1937 жылғы "Камикадзе" ұшағының Лондонға қанатын жаюы

the Mitsubishi Ki 15 aircraft and the 1937 flight to London

Kamikaze (神風号) was a Mitsubishi Ki 15 Karigane airplane, (registration J BAAI) sponsored by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. It became famous on April 9, 1937, as the first Japanese built aircraft to fly from Japan to Europe. The flight from Tokyo to London took 51 hours, 17 minutes and 23 seconds and was piloted by Masaaki Iinuma (1912–1941), with Kenji Tsukagoshi (1900–1943) serving as navigator.

Nakajima's Kotobuki (Jupiter) engines were widely used in civilian planes. The engine was named, in connection with Jupiter, 寿 Kotobuki, the pronunciation of the Kanji. Nakajima was using a single Kanji (Japanese character) to bring luck to the engine names. Mitsubishi used star names, and Hitachi used wind names as well.

The European record flight of the Kamikaze go was sponsored by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper to celebrate the coronation of Great Britain's King George VI, and also as a goodwill flight to European countries. Kamikaze gō was the second prototype Ki 15. It was registered J BAAI. The airplane was painted silver with medium blue trim. The Kamikaze go took off from Tachikawa Airfield in Tokyo at 2:12:04 pm on April 6, 1937, with much fanfare. The aircraft flew from Tokyo via Taipei to Hanoi and Vientiane in French Indochina, then via Calcutta and Karachi in British India and Basra and Baghdad in Iraq, and then Athens, Rome and Paris in Western Europe. The aircraft landed at London's Croydon airport to a cheering crowd of spectators at 3:30 pm on April 9. The total elapsed time since departure was 94 hours, 17 minutes and 56 seconds, with actual flight time for the whole distance of 15,357 km of was 51 hours, 19 minutes and 23 seconds (average speed: 162,8 km/h or 101 MPH). The flight was the first Fédération Aéronautique Internationale aviation record to have been won by the Japanese. This flight to Europe made the pilot, Masaaki Iinuma (then 26 years old), a national hero, and he was acclaimed as the “Japanese Lindbergh”. Both the pilot and navigator Kenji Tsukagoshi were awarded the Légion d'honneur by the French government. On April 12, only a few days after the record breaking flight, the Kamikaze go carried Prince Chichibu who was visiting England for the coronation, on a joy ride. A month later, on May 12, it was used to film the coronation ceremonies from the air. The Kamikaze go was then flown back to Japan, duplicating its original route in the opposite direction, departing London May 14 and arriving in Osaka on May 20, and Haneda airport in Tokyo on May 21.

After its return to Japan, the Kamikaze go continued to work actively in a variety of capacities for the Asahi Shimbun. However, on a flight back from the south of China it encountered bad weather and had to be ditched in southern Taiwan. It was later recovered and put on display at a "Kamikaze Memorial Center" on Ikoma, Nara Prefecture. The facilities were destroyed in World War II. To commemorate the 1937 flight of the aircraft, Asahi Shinbun produced sake bottles and cups which were made available with the image of this aircraft on it.

The flight of the Kamikaze and its triumphant journey gave rise to a piece of classical music in 1937: Hisato Ohzawa's Piano Concerto No. 3 Kamikaze. This piece of music has become better known in recent times with the release of a new CD recording by the Naxos company in 2005.