back. Some 113 km (70 miles) from their target the planes are intercepted by 16 F6F Hellcat fighters. The Bettys immediately jettison their Ohkas, sending the pilots to watery graves without even a chance to impart damage on the enemy. All the Bettys are shot down and only 15 of the escorting Zeros make it back to base. On 1 April six Betty/Ohka combinations try again, attacking the US fleet off Okinawa. This time the bombers are able to approach close enough to their targets, and one Ohka completes a successful attack on the battleship West Virginia, causing moderate damage to one of its gun turrets. Three cargo ships are also hit by suicide aircraft but these may have been conventional kamikaze planes rather than Ohkas. The Bettys are all shot down. Eleven days later nine Bettys with Ohkas again attack the US fleet off Okinawa. One Ohka plunges onto the destroyer Mannert L. Abele, causing an explosion that rips the ship apart. The Abele becomes the first warship to be sunk by a kamikaze rocket plane, demonstrating the vulnerability of a ship to an accurately guided rocket missile flying at high speed. Another Ohka aiming for USS Jeffers is hit by anti-aircraft fire from the destroyer and blows up only 45 meters (148 feet) from the ship, imparting extensive damage. A pair of Ohkas target the destroyer Stanly and one hits it just above the waterline. However, the plane’s explosive charge punches right through the ship and explodes only after emerging from the other side of the hull, causing little damage. The other Ohka narrowly misses the ship and falls into the sea. Only one Betty survives the mission.

Further attacks on 14 April (with seven Ohkas), 16 April (six Ohkas) and 28 April (a night attack with four Ohkas) fail to produce any Ohka hits and most of the Betty carriers are shot down. On 4 May the Japanese have better luck when one of seven Ohkas sent against the US fleet near Okinawa hits the bridge of the destroyer Shea and causes extensive damage and casualties. The minesweeper Gayety is damaged by a near-miss of another Ohka. Again the price for the Japanese is high, as all but one Betty is lost (in addition to all Ohkas and their pilots). On 11 May one of the four Ohkas sent out hits the destroyer Hugh W. Hadley and causes such extensive damage and flooding that the vessel is deemed to be beyond repair. But this proves to be the final Ohka success, as the attacks on 25 May (eleven Ohkas, with most returning to base owing to bad weather) and 22 June (with six Ohkas, two of the Bettys making it home) are ineffective. Initially presuming the Ohka to be just a new type of anti-ship bomb, the Allies learn of its true nature only after capturing some of the machines on Okinawa in June 1945.

Deployed in greater numbers, the Ohka might have played a more significant role in the war but the few successes do little to stop the mighty US fleet. These attacks do show how difficult it is to stop a rocket propelled missile, and that a single hit can severely damage or even sink a large warship. The post-war development of anti-ship missiles was rapid but the kamikaze pilots were superseded by electronic guidance and the rockets were launched from fast attack jets, not lumbering bombers like the Betty whose crews had also been effectively flying suicide missions.

In an artificial cave set behind the main buildings of Kenchoji Zen Temple in the ancient Japanese capital of Kamakure there is a monument to remember the Ohka missions. A steel plaque lists all of the Ohka pilots as well as the crews of the Betty bombers who died in the first ever (and hopefully final) kamikaze attacks using a rocket plane. Another plaque in the cave tells the Ohka story, albeit from a rather nationalistic Japanese perspective. The final part of the engraved text reads: “.. .Ohka attacks together with special attacks by Zero fighters carrying bombs were made repeatedly. That heroic battle tactic made American officers and men tremble

with fear. This monument to the Jinrai warriors honors those pure and excellent young men who, without regard for their own sacrifice, courageously went to their place of death for their homeland and fellow countrymen.”

Many Ohka Type 11 have survived and are on display at museums in the US, UK and Japan. The only remaining Type 22 jet-propelled version is at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, which also has a dual-cockpit trainer that seems to have been intended for preparing pilots for land-based launches, where Ohka’s would have taken off with the help of a rail launch cart equipped with two solid propellant rocket boosters.

Japan also experimented with rocket boosters to assist aircraft take off. They were applied to the Nakajima ‘Kitsuka’, a Japanese version of the Me 262 jet fighter that suffered from underperforming jet engines. It was hoped that the additional power of jettisonable rocket boosters would limit the otherwise very long take-off run of this plane. On the second test flight of the first prototype, four solid rocket boosters with a thrust of 8,000 Newton each were installed. However, they had not been set at the correct angle. Rather than adjust them, which would take too much time, the thrust of each booster was halved in the expectation that at such low thrust the misalignments would not cause a significant disturbance to the balance of the plane. On 11 August 1945, after a delay of one day owing to the high level of activity of enemy aircraft in the vicinity, pilot Lieutenant-Commander Susumu Takaoka climbs into the cockpit, has the engines started and then taxies onto the runway where he stops, extends the wing flaps for additional lift at take-off and opens the throttles of the jet engines to build up thrust prior to releasing the brakes. Four seconds into the take-off run he ignites the four boosters and promptly finds himself in serious trouble. The sudden thrust of the four downrated boosters forces the nose of the plane up and makes the tail slam down onto the runway. He pushes the stick forward but it doesn’t help. The boosters burn for 9 seconds with the plane essentially out of control. Just one second before the units bum out, the plane’s elevators suddenly take effect and slam the nose down hard. Takaoka decides to abort the flight, but his brakes have little effect. He mns off the mnway, the undercarriage collapses upon encountering a drainage ditch, and the plane slides to a standstill on its belly. The damage is severe, not only to the landing gear but more importantly to the engines slung under the wings. It is likely that the misalignment of the boosters was the cause of the problems. The Kitsuka never flew again because Japan surrendered several days after this aborted test flight and work on the project halted.

Rocket boosters were also envisaged to help the egg-shaped Kayaba ‘Katsuodori’ get up to take-off speed. This was to be a fighter plane powered by a ramjet engine. As explained earlier, a ramjet is a jet engine without a rotating compressor or turbine in which the air is instead compressed by the speed of the airplane and the shape of the air intake (in other words, the air is rammed into the engine as the plane flies through the atmosphere, increasing its pressure sufficiently for proper combustion and effective thrust). Owing to the lack of moving parts the design of a ramjet is relatively simple, is more reliable than a gas turbine engine, and ought to require less maintenance. By drawing oxygen from the air it can ran for much longer than a rocket engine on the same amount of propellant. But for the ram effect to compress the air sufficiently for the engine to start to function, the plane must already be flying at a speed of at least Mach 0.3. Hence the engine could not be used for take-off. To get the Katsuodori up to speed, four solid propellant rocket boosters were to be mounted on the side of the fuselage beneath the wing roots, in pairs, one above the other. During the horizontal take-off run on an ejectable wheeled dolly the rockets would be fired in pairs, one on each side of the plane, with each lasting 5 seconds. After the second pair burned out the plane’s speed would be sufficient for the ramjet to operate and all of the boosters would be jettisoned. But the project was shelved in 1943, probably in part due to the danger of using multiple solid propellant boosters: they cannot be stopped and if one misfires or has a lower thrust than its partners then the plane can quickly lurch out of control (recall that the German Luftwaffe used liquid propellant Walter rocket pods rather than solid propellant boosters to help their heavy bombers take off).

As in Germany, near the end of the war Japan also had a simple rocket aircraft for ramming purposes under development. Like the Zeppelin ‘Rammjager’, its pilot was to ram his rocket powered plane into an enemy bomber, then glide back for a landing (followed by another hair-raising ramming mission in the same machine until either it or he were lost). But unhke the German machine it was not armed. It would have been accelerated by four of the same solid propellant boosters as used by the Ohka. While the Ohka had only three motors and was laden with a massive warhead, four rockets with a combined thrust of 11,000 Newton would probably have been able to drive the light ramming plane to a speed of over Mach 0.9. The concept remained a paper study but if this plane had taken to the air its test pilot would likely have found himself in serious trouble since the Japanese had virtually no knowledge of transonic aerodynamics. The plane had swept wings but it is not clear whether the designers understood the benefits of such wings at transonic speeds or whether they introduced this shape merely to provide an angled edge to cut more easily through the tail of an enemy plane. It is not known whether the Japanese rammer was to be towed into the air like its German counterpart or be launched from the ground.

The US had no appreciation of how far Japanese jet and rocket plane technology had advanced until after the surrender, when they got access to the aircraft factories, many of which were hidden in tunnels in the mountains, and discovered the fleet of advanced airplanes that Japan had been busy building in preparation for the defense of their home islands. Had Japan started its advanced projects a bit earlier, and had the US been forced to invade Japan itself by conventional military means rather than forcing a surrender by dropping atomic bombs, the US ships and planes would have been met by a variety of jet and rocket planes against which they would have had little defense.