My father flew the A6M2 recovered from the Aleutians, oh, five or six times in the late summer and early fall of 1944 while serving as Director of VF Training at ComFAirWest. He had this to say about the canopy and specifically the windshield:
" The canopy gave a beautiful view of the outside world, noticeably good to the rear in contrast to our VF. The enclosure was made up of many panes of plexi, some contoured. Wind noise was moderate. Some of the enclosure had been destroyed and was remade by A & R. The windscreen section was original, for it bore deep craters from the corrosion that took place during its dip into the marsh of Akutan. These cavities would have a way of coming into focus when air speeds built up. I often wondered why they had not been replaced by A & R. In VF-42 we had had some nasty experiences with the original F4F windscreens blowing in on us when Vi > 300 kt. Grumman corrected it with a beef up that robbed us of valuable forward vision, but it ended the problem. Zero had no such heavy structure in the first place so it was a source of uneasiness. "