Mitsubishi 1MF10

The Mitsubishi 1MF10, also called the Mitsubishi Experimental 7-Shi Carrier Fighter, was a prototype single-seat carrier fighter built for the Imperial Japanese Navy in the early 1930s. It was designed by a Mitsubishi team led by Jiro Horikoshi in answer to a 1932 Navy specification for a replacement for the Nakajima A2N, and it was the first low-wing cantilever monoplane designed in Japan. The airframe was all metal, with a monocoque duralumin fuselage, a fabric-covered duralumin wing and an open cockpit, and it was powered by a Mitsubishi A4 two-row 14-cylinder radial engine driving a two-bladed propeller on a fixed tailwheel undercarriage. The first prototype flew in March 1933 and broke up in a dive test that July; the second, with spatted main wheels, was lost in a flat spin in June 1934. The Navy rejected the design for poor handling and for missing its performance requirements, but Horikoshi carried its box-spar structure and layout into the later Mitsubishi A5M fighter.