Thursday 26 May 2016

Aichi S1A "Denko"

As this airplane went under our radar, we consider that we have to publish it now.

The Aichi S1A Denko (Japanese word for Bolt of Light) was the prototype of a Japanese night fighter designed to replace the Nakajima J1N1-S Gekkou.

As it was full of special equipment, like a mounted-in radar (something very rare for a Japanese aircraft) it's weight exceded in ten thousand kilograms and the initial prototype's engines didn't pass the Navy's standards only two of them were manufactured, and the designers at Aichi expended the rest of the time trying to fix the design shortcomings, specially the excess of weight.

As it was a very rare design for a Japanese, it's worth to mention that, it was the first IJN designed airplane to serve specifically as a night fighter (the previous Gekkou was just a heavy fighter devoid of any radar), it featured a powerful armament, something that wasn't usual for the Japanese planes of those years. In fact in the fuselage, configured for a forward firing position it had two 30mm type 5 cannons plus another two 20mm type 99 model 1 cannon. As a defensive armament it had a remote-controlled turret equipped with a 20mm type 99 model 2 cannon.
It's worth to point that the turret was something like a fake defensive turret as it was configured to shoot in the 'Schräge Musik'  tactic which fired in an elevation angle of up to 30º from the horizontal position and allowed to aim and shoot without changing the flight direction of the airplane.

The prototypes were powered by two 2000hp Nakajima NK9K-S and, as those weren't good enough for the Navy's standards, plans were set for a version powered by either the more powerful Mitsubishi HI MK9A Ru or MK10A Ru engines.

The development was really catastrophic as the first prototype was badly damaged in the Tonankai earthquake of 1944 and then, on 9th June 1945 an American air strike destroyed completely the first prototype and the development was concentrated on the second one, but just one month later on 9th July 1945, another air strike destroyed the second one too.










Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aichi_S1A
2. http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php?topic=34547.0

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