By Huw Morgan

CZECH OUT

Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka (Cherry Blossom)

Kit No: 48002

Scale: 1/48

Type: Injection Moulded Plastic

Manufacturer: Brengun

www.brengun.cz

By the summer of 1944 the tide had turned against Japan in the Pacific, the Allies’ island hopping strategy taking them inexorably closer to the Japanese home islands. Faced with this reversal, a number of voices in the Japanese military began advocating more radical, unconventional tactics. One of these voices was that of Navy Ensign Mitsuo Ohta, who conceived and proposed the idea of a rocket powered, piloted bomb; a suicide attacker. The Navy seized on Ohta’s idea and quickly commissioned Dai-Ichi Kaigun Koku Gijitsusho at Yokosuka to design and build prototypes. Designated the MXY7, ten unpowered prototypes were completed by September 1944, Yokosuka intending that this initial Model 11 be powered by three Type 4 Mark 1 Model 20 rockets with a combined thrust of 800kg, and planning that it would carry an enormous 1,200kg warhead. Designed to be built quickly and cheaply using non strategic materials, delivery to target was to be by air launch from specially modified G4M2e Betty bombers. Over 750 Model 11 Ohkas were built, but their limited range of around twenty nautical miles meant that the slow and cumbersome Bettys were easy targets for Allied fighters. Relatively few Ohkas achieved a successful launch, and fewer still struck home.