Hayabusa, go !

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I like the first one you posted... period propaganda films are always fun to watch...
 
The first one "64th Sentai's Song" was made in 1940 while the unit was in China, far before neither Hayabusa fighter nor LtCol Tateo Kato came to the unit. The song is meaningful in being written by the mebmers of the Sentai who must've always strive to improve own efficiency, not by the propaganda writers in later days.

Tateo Kato became the Sentai OC in mid 1941. Before that he was in the aircraft experimental and testing division of the Army where he had strongly opposed to field the early Ki-43 prototype which then suffered lack of engine power for its size and weight and the airframe strength.

After Kato took over the Sentai one of his co-worker at the experimental division came and asked him to fly the Ki-43 which was adopted by the Army recently but still had a lot of problems. The fighter was further tested and modified through in-field use by the Sentais including the 64th, had eventually became the core of IJAAF fighter units.

My comment is based on an interview with Yohei Hinoki, a noted one-legged fighter ace. Unfortunately its in Japanese.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJOCUXtv7Bg


In this song the word hayabusa, a dagger, symbolized fighter planes in broader terms. Also on the very first of the lylics a word "enjin" (engine) was used which against national policy during WW2 not to use or teach any words originated from and in the same phonetics of English. I heard the the Army mostly obeyed this rule whilist the Navy still used many of its technical terms originated from English as taught by the British Aviation Mission in the early 1920s.

BTW I am not impressed with the last one cherishing the success of Pearl Harbor Attack. I didn't know of the existence of it.
 
Thanks for your insight ppopsie

The Japanese Army and Navy were famous for their rivalry.. Did any Navy people recognize that the Ki-43 was a fantastic aircraft or did they disparage it in the hopes of gaining more funding for the Navy?

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Though I don't know exactly but there was a copetition held between the Navy and the Army for their major fighters before the war. In this the early Zero had a slightly better perforance over the Ki-43 which still did not perform satisfactory.

Fundings; indeed a rivalty existed between IJN and IJA. As long as I understand it was like in "don't know each other at all" fashon and the both respected each other. The war budget was cut almost in half to be given to the both equally. Although most of the major battles were fought by the Navy and there had been some attepts for the Navy to be given priority but were all useless.

There were never a hope that the both to use common equipment in having totally different ideas, systems and specifications to every bit, to the thread of a small screw, for example. A major aircraft manufacturing company split its production division up, one for the Navy and another for the Army, by the requests from both services to keep the security even each other.
 
Hi Ppopsie,

>Tateo Kato became the Sentai OC in mid 1941. Before that he was in the aircraft experimental and testing division of the Army where he had strongly opposed to field the early Ki-43 prototype which then suffered lack of engine power for its size and weight and the airframe strength.

Interesting comment on the airframe strength! There is an anecdote in "Hurricane over Sumatra" describing a surprise attack by "Navy Noughts" (British slang for Zero fighters) which actually were Ki-43s, of which none of the RAF pilots had ever heard at that time. The report included the mention of a Ki-43 "folding its wings" in what must have been a high-G pullout after an attack on a Hurricane.

Do you have any data on the design load factor of the Ki-43? I think I have seen some mention of the factor for the A6M somwhere, but never for the Ki-43.

>In this song the word hayabusa, a dagger, symbolized fighter planes in broader terms.

That's fascinating - in the (Western) literature, "Hayabusa" is usually translated as "Peregrine Falcon". Is that an error, or is there more behind this?

>Also on the very first of the lylics a word "enjin" (engine) was used which against national policy during WW2 not to use or teach any words originated from and in the same phonetics of English.

The Third Reich had a similar policy against foreign terms. In some of the technical reports, it worked out surprisingly well, but in less technical use it could be rather awkward. (And in some technical fields such as chemistry, there apparently was no hope of doing away with foreign terms even for the most inspired nationalist. I've heard that the chemists actually wrote a polemic article defending themselves against the accusation of being linguistically un-patriotic :)

In German aviation terms, the "engine" was either called "Triebwerk" (a German term) or "Motor" (a Latin derived term that was so well-established that it withstood attempts to replace it). Thanks for pointing out the Japanese policy - the parallel to the German policy is highly interesting! :)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)
 
Hello HoHun,
>Peregrine Falcon
That should be more accurate. In Japanese wiki I found this morning that Ara-washi was also used to represent the Army fighters in whole where "ara" in should mean tough and "washi" means an eagle.

Am still to find the design load factor of the Ki-43 but I got ones for the prototype A6M that;
N1: +7.0 x 1.8 at diving pullout
N2(?): +2.0 x 1.8 at design dive speed today's Vd
N4: -3.5 X 1.8 in inverted position
where 1.8 is called safety factor which means the airframe must be abelto withstand 7.0x 1.8=12.6(G) at least for 3 seconds without leaving any harmful structural deformations.

In this Mr. Hinoki mentioned on the movie that on one day he recognized a huge skin clack on the bottom of the airplane's belly and on the center line. It was so big that even his small finger could be put into and this implied that there had been a harmful deformation left on the airframe after a hop.
 

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