The Type 98 Light Tank (Ke-Ni) was developed as the successor to the Japanese Army’s primary light tank, the Type 95 Light Tank (Ha-Gō). Ordered…

It is well established that the performance of Japanese aircraft engines in WWII was limited by the suboptimal fuels available at the time, among other…

This is an update to the previous article about the performance of the Type 4 Fighter (Ki-84), addressing some errors and new information that I…

The A6M4 is an “unknown” variant of the Zero Fighter that has been described as a variety of things over the years. The most common…

Following the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the American occupational authorities sought to gather whatever aircraft developments were of potential interest. Naturally, the most…

This article is an attempt to clarify the details of the different training aircraft that were developed for the Japanese Navy’s late-war special attacker ‘Ōka’….

Update Jun 26 2024: some additional information and corrections to this article in Part 2: https://karyu.org/2024/06/26/about-the-performance-of-type-4-fighter-2 The performance of the Type 4 Fighter (project name…

As the threat of strategic bombing loomed over Japan from the middle of the Pacific War, the development of effective extreme-caliber aircraft guns was expedited…

At the outset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Japanese Navy’s Air Service assumed a leading role in the strategic bombardment of China…

On July 26th, 1944, the Japanese Navy submarine I-29 ‘Matsu’ was sunk by the USS Sawfish near the Philippines while en route to Kure. Onboard…

By the 1930s, the practical speed limit of piston-engined aircraft was being approached for the first time. Before a propeller-driven airplane can approach the speed…

At the dawn of 1944, the German jet fighter Messerschmitt ‘Me 262’ was nearing the beginning of its service life. Due to issues with its…