There is an eternal thread here, recently resurrected again, asking for opinions on the most over-rated aircraft of WWII. I have lately been thinking about that very question, and about a particular airplane, and that plane would be the A6M, or Japanese Zero. It was definitely the most over-rated plane of World War II, based on the disparity between its very high reputation and its fairly low actual merit. At the same time, I will suggest that the F4F (Grumman Wildcat) was possibly the most under-rated plane, precisely because it always gets compared to the Zero, and always (supposedly) comes up way short.
Let's quickly review the part that "everybody knows": when the Zero first appeared in combat against American navy aircraft, everybody was amazed at how agile it was. Fantastically maneuverable, it simply overwhelmed the poor clumsy Wildcats. In a dogfight, it was no contest. The Wildcat was simply no match for the Zero. Or so "they" said.
And of course we all know why: to quote from the National Air and Space Museum website, "Jiro Horikoshi assembled a team in 1937 to design a new fighter for the Imperial Japanese Navy with two primary goals in mind: to make the aircraft as maneuverable as possible and to provide it with enough range to escort Japanese bombers all the way to distant targets in China and back."
Well, he got the required range by filling it with enough gas tank volume to hold 137 gallons internally and another 87 gallons in a drop tank, which enabled the 940 hp Nakajima 14-cylinder radial engine to haul the plane for over 1100 miles under normal conditions, giving it an effective combat radius (there, fight for a while, and back) of well over 300 miles, which was much greater than the combat range of American carrier planes.
But the agility came in large part from a conscious decision to cut every possible pound of weight out of the airplane. For starters, that meant a frame as light as Horikoshi could make it (not wood, as some think, but a very lightweight aluminum alloy, and as little of it as possible). Then there was the big decision: no armor. Not for the pilot, and not for the engine. And the gas tanks were not self-sealing. The resultant light-weight warrior could dance better than probably any other plane in the world at the time, and that was exactly what Horikoshi had been tasked to make it do.
That maneuverability was of course what everybody noticed. And the Zero quickly acquired the *myth* of invincibility. Because it was just that—a myth. The Zero's early success was based more on surprise than anything else. The Wildcat pilots were simply unprepared for what the Zero could do. Yet even on the morning of the greatest surprise of all, two American pilots flying P-40s (another often under-rated plane) shot down six Japanese planes between them, mostly Val dive bombers but also including one Zero. A P-40 could shoot down a Zero in a fair fight. (What the P-40s piloted by the Flying Tigers did to Zeros deserves its own separate discussion.)
Now here is where it gets revealing: in the early days of 1942, when the Zero was thought to be virtually unbeatable, the actual kill ratio between Zeros and Wildcats was about 1.5 to one. Certainly that equals an advantage for the Zero, but not a very large one. Wildcats were quite capable of shooting down Zeros. But as the war progressed, American tactics were adjusted to take advantage of the Wildcat's strengths and the Zero's weaknesses, and by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign the Wildcats were enjoying a kill ratio of almost six to one. And by the end of the war, with the declining quality of Japanese pilots who were up against better-trained, experienced American pilots, the ratio had reached nearly seven to one.
Of course, a big chunk of the Wildcats' advantage was training and teamwork. There was a saying that went, "A single Wildcat is no match for a Zero, but two Wildcats can take on four Zeros." And that kinda brings me back around to my opening point, and my conclusion: the high reputation of the Zero was based on just one outstanding quality—its maneuverability—plus the "surprise factor" when American pilots discovered it. Once things settled down and we had a chance to adjust, it turned out that the inherent advantages of the Wildcat (a much stronger engine, a powerful punch with its .50-caliber guns, and its heavy construction and generous armor, which made it able to absorb repeated hits from the Zero's guns and still keep fighting) along with the greatest weakness of the Zero (its light construction made it easy to knock down with one good burst) made the Wildcat not merely the Zero's *equal*, but for all practical purposes its *superior*. And instead of focusing on just one isolated characteristic of the Zero, the focus should have been on the entire machine. A good machine is the one that gets the job done, and the bottom line for the "superior" Zero and "inferior" Wildcat is that the Wildcat got the job done better than the Zero did.
In the end, the Zero was a noble but failed experiment. It never did deserve a reputation as a "superplane."
And if you want more details, here is something I came across while I was writing this:
Let's quickly review the part that "everybody knows": when the Zero first appeared in combat against American navy aircraft, everybody was amazed at how agile it was. Fantastically maneuverable, it simply overwhelmed the poor clumsy Wildcats. In a dogfight, it was no contest. The Wildcat was simply no match for the Zero. Or so "they" said.
And of course we all know why: to quote from the National Air and Space Museum website, "Jiro Horikoshi assembled a team in 1937 to design a new fighter for the Imperial Japanese Navy with two primary goals in mind: to make the aircraft as maneuverable as possible and to provide it with enough range to escort Japanese bombers all the way to distant targets in China and back."
Well, he got the required range by filling it with enough gas tank volume to hold 137 gallons internally and another 87 gallons in a drop tank, which enabled the 940 hp Nakajima 14-cylinder radial engine to haul the plane for over 1100 miles under normal conditions, giving it an effective combat radius (there, fight for a while, and back) of well over 300 miles, which was much greater than the combat range of American carrier planes.
But the agility came in large part from a conscious decision to cut every possible pound of weight out of the airplane. For starters, that meant a frame as light as Horikoshi could make it (not wood, as some think, but a very lightweight aluminum alloy, and as little of it as possible). Then there was the big decision: no armor. Not for the pilot, and not for the engine. And the gas tanks were not self-sealing. The resultant light-weight warrior could dance better than probably any other plane in the world at the time, and that was exactly what Horikoshi had been tasked to make it do.
That maneuverability was of course what everybody noticed. And the Zero quickly acquired the *myth* of invincibility. Because it was just that—a myth. The Zero's early success was based more on surprise than anything else. The Wildcat pilots were simply unprepared for what the Zero could do. Yet even on the morning of the greatest surprise of all, two American pilots flying P-40s (another often under-rated plane) shot down six Japanese planes between them, mostly Val dive bombers but also including one Zero. A P-40 could shoot down a Zero in a fair fight. (What the P-40s piloted by the Flying Tigers did to Zeros deserves its own separate discussion.)
Now here is where it gets revealing: in the early days of 1942, when the Zero was thought to be virtually unbeatable, the actual kill ratio between Zeros and Wildcats was about 1.5 to one. Certainly that equals an advantage for the Zero, but not a very large one. Wildcats were quite capable of shooting down Zeros. But as the war progressed, American tactics were adjusted to take advantage of the Wildcat's strengths and the Zero's weaknesses, and by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign the Wildcats were enjoying a kill ratio of almost six to one. And by the end of the war, with the declining quality of Japanese pilots who were up against better-trained, experienced American pilots, the ratio had reached nearly seven to one.
Of course, a big chunk of the Wildcats' advantage was training and teamwork. There was a saying that went, "A single Wildcat is no match for a Zero, but two Wildcats can take on four Zeros." And that kinda brings me back around to my opening point, and my conclusion: the high reputation of the Zero was based on just one outstanding quality—its maneuverability—plus the "surprise factor" when American pilots discovered it. Once things settled down and we had a chance to adjust, it turned out that the inherent advantages of the Wildcat (a much stronger engine, a powerful punch with its .50-caliber guns, and its heavy construction and generous armor, which made it able to absorb repeated hits from the Zero's guns and still keep fighting) along with the greatest weakness of the Zero (its light construction made it easy to knock down with one good burst) made the Wildcat not merely the Zero's *equal*, but for all practical purposes its *superior*. And instead of focusing on just one isolated characteristic of the Zero, the focus should have been on the entire machine. A good machine is the one that gets the job done, and the bottom line for the "superior" Zero and "inferior" Wildcat is that the Wildcat got the job done better than the Zero did.
In the end, the Zero was a noble but failed experiment. It never did deserve a reputation as a "superplane."
And if you want more details, here is something I came across while I was writing this:
