Inside the Unbelievable True Story of the Real WWII Fighter That Killed Godzilla

Human war machines don’t tend to fare well in encounters with Godzilla, who debuted on the silver screen in 1954. However, in Godzilla Minus One—a hit with U.S. audiences after its release on Netflix in June—the notorious kaiju finely meets his match in the form of a bizarre-looking fighter plane called the J7W1 Shinden. The film, which won an Oscar for special effects despite its modest $15 million budget, is primarily set in 1947 in the immediate aftermath of World War II—a period during which Japan’s forces were progressively disarmed and mostly dissolved under U.S. occupation. In film’s fictional universe, the American nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll awaken Godzilla, but the U.S. military is too distracted by the Soviets to fight him. So, Japanese paramilitary forces are left to scrape together a handful of disarmed warships and left over prototype tanks and aircraft to confront the King of Monsters on his Tokyo-bound rampage. But the elegant Shinden (which means Magnificent Lightning) sure doesn’t look like a real World War II-era fighter. It sports swept wings, a rear-facing pusher engine and a set of smaller additional wings near the nose called canards—none of which were found on operational World War II-era piston-engine propeller planes. [View in Browser]( [Popular Mechanics]( [SHOP]( [EXCLUSIVE]( [SUBSCRIBE]( [Inside the Unbelievable True Story of the Real WWII Fighter That Killed Godzilla]( [Inside the Unbelievable True Story of the Real WWII Fighter That Killed Godzilla]( [Inside the Unbelievable True Story of the Real WWII Fighter That Killed Godzilla]( Human war machines don’t tend to fare well in encounters with Godzilla, who debuted on the silver screen in 1954. However, in Godzilla Minus One—a hit with U.S. audiences after its release on Netflix in June—the notorious kaiju finely meets his match in the form of a bizarre-looking fighter plane called the J7W1 Shinden. The film, which won an Oscar for special effects despite its modest $15 million budget, is primarily set in 1947 in the immediate aftermath of World War II—a period during which Japan’s forces were progressively disarmed and mostly dissolved under U.S. occupation. In film’s fictional universe, the American nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll awaken Godzilla, but the U.S. military is too distracted by the Soviets to fight him. So, Japanese paramilitary forces are left to scrape together a handful of disarmed warships and left over prototype tanks and aircraft to confront the King of Monsters on his Tokyo-bound rampage. But the elegant Shinden (which means Magnificent Lightning) sure doesn’t look like a real World War II-era fighter. It sports swept wings, a rear-facing pusher engine and a set of smaller additional wings near the nose called canards—none of which were found on operational World War II-era piston-engine propeller planes. Human war machines don’t tend to fare well in encounters with Godzilla, who debuted on the silver screen in 1954. However, in Godzilla Minus One—a hit with U.S. audiences after its release on Netflix in June—the notorious kaiju finely meets his match in the form of a bizarre-looking fighter plane called the J7W1 Shinden. The film, which won an Oscar for special effects despite its modest $15 million budget, is primarily set in 1947 in the immediate aftermath of World War II—a period during which Japan’s forces were progressively disarmed and mostly dissolved under U.S. occupation. In film’s fictional universe, the American nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll awaken Godzilla, but the U.S. military is too distracted by the Soviets to fight him. So, Japanese paramilitary forces are left to scrape together a handful of disarmed warships and left over prototype tanks and aircraft to confront the King of Monsters on his Tokyo-bound rampage. But the elegant Shinden (which means Magnificent Lightning) sure doesn’t look like a real World War II-era fighter. It sports swept wings, a rear-facing pusher engine and a set of smaller additional wings near the nose called canards—none of which were found on operational World War II-era piston-engine propeller planes. [Read More]( [Read More]( [Keep Clean Without the Wasted Paper Using These Bidets]( [Keep Clean Without the Wasted Paper Using These Bidets]( Never wipe with scratchy paper again. [Read More]( [Alternate text] [Alternate text] [Light up Your Workshop or Garage With One of These Editor-Approved LED Shop Lights]( [Light up Your Workshop or Garage With One of These Editor-Approved LED Shop Lights]( LED shop lights are a great replacement for traditional incandescent or fluorescent bulbs due to their high brightness and energy efficiency. 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