Raijin the Aerocat

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by Merlin

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my very first aerocat! raijin is a specially modified j7w1. myth goes that japan was always planning to produce a jet engine powered j7 and that was the entire reason they designed it as a pusher prop. but the war ended before japan could get a usable engine.

except that there's really only one source saying such things, and it's a little suspect.

either way, i designed raijin before there were any aerocats based on prop models (and indeed, before presto officially opened the species, even, so there was no guidence...) and wanted to stick with late wwII jets as the earliest. so a hypothetical j7w2 model, where the pusher prop was replaced with a retrofitted jet engine. somewhat amusingly i did all this before finding out that there's a jet powered j7 in world of planes and that it's also called the j7w2.

Raijin is an old boi and harbors some old grudges. he never got his chance to defend his homeland and his entire purpose was to hunt superfortresses, so the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki might have been prevented, if only the j7w1's had been finished earlier.

unlike many of the other aerocats, raijin does not have much in the way of modern features. no holographic copilot, no sophisticated black box, no fly by wire. he's an old old man in a youthful, underpowered body.

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