An ironworks takes to the air

Kyushu Hikoki grew out of the Watanabe ironworks of Fukuoka, a machine shop opened in 1886 as an offshoot of a building contractor. Watanabe made army supply wagons from 1904 and torpedo parts for the navy, first touched aviation in 1923 with a trial undercarriage and moved to a site at Zasshonokuma on the edge of Fukuoka in 1930. It began building aircraft in 1935. In 1943, as the war turned against Japan, the aircraft division was spun off as Kyushu Hikoki, the Kyushu Aircraft Company, and the parent became Kyushu Heiki, Kyushu Armaments.

Seaplanes, trainers and submarine hunters

Most of the work was licence production. The Zasshonokuma works covered about 120,000 tsubo, some 40 hectares, and built 16 types, among them about 1,200 Type 0 reconnaissance seaplanes, the Aichi design the Allies called Jake. Its own designs were modest: the E9W submarine-borne floatplane of 1935, a licence Bücker Jungmann trainer, and the K11W Shiragiku crew trainer, which flew in November 1942 and was later loaded with explosives for kamikaze attacks. The Q1W Tokai, a twin-engined anti-submarine patrol aircraft with radar and a magnetic anomaly detector, flew in September 1943.

Tsuruno’s backwards fighter

The famous one came from outside. Lieutenant Commander Masayoshi Tsuruno of the navy’s technical arsenal believed a canard layout, with the wing at the back, a small foreplane at the nose and a pusher propeller, could beat conventional fighters on speed and later take a jet engine. His MXY6 gliders proved the idea, and the navy picked Kyushu to build the real thing partly because its design office and factory were less busy than the big firms’. The J7W Shinden, or Magnificent Lightning, was meant to climb above the B-29s and hit them with four 30 mm cannon.

Three flights in August 1945

Japanese sources say Kyushu finished drawings that normally took 18 months in six, about 6,000 sheets, and at its peak drew on more than 50,000 mobilised students and conscripted workers. B-29 raids wrecked Mitsubishi’s engine works and forced Kyushu to disperse its factory. The first prototype was finished in June 1945 and flew on 3 August from Mushiroda, now Fukuoka airport. Two more short flights followed in the week of the atomic bombs. They showed a strong pull to the right from the 2,130 hp engine, propeller flutter and shaft vibration. The navy had already ordered it into production.

From fighters to bus bodies

Peace ended the story within days. Drawings and unfinished airframes were burnt on navy orders, the second prototype was scrapped, and the first was shipped to the United States in 1945. Its forward fuselage is shown today at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center. Back in Fukuoka, the company became Watanabe Jidosha Kogyo, building vehicle bodies and repairing buses for the Nishitetsu group, until it was wound up in 2001. A full-size Shinden made for the 2023 film Godzilla Minus One now stands in the Tachiarai Peace Memorial Museum.

Fábricas

• Zasshonokuma works · Zasshonokuma, Fukuoka (near today’s Minami-Fukuoka station) — About 120,000 tsubo; seized by US forces after the war
• Haruda dispersal site · Haruda, Chikushino, Fukuoka — Factory dispersed here after the March 1945 Tachiarai raid

Pessoas

• Masayoshi Tsuruno · navy engineer, Shinden concept — Proposed the canard fighter and led the navy team seconded to Kyushu
• Kunitake Kiyohara · deputy head of design section 1 — Wrote the main first-hand account of the Shinden programme
• Franz Pohl · Henschel engineer — Advised on redesigning the Shinden for mass production, 1944–1945

Recordes e pioneirismos

• J7W Shinden was ordered into production before the prototype had flown, with 1,086 projected between April 1946 and March 1947