Posted on 01/27/2016 6:22:00 AM PST by Olog-hai
One of Mitsubishi's legendary Zero fighter planes took to the skies over Japan on Wednesday for the first time since World War II.
The restored plane made a brief flight to and from a naval base in southern Japan. Decorated former U.S. Air Force pilot Skip Holm flew the aircraft.
Zero fighters were considered one of the most capable fighter planes in World War II, rivaling the British Spitfire. Their long range allowed them to play a prominent role in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Only a few are still in operating condition. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
Collecting “ditched” pilots is one thing.
What happens when the ship itself that they are on sinks?
Another problem they had is that after Midway, the Japanese built seven carriers; we built 70+.
You misspelled “Flying”. It is properly spelled “S-u-p-e-r” in this context.
Then the pilot allowed us to stand up in the aircraft's midsection & poke out heads out into the slipstream while he stood the plane up on a wing on a pass over Moffett Field. Unforgettable.
A man-after-my-own-heart!
My FIL was WWII Army Airborne in Germany and my SIL is now in the BIG RED 1 headed for Ranger School.
That said, thanks for all YOU have provided to the USA!
Made obsolete by the Grumman F6F Hellcat, June 26, 1942 date of first flight.
Cool !
I always enjoy seeing the WWII stuff,especially the planes.
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only 13 survived according to this source: Mitsubishi not the major manufacture?
http://ww2db.com/aircraft_spec.php?aircraft_model_id=3
By the end of WW2, 10,937 Zero fighters were manufactured. Mitsubishi built only 3,880, while the majority of the remainder were built by Nakajima, the company that declined to bid on the original request for such a fighter.
After the war, most surviving A6M Zero fighters were destroyed. A few of them were sent to the United States for testing. Many of them were abandoned across the various Pacific islands, rusting very quickly in jungle climates. Only about 13 were available for museum display today, such as the Zero fighter on display at Yushukan museum adjacent to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Japan. Only a very small number are in flyable condition today.
The US managed to salvage a Zero and fly it. They discovered that its biggest weakness was turning right in a dive. Once the pilots discovered that, it was all she wrote.
Good read, thanks
In February 1945 Cmdr. Richard G. Crommelin was taxiing Zero 4593 at San Diego Naval Air Station, where it was being used to train pilots bound for the Pacific war zone. An SB2C Curtiss Helldiver overran it and chopped it up from tail to cockpit. Crommelin survived, but the Zero didn’t. Only a few pieces of Zero 4593 remain today. The manifold pressure gauge, the air-speed indicator, and the folding panel of the port wingtip were donated to the Navy Museum at the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard by Rear Adm. William N. Leonard, who salvaged them at San Diego in 1945. In addition, two of its manufacturer’s plates are in the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum in Anchorage, donated by Arthur Bauman, the photographer. Leonard recently told me, “The captured Zero was a treasure. To my knowledge no other captured machine has ever unlocked so many secrets at a time when the need was so great.â€
The F-6F was also rumored to have been developed based on the captured Zero's performance as well as reports from the Pacific fleet.
#40 The gunner on the ground was a good shot.
“The US didn’t have anything that could match them”
More than a few zeros and 109’s were downed by P-40s. With the right tactics they held their own. The P-38 likewise. The P-39 also. Recent analysis of actual action for the P-40 showed it was a lot better than its modern reputation. Heck man, the Wildcat had a 5.9:1 kill ratio in 1942. Don’t believe everything you have read.
The P-40 did fine against the 109... except that the RAAF used a lot of P-40s as bombers in Africa and 109’s caught them flying low and slow with bombs. So kill ratio were skewed by that. In the air to air role they did fine against 109s.
“Alot of the Wildcat’s success was due to tactics, for what its worth. Thatch Weave & all.”
If good tactics make aircraft A dominate aircraft B then it can not be said that aircraft B is superior.
The early strength of American fighters was their ability to absorb hits from opposing fighters. When armed with the 50 cal machine guns, they were also more lethal because of the amount of firepower they could muster on a target.
I left the P-36 out of the mix because it was mostly not a factor. Then there was the Brewster Buffalo...
Thanks for the ping. I didn’t know there are any Zeros left.
It can if one-on-one aircraft B more often wins. And one on one the A6M would prevail in most cases.
BTW the Russians loved the P39 as a low altitude ground support role. But in the air superiority role it stunk on ice.
More than you’d ever want to know about television during WWII:
http://www.qsl.net/w2vtm/mil_television_history.html
“...Many of them were abandoned across the various Pacific islands, rusting very quickly in jungle climates...”
Damn... imagine recovering a couple of those and restoring them. Probably completely obliterated by now. 13 left, out of thousands.
I was at an airshow in Reading PA last summer; they had a P61 Black Widow that was recovered from a crash site in New Guinea and is under restoration. There’s only a few of those left too. Big, twin tail night fighter, sort of like a P38 Lightning on steroids.
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