1. Jiro Horikoshi was a Japanese aeronautical engineer.
13 Facts About Jiro Horikoshi
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Jiro Horikoshi was the chief engineer of several Japanese fighter aircraft designs used during World War II, most notably the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter, as well as the NAMC YS-11.
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Jiro Horikoshi was born near the city of Fujioka, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, in 1903.
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Jiro Horikoshi, who had been at a conference in Tokyo with Imperial Navy officers to discuss the new Reppu fighter, returned to Nagoya on the 17th, in time to experience another air raid on the Mitsubishi factories the next day.
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Still very weak, Jiro Horikoshi was sent home to rest after only a week back at work.
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Jiro Horikoshi subsequently left Mitsubishi and taught at educational and research institutions.
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In 1956, Jiro Horikoshi collaborated on a book about the Zero with Okumiya Masatake, a general in the JASDF and a former Imperial Navy commander who had led Zero fighter squadrons during the war.
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Jiro Horikoshi's memoir regarding the development of the Zero was published in Japan in 1970, and was translated by the University of Washington Press as Eagles of Mitsubishi: The Story of the Zero Fighter, which was published in English in 1981.
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Jiro Horikoshi died of pneumonia in a Tokyo hospital on 11 January 1982, aged 78.
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Jiro Horikoshi's obituary was covered in several major newspapers around the world.
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Jiro Horikoshi was posthumously promoted to the fourth rank in the order of precedence.
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Jiro Horikoshi was survived by five children, none of whom pursued a career in aircraft design or engineering.
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Jiro Horikoshi is the subject of The Wind Rises, a fictionalized biographical animated film by Hayao Miyazaki, released in 2013, in which his voice was provided by Hideaki Anno.