Nakajima Ki-12

The Nakajima Ki-12 was a private development by the Nakajima Aircraft Company, offered after the Ki-11 failed to meet the Japanese government's 1935 requirement for a modern single-seat monoplane fighter. Nakajima wanted the most technically advanced fighter in Japan, and the French Dewoitine engineers Roger Robert and Jean Beziaud worked with the Nakajima engineer Shigenobu Mori on a design heavily influenced by the Dewoitine D.510. Built on the Ki-11 airframe, it had a liquid-cooled 454 kW Hispano-Suiza 12Xcrs V engine, the first fully retractable landing gear on a Japanese design and slotted flaps, with a proposed 20 mm cannon and two 7.7 mm machine guns. It was tested against the Mitsubishi Ki-18 and rejected as too heavy and complex, but a simplified relative, the Nakajima Type P.E., evolved into the successful Ki-27.