Yokosuka Ohka

The Ohka (Cherry Blossom)  was designed to allow a pilot with minimal training to drop from a Japanese Betty-bomber at high altitude. The Ohka pilot would detach, ignite the rocket motor, and dive into a ship. and guide his aircraft with its warhead at high speed into an Allied warship.
Late in World War II, the Dai-ichi Kaigun Koku Gijitsusho (1st Naval Air Technical Arsenal) at Yokosuka, Japan, designed the MXY7-K1 to teach less experienced pilots to fly the Model 11 "Ohka" (Cherry Blossom) kamikaze suicide rocket bomb.
Some 755 of these suicide aircraft were built.
  • While a number of the rocket-powered Ohka 11 versions exist in museums worldwide, the NASM's Ohka is the only surviving example powered by a motor-jet. The aircraft was probably shipped from Japan in November or December 1945. The first known photograph of it was snapped at Naval Air Station Alameda, California, on December 22. It shows the missile without engine or air scoops. Sometime later, navy personnel added dummy rocket tubes to make the aircraft look like a Model 11. The station displayed the aircraft for a time, and then transferred it to the National Air Museum on April 15, 1948. It was displayed at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building until the early 1970s when museum workers moved it to the Garber Facility. NASM restoration staff began working on the aircraft in January 1994. They had to fabricate the missing air scoops, install an engine, rebuild the cockpit, make minor repairs to the skin and airframe, and repaint and re-mark the machine. Finished in 1997, the restored Ohka 22 has been on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center since December 2003.
  • The one on display at RAF Cosford is presumably one of the four aircraft brought back to the UK for evaluation, all of which survive. One of these - it is not known which - was captured by the RAF at Seletar, Singapore and later examined at Farnborough.
  • The example at the USAF Museum (Dayton is  a trainer version. Unlike the Ohka, the MXY7-K1 had a landing skid and flaps. In place of the warhead and rocket motors of the Ohka, the MXY7-K1 used water ballast that was expelled before landing. Even so, it challenged novice pilots with its high, 130 mph landing speed.