
“Japanese Lindberghs” Made a 10k Mile-Flight in 1937 - tintinnabula
https://www.airspacemag.com/airspacemag/japanese-lindberghs-180975338/
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peterburkimsher
A couple of days ago I discovered DeOldify [0], so I decided to colourise the
pictures from this article. No copyright infringement intended, IANAL but I
guess these are old enough to be public domain by now.

[https://imgbox.com/ED7IqzyD](https://imgbox.com/ED7IqzyD)

[https://imgbox.com/9kUgPmJa](https://imgbox.com/9kUgPmJa)

[https://imgbox.com/Jt1ngFre](https://imgbox.com/Jt1ngFre)

[https://imgbox.com/RElPFDJf](https://imgbox.com/RElPFDJf)

I've also started colourising photos of my grandpa's 1937 cycling tour of
Germany, Austria, and Italy [1]. To make peace, we must actively reach out and
befriend all kinds of people. I'm thankful for communities like this where we
can all learn from one another without discrimination.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24162561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24162561)

[1]
[http://drmarionb.free.fr/1937CyclingTour/](http://drmarionb.free.fr/1937CyclingTour/)

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samatman
This is very cool.

I'm pretty sure the flags in the first photo weren't that color, however...

~~~
peterburkimsher
I'm sure they're red! It's interesting to see the limits of the AI. If I were
better at art, I'd try to fix it manually, but I'm sure that I'd just end up
making it look fake.

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macintux
More technical information:

[https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/masaaki-
iinuma/](https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/masaaki-iinuma/)

And a lovely illustration of the route, curiously absent from both articles,
can be found here:

[https://www.oldtokyo.com/tokyo-london-world-record-
flight-19...](https://www.oldtokyo.com/tokyo-london-world-record-flight-1937/)

Mitsubishi, of course, also made a famous long-range fighter. Per Chuck Hawks:

> Not only could the Zero out fight any Allied fighter, it also out-ranged
> them. Many people do not realize that the Zero was the world's first long
> range escort fighter. Zeros flew long range bomber escort missions during
> the war in China, before the Pacific war even began. If the Germans had the
> long range A6M2 Zero instead of the short range Bf 109E, the outcome of the
> Battle of Britain might have been very different.

[https://www.chuckhawks.com/best_fighter_planes.htm](https://www.chuckhawks.com/best_fighter_planes.htm)

~~~
cafard
Wasn't that range bought in part by the omission of protection comparable to
what e.g. Grummans had?

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supernova87a
It seems that most others have been relegated to relative obscurity in
comparison with Lindbergh, including these Japanese pilots (hence the story).

Australia saw Charles Kingsford Smith just about a year later do a similar (if
not more impressive) feat across the Pacific, and many other aviation
achievements. But all he is now (pretty much) is an airport name.

Aside from all that, I'm always wowed at how these early pilots could set off
into the unknown with the most rudimentary maps, no knowledge of what fuel
awaited them. And no credit cards...

~~~
oska
My grandfather made me a beautiful wooden model of Kingsford Smith's biplane
the _Southern Cross_ , complete with spinning propeller. But we moved a lot
when I was a child and at some point it got lost or left behind. I greatly
regret not still having it, mainly as a reminder of my grandfather and his
woodcrafting skills. My grandfather was born in 1910 and I think his
imagination was caught by the exploits of Kingsford Smith and other early
aviators, as was the case for so many people at that time.

~~~
oska
I don't know why I wrote 'biplane' above. The _Southern Cross_ was of course a
monoplane.

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sandworm101
We should not forget the military implication of these aircraft. These were
not peaceful soaring propaganda machines. A craft that could fly for days,
remain aloft across the vast pacific, would have been seen as an ideal
reconnaissance platform for spotting approaching fleets. In the skies of the
1930s pacific theater speed was secondary to range and reliability. If they
turned and ran, even the most powerful fighters of the time would have had
trouble running them down before running out of fuel themselves.

~~~
hinkley
Altitude. Any fighter they scramble from the ground to intercept is going to
be trading speed for altitude, and unless they vastly outclass you, they won’t
be able to close while climbing.

With any luck, any planes already in the air will have to close a larger
distance, and you can dump altitude to increase speed and thus distance. You’d
just better pick a direction that doesn’t put you over another airfield, or
you’ll be out of the pan and into the fire.

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mholt
For a really interesting, semi-true story about a Japanese warplane engineer
in WWII, I highly recommend watching *The Wind Rises&. Probably one of
Miyazaki's finest works (although that's just my opinion).

It gives you some sense of the sense of the nationalistic feelings in Japan as
they entered WWII, and the tremendous pressures their country faced to prove
themselves.

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melling
“nine-cylinder Nakajima radial engine, was named Kamikaze, or Divine Wind. ”

Never knew there was another meaning for Kamikaze.

~~~
proggy
There’s only one meaning for the word, it can just be used in different
contexts. For an example, in English, take “hellfire”. It’s a biblical
reference to a conflagration in the underworld. Someone in the US military
industrial complex thought it’d also be a very apt name for a type of missile.
Same word, same basic meaning, different use.

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valuearb
More detail on the Ki-77 disappearance from Wikipedia.

“ Their intended destination was the German airfield at Sarabus (now
Hvardiiske, Crimea, WikiMiniAtlas45.118236°N 33.976564°E.) but they were to
disappear over the Indian Ocean. British fighters likely intercepted them as
they were aware of the flight and its route (via air grid squares 3420, 2560
and 2510) thanks to the ULTRA analysts at Bletchley Park decoding intercepted
German communications to Sarabus warning of their impending arrival.[2] Slow,
unarmed, without armour protection and with a substantial amount of fuel on
board, the Ki-77 would have been vulnerable to Allied fighters, even had no
mechanical problems occurred.”

