Oahu, HI — Dec. 7 will mark the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Oahu’s Pacific Aviation Museum has begun a public renovation on the most complete remaining example of critical aircraft used during the aerial assault, the Nakajima B5N torpedo bomber.
Kenneth DeHoff, executive director of the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor, said nearly 1,150 B5Ns were built in the years leading up to World War II and during the conflict, but his institution’s bomber is really the only close-to-complete version that has survived the decades following the war.
“Wherever someone is coming from, this is a piece of history they’re not going to see someplace else,” DeHoff said of the plane.
“It was never wrecked,” he added. “It has a couple of bullet hole patches on it, but it was a flyable airplane. When the war was over, like they did with so many of the [surrendered aircraft], they just pushed it off the runway and abandoned it.”
Nicknamed “Kate” by the allies during the war, dozens of B5Ns were involved in the imperial Japanese navy’s attack on Oahu’s Pearl Harbor in 1941, and one of those Nakajima torpedo bombers dropped the high-altitude bomb that did so much damage to the USS Arizona, sinking the battleship and killing 1,177 U.S. sailors and Marines.
“This is probably one of the most fantastic airplanes that participated in the early part of World War II in the Pacific,” DeHoff said of the B5N. “It caused more death and destruction than any other aircraft, and it’s a one of a kind for us. There are no more, so we are honored to have it and restore it and get it to a display quality.”
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