The Mitsubishi Ki-51 was a light bomber which could also serve as a dive bomber that served with the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
It flew for the first time in mid-1939 and, initially it served in mainland China, where it proved to be too slow to hold against Allied fighters. Nonetheless, when deployed in the China-Burma-India theatre, proved to be very useful as it could operate from very improvised and rough airfields thanks to its short take-off and landing capabilities, where other aicrafts couldn't operate. As the war was turning against Japan, they were used as kamikaze aircrafts.
This aircraft was also the last Japanese aircraft that sank an American warship. On 6th August 1945 (the same day that Hiroshima was destroyed by the nuclear bomb) a Ki-51 belonging to the 73rd Independent Chutai dropped depth charges against the Balao-class submarine USS Bullhead (SS-332) in the Java sea.
It was powered by a single Mitsubishi Ha-26-II 14 cylinder air-cooled radial engine which delivered 950hp (709Kw) of power and was armed with two fixed forward-firing 7.7mm (0.303in) Type 89 machine guns, which in later models were replaced with two 12.7mm (0.5in) Ho-103 machine guns and had a defensive rearward-firing 7.7mm Te-4 machine gun in the obeserver position.
It had a payload of 200Kg (441lb) of bombs in underwing hardpoints and, for kamikaze operations it could be increased to 250Kg (551lb).
In total 2385 of them were manufactured, among them two prototypes were and eleven pre-production models. Three prototypes of the reconnaissance version were built by Mansyu with a retractable landing gear, but it didn't enter into production.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Ki-51
2. https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=892
3. http://www.daveswarbirds.com/Nippon/aircraft/Sonia.htm
A blog dedicated to draw historical, ahistorical and fictional warplanes and other military vehicles in 1/34 scale. Disclaimer: We just draw for the fun of doing it. If you want you can display the drawings of this blog in your website or forum as long as you credit the source. To properly view the drawings, click on them.
Showing posts with label Mitsubishi Ki-51. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mitsubishi Ki-51. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 April 2018
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Mitsubishi Ki-51
The Mitsubishi Ki-51 was a Japanese light bomber which, in the inmediate post-war, served with many nations.
- China: After the Japanese withdrawal from mainland China tons of equipment were left behind. Both communist and nationalist armies took them and pushed them into service. They served through the late stages of the Chinese Civil War, in the post 1945 period. Apparently, initialy the nationalists captured them, but they were soon captured by the communists some time after 1945 and after the war they were kept in service by the People's Liberation Army's Air Force until 1953.
- France: As the Ki-51 was mainly used in the China-Burma-India Theatre of Operations, many of them were left behind in Indochina. After the Japanese withdrawal, local French authorities pushed some few of them into service (as most of them were damaged or derelicted beyond usage) and used them occasionaly in the First Indochina War in the liaison role, which, not in vain, they were assigned to a liaison squadron.
- Indonesia: The Indonesian People's Security Force (IPSF), which was the Indonesian anti-Dutch militia that fought for independence, captured a small number of Ki-51s at numerous Japanese bases being the bigger one the one located at Malang, named Bugis Air Base which was evacuated on 18th September 1945. Most of the aircrafts were destroyed in the subsequent Indonesian Independence War which lasted from 1945 until 1949. It's known that at least one Ki-51 bombed Dutch troops on 29th July 1947.
- Democratic People's Republic of Korea: As Manchuria and Korea were important Japanese bases, after the USSR invaded in August 1945, they captured lots of Japanese equipment which, compared to Soviet ones, they were very outdated. As most of them were concentrated both in Harbin (capital of Manchuria), Port Arthur (nowadays Dalian) and Pyongyang, (which before the proclamation of North Korea was an important hub in the region) when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (AKA North Korea) was proclaimed on 9th September 1948, Soviet authorities allowed the newly Republic to have some Ki-51s. They were most probably used in the opening stages of the Korean War, however, most likely, they were destroyed soonly after. Anyway, we couldn't find any graphical evidence about them, the profile should be taken with a grain of salt.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Ki-51
2. https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=892
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)


