Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi

History of Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi

The Nakajima Ki-115 Tsuguri ("Sword") was a simplified single-seat, single-engine, suicide fighter developed by Imperial Japan during the last month of World War II. The type first flew in June 1945, and only 104 were built before the war officially ended its career in August of that year.

Developed by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF), the Ki-115 is also intended to enter the inventory of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), where it is known as "Toka" ("Wisteria Flower").

By mid-1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide, Germany succumbed to the power of the Allied war machine, the Axis powers ceased to exist - the war in Europe was officially over and marked by "VE" day. The Pacific War was an ongoing war, and the Allies were making steady progress, albeit at great cost. However, with the capture of Iwo Jima (February) and Okinawa (April), the war on the coast of the Japanese Empire was finally over, with all its major cities within range of Allied fighters and bombers. Like Germany in the final months of the European campaign, it was a time of desperate measures for the island nation, and a full-scale Allied invasion of the mainland was a very certain reality.

The invasion, code-named Operation Downfall, is being planned.

The plane had no standard machine gun or cannon armament to save weight, and the simple fact that the Ki-115 was not designed to engage directly with Allied fighters. Instead, as with other kamikaze aircraft, the pilot provided a powerful payload that included a bomb clipped to the centerline of the fuselage below the plane.

This comes in the form of a single 551-pound, 1,102-pound or 1,764-pound bomb designed to cause as much damage as possible during a kamikaze attack.

In the end, like the kamikazes feared by the Allied sailors, the attack did not disrupt shipping routes and planned attacks. As such, projects like the Ki-115 were rather short-lived - although it was too early for the Imperial Japanese war to officially end, with the atomic bomb droppings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Pacific War - like the whole of World War II - is now over in the history books.

Operational Downfall never materialized and saved the lives of thousands of Allied Marines, pilots and sailors.

The Ki-115 was never used in kamikaze operations. As with these "secret Air Force weapons," only the reader can imagine what swarms of Ki-115 suicide fighter jets might have done to Allied shipping in the region.

Only one production prototype survived the war, which is now housed at the Garber facility attached to the National Air and Space Museum.

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