Fighter First flight: 1934 Nakajima

At Nakajima, Yasushi Koyama was appointed to lead the development work, and Shinroku Inoue was the chief designer of the project. The new aircraft (trade designation PA) featured a stocky fuselage and swept wings with rounded tips, giving it an elliptical planform. Although Nakajima's previous low wing had a cantilever wing, the thinner profile for higher speeds could only be applied to a wing reinforced with external braces. Therefore, the designers of the campaign went for just such a variant of the wing of the new fighter. The fixed main landing gear was equipped with wide-chord fairings.

Between April and December 1935, four prototypes were built, each with some differences. The third prototype was fitted with a three-bladed propeller, while the fourth was equipped with a two-bladed propeller and a cockpit canopy. Each of the prototypes had differences in the undercarriage fairings and vertical tail, as well as minor changes based on test results.

Joint flight tests of the Ki-10 and Ki-11 took place in mid-1935 at the Army Aircraft Research Institute at Tachikawa and were conducted by its team of test pilots. The ratings of aircraft performance were mainly based on the favorite method of Japanese aviation - maneuverable horizontal battles, which gave the Kawasaki Ki-10 polutoraplan an advantage over the Nakajima Ki-11 monoplane. The latter, in this case, would be more suitable for hit-and-run tactics, the advantages of which were discovered a little later. On the basis of these differences, the Ki-10 won the competition, which was adopted by the Imperial Army and became the "type 95 fighter", while in September 1935 the Ki-11 was rejected. However, reports indicated that the Ki-11's Kotobuki radial engine was more reliable than the Ki-10's Ha-9 II water-cooled inline engine, which was an evolution of the BMW-VI line version. Despite these results, the Ki-11 became the basis for the development of the next generation of Japanese fighters, one of which was the Nakajima Ki-27, which received from the Allies during the Pacific War codename Nate.

Efforts were made by Nakajima to produce the Ki-11 as an export fighter for Southeast Asia, but no potential customers showed any interest in it, and so production was discontinued after four prototypes were built. The first and third prototypes were used by Nakajima for research on new fighter projects, and the fourth was sold to the Asahi Shimbun (朝日新聞 - Morning Sun Newspaper) as a high-speed aircraft (civil registration number J-BBHA) under the designation AN-1.

In the service of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, this one and only AN-1 achieved significant success. On December 31, 1935, an AN-1 aircraft piloted by Mosaburo Niino set a speed record by flying from Tokyo to Osaka in 1 hour and 25 minutes. This record was surpassed by the same aircraft when Masaaki Iinuma flew this route. In June 1936, during a solar eclipse best seen on the island of Hokkaido, a piloted Iinuma AN-1 delivered undeveloped films to the newspaper's Tokyo office, outpacing all other newspaper competitors. This flight was performed at an average speed of 398 km/h. Until the advent of the Mitsubishi Karigane, which was used by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in March 1937 as an ultra-long-range Kamikaze aircraft, the Nakajima AN-1 remained the fastest Japanese machine. In preparation for the European goodwill flight, Iinuma used the AN-1 to improve its flying skills ahead of the historic flight. The famous French pilot Marcel Doret took off in an AN-1 from Haneda Airport in September 1937, demonstrating his aerobatics skills on this modern aircraft.

Photo	Description
	Drawing Ki-11
	Nakajima AN-1

Fighter First flight: 1936 Nakajima

Despite the failure of the Ki-11, Nakajima continued her research into fast fighters, beginning the design of a new machine with technical assistance from Dewoitine. Roger Robert and Jean Beziaud led the project from the French side, and Shigenobu Mori from the Japanese side. The Dewoitine D.510J fighter was taken as a model, while the project was based on an experienced Ki-11 fighter: leaving the rear fuselage, the design team replaced the Nakajima Kotobuki 3 radial engine with a French Hispano-Suiza 12Xcrs water-cooled engine with a capacity of 610 hp. With..

Nakajima wanted to squeeze the maximum performance out of the aircraft, and therefore its design was distinguished by the use of the latest achievements in aircraft construction, many of which were used for the first time on Japanese fighters. The Ki-12 used retractable hydraulic undercarriages, a slotted wing and cannon armament: a 20 mm cannon was installed on the fighter, firing through the camber of the propeller. On trials in October 1936, the aircraft showed excellent flight performance.

However, the leadership of the army aviation from the very beginning was critical of the f. Nakajima: The victorious supporters of the "maneuverable" fighter considered the Ki-12 to be insufficiently stable, poorly maneuverable (by Japanese standards), expensive and complicated. In addition, in the experience of Kawasaki's problems with the licensed release of the BMW-VI, there were doubts about the ability of the Japanese industry to establish serial production of the Hispano-Suiza 12Xcrs.

All this led to the refusal of the military to accept the Ki-12 into service. As a result, Nakajima also came to the conclusion about the dangers of running ahead of the locomotive: the company began work on a more "simple" project "type P.E." with fixed landing gear and air-cooled engine. The development of the "RE type" project led to the appearance of the Ki-27 fighter, which was put into service.

Bibliography

• Japanese aircraft of World War II. /Oleg Doroshkevich/
• Japanese aviation. /A. Firsov/
• Fighter "Kawasaki" Ki-10 / Planes of the World. Elena Astakhova./
• Experienced fighter Nakajima Ki-11 /Alternative History/
• The one who is unlucky. Fighter Nakajima Ki-12 /Alternative History/
• Encyclopedia of military equipment /Aerospace Publishing/