Ki-115 Tsurugi
The Ki-115 Tsurugi is a very specific aircraft, designed for kamikaze missions. It was a technologically simple aircraft that could be built quickly and in large series. Fortunately, the war ended in time for these aircraft to never see combat. Most of the 104 aircraft produced were delivered unpainted, with only the national insignia sprayed on. They never entered service; after the war, they were bulldozed to the edge of the airport and covered with dirt. And there they remain to this day. One relatively well-preserved example, transported to the US after the war, is now on display at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Arizona, right next to a B-29 Superfortress. That is, the aircraft that ended World War II and the associated bloodshed by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Without this act, which is generally condemned today, further bloodshed would undoubtedly have continued. And the Tsurugi would certainly have played a significant role in it.
#11192BOXART STORY
The Ki-115 Tsurugi is a very specific aircraft,
designed for kamikaze missions. It was
a technologically simple aircraft that could be built
quickly and in large series. Fortunately, the war
ended in time for these aircraft to never see combat.
Most of the 104 aircraft produced were delivered
unpainted, with only the national insignia sprayed on.
They never entered service; after the war, they were
bulldozed to the edge of the airport and covered with
dirt. And there they remain to this day. One relatively
well-preserved example, transported to the US after
the war, is now on display at the Pima Air and Space
Museum in Arizona, right next to a B-29 Superfortress.
That is, the aircraft that ended World War II and the
associated bloodshed by dropping atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Without this act, which is
generally condemned today, further bloodshed would
undoubtedly have continued. And the Tsurugi would
certainly have played a significant role in it.
From the perspective of the genre we are currently
focusing on, i.e., describing the events in the boxart of
the kit, this is not very interesting. The aircraft did
not fly or fight, so there is basically nothing to write
about. Fortunately. However, what can be written
about is the history of the creation of the Ki-115 kit.
This is also an interesting story, and I will now tell
it to you.
Eduard has a long history of producing plastic
kits. We introduced the first two kits, the Sopwith
Baby and Schneider floatplanes in 1/72 scale,
in the fall of 1992. They were typical short-runs of
the 1990s with all their shortcomings, lots of flash,
no snap-fit parts, and not much detail. The moulds
and moulding were initially provided by MPM, now
Special Hobby. We then quickly began working with
Pavel Vanďalík and his father, who also produced
epoxy moulds, which they still do today, but because
both are professional toolmakers, their moulds were
of a much higher technological standard and the
quality of the mouldings was much better. This was
a big step forward, a huge leap in quality! At the end
of the 1990s, we started building our own tool shop.
We introduced galvanic electroplating, and so the
moulds were already made in metal. However, all the
master templates for the kits were still handcrafted.
At the peak of this technology, they were produced
by two master designers, Zdeněk Sekyrka and
Jindřich Balon, who gradually built a team of
casters, machinists, toolmakers, and moulders
around them. However, the 1990s were also a time
of rapid digitization and the advent of computers,
and CAD programs, which were still new at the time,
were penetrating all areas of industry. We had many
years of experience with CAD design, and we began
designing etchings on computers as early as 1990,
and the same was true for decals.
We always knew that the old motto "give work
to machines" still applied. With the arrival of
the new millennium, we therefore embarked on
a project to digitize the tool shop. We approached
it generously, securing financing that enabled us
to purchase high-quality machines, programs,
and our first CNC milling machine for the time.
We didn't skimp; we chose Unigrafix, now Siemens
NX, for the design. We were also able to build the
foundation of a design and programming team, which
consisted of our employees as well as new experts
from old engineering companies in the area that
were being shut down at the time. Many of these
founding figures are still with Eduard today, and
what you receive from us is still their work. However,
the beginnings were difficult. We learned a lot
in training courses and we already knew a lot,
but we were doing new things that no one had any
experience with, and learning them came at a high
price.
The first project we successfully completed was
the engine for the Bf 108 in 1/48 scale. The next
piece was more ambitious, a quarter-scale Sopwith
Camel. We completed this project as well, but we
weren't very satisfied. Some parts of the kit didn't
look the way we imagined; it was all so rough and
misshapen, and even the moulds didn't work the way
we imagined. The next project was Curugi. We chose
it not because we were Kamikaze at heart, although
in retrospect it may seem that way, but because we
needed a simple aircraft in which we could apply
what we had learned from building the Camel and
also try out some new things. The most important of
these was riveting. We riveted the entire surface of
the model and launched it on the market with great
expectations at the beginning of 2004 and got a lot
of criticism from reviewers. The biggest criticism
was about the rivets. They wrote that the surface
looked like it had been shot through with a machine
gun and that this was definitely not the way to go.
It was so intense that we decided to remove the rivets.
At that time, we were already working intensively on
the Mirage IIIC, which we did not rivet and made it in
the classic way, with rivets only along the panelling.
We returned to riveting eight years later with
the arrival of another wave of innovation and the
introduction of directly milled and spark-abrasive
moulds made of Certal, a special aluminium alloy
developed for the production of injection moulds.
Text: Vladimír Šulc
Ilustrace: Piotr Forkasiewicz
Ki-115 Tsurugi
INFO Eduard22
September 2025