Post by Diarist on Sept 30, 2015 6:33:25 GMT 1
The Mitsubishi G3M "Nell" had its maiden flight, taking off from a Nagasaki airfield belonging to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and landing at Haneda Airport on the outskirts of Tokyo this month.
The G3M has its origins in a specification submitted to the Mitsubishi company from the Imperial Japanese Navy requesting a heavy bomber aircraft with a range figure unprecedented at the time. This principally stemmed from Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's influence in the Naval High Commission on the necessity of a heavy bomber capable of encompassing the enormous ranges of the arenas where Imperial Japan sought to conquer in the years to come, including those outlined in the expansionist Tanaka Memorial – namely China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Isles and the vast far east of the Soviet Union. The requirement for payload was also unprecedented in Japanese military aviation history, though necessary to accommodate the aerial torpedo envisaged to combat the armoured battleships of the Allies in the geographical broadness of the Pacific front. The speed requirement submitted by the Naval Department was again also unprecedented, not only in Japanese but also in international heavy bomber aviation, where in relation to the envisaged Japanese battlegrounds of China and the Pacific, the bomber would need to not only cover long distances, but necessarily have exceptional speed to strike distant targets with a minimum attack time. Thus the G3M was an embodiment of Japanese military aircraft design in the brief period leading to the Pacific War, with powerful offensive armament (in this case in the form of bombs/torpedoes) and range and speed emphasised over protection and defensive capabilities.
Source: Wikipedia
The G3M has its origins in a specification submitted to the Mitsubishi company from the Imperial Japanese Navy requesting a heavy bomber aircraft with a range figure unprecedented at the time. This principally stemmed from Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's influence in the Naval High Commission on the necessity of a heavy bomber capable of encompassing the enormous ranges of the arenas where Imperial Japan sought to conquer in the years to come, including those outlined in the expansionist Tanaka Memorial – namely China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Isles and the vast far east of the Soviet Union. The requirement for payload was also unprecedented in Japanese military aviation history, though necessary to accommodate the aerial torpedo envisaged to combat the armoured battleships of the Allies in the geographical broadness of the Pacific front. The speed requirement submitted by the Naval Department was again also unprecedented, not only in Japanese but also in international heavy bomber aviation, where in relation to the envisaged Japanese battlegrounds of China and the Pacific, the bomber would need to not only cover long distances, but necessarily have exceptional speed to strike distant targets with a minimum attack time. Thus the G3M was an embodiment of Japanese military aircraft design in the brief period leading to the Pacific War, with powerful offensive armament (in this case in the form of bombs/torpedoes) and range and speed emphasised over protection and defensive capabilities.
Source: Wikipedia