Aviation: Reclaiming the Sky

As white-robed Shinto priests performed intricate purification ceremonies, a potbellied turboprop transport rolled out of a hangar at Nagoya’s Komaki Airport, taxied down a runway and roared aloft. An hour later, when the plane set back down at Komaki, a waiting throng of businessmen and Japanese air force brass broke into exultant banzais. The YS 11, first Japanese-designed commercial transport to be built since World War II, had completed its maiden flight.

Brainchild of a five-man engineering team headed by wispy Jiro Horikoshi, designer of World War II’s deadly Zero fighter, the YS 11 is a response to mounting Japanese sentiment that “Japan must get its own skies back.” Grounded by Occupation edicts from the end of World War II until 1952, the once potent Japanese aircraft industry has fluttered along since then by producing a handful of U.S.-designed planes under license.

How much the YS 11 will do to revive the industry is debatable. Built by the Nihon Aeroplane Manufacturing Co. (which was formed especially for the purpose with 54% government capital), the plane incorporates a high percentage of foreign components, including its twin Rolls-Royce Dart RDa. 10/1 engines. In their desire to sell the YS 11 as a latter-day replacement for the workhorse DC-3, its designers sacrificed both speed (295 m.p.h.) and range (380 miles with a full load of 60 passengers) in order to cut the plane’s normal take-off run to as little as 3,000 ft. Trouble is that by December 1963, when the first YS 11 production model is scheduled for completion, the skies may well be swarming with competition from short-range pure jets such as British Aircraft Corp.’s BAC One-Eleven, which also aspires to the title of “the new DC-3.”