Fighters of the Dying Sun: The Most Advanced Japanese Fighters of the Second World War

Author(s): Justo Miranda 

ISBN: 9781781558119
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A previously unpublished compilation of forty-two advanced fighters developed in Japan during the Second World War.
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  • Includes forty-two previously unknown fighters of the Second World War

  • Presents a historical framework and performance details for each project for the bitter defence of Tokyo

  • Profusely illustrated with technical drawings and gives exhaustive coverage on different models and variants

  • Written by the best-selling author of The Ultimate Piston Fighters of the Luftwaffe, The Ultimate Flying Wings of the Luftwaffe and Axis Suicide Squads: German and Japanese Secret Projects of the Second World War

  • Of interest to aviation and military historians, modellers, gamers and flight simulator enthusiasts


The first B-29 Superfortress, ironically named ‘Tokyo Rose’, flew over Tokyo on 1 November 1944 and was on a photographic reconnaissance mission.

Nakajima Ki-44 fighters of the 47th Sentai took-off to intercept, but the B-29s flew at such a high altitude and speed that they failed to engage. The Ki-44-II Otsu had been specifically designed for this type of interception and could reach the astonishing rate of climb of 5,000 metres in four minutes; however, it was not good enough.

During the following ten months, a devastating bombing campaign by B-29s decimated sixty-seven Japanese cities and half of Tokyo. The cultural shock and political consequences were huge when it was realised that the heat and stress-metallic alloys for the turbo superchargers could not be manufactured in high numbers.

Japan lacked the essential chromium and molybdenum metals to harden the steel, which thwarted the design of numerous advanced projects such as turbojet and rocket engine technology from Nazi Germany.


BOOK ISBN 9781781558119
FORMAT 248 x 172 mm
BINDING Hardback
PAGES 256 pages
PUBLICATION DATE 8 July 2021
TERRITORY World
ILLUSTRATIONS 158 back-and-white scale drawings

 

 






Justo Miranda is the author of books and monographs on aviation since the 1980s. A widely known historian, Miranda specialises in aviation of the 1930s and is the author of two volumes on aircraft used during the Spanish Civil War. The exciting discovery of a microfilm on secret German weapons in the early 1990s drove him to publish Secret Wonder Weapons of the Third Reich, later published by Schiffer in 1996. Since then, Miranda has published Reichdreams and monographs on little known airplane projects.

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