Mitsubishi F-1

what is it?

The Mitsubishi F-1 is a single-seat twin-engine supersonic strike aircraft designed and produced by the Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. It was Japan's first domestically developed supersonic combat aircraft. Developed during the early 1970s, the F-1 is essentially a combat-orientated derivative of the Mitsubishi T-2 trainer aircraft, which was also procured for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF); accordingly, it was initially referred to as the FS-T2kai prior to being redesignated as F-1.

🔎How to recognise it: 2 jet engines · 7.9 m wingspan

base stats

• speed 1,700 km/htop speed
• size 13.7 tmax take-off weight
• built 77made in total

Bars compare against all aircraft: 3,500 km/h, 20,000 km, 850 seats; size and number built on a log scale up to 640 t (An-225) and 45,000 built (Cessna 172).

fun facts

• 🎂First flew 51 years ago, in 1975.
• 🏎️Top speed is 13.1× a car on the Dutch motorway (130 km/h).
• 💥Faster than sound: up to Mach 1.4 (sea-level speed of sound ≈ 1,235 km/h).
• 🐘Fully loaded it can weigh as much as 2 African elephants (~6 t each).
• 🏔️Can fly 1.7× higher than Mount Everest (8,849 m).

jet: Gas turbine pushing air out the back (turbofan or turbojet): fast and high-flying.

spec sheet

first flight

1975-06-03

introduced

1978

retired

2006

status

retired

number built

77

role

attack aircraft

origin

🇯🇵 Japan

makers

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

engines

2× Ishikawa-Harima TF40-801A

crew

1

length

17.9 m

wingspan

7.9 m

height

4.5 m

max take-off weight

13.7 t

top speed

1,700 km/h

range

—

ceiling

15,240 m

Specs are for the version in the Wikipedia article's specification section. Blank means the sources don't say.

family