A shipbuilder’s gamble

Shōzō Kawasaki survived two shipwrecks as a young man and drew a simple conclusion: Japan needed modern ships. In 1878 he opened the Kawasaki Tsukiji Shipyard on borrowed government land by the Sumida river in Tokyo. His Hyogo yard at Kobe was incorporated as the Kawasaki Dockyard Company on 15 October 1896, the date Kawasaki Heavy Industries still counts as its birthday. Aircraft came later, almost as a side line. In July 1918 the dockyard set up an aeroplane section at its Hyogo works, and in 1922 it opened a branch factory on the Kakamigahara plain in Gifu. That factory is still where Kawasaki builds its aircraft.

Dr Vogt’s pupils

Kawasaki began by licence-building French Salmson biplanes and engines, and Dornier flying boats; a Kawasaki-Dornier Wal made a notable flight in December 1924. The bigger investment was a person. From 1923 to 1933 Kawasaki employed the German engineer Richard Vogt to design aircraft and train Japanese engineers. Vogt later became chief designer at Blohm & Voss, famous for its asymmetric BV 141. Among his pupils was Takeo Doi, who would become Kawasaki’s chief designer. The Type 88 reconnaissance biplane of 1927 sold 1,117 copies, and the Ki-10 of 1935 became the last biplane fighter of the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1937 the aircraft works was spun off as Kawasaki Aircraft Industries.

The swallow mistaken for a Messerschmitt

Doi’s masterpiece first flew in December 1941. The Ki-61 Hien, or flying swallow, used a licence-built Daimler-Benz DB 601, making it the only mass-produced Japanese fighter of the war with a liquid-cooled inverted-V engine. With its slim pointed nose it looked so un-Japanese that the first American pilot to see one, during the Doolittle Raid of April 1942, took it for a Messerschmitt Bf 109. The Allies later code-named it Tony, believing it Italian. More than 3,000 were built. Alongside it came the Ki-45 Toryu twin-engine fighter and the Ki-48 light bomber, nearly 2,000 of them.

275 fighters without engines

The Ki-61’s engine was its weakness, and American bombers finished the job. On 19 January 1945 a raid destroyed the Ha-140 engine plant at Akashi, leaving 275 otherwise complete fighters standing engineless. Doi and two colleagues grafted on a Mitsubishi radial in place of the inline engine, smoothing the joint with a second skin riveted over the fuselage. The improvised Ki-100 first flew on 1 February 1945, and instructors at the Akeno flying school concluded that, with pilots of equal skill, it would always beat the Ki-84, the Army’s best fighter. Months later the Gifu works lay in ruins, flattened by bombing, and Japan was forbidden to build aircraft at all.

Licence, then independence

When the ban lifted, Kawasaki rebuilt itself on licences: 210 Lockheed T-33 jet trainers, 239 Bell 47 helicopters and their KH-4 developments, KV-107s, CH-47s and 101 P-3C Orions. The aircraft company also gave birth to something unexpected. Kawasaki Aircraft built motorcycles in the post-war years, absorbed the Meguro motorcycle works in 1964, and its motorbike business lives on today as Kawasaki Motors. In 1969 the aircraft company was folded back into Kawasaki Heavy Industries. A year later, on 12 November 1970, the C-1 flew: Japan’s first domestically designed twin-turbofan military transport. In 1977 Kawasaki and Germany’s MBB agreed to build the BK 117 helicopter together.

Flying by light

The T-4 trainer of 1985, flown by the Blue Impulse aerobatic team, might have sold abroad, Flight International thought, had Japan not banned military exports. Then came the boldest programme in 30 years: in 2001 Kawasaki won both a maritime patrol jet and a transport, sharing cockpits, outer wings and tails to save money. The P-1 flew from Gifu on 28 September 2007, the world’s first production aircraft with fly-by-optics controls, sending commands through fibre-optic cable instead of wire. The C-2 followed on 26 January 2010 and can carry four times the C-1’s load. Kawasaki also builds parts for the Boeing 767, 777 and 787, and engines at Akashi.

Továrny

• Gifu Works · Kakamigahara, Gifu — Opened 7 September 1922; destroyed by bombing in 1945; main airframe plant today
• Akashi Works · Akashi, Hyogo — Opened 1940; jet engines and transmissions; Ha-140 plant bombed 19 January 1945
• Nagoya Works 1 · Yatomi, Aichi — Opened 1992; Boeing 777 and 787 structures
• Nagoya Works 2 · Tobishima, Aichi — Opened 1979; Boeing 767 structures
• Seishin Works · Nishi-ku, Kobe — Opened 1990; jet engine and gas turbine parts

Lidé

• Shōzō Kawasaki · founder — 1837–1912; shipbuilder from 1878
• Richard Vogt · German designer, at Kawasaki 1923–1933 — Trained Kawasaki’s engineers; later chief designer of Blohm & Voss
• Takeo Doi · chief designer — Designed the Ki-61 and led the Ki-100 conversion

Rekordy a prvenství

• Ki-61 Hien: only mass-produced Japanese fighter of WWII with a liquid-cooled inverted-V engine
• Ki-10: last biplane fighter of the Imperial Japanese Army
• KAL-1, first flown July 1953: first post-war all-metal aircraft of Japanese design
• C-1, first flown 12 November 1970: Japan’s first domestically designed twin-turbofan military transport
• P-1: world’s first production aircraft with fly-by-optics flight controls