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

During the last months of the war, the wasted Japanese industry could not manufacture fighters that were sufficiently advanced to face the Superfortress. They destroyed 67 towns and half of Tokyo in a nine months’ bombing campaign. The book describes 42 little known projects of Japanese unbuilt super fighters designed at the end of the war.

The first B-29 flew over Tokyo on 1 November 1944. It was a photographic reconnaissance aircraft ironically named ‘Tokyo Rose’. The Ki.44 fighters of the 47th Sentai took off to intercept it but as it turned out the Superfortress flew at such an altitude and speed that they could not reach it. 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 m in four minutes; however it was not good enough. During the following ten months, a devastating bombing campaign of thousands of Superfortress destroyed 67 Japanese cities and half of Tokyo. The cultural shock and the political consequences were huge, when it was realised that the Japanese industry was not able to produce the specially heat and stress-resistant metallic alloys that were required to manufacture the turbo superchargers needed by the fighters in charge of defending the Japanese mainland. They lacked the essential chromium and molybdenum metals to harden the steel. This fact thwarted the manufacturing of numerous advanced projects of both conventional fighters and those derived from the transfer of German technology fitted with turbojets and rocket engines. They are thoroughly described in this book.

Weight: 794g
Dimension: 272 x 400 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781781558119