The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia
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| Table of Contents |
U.S. Navy. Reproduced from Francillon (1979) |
U.S. Army. Via ibiblio.org |
Mitsubishi G3M2 Model 22 "Nell"
| Crew | 5 |
| Dimensions | 82'0" by 54'0" by 12'1" 25m by 16.45m by 3.69m |
| Wing area | 807
square feet 75 square meters |
| Weights | 10,936-17,637 lbs 4965-8000 kg |
| Maximum speed | 232 mph at 13,715 feet 420 km/h at 4180 meters |
| Cruising speed | 173 mph at 13,125 feet 278 km/h at 4000 meters |
| Climb rate | 20 feet per second 6.1 meters per second |
| Service ceiling | 29,950 feet 9130 meters |
| Power plant | Two 1075 hp (802 kW) Mitsubishi Kinsei 41 or 42 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial engines driving three-blade variable-pitch metal propellers. |
| Armament | One flexible 20 mm
Type 99 Model 1 cannon in a dorsal turret One flexible 7.7 mm Type 92 machine-gun in each of the lateral blisters and a retractable dorsal turret. One flexible 7.7 mm Type 92 machine-gun fired from cockpit windows. |
| External stores |
One 800 kg (1760 lb) torpedo or 800 kg (1760 lbs) of bombs carried externally under the fuselage. |
| Maximum range | 2722 miles 4380 km |
| Fuel capacity |
852 gallons 3874 liters |
| Production | A total of 1,048
G3Ms were built as follows: Mitsubishi
Jukogyo K.K., at Nagoya: 34 G3M1 production aircraft (1936-37) 343 G3M2 Model 21 production aircraft (1937-39) 238 G3M2 Model 22 production aircraft (1939-41) Nakajima Hikoki K.K., at Koizumi: 412 G3M2 Model 22 and G3M3 production aircraft (1941-43) |
| Variants |
The
G3M1 used two
910 hp (678 kW) Kinsei 3 engines. The G3M3 used two 1300 hp (969 kW) Kinsei 51 engines and added another 20mm Type 99 cannon in a dorsal fairing and three more 7.7mm machine guns in side blisters. Fuel capacity was increased to 1140 gallons (5182) giving a range of 3871 miles or 6229 km. |
Also known as the Type 96 Land-based Attack Aircraft, "Nell" was designed in response to a Navy call for an attack aircraft
with the range and performance of the G1M1 reconnaissance aircraft,
which had created a sensation in Navy circles. The first prototype flew
in April 1934 and the design was adopted by the Navy in June 1936. It
was dubbed the chūkō, a
contraction of chūgata
kōgeki-ki ("medium attack plane").
Adoption of the aircraft required rapid expansion of aircrew training, since the aircraft was
more manpower-intensive than any previous Navy aircraft. Crews were
initially selected from the elite of the existing carrier air groups. Because
of its speed, the crews believed that no fighter could touch them,
until experience over China proved
otherwise. The defensive armament was inadequate, the aircraft lacked
any kind of armor protection, and
its vulnerable fuel tanks caught fire
almost any time the aircraft was hit.
The Nell was being replaced by the G4M "Betty"
as the Japanese
Navy’s principal long-range land-based
bomber at the time of Pearl
Harbor. Force Z
from Singapore
(Prince
of Wales and Repulse)
were sunk
by torpedoes
from Nells and a few Bettys in the Gulf
of Siam just days after the
Pearl Harbor attack. A number of Nells were equipped with radar or magnetic anomaly detectors late in the war for convoy protection.
In spite of its medium bomber layout, the Nell had
no internal bomb bay, being designed to carry a single torpedo under
its belly instead. It featured retractable turrets, though these were
reduced from two dorsal and one ventral turret in earlier models to a
single retractable dorsal turret in the Model 22.
References
Francillon
(1979)
OPNAV-P-03-100 (accessed 2012-11-10)
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