ShinMaywa US-1A `Japan has one godzilla of a seaplane.'

ShinMaywa Industries, Ltd. (yang dulunya adalah Shin Meiwa) adalah perusahaan pembuat pesawat US-1A. US-1A pertama kali dibuat pada tahun 1960. Pada awal pembuatanya, ShinMaywa Industries membuat 2 pesawat prototype yang dinamakan PS-X. Pesawat yang dibuat ini melakukan terbang perdananya pada 5 Oktober 1967.

US-1A merupakan pesawat STOL (short take-off landing) besar yang di desain untuk anti kapal selam (anti-submarine warfare-ASW) dan pesawat penyelamat (air-sea rescue-SAR). Dan satu lagi, US-1A ini merupakan pesawat amfibi.
Debut pertama US-1A adalah pada saat melakukan penyelamatan di kapal selam Yunani. Sejak 1967 sampai 1999 US-1A telah melakukan 500 penyelamatan dan telah menyelamatkan sekitar 550 nyawa. namun sayang, pesawat ini sekarang sudah tidak digunakan lagi, karena posisinya telah digantikan oleh P-3 Orions.

Spesifikasi
General characteristics

-Crew: nine (pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, navigator, radio operator, radar operator, two observers)
-Capacity: 20 survivors or 12 stretchers
-Length: 33.46 m (109 ft 9¼ in)
-Wingspan: 33.15 m (108 ft 9 in)
-Height: 9.95 m (32 ft 7¾ in)
-Wing area: 135.8 m² (1,462 ft²)
-Empty weight: 23,300 kg (51,367 lb)
-Max takeoff weight: 45,000 kg (99,200 lb)
-Powerplant: 4× Ishikawajima-Harima/General Electric T64-IHI-10J turboprops, 2,605 kW (3,493 ehp) each
-plus 1× General Electric T58 gas tubine, 1,104 kW (1,360 shp) driving boundary layer contol system

Performance

-Maximum speed: 511 km/h (276 knots, 318 mph)
-Cruise speed: 426 km/h (230 knots, 265 mph)
-Range: 3,817 km (2,060 nmi, 2,372 mi)
-Service ceiling: 7,195 m (23,600 ft)
-Rate of climb: 8.1 m/s (1,600 ft/min)

Foto-Foto

oh iya gan...
ni ada cerita tentang penyelamatan F-16 oleh US-1A, tapi pake bahasa inggris...

ON A COLD DAY IN JANUARY 1992, U.S. AIR FORCE CAPTAIN JOHN DOLAN ejected from his damaged F-16 at 25,000 feet and landed in the Pacific Ocean about 700 miles from the Japanese mainland. For the next four hours Dolan lay in a tiny rubber life raft that was tossed and continually swamped by high seas; he eventually suffered severe hypothermia. Finally, when he was barely conscious, Dolan saw a large, four-engine aircraft—a ShinMaywa US-1A bearing the Rising Sun of the Japanese military—slowly circling his raft.

Aboard the US-1A, a radar at the copilot’s station indicated that the waves below were just over nine feet high. US-1A Pilot Commander Hideki Kida put the 50-ton aircraft down in the churning ocean and taxied to within 50 yards of Dolan’s raft. Two rescue swimmers got to Dolan and hauled him aboard the US-1A, and in another four hours Dolan was at the military hospital at Yokota Air Base, Japan.

With this rescue, one of 628 flown by a US-1A since it entered service in 1976, the aircraft completed for the first and only time the mission it was created to fulfill: rescuing military fliers. In its years of service, the US-1 type, with its 12-member crew, has made its real impact by saving civilians. To sailors at sea and people living on remote Japanese islands, it has been an aerial lifeline, an odd role for an aircraft that started out hunting submarines.[/QUOTE]