This perhaps should be in the alternate history section? At any rate, speaking of japanese V-12s, i wonder if Kawasaki could have further developed their Ha-9 engine in the same way the soviets did with the Mikulin AM-34 et seq, both of which tracing their lineage to the BMW-VI. Mikulin got 2000HP out of the later AM-42, if Kawasaki gradually evolves the Ha-9 into say a 1500HP plus class engine, entirely adapted to japanese manufacturing techniques/resources, maybe the could have avoided some of the manufacturing and reliability issues the Ha-40/Atsuta experienced, due to the german design requiring specialist machine tools, tight tolerances, advanced materials etc.