The Slow Nick, AKA the Dragon Slayer
The The Kawasaki-made Ki-45 Toryu ( translation”Dragon Slayer”) was a two-seat, twin-engine fighter used by the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II who classified it as the “Type 2 Two-Seat Fighter.” During the war the Allied reporting name for this craft was “Nick”. The Nippon homage to the German Luftwaffe’s Me 110 twin engined heavy fighters, some 1600 of these often forgotten planes flew in the Pacific from 1941-1945. Heavily armed with a manually-loaded 37mm Type 94 field gun (that could fire just two rounds a minute) as well as 12.7mm and 7mm machineguns, Nick was meant to be a bomber-killer.
ki45 left to rot
However, with a top speed of just 290 knots and slow, ambling turns, he just couldn’t hang against single-seat fighters of almost any vintage, being shot down by Flying Tiger’s P-40Bs over China as soon as they were introduced. They did well against B-29s striking the home islands in 1944 until the USAAF crews figured out that if they climbed over 30,000-feet that Nick just couldn’t reach them.
Only a single one survives today, with just its fuselage on display in the Smithsonian’s collection.