Five ox carts to Kagamigahara

In September 1939 the first prototype of Mitsubishi’s new G4M bomber left the company’s Nagoya plant. It did not taxi out or fly away. It was taken apart, loaded onto five ox-drawn farm carts and hauled 48 kilometres north to Kagamigahara airfield. The contrast says everything about Mitsubishi in those years: a company designing some of the most advanced aircraft in the world in a country whose roads could not yet carry them. Within three years those aircraft had stunned the Allies across the Pacific.

A shipyard in Nagasaki

Mitsubishi was a shipbuilder long before it built aeroplanes. On 7 July 1884 Iwasaki Yatarō, founder of the Mitsubishi trading house, leased the government shipyard at Nagasaki, a works first laid out by Dutch engineers in 1857. He bought it outright in 1887, and it grew into Mitsubishi Shipbuilding & Engineering in 1917. Engines and aircraft came next: in 1920 the group set up Mitsubishi Internal Combustion in Nagoya, renamed Mitsubishi Aircraft in 1928 and folded into the new Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1934, then Japan’s largest private firm.

The Englishman in Nagoya

The company learned to design aircraft from an Englishman. Herbert Smith, formerly of the Sopwith Aviation Company, came to Nagoya and designed the 1MF carrier fighter, which first flew in October 1921. On 28 February 1923 a 1MF became the first aircraft to take off from and land on Japan’s new carrier Hōshō. Mitsubishi also signed a technology agreement with Junkers in 1925. Within a decade the pupils had overtaken their teachers, and the most gifted of them was a young Tokyo graduate called Jiro Horikoshi.

Horikoshi’s fighters

Horikoshi’s A5M, first flown on 4 February 1935, was the world’s first low-wing monoplane carrier fighter to enter service. His A6M followed on 1 April 1939: the Zero, light, agile and with enormous range. Early in the Pacific war it reportedly shot down twelve aircraft for every one lost. Mitsubishi built 3,879 Zeros and Nakajima, under licence, 6,538. Mitsubishi’s G3M bombers helped sink HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse on 10 December 1941, the first capital ships defending themselves at sea to be sunk by air power alone.

The price of lightness

The lightness had a price. The G4M carried no armour or self-sealing tanks, and Allied pilots called it the flying lighter. On 18 April 1943 American P-38s shot down a G4M carrying Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of Pearl Harbor. In August 1945 two demilitarised G4Ms, painted white with green crosses, carried Japan’s surrender delegation to Ie Shima. Its naval work, including the battleship Musashi, had helped make Nagasaki a target; the atomic bomb fell there on 9 August 1945. Hayao Miyazaki’s 2013 film The Wind Rises retold Horikoshi’s life, much of it fictionalised.

Broken up and rebuilt

In January 1950 the occupation authorities split MHI into three regional companies; they reunited in 1964. Aviation restarted under licence, and the 127th Mitsubishi-built F-4EJ, completed on 20 May 1981, was the last Phantom built anywhere. Home-grown designs followed: the T-2 trainer of 1971, the first Japanese-developed aircraft to break the sound barrier, and the F-1 fighter of 1975. The MU-2 turboprop sold 704 examples, many assembled in Texas. Mitsubishi licence-built 164 F-15Js, and the F-2, a heavily redesigned F-16, triggered a political storm in Washington.

From SpaceJet to GCAP

The civil dream ended badly. The SpaceJet regional airliner first flew on 11 November 2015, but after repeated delays, many caused by certification paperwork, and spending put at up to a trillion yen, MHI cancelled it on 6 February 2023. The military path has gone better. The X-2 stealth demonstrator flew in 2016, and MHI is Japan’s prime contractor for the Global Combat Air Programme with BAE Systems and Leonardo, through the joint venture Edgewing, named in June 2025, with service entry planned from 2035.

Fábricas

• Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works · Nagasaki — Leased 1884, bought 1887; built the battleship Musashi
• Nagoya aircraft plant · Nagoya, Aichi — Aircraft works from 1920; built 493 of 621 J2Ms and Mitsubishi’s Zeros
• Komaki · Aichi — Final assembly of the F-15J

Pessoas

• Iwasaki Yatarō · founder of Mitsubishi — Leased the Nagasaki shipyard in 1884
• Herbert Smith · designer, ex-Sopwith — Designed the 1MF, 1921
• Jiro Horikoshi · chief designer — 1903–1982; A5M, A6M Zero, J2M; later worked on the YS-11

Recordes e pioneirismos

• 1MF: first take-off and landing on Japan’s carrier Hōshō, 28 February 1923 (m5)
• A5M: first low-wing monoplane carrier fighter to enter service, 1936 (m6)
• T-2: first Japanese-developed aircraft to break the sound barrier (m16)
• F-4EJ: last Phantom built in the world, 20 May 1981 (m20)