Focke-Wulf Fw.200 Condor. Part Two. More foreign Users

 

The Focke-Wulf Fw.200 Condor was a German all-metal four-engined monoplane, originally conceived as a long-range airliner. It was mainly used by Germany, but some countries employed the type too, among them, the following ones:

• United Kingdom: A single Danish Fw.200A, registered as OY-DAM, flew to Shoreham, Sussex, on 8th April 1940. That night, Germany launched the Operation Weserübung - Süd, the invasion of Denmark and Norway. The morning of 9th April the crew was not allowed to return to the airplane as it was seized by British officials. In May it received a new registration, new colours and it was flown to Whitchurch, Shropshire, as it was allocated to the BOAC (British Overseas Aircraft Corporation). Turn out that the BOAC didn't use the aircraft very much and it crashed in July 1941.
  There were two more Fw.200 which served with the Royal Air Force (RAF), the first one, registered as F8+FS, surrendered to the British forces in Wuppertal on 8th May 1945. With the RAF it was flown to Belgium and from there, possibly to the other side of the British Channel, however, its ultimate fate is unknown. It was just possibly scrapped. 
  The other Fw.200 was captured intact at Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, when the war ended and it's thought it was used by Heinrich Himmler, as Flensburg was the base of the Great Admiral Dönitz who took over the German government after Hitler's death on 30th April 1945. This machine, coded as GC+AE, was flown to Roya Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Farnborough, Hampshire, for evaluation. 
• Finland: The Finnish national airway, AeroO/Y ordered two Fw.200A airliners. These machines were eventually built, but once the war started, they were taken over by the Reichluftfahrtministerium (RLM) and pushed into Luftwaffe's service. 
• Japan: Japanese authorities were impressed by the flight around the globe performed by the Fw.200A D-ACON (even if it was lost off the Philippine capital, Manila) and they ordered five Fw.200B airliners (the Fw.200B was equipped with better BMW 132Dc engines) in 1939 for use with the Dai Nippon KK (Japanese national airline back then) plus a single Fw.200 to be used by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) for a possible reconnaissance role. 
  Focke-Wulf proposed the Fw.200V10, which was an armed long-range reconnaissance variant fitted with a dorsal turret, armed with a 7,5 mm MG-15 machine gun and an elongated ventral gondola offset to starboard armed with smaller caliber machine guns to fire from fore and aft. Gondola's central section was taken up by a weapons bay. A total of five airframes were converted to this new standard and they were temporarily designated as Fw.200KC-1, to be allocated to Dai Nippon KK. 
  Eventually they were not delivered to Japan and the five KC-1 were completed as Fw.200C-2s and D-2s and were assigned to the Luftwaffe.

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_200_Condor

2. https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235070268-boac-fw-200-condor/

3. Hall Park Books - Warpaint 13 - Focke-Wulf Fw.200 Condor

4. Osprey - Combat Aircraft 115 - Fw.200 Condor Units of World War II

Mitsubishi Ki-83

 

The Mitsubishi Ki-83 was a Japanese long range heavy fighter designed during the very late stages of World War 2, which never went beyond the prototype stage.

The Ki-83 was designed as a long range heavy fighter, designed by a team led by Tomio Kubo who also designed the Mitsubishi Ki-46. The Ki-83 was designed as an answer to a 1943 specification for a new heavy fighter with long range. 

The first prototype flew for the first time on 18th November 1944 and it was followed by three more prototypes. They showed great maneuverability for an airplane of that size. The prototypes were able of performing a 671 m (2.200 ft) diameter loop in 31 seconds at a speed of 644 km/h (400 mph). 

The Ki-83 was powered by two Mitsubishi Ha-43 Ru 18-cylinder air-cooled radial engines rated at 2.200 hp each and drove a four-bladed propeller. They were armed with two 30 mm Ho-155 cannons plus two more 20 mm Ho-5 cannons mounted in the nose. 

In spite of the American bombing campaign against Japan, the Ki-83 was set for mass production when Japan surrendered on 15th August 1945.

Both the existence and performance were kept secret during the war, even in Japan. In fact, it was completely unknown for the Allies, as demonstrated by the fact that it had not a reporting name. Most of the existing photographs of the type were taken during the post-war occupation of Japan, when the prototypes were seized by the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) and was repainted with American insignia. 

One prototype was tested by American aeronautical engineers and other experts and, when flying with high-octane fuel, it achieved a speed of 762 km/h (473 mph) at an altitude of 7.000 m (23.000 ft). 

There were also plans for a reconnaissance variant, named Ki-95 and for a further development, named Ki-103, but they didn't go beyond the drawing board.

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Ki-83

2. https://www.valka.cz/Micubisi-Ki-83-t1293

3. https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.php?aircraft_id=1469

Mitsubishi G1M1/Ka-9

The Mitsubishi Ka-9 was originally designed to perform aerial surveillance over the Pacific. It was the first prototype in the series of aircraft that would later be known as the Mitsubishi G3M 'Nell'. The Imperial Japanese Navy's (IJN) first ambitious attempt to produce a long range bomber was part of the Experimental 7-shi programme of 1932, which was hoped for that programme to produce a new generation of Japanese naval aircraft. However, the only successful to come out from it was the Kawanishi E7K reconnaissance seaplane, while the only land-based bomber to emerge from the programme was the Hiro G2H, which flew for the first time in 1933 which, although it had the required range, it lacked performance in many other factors like speed and, eventually only eight of them would be built in 1935.
In 1933 the head of the technical development at the Naval Aircraft Establishment was the Rear-Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who was convinced that the IJN needed a long-range land-based bomber to be used as a defensive weapon from bases on the scattered islands of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific Ocean. It was clear that the G2H wasn't that aircraft, so Yamamoto gave Mitsubishi in early 1933 a non-competitive contract to produce a long-range, high-speed multi-engined monoplane. No bomb load or performance figures were issued, giving Mitsubishi free reign.
Mitsubishi was chosen because in the late 1920s it had developed strong bonds with Junkers. In fact, in 1928 they had purchased a number of licences for Junkers' aircraft designs and, by the start of 1933, they had designed the Mitsubishi Ki-1, Ki-2 and Ki-20 bombers for the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. A number of Japanese engineers, among them Sueo Honjo (who designed the Ka-9), had also received training from Junkers.
Sueo Honjo was the main chief engineer in charge of the "Navy's Project 435" or, "Experimental 8-shi reconnaissance plane". Internally at Mitsubishi it was known simply as "Ka-9".
The Ka-9 was completed on 18th April 1935 and was a twin-engined monoplane powered by two Hiro Type 91 engines which gave 650 hp of power each. It had a slim streamlined fuselage, twin vertical tails and rudders, and Junkers' double wings. On this design, a second, much smaller airfoil was mounted on the back of the main wing. The gap between the two wings increased lift, specially when the aircraft flying at a step angle, either when climbing or landing, at the expense of increased drag. It was also the first Japanese military aircraft to have retractable landing gear.
Yamamoto was among the first people to test the aircraft and was impressed by its performance. Honjo had produced an aircraft with a range of 3265 nautical milles (6047 km), better than any contemporary military aircraft. The Ka-9 was given the short designation of G1M1 by the IJN making it the first entry in a new land-based bomber sequence.
Mitsubishi were therefore rewarded with the Navy Project 79 for the Navy Experimental 9-shi land based attack plane, which would eventually emerge as the Ka-15 and accepted into IJN's service as the G3M.
The sole G1M1 was used as a testbed for Mitsubishi's 14-cylinder Shinten twin-row air cooled radial engines, which could yield the impressive amount (for the time) of 920 hp but only could increase aircraft's speed by 15 mph (24.1 km/h) and were very unreliable.

Sources:
1. http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_mitsubishi_G1M1.html
2. https://elpoderdelasgalaxias.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/mitsubishi-ka-9-name-it/
3. https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/mitsubishi-ka-9-8-shi-special-reconnaissance-plane-g1m1.23519/
4. https://www.valka.cz/Micubisi-G1M1-t64820
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_G1M

Mitsubishi A7M Reppū

First things first, we wish all our readers a very merry Christmas and we hope that Santa brought you all your desired presents, and now, on to today's post.
By the end of 1940, the Imperial Japanese Navy, asked Mitsubishi to start designing a 16-shi carrier fighter that would replace the A6M Zero already in service. However, at that time there wasn't any reliable high-output compact engine suitable to be used in a fighter. Furthermore, Jiro Horikoshi's team (the team designer of the famous A6M Zero, among others) was busy fixing all the production issues of the A6M2b version of the Zero that was already under production, developing the A6M3 Zero and the 14-shi interceptor, that would eventually become the Mitsubishi J2M Raiden. Due to that, work on the A7m was pushed back until January 1941.
In April 1942, as the work on the A6M3 was already complete, the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered Mitsubishi to retake the works on the Zero's successor and shortly after, in July, the Navy issued a specification:
It had to fly faster than 345Kn (639km/h; 397mph) above 6000m (20000ft) in less than 6 minutes, it had to be as maneouvrable as the Zero and it had to be armed with two 20mm cannons and other two 13mm cannons.
One of the main obstacles was the engine selection, as in order to comply with the specification, it had to produce at least 2000hp (1500Kw) of power, narrowing that way the choices down to Nakajima's NK9 that was still under development and would later become the Homare, or Mitsubishi's Mk9 that was also under development.
With that choice of engines, wing loading became also an issue as the specification stablished a maximum of 150kg per square meter but desired 130kg per square meter complicating even more design considerations. With the Nk9, they could achieve less than 150kg, but with the less power, it wouldn't meet the maxomum required speed, however, it was concluded by the engineers that with the Mk9 it could fulfill the requirements. However, production of the Mk9 was delayed in comparisson with the Nk9 and the Navy ordered Mitsubishi to use the Nk9.
The aircraft was delayed further when Mitsubishi's factories prioritized production of the Zero and the G4M bomber as well as addresing issues on the Raiden.  Due to those factors, the 17-shi, which became A7M1 flew officially for the first time on 6th May 1944, as late as four years after the development started. It showed excellent handling and maneouvrability, but, as Mitsubishi's engineers feared, was underpowered with a maximum speed similar to the A6M5 Zero.
As it was disappointing, the Navy ordered development to stop on 30th July 1944, but Mitsubishi got permission to continue with the development using the Ha-43 engine, so the prototype flew with such engine and the designation of A7M2 Reppu (Strong Gale) on 13th October 1944. It now achieved a top speed of 628km/h (339kn; 390mph) and surpassed in climbing and other areas the Zero which made the Navy to change their mind about the aircraft. It was also equipped with automatic flaps, which were previously used on the Kawanishi N1K-J improving maneouvrability even further. An earthquake on 7th December 1944, plus Allied bombings, delayed the development of the aircraft even further.
In June 1945 Japanese Ace pilot Saburo Sakai was ordered to Nagoya to test the aircraft and declared to be the fastest aircraft he had ever seen, capable of surpassing anything in the air, Japanese or American. He claimed also that it could fly in circles, while ascending around a Hellcat or a Mustang and it could fight at up to 12000m.
Further versions were proposed and even worked on, like the A7M3, that would've featured a mechanically driven three-speed supercharger Mitsubishi Ha-43 engine rated at 2250hp (1680Kw), and, unlike the previous variants it would've operated from land bases. Work on the prototype of this variant was underway, however the end of the war halted any development.
Another land based variant the A7M3-J Reppu-Kai was planned around the turbo-supercharged Ha-43 engine, rated this time at 2200hp (1600Kw) including an inter-cooler with a maximum speed of 648km/h (402mph) and armed with six 30mm Type 5 cannons, four wing mounted and two oblique-firing mounted in the fuselage, copying the German Schäge Musik system. A full-scale mock-up was built but no prototype was produced.
When Japan surrendered in September 1945, every development was halted.
Edit: We've just updated the drawings today, on 30th May 2020.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_A7M
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters

Asja Jaktfalk II - Foreign Users

Yes, that's the roundel used by the Swedish Air Force during the late 20s and mid 30s.

As we are covering it's foreign users, we are leaving technical descriptions for later.

The Asja Jaktfalk was a Swedish single-seat biplane fighter built in the late 20s, but it's most developed version, the Jaktfalk II, saw the light in 1932.

The Asja Jaktfalk was firstly tested by military representatives of both Argentina and the Empire of Japan, but they placed no orders as they weren't satisfied by it's performance, however we decided to draw some paintjobs to see how they would've looked like if they had bought them.
They also served in the Finnish Air Force who received three of them on 8th December 1939 as part of the Swedish help on the Finnish winter war. As they were seriously outdated, they were used for training purposes at the airfield of Kauhava until as late as 1945 when they were all scrapped.
Apparently, it also served with the Latvian navy, however as we only could find a text reference on wikipedia to this, the Lavtian profile of this airplane should be considered speculative.
Finally a modified version, powered by an Armstrong Siddeley Panther IIIA engine was built for Norway in order to test it against the British Hawker Fury.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svenska_Aero_Jaktfalken
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters