A shipyard’s aircraft offshoot

Tachikawa began as the aircraft subsidiary of a shipyard. On 1 November 1924 Tokyo Ishikawajima Shipyard, the future IHI, set up the Ishikawajima Aircraft Manufacturing Company at Tsukishima in Tokyo. It built a handful of trainers and reconnaissance prototypes, often one or two of each, and in 1930 moved to Tachikawa, beside the army airfield west of the city. In July 1936, at the army’s request, it took the name of its home town and became Tachikawa Aircraft, an army supplier through and through, building trainers, liaison aircraft and, under licence, other firms’ designs.

Red Dragonflies and the army’s schoolroom

Its signature product was the Ki-9 biplane, the Army Type 95-1 intermediate trainer, first flown on 7 January 1935. Painted trainer orange, it was nicknamed aka-tombo, the Red Dragonfly, and remained the army’s main trainer until 1945; Tachikawa built 2,395. Designer Ryokichi Endo followed it with the Ki-36 army co-operation aircraft of 1938, the Ki-55 trainer derived from it and the twin-engined Ki-54 crew trainer. Tachikawa also bought a licence for the Lockheed 14 Super Electra and became a major second source for Nakajima’s Ki-43 Hayabusa fighter. Late in the war its trainers, like so many Japanese aircraft, were expended as kamikaze aircraft.

Flight to Germany: the Ki-77

The most remarkable Tachikawa aircraft began as a newspaper stunt. The Asahi Shimbun commissioned the A-26, a slim long-range twin designed under Hidemasa Kimura of Tokyo Imperial University, to fly from Tokyo to New York for the 2,600th year of the imperial calendar. War intervened, and the army revived it as the Ki-77 to link Japan with Germany. On 7 July 1943 the first prototype left Singapore for the Crimea and vanished over the Indian Ocean; British codebreakers had known its route in advance. In July 1944 the second flew 16,435 kilometres in 57 hours over a closed circuit in Manchuria, an unofficial world distance record.

From fighters to Skylines and Corollas

American bombing wrecked the Tachikawa works in March and April 1945, and the occupation seized the airfield as Tachikawa Air Base. The engineers scattered into the car industry. In 1947 the prototype works manager Tamotsu Toyama and Jiro Tanaka, designer of the Ki-74 high-altitude bomber, founded the Tokyo Electric Car company, which became Prince Motor, maker of the Skyline and Gloria, and merged with Nissan in 1966. Tatsuo Hasegawa, who designed the Ki-94 high-altitude fighter, went to Toyota and was chief engineer of cars including the Corolla.

Tachihi: a landlord with a past

Aviation never really came back. A second company built the R-52 trainer in 1952, the first post-war Japanese-designed aircraft, and the R-53, but neither sold, and in 1955 Tachikawa Aircraft renamed itself Tachihi Kigyo to make clear it had left the aircraft business. When the Americans returned the Tachikawa land in 1976, the company became a property landlord. A management buyout in 2012 took it off the Tokyo exchange and created Tachihi Holdings. The monorail station at Tachihi, opened in 1998, is named after it.

Fábricas

• Tsukishima works · Chuo, Tokyo — Original Ishikawajima Aircraft plant, 1924–1930
• Tachikawa works · Tachikawa, Tokyo — Main plant from 1930; bombed 1945; seized by US forces until 1976
• Kofu works · Kamanashi River, Yamanashi — Decided 1942, completed 1944
• Okayama works · Kojima Bay, Okayama — Built on reclaimed land, completed 1944

Gente

• Ryokichi Endo · chief designer — Led the Ki-9, Ki-36 and Ki-54 teams
• Hidemasa Kimura · university aeronautical designer — Directed the A-26/Ki-77 design
• Jiro Tanaka · engineer — Ki-74 designer; co-founded the car firm that became Prince Motor
• Tatsuo Hasegawa · engineer — Ki-94 designer; later Toyota chief engineer on the Corolla and others

Récords y primicias

• Ki-77: 16,435 km closed-circuit flight in 57 h 9 min over Manchuria, 2–4 July 1944, exceeding the SM.75’s 12,936 km; not ratified
• R-52: first post-war Japanese-designed aircraft, 1952