Quote:
Originally Posted by shelby
yes but i think all the night fighters variants remained on paper because the j1n was produced
|
Actually, no.
According to Francillon, which is still probably the best book on Japanese WW2 aircraft in English, Ki-45 units in the SW Pacific made an unspecified number of field modified night fighters to counter night raids by USAAF B-24 bombers.
Those conversions worked well enough that about 200 night fighters were produced at the factory when the next production block was introduced. Those would be the Hei version according to Major.Kudo and the Bunrindo book, or whatever the variant is without the nose guns according to Francillon.
While the Tei version was mostly intended as an anti-shipping/heavy fighter, it appears that at least a few were converted to night fighters in an attempt to counter the B-29 raids on the Japanese Home Islands. I'm not sure how many, though.
But, you're correct that the version of the Ki-45 which was optimized as a single seat interceptor/night fighter got turned into its own project, which was called the Ki-96 by the IJAAF.
The J1N Gekko/Irving was a different aircraft, produced by a different manufacturer (the N stands for Nakajima, Kawasaki didn't produce aircraft for the IJN) for the IJNAF. It was built at approximately the same time as the Ki-45, but since the Japanese Army and Navy didn't get along at all, and had separate procurement systems, it was very unusual for them to use the same models of aircraft.