YS-11 is the only passenger airplane manufactured in Japan after the Second World War.

Japan produced many kinds of warplanes until the end of the Second World War, though GHQ for the Allied Powers strictly banned it after the war.  GHQ also prohibited aircraft-related study at universities in Japan.  After Japan’s sovereignty was recovered in 1951, a national project for Japan-made passenger airplanes was established.  Many technical experts focusing on warplanes before and during the war were summoned for the project.  YS-11 was the fruit of the project and the maiden flight of it was in 1962.  Being designed too stoutly since it was planned by the former engineers for warplanes, the body was heavier and the cost was higher than other passenger airplanes in the world.  But thanks to its good performance of short takeoff and landing, 182 planes were sold for the route between small cities in Japan as well as in developing countries.  On the other hand, as the cost reduction effort reached to the very limit, it was driven into the end of production in 1982.  Only three YS-11 are flying now as spy planes of the Air Self-Defense Force of Japan.  The photo shows a static preservation of YS-11 in the Tokorozawa Aviation Memorial Park, the old site of Japan’s first airport in 1911, in Saitama Prefecture.

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