I haven’t read much on the Ki-21 since making this video, so I very well could be wrong. I believe it is a sliding glass canopy that can be opened for a gunner. It seems to be closed in the photos and that’s why it looks like a single, flush piece of glass.

My guess, and it is a guess. Just aft of the radio operator's (doubling as the dorsal air gunner?) station amidships, and instead of an astrodome, the navigator got a clear view from the forward & mid sections of that dorsal canopy for orographic and celestial navigation in conjunction with its purpose as rear dorsal defensive gun mount -similar to but better than that operated by the radio operator on the B-17. The rear of that clear panel section was hinged so it could open to mount for a single defensive 7.7mm Type 89 MG (licensed Vickers) which could be withdrawn within. The Ki-21 also mounted a remote controlled defensive 7.7mm stinger in the tail, a ventral 7.7mm MG mounted to project through hinged inward opening panels, and port 'waist' 7.7mm MG mounted through a small lateral hatch just aft of the trailing edge root below the dorsal gunners position. The starboard lateral 7.7mm MG was mounted on the rear right side of the cockpit canopy clear frame. All except the tail 'stinger' were drum fed.

@@theblytonian3906. Thanks for he info.

@@theblytonian3906 I appreciate the help.

@@TiptonBros correct, that is where the gunner is located

The 247 was a lot sexier than the SALLY. Design lines are more trout-like on the Boeing. Whereas the Mitsi looks a bit bulbous by contrast. Americans had the advantage of having better twin engine bombers, and could relegate the 247s to a transport role as the C-73.

Albeit design encumbered as all Japanese types of the era were by the power of available domestic aero engines exacerbated by low fuel octane, the Ki21 was state of the art when production commenced in August 1937 and served well in China, the early campaigns of 1941 and initial phase of the Pacific war. Remembering the British in the particular had a superior aero engine manufacturing industry, the best in the world at that time, compare it with comparable British & German medium bombers of the same era. Hampden, Whitley, Wellington, Do-17, He-111 & Ju 88 It was only as the American industry ramped up both in overwhelming quantity and vastly improved quality that they like the G3M and G4M of the IJN found their performance and design obsolete and totally outclassed in terms of defensive firepower and robust structure. Japan did not have the manufacturing capacity or capability that America did, and so these now obsolete and vulnerable types, just like the Zero and Ki-43 were pressed to continue in service. With Japan knowing the war was lost and making negotiated terms of surrender peace overtures through their embassy in the Soviet Union by late 1943, what production that was available was turned to producing fighters like the Ki-61, Ki-44 & J2M developing and subsequently producing the Ki-84 & N1K1a/2-J. Have a look at American production numbers, then struggling relatively minuscule Japanese production numbers e.g. N1Kx-J and J2M you'll realise how desperate and hopeless Japan's situation was and the outcome undeniably evident by mid 1943. That war was an extension of American foreign policy manipulated by Roosevelt's seizure of Japanese assets and sanctions of oil and raw materials shutting down any diplomatic resolution well knowing the only viable alternative and probable response from the Japanese. The American government from the outset never had any intention or interest in accepting a negotiated surrender even though doing so in 1943 or even early 1944 would have saved countless American lives in making so many of the Pacific battles and American casualties completely unnecessary. e.g. Kwajelein, Peleliu, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, et al. Perhaps even Tarawa might have been avoided. But what's a few dead Americans when an new age of American Empire and dollar as the international currency is calling?

@@theblytonian3906 I ain’t reading allat

That’s my voice lol 😂