World War Photos

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Japanese anti-submarine patrol bomber aircraft.
As the Pacific War intensified, the Navy felt the need for a coastal patrol aircraft with full-scale anti-submarine attack capability, and in September 1942, ordered Watanabe Iron Works (later Kyushu Aircraft) to develop a prototype of the Seventeen Test Patrol Aircraft. The main requirements of the plan were:
– aircraft should be capable of long flights at low speeds (cruising time of 10 hours or more);
– aircraft should be capable of dive attacks.
Watanabe immediately began work on the design and completed the first prototype in December 1943, when the company was renamed Kyushu Aircraft. The design was based on data from the Junkers Ju 88 bomber, which the Navy had purchased from Germany before the war for research on “twin-engine dive bombers. The test results were generally favorable, except for a slight problem with directional stability, so mass production began in April 1944, without waiting for official adoption, after eight prototypes and additional prototypes were built with modified tail sections. After that, the aircraft’s equipment was changed and its armament was strengthened, and it was officially adopted as the Tokai Ichi Type 1 (Q1W1) in January 1945.
Other derivative models included Q1W1a, which had a 20mm machine gun instead of a 7.7mm machine gun, and the Q1W1-K, a trainer model that adopted a parallel copilot system.
It was designed to dive on submarines as soon as they were detected, and was equipped with two 250-kg bombs. Since the planned new type of electromagnetic detector was not available in time, the KMX Type 3-1 submarine magneto-magnetic detector was installed to supplement the performance of the older H-6 electromagnetic detector. Nose was uniquely shaped with a large glass panel to provide a wide field of view. The pilot’s seat was double-seated in parallel with the scout. Some of them were equipped with the “C device,” which was based on the concept that when a ground station transmitted very long waves, interference waves were generated in the sky above the submarine.
The first aircraft to be deployed with the Tokai was the Saeki Naval Air Group, and the first unit with the Tokai was organized in October 1944. Initially, all production aircraft were deployed to the Saeki for flight and maintenance training. Later, the aircraft were deployed from Saeki to various air units around the country, but most of them were deployed to the 951st Naval Air Group at Tateyama Air Base. This aircraft was mainly engaged in anti-submarine patrol activities in the East China Sea and the Ogasawara Islands from Moslepo Air Base on Jeju Island. The greatest weakness of this aircraft is that it adopted low-power engines in order to improve its airworthiness, which made it unable to have enough power generation and expandability of onboard electronic equipment. By the time it was formally adopted, the Japanese had lost control of the airspace around the mainland, making anti-submarine patrols with a slow, poorly armed, defenseless aircraft was extremely dangerous. For this reason, even though the aircraft had been in operation since October 1944, it had an extremely high loss rate, with more than half of all aircraft produced being lost by the end of the war in a short period of time.
Total production: 153