Chiang, Mussolini and a factory in Nanchang

Hongdu’s story begins with an unlikely partnership. In 1933 Chiang Kai-shek signed an agreement with Benito Mussolini, and in December 1934 the Sino-Italian National Aircraft Works opened in Nanchang, with T. L. Soong as chairman and an Italian as general manager. When Japan invaded in 1937, Japanese bombers wrecked the factories, and the Chinese government discovered that Italians were guiding the Japanese pilots. All the Italians were gone by the end of the year. On 9 December 1937 Chiang confiscated their shares, and the works fled to Nanchuan near Chongqing, returning to Nanchang only in 1947.

Hongdu: the ancient name of Nanchang

After 1949 the factory was refounded in 1951 as the Hongdu Machinery Factory, Hongdu being the ancient name of Nanchang, and became State Factory 320. Its first job was to teach a new air force to fly. Between 1954 and 1958 it built 379 CJ-5s, licensed Yakovlev Yak-18 trainers, and on 27 August 1958 flew its own successor, the CJ-6. More than 2,000 CJ-6s have been built, and the aircraft is still in production. Between 1957 and 1968 Nanchang also built 727 Y-5s, the Chinese version of the Antonov An-2 biplane, before handing that line to Shijiazhuang.

The Fantan

Its most famous combat aircraft grew out of the MiG-19. Under chief designer Lu Xiaopeng, Nanchang stretched and area-ruled the Shenyang J-6 into the Q-5, giving it side intakes and a four-metre internal weapons bay. Cancelled in 1961 amid political turmoil, it survived through a small team that kept the project alive and first flew on 4 July 1965. About 1,300 were built between 1969 and 2012. Some were adapted to carry a small nuclear bomb, one of China’s few tactical nuclear programmes, until Beijing halted it in 1979. Known to NATO as Fantan, it was exported as the A-5 to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sudan.

Teaching the world to fly jets

In the 1980s Nanchang teamed with Pakistan on the K-8 Karakorum, a jet basic trainer built for the PLA as the JL-8. It first flew on 21 November 1990 and more than 735 have been built, making it a mainstay of Chinese military exports as well as of PLA flight schools. Its supersonic successor, the L-15 Falcon or JL-10, was developed with consulting help from Yakovlev, first flew on 13 March 2006 and has been sold to Zambia and the United Arab Emirates. In March 1998 the company took its current name, Hongdu Aviation Industry Group.

From sidecars to stealth drones

Hongdu has always made more than aircraft. In the 1950s it built Chang Jiang 750 cc sidecar motorcycles, descended from Soviet copies of the BMW R71; later it assembled MD 500 helicopters, built the N-5 crop-sprayer and a range of anti-ship and air-to-surface missiles. In 2005 the US State Department sanctioned the company for allegedly supplying weapons technology to Iran. Its newest product is the most secret: the GJ-11 Sharp Sword, a stealthy flying-wing combat drone that first flew in November 2013. In 2018 Hongdu moved its test flying from the old Qingyunpu field to the new Nanchang Yaohu airport.

Factories

• Nanchang works · Nanchang, Jiangxi — Founded on the Sanjiadian (Qingyunpu) airfield in 1935; main plant
• Nanchang Yaohu Airport · Nanchang Aviation Industrial City — New flight-test airfield opened 16 August 2018
• Wartime No. 2 Aircraft Factory · Nanchuan, Chongqing — Evacuation site during the war with Japan, 1937–1947

People

• T. L. Soong (Song Ziliang) · first chairman of SINAW
• Lu Xiaopeng · chief designer — Designed the Q-5 and the J-12