Kawasaki Ki-61

The Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien, meaning flying swallow, was a single-seat Japanese fighter of the Second World War, accepted by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service as the Army Type 3 Fighter. It grew out of the unproduced Ki-60 and was designed by Takeo Doi and Shin Owada around a Kawasaki licence-built version of the German Daimler-Benz DB 601 engine, which made it the only mass-produced Japanese fighter of the war with a liquid-cooled inverted V engine. Allied intelligence at first took it for a Messerschmitt Bf 109 or a Macchi C.202 and gave it the reporting name Tony. The prototypes flew at the end of 1941, the type went into combat over New Guinea in early 1943, and more than three thousand were built.