Today the word “kamikaze” will always be associated with the suicidal air (and sea) attacks of World War II, but in 1937 it was the name of a unique record-breaking airplane and my latest modeling project. (I know it’s not the greatest model, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk about this airplane.)

In 1937 the Asahi Shimbun newspaper purchased a prototype Mitsubishi Ki-15 Karigane to fly from Tokyo to London to cover the coronation of King George VI and break the world record for flying from Tokyo to London along the way. The Ki-15 was being developed for the Army though was also sold to the Navy, which is unusual given their rivalry, as a fast long-range reconnaissance aircraft at the time and hadn’t yet entered service.

Asahi Shimbun dressed the aircraft in their rising sun livery and named it Kamikaze, which means “Divine Wind.” The flags on its sides and wingtips are the newspaper’s flag and not the national flag, the hinomaru. It was a publicity stunt and the paper generated a lot of interest in its new airplane, which of course also generated interest in buying papers. Even its name, Kamikaze, was chosen via vote by the paper’s readers.

Pilot Masaaki Iinuma and navigator Kenji Tsukagoshi took off from Tachikawa Airfield on Apr. 6, 1937 and after making a few stops arrived in London at Croydon airfield on Apr. 9. Total elapsed time was 94 hours.

I first learned about this airplane back in August when touring the Kakamigahara-Gifu Air & Space Museum, which had a pictorial magazine on display. I had no idea what it was or why it was relevant, but just a few days later I was in Kawaguchiko Fighter Museum and saw their large model on display. The name Kamikaze on what appeared to be a civilian aircraft, the same one from the displayed magazine stuck out to me, though at the time I was also being overwhelmed by the museum’s three Zeroes, Betty bomber fuselage and Ki-43. Then I saw this model at my local hobby shop, looked it up and decided I had to build it.

Kakamigahara-Gifu Air & Space Museum Kakamigahara, Gifu Prefecture

Kakamigahara-Gifu Air & Space Museum Kakamigahara, Gifu Prefecture

Kawaguchiko Fighter Museum Kawaguchiko, Shizuoka Prefecture

The particular model I built was Fine Molds 1/48 Mitsubishi Karigane Aircraft (Ki-15) Kamikaze, part of a series of four recently released Ki-15 variants they’ve put on the market. (Two are army and another is navy.) The model went together without incident and everything fit just right. I usually work in 1/72 for shelf space reasons, but liked getting to work with a bigger engine and the birdcage cockpit (why is it the parts that take the most work are invisible upon completion?!). Even the massive decals went on smoothly, which was a concern as I’ve had large decals rip with the slightest provocation on other models. I can recommend this to anyone wanting to build a memorable version of a military aircraft.

A sad footnote to the Ki-15, later Army Type 97 and Navy C5M (reporting name “Babs”) is that toward the end of the war many of them also became kamikaze, but in a much different way. There are no surviving Ki-15s that I know of, this one was possibly destroyed during the war in an air raid, but I don’t fully trust what people put on Wikipedia.

This is the first time I’ve shared one of my model stories on the site, usually it’s just on our Facebook. I sometimes build models for the same reason I travel, the interesting history, or sometimes because I want to build something I saw in a museum. Like a do-it-yourself souvenir. Hopefully you don’t mind these occasional asides into my hobby if you’re only here for the travel. Otherwise I just hope, like always, that you learned something from this.