The Randy began life in 1942 as the Imperial Japanese Army sought to improve the highly maneuverable but slow and offensively pathetic Ki-45 Toryu--the design was in fact initially called the "Ki-45 KAI II". Soon, however, the Army began a two-year saga of indecision and waste, changing its mind repeatedly on such things as crew accommodation, engines, and even service role, a process leading to the Ki-96 single-seat fighter, before the Army changed its mind again and decided that they wanted a two-seater after all--but then as a ground-attack aircraft! The wings and tail of the Ki-96 were retained for this final redesign, which was finished by January 1944. The first three prototypes rolled out of the Gifu plant over the following spring. These appeared as a slightly larger Toryu with a square tail, the offensive armament deficiency corrected with a package of two 20mm cannons and a third of no less than 57mm in bore (firing a 3-pound shell) fed by a 16-round magazine. A set of bomb racks could be fitted under the fuselage about level with the wing leading edge, and a 12.7mm machine gun operated by the aft crewmember covered the rear quarter.

  Parallel to this, Kawasaki's drafting and prototyping shops had responded to all the Army's convulsions quite deftly, and by now had become so accustomed to the IJAAF's vacillating that they proactively planned three separate versions of the new Ki-102 in anticipation of the service's needs, the -Ko supercharged high-altitude day interceptor; the prototyped -Otsu for ground attack; and -Hei night fighter, the first major design change. Soon, at the Army's urging, a pressurized high-altitude day interceptor, the Ki-108, was added to this development schedule, along with a smaller, stripped down and unnamed/undesignated day fighter which sacrificed everything for speed. In short, even as the base Ki-102b/Otsu began trickling into production in December 1944, its parent company's efforts were being dissipated into developing the aircraft into no less than FIVE versions, three of them substantially different.

  The design flew really well right off the drawing board, the only problems being marked yaw instability on takeoff/landing and the ferocious recoil of that 57mm blunderbuss. The former was temporarily remedied by fitting a long tail wheel leg to reduce the ground angle: a 1-meter fuselage stretch was supposed to be the permanent solution but the pressing need for aircraft prevented this from being implemented on the assembly line. The latter was presumably solved by telling pilots to man up and deal with it.

   By now, however, a new enemy--literally, and to the production effort--had appeared: the B-29. USAAF bombing led to production being relocated no less than three times. Nonetheless, this football of an aircraft managed to enter mass series, with over 200 of the -Otsu being built and 20 or 30 of the high altitude -Ko (modified from Otsu airframes). Two prototypes of the -Hei night fighter were almost finished when damaged beyond repair by--you guessed it--yet another B-29 raid. Through the chaos, the Randy managed to actually enter frontline service in substantial numbers, with several tactical-fighter units reequipping on the type before war's end. 

   Recorded more specifically is the Ki-102's service over the Home Islands, drawn primarily from an article in the incomparable French periodical Avions (Issue #140, Nov. 2004) which itself drew from Japanese sources. Because I don't speak/read a syllable of French, I resorted to Google Translate (and my own knowledge of the way human languages work) to get the gist of the text. I used this material along with some corroboration from other references in English for the following:

   The 3rd and 75th Sentais were the first recipients of the Ki-102. Both were Ki-48 Lily units which had been decimated in the Philippines in the fall of 1944, their remnants ordered back to Japan immediately afterward to reequip on the new fighter. These two groups were stationed on Noshiro and Hachinohe, respectively, to await the anticipated Allied invasion of Japan. A Ki-45 Sentai, the 45th, was also recalled from the Philippines for similar duty but was still in training on their new airplane at Hokota when the war ended. A fourth group (the 28th) equipped with the Ki-46 III-Kai was given a few of the Ki-102 Ko and Otsu for operational evaluation. The squadron flew several interceptions against B-29s with unconfirmed results during April 1945.

   A fifth "unit", actually the IJAAF test center at Fusa (near Tokyo), had also received a mixed bag of Ki-102 -Ko and -Otsu for operational evaluation, with two of its pilots gaining concrete results. Given a supercharged -Ko, Nomonohan-veteran 51-kill ace Maj. Yasuhiko Kuroe flew several missions against B-29s between December 1944 and March of 1945. The first were flown without incident, but in March he finally made contact with a Superfortress formation at 34,000' over Tanashi and made several passes, trading shots with the American gunners until finally his right engine was damaged and he was forced to return to base. Later that month, Kuroe finally scored hits on a B-29, which began to burn and descend before he was again forced to break the fight. He was later formally credited with the shootdown. Some sources credit Kuroe with two kills (Sakaida, P.33) on these missions. 

   In June, Lt. Miyoshi Shimamura departed Fusa in an -Otsu, holding in hand a test card for airborne evaluation of the 57mm gun. By accident, he ran across another B-29 formation at 26,000'. Lining up on one unfortunate member of it, a single burst from all three guns sent the mighty bomber into a spin in which it disintegrated. 

   So--two or three kills and several probables for all that effort. Without a doubt, the Randy would have been a major presence over the invasion beaches had the Allies stormed Kyushu in November 1945 as planned, but history obviously went elsewhere. No example of the Ki-102 survives today, even though one each of the -Ko and -Otsu versions were brought back to the United States for evaluation following the war. There is still the Smithsonian's Ki-45, whose fuselage sits on a cart in the Udvar-Hazy center at this writing, looking like a frozen brook trout, while aviation geeks puzzle online whether or not the museum has the rest of the aircraft squirreled away somewhere like it did with the B-26Flak Bait.

   The Ki-102 in 1/72: despite the fact that this is a genuine WWII operational type and one with quite a bit of visual appeal, it has been mostly ignored by kit manufacturers. For decades there was only the KPL kit from the '70s: this was one of the first vac-forms I attempted. I didn't finish it but gained some new skills, namely identifying when a subject is under-scale and methods to correct that. A Czechmaster special order resin kit next came out in 1995 through Aviation Usk, but I never laid eyes on it owing to its $38 price tag being too rich for my bohemian blood at the time. Pavla came out with the best-known kit a year later, an early short-run injected w/photoetched parts which even included a complete 57mm cannon, but the finished model sported a nose too pointy, cockpit too narrow, engine nacelles and cowls way too large, and all parts having that blah too-rounded look so characteristic of short-run kits from that period.