The Zero was a desperately overrated aircraft. The idea that it was some sort of superweapon has somehow made it into a lot of crappy History Channel documentaries.
The only occassions the Zero racked up high kill totals were against very badly trained Dutch, British, and Chinese pilots, flying things like Brewster Buffalos. The Japanese pilots at the beginning of the war were very, very, very, very, very good.
At no time in the entire war did Zeros have a positive kill ratio against US Navy pilots; even when they were flying F4F Wildcats; the F4F Wildcat killed more Zeros than Zeros killed Wildcats.
How tightly an aircraft can turn basically turned out to be irrelevant in World War II; Durability, Speed, ability to roll at high speeds, firepower were all more important.
Thing about the Zero was that there had been so much mythology about Japanese being nearsighted and unable to fly well, and unable to build decent machinery, that it was incredibly shocking when they turned out to have anything that was even remotely competitive.
Don't quite agree. The Zero was very good - when it came out. It had a range of over 1000 miles with drop tanks, 300mph performance, and outstanding low to medium speed manueverability. When it first appeared (1939) it was one of the premier fighters in the world. It's performance was so good for the time that when the US military was informed of the planes existance in early 1940 - and provided with photos and movies - it refused to accept that a plane with the reported performance could exist (documented in Martin Caiden's "Ragged Rugged Warriors")
US pilots always had better luck against the Zero than European and Asian pilots. Hell, the AVG was beating the crap out of Zeros with P-40B Tomahawks, a plane that in almost every regard was inferior to the Zero. Yet the British in Malasia, with pilots that had experianced the Battle of Britain and flying Hawker Huricanes, were literally cut to shreds by Zero pilots.
The Jap pilots were very very good (at least in 41 and 42), but so were a lot of the US pilots, and the Marine and Navy pilots in particular were extremely creative in figuring out how to get the best performance out of their aircraft. They were simply more creative than the average Jap pilot - although guys like Suboro Sakai (sp?) would have been top notch no matter what they flew.
Even at the end of the war, pilots in the Pacific were told "Never dogfight a Zero."
The Japanese also didn't believe in armor for their aircraft, or self-sealing gas tanks. This made the plane a lot lighter, faster, and more manuverable that it would have been had it been designed and built by most other countries. The downside of this is that 6 .50 machine guns on a U.S. fighter had the effect of a buzzsaw on these guys.