The Mitsubishi 1MF9 or Mitsubishi Experimental Taka-type Carrier Fighter was a prototype

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese

fighter aircraft Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...

of the 1920s. It was a single-engined, single-seat

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...

intended to operate from the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...

s, but only two were built, with the type being rejected by the Navy.

Design and development

The standard carrier-based fighter of the

in 1926 was the

Mitsubishi 1MF The Mitsubishi 1MF was a Japanese carrier fighter aircraft of the 1920s. Designed for the Mitsubishi Aircraft Company by the British aircraft designer Herbert Smith, the 1MF, also known as the Navy Type 10 Carrier Fighter was operated by the ...

or Navy Type 10 Carrier Type Fighter, designed in 1921 by the ex- Sopwith British designer

Herbert Smith Herbert Smith LLP was a multinational law firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom. The firm was founded in the City of London in 1882 by Norman Herbert Smith and merged with the Australian law firm Freehills on 1 October 2012, forming Herber ...

.Mikesh and Abe 1990, p. 161. In April that year, a specification was issued to Mitsubishi, Aichi and Nakajima for a replacement for the Type 10, requiring the aircraft to stay afloat in the event of ditching in the sea. Mitsubishi gave the task of designing the new fighter to Joji Hattori, who had worked with Smith on the design of the Type 10. The resultant aircraft, the Experimental Taka-type (Falcon) fighter or 1MF9, was a single-

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

of wooden construction with fabric covering. It had a watertight

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...

and jettisonable fixed

conventional landing gear Conventional landing gear, or tailwheel-type landing gear, is an aircraft undercarriage consisting of two main wheels forward of the center of gravity and a small wheel or skid to support the tail.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Term ...

to meet the Navy's ditching requirements (jettisonable because aircraft with fixed landing gear are very dangerous to land on water, since the drag from the water can easily flip the aircraft over when the wheels touch the surface), and was powered by a

Mitsubishi Hi V-12 The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 t ...

(licence-built

Hispano-Suiza Lb Hispano-Suiza () is a Spanish automotive–engineering company. It was founded in 1904 by Marc Birkigt and Damian Mateu as an automobile manufacturer and eventually had several factories in Spain and France that produced luxury cars, aircraft en ...

). The pilot sat in an open cockpit, armed with two synchronised machine guns.

Operational history

The first of two prototypes flew in July 1927, being the first Japanese designed carrier-based fighter to fly, with the second following in September. It was not successful, with the design proposed by Nakajima, a modified version of the British

Gloster Gamecock The Gloster Gamecock was a biplane fighter designed and produced by the British aircraft manufacturer Gloster. The Gamecock was a development of the earlier Grebe Mk III, an early interwar fighter procured by the Royal Air Force (RAF). Wor ...

fighter being chosen for production as the Nakajima A1N, despite the fact that Nakajima and Gloster had chosen to ignore the requirement for easy ditching, allowing a lighter and more manoeuvrable aircraft.Mikesh and Abe 1990, p224.

Specifications

Notes

References

*Mikesh, Robert C and Shorzoe Abe. ''Japanese Aircraft 1910–1941''. London:Putnam, 1990. . {{Mitsubishi aircraft 1MF9 1920s Japanese fighter aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Biplanes

Design and development

Operational history

Specifications

See also

Notes

References