The Imperial Japanese Navy formally issued a set of specifications on 17th January 1938 to both Mitsubishi and Nakajima to develop an advanced fighter whose performance would exceed any other fighter aircraft that it was likely to meet. The Nakajima Company on reading the specifications believed them to be nearly impossible to fulfil and pulled out from the competition. The Mitsubishi Company continued to undertake the development of the required fighter. The design team was led by Jiro Horikoshi who had also led the team that produced the A5M. He believed that the requirements could be met but only if the fighter's weight was kept as light as possible. Every weight saving measure was looked at and this included using a new aluminium alloy that was developed by Sumitomo Metal Industries in 1936. It was decided that there was to be no armour protection for the pilot or any other critical parts of the aircraft, and it had standard fuel tanks as opposed to self-sealing ones, which were becoming the norm in the aircraft of other manufacturers. All of this went to make it lighter, more manoeuvrable and have a longer range than any other fighter in production at the time. It had an amazingly low stall speed of 110 kph or 69 mph and it was this that contributed to it being able to out-turn any other fighter it went up against.
No comments:
Post a Comment