The one most over-rated plane of WWII

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I like your moxie, kid!
 
I thought the roundels were substituted for armor plate and nose / tail weight, in lieu of fuel (so it could have short range, like all British aircraft), and were also used to shift the center of gravity so the airplane naturally headed for a coastal British airfield where it would land due to fuel shortage.

Red Stars meant you were going to get shot down, at least in the first two years of the Russian Front.

The U.S. insignia meant you were going to fly an 8-hour mission at high altitudes, see no German airplanes, and would very definitely be freezing when you got home, where you would grumble about the war while drinking lukewarm beer, chasing British women, and generally being an "Ugly American" until morning, when you would do it all over again.
 
PAT303 said:
Both sides were fitting armour and SS tanks as quickly as possible for a reason after the battle of France, thinking the unprotected A6M is going to survive in view of the facts is strange logic.
Click to expand...

And yet, across the other side of the world the A6M was found to be more than a match than heavier armoured Allied fighters and pilots flying the type shot down a lot of aircraft with armour, not only that it earned itself a myth of invincibility, which, incidentally is why we are here, so strange logic? Not me. But of course, lets apply yours and say that despite its victories and its formidable reputation in the SEA campaign it wouldn't have been any use at all in the Battle of Britain, that is, if the Japanese had a time machine...
 

What's not under question here is the US response to a threat, nor its tactics, which were necessary simply because the F4F was outclassed by the A6M. In hands of powers with less training and resources than the US Navy the differences between the two types would have been more marked. To be fair, the standard of aircraft carrier based fighters between 1940 and 1943 up to when the F6F enters the scene isn't that spectacular, there's the A6M, the F4F, the Brewster Buffalo, the Fairey Fulmar, the Hawker Sea Hurricane, the Gloster Sea Gladiator the Supermarine Seafire I (later Seafires were obviously far more potent), so the A6M looks pretty good compared to its contemporaries.

To really appreciate the capabilities of a weapon it needs to be considered next to the other aircraft in use at the time it was, rather than attempting to compare it to everything else. Obviously the A6M was in service until the very end of the war, so that means it was contemporary to almost every fighter in theatre throughout the war, but to begin with, in the first year when the USA is taking its first steps into the war, the A6M is by far one of the best fighters in theatre.
 
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