Kawanishi Aircraft

Do you know how the Japanese aircraft industry was created? It was all about big industrial and financial conglomerates creating aircraft manufacturing branches, then adding design bureaus to them, finding suppliers and service partners etc. It was all very orderly, with very little room for rogue agents, dreamers or crazy ambitious schemes... but the Kawanishi aircraft company clearly didn’t get the memo. Founded by a bunch of geeks, this manufacturer proved to be extremely flexible: the history of the company is full of twists and turns, with many events that were simply not supposed to happen in the brutal market governed by big industrial conglomerates.