Some of you might remember a month or two ago when I posted a couple of photos of my prototype model of a hypothetical P-40 night fighter variant. The P-40 NF.MK I Nighthawk in RAAF markings.
Anyway, I decided it needs some sort of hypothetical Axis nemsis all to itself. I don’t know a whole lot about WWII Japanese aircraft so any help from those that know more would be helpful. Here’s a brief overview of what I’ve decided this nemesis will feature so far:
Twin radial engines
Radar equiped medium bomber for night missions
remote control gun turrets
crew of three (four maximum)
Thats all I’ve decided so far about it, I’ll probably be doing work up drwaings for it for quite sometime before I come up with something that I think fits the description well.
What I need help with right now is naming her. I know the allies assigned feminine code names to Japanese bombers, but I don’t want to use a code name thats already been used on something real. I’m leaning strongly towards the name “Susan”, was it ever used as an actual code name?
I’d also like to give it an actual japanese name too, but my command of Japanese is something less than zero. My first choice would be to call it the Japanese word for dragonfly, but I’ve no idea what that would be or if the Japanese actually named one of their wartime birds that.
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. I find it much easier to visualize a hypothetical thing if I can put some sort of name to it. while I’m in the early planning stages of it.
Hey good luck on finding a Jap plane with remote control gun turrets, but I think that you should go for the Betty Bomber, and just use the basic kit parts for it and complaetly redisign the aircraft. If you want the Remot turrets go to a model swap meet and try to fing the Monogram B-29 for under 10 bucks. Salvage the turrets from there and graph them into the Bettys airframe. I think it would be a neat bomber.
Good luck to you and be sure to post your designs, so we can all see your work.
Thanks for the input, Vintage Aircraft. of course I’ll probably post my drawings when they’re finished just to get a few extra opinions before setting in stone.
The remote turrets are just an initial idea, I may not stick with them.
The admittedly foggy first images of this bird in my head resmble something between Lockheed Hudson and an Ilyushin IL-4 rather than a Betty.
The Japanese word for “dragonfly” is “tombo.” There is already one Japanese aircraft with “tombo” in its name: the Yokosuka K5Y1/K5YK Akatombo (“Red Dragonfly”), a single-engined biplane trainer.
Japanese fighters were usually named using these themes: light, thunder and lightning, and wind.
What’s the Japanese word for avalanche? Seems a fittingly ominous name for a bomber and does fit the mountain theme.
I definitely think I’ll stick with the code name Susan here. My second thought for a codename was Sandra, but I preffered Susan if I could get away with it.
How about a Ki-67 Peggy (Hiryu=Flying Dragon) fighter prototype? The Ki-67 was easily as fast and manuverable as the B-26B Marauder (many bombers were reported to have performed loops during combat) and there were plans to replace the glass nose with a cannon module (yes, the entire aircraft was of modular design). Allied bombing prevented it from going into full scale production and the use of non-supercharged engines stopped the few made from being able to reach the B-29 bombers. At lower altitudes it would have been a considerable threat, able to deliver enough munitions in one pass to sink even the largest ships!
It may not help you in your current project, but it has enough information on the Japanese X-palnes for your future projects. A lot of Japanese designs are very intriguing![:)]
Thanks for the link to Japanese X-planes, Anthony. Some wild stuff there. Glad the G-10 bomber never came to be.
The KI-67 was an intriguing type, Swanny, but I think I wanted something somewhat more hypothetical than even a prototype that existed. Definitely I wanted a medium bomber with radar for the night mission and I wanted it to be a real threat for places down the Australian East coast at least as far south as Sydney if not further as well as something that could get to New Zealand.
Again, J-Hulk, thanks for all the help with the Japanese translations. I think “Nadare” will do quite nicely as the true Japanese designation for “Susan”
Somewhere down the road, I’ll have to decide who built the thing and what model number to give it, but the names are good enough for now.
Thanks again all for your input and my drawings will be posted sometime down the road, it could be a while, right now she’s just a couple of rough pencil line doodles in the margin of a notebook.
