Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa

The Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa, meaning Peregrine Falcon in Japanese and known to Allied forces by the reporting name Oscar, is a Japanese single-engine fighter aircraft built by Nakajima Aircraft Company, entering Imperial Japanese Army Air Service service in 1941 and serving as the Army's most numerous fighter type throughout the Second World War, broadly paralleling the Imperial Japanese Navy's use of the similarly conceived Mitsubishi A6M Zero. Built with light weight and exceptional maneuverability as its primary design priorities, at the cost of only modest armament and minimal armor protection for the pilot in its early versions, the Ki-43 excelled in the highly maneuverable dogfighting conditions of the early Pacific war but became increasingly vulnerable as Allied aircraft grew faster, better armed and more heavily armored through the war's later years. Because Allied pilots frequently misidentified the Ki-43 as the more famous Navy Zero, the two aircraft are often conflated in wartime accounts despite being separate designs built by different manufacturers for different services.