Nakajima Kitsuka: Why Japan's First Jet Flew on Pine Roots

By 1944, Japan's aviation industry was crippled by continuous bombing and a severe lack of raw materials. Driven by the threat of American B-29 raids, engineers attempted to build their own turbojet fighter based on a single cross-section blueprint of a German BMW 003 engine recovered from a sunken transport submarine. The resulting Nakajima Kitsuka was built in a matter of months. Due to an extreme national fuel crisis, the twin-engine jet relied on a substitute fuel extracted from pine roots. It successfully completed its first test flight the day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima , only to crash a few days later during a disastrous takeoff assisted by solid rocket boosters. #ww2aviation #militaryhistory #jetfighter