Kawasaki Ki-48

The Kawasaki Ki-48, officially the Army Type 99 Twin-engined Light Bomber and called Lily by the Allies, was a Japanese twin-engine light bomber of the Second World War. Development began at the end of 1937, when the Army asked Kawasaki for a high-speed bomber able to reach 480 km/h at 3,000 metres, and the design drew on the Soviet Tupolev SB and on Kawasaki experience with the Ki-45 heavy fighter. Speed was meant to be its main defence, so it carried only three machine guns and an 800 kg bomb load, and it became vulnerable once Allied fighters caught up. It served from China in 1940 to the Philippines, Burma and New Guinea, and in 1945 some were converted into kamikaze aircraft. Nearly two thousand were built.