4-2018 MANSYU KI-98

The Mansyu Ki-98 was a WWII Japanese fighter and attack aircraft project. The drive was to be provided by a single engine Mitsubishi Ha-211 Ru with 2200 hp. There was never a prototype test flight, let alone mass production. It was planned that the serial machines would be armed with a single 37mm Ho-204 cannon and two 20mm Ho-5 cannons. The first work on the Ki-98 began in 1942 and from the very beginning involved the construction of a machine with an unusual aerodynamic system. The works were carried out under the aegis of the Army Air Force Command. In the final project, they assumed the creation of an aircraft with a highly refined aerodynamic profile, with a tail mounted on two tail beams and the use of a push propeller, and not, as in most contemporary constructions, a pulling one. Originally, the Ki-98 was also planned to be an attack aircraft, but as the situation at the front changed in 1943-1945, the new machine was redesigned into a high-rise fighter, capable of countering Boeing B-29 bombers. The Mansyu Ki-98 was never flown due to the shortage of strategic raw materials and the disastrous state of Japanese industry in the declining phase of World War II.