Heres what a couple of American pilots had to say re the Wilcat vs Zero:
LT John Thach
In connection with the performance of the Zero fighter, any success we
had against the Zero is not due to performance of the plane we fly, but is
the result of the comparatively poor marksmanship on the part of the
Japanese stupid mistakes by a few of their pilots and superior
marksmanship and teamwork on the part of some of our pilots...
VMF-121 pilot Roger Habermane
...we'd work like hell to get to to climb to 23,000-24,000 feet. At that
altitude when you malke a turn you lose 1,000 ft, and its very easy to
stall out. In theory the F4F had a higher service ceiling but not in
practice. You'd look up and there sit the Japs at 30,000 ft looking
right down at your gazoo. A real fun time. You couldn't get that bird
much higher than 24,000: not you, not Jesus, nobody. The bird
Wouldn't go any higher.
The early war success of the Wildcat when compared to other allied fighters was largely based on the Wildcats toughness, the excellent training of its pilots and that it largely engaged zeros in near equal numbers.
Joe B basically got it right
F4F and Zero numbers were generally comparable in their 1942 combats, which were pretty extensive in a fair variety of tactical situations. Pilots are obviously always a big variable, the problem is always *quantifying* that variable, rather than just using it as a fudge factor when analysis of simple stats gives the 'wrong' answer (as it notably tends to do with the F4F's combat record compared to its simple performance stats).
Slaterat