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A6M Zero

Country Japan Manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Primary Role Fighter Maiden Flight 1 April 1939

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseIn Oct 1937, the Japanese Navy sent out requests for a new advanced naval aircraft to Japanese manufacturing firms Nakajima and Mitsubishi. On 17 Jan 1938, requirements were revealed to representatives of the two firms at Yokosuka, Japan, which called for an aircraft with speed of 500 kilometers per hour at 4,000 meters and a climb to 3,000 meters in altitude in 3.5 minutes. The Nakajima team immediately thought it was impossible to achieve and pulled out of the bidding process. The executives at Mitsubishi, knowing that the firm was already occupied with the navy bomber project, also considered to reject the project, but designer Jiro Horikoshi pressed hard to embark on this task, arguing that his team would be able to achieve the high performance demanded by reducing the weight of the aircraft. After negotiations, the navy dropped the bomber project, and Horikoshi was able to embark on this fighter project.

ww2dbaseThe result was the Type 0 Carrier Fighter (Japanese: Rei-shiki kanjo sentoki, or Reisen for short), the most maneuverable fighter aircraft in aviation history. The Zero fighters were made out of lightweight duralumin alloy for maximum maneuverability. Horikoshi and his team had to make sacrifices to achieve such high performance, especially considering the relatively weak 950 horsepower powerplant. Armor plating and self-sealing fuel tanks, for example, were deleted from the blueprint to save weight. On 23 Mar 1939, a prototype Zero fighter was taken apart, loaded onto two ox carts, and moved about 25 miles to the naval base of Kagamigahara, Japan, where it would take its maiden flight on 1 Apr. The second prototype was delivered on 25 Oct 1939. Production began soon afterwards, with the first production example delivered on 31 Jul 1940.

ww2dbaseMost Japanese Navy pilots immediately found A6M Zero fighters to be the most efficient aircraft they had ever flown. Saburo Sakai later recalled that "[t]he Zero excited me as nothing else had ever done. Even on the ground it had the cleanest lines I had ever seen in an aeroplane. it was a dream to fly."

ww2dbaseZero fighters' first combat mission took place in China on 19 Aug 1940, when 12 of them escorted 54 G3M2 bombers on a bombing mission against the capital city of Chongqing. On 13 Sep 1940, the pilots of the 12th Combined Naval Air Corps shot down 27 Chinese I-15 and I-16 Russian-made fighters while flying a bomber-escort mission. After a year in combat in China, the small number of Zero fighters shot down a total of 44 Chinese aircraft at the loss of only two fighters, and they were lost to anti-aircraft fire rather than in dogfights. This led to the belief that the Zero fighters, in the hands of capable pilots, were nearly invincible. Japanese Navy aviation leadership believed that each Zero fighter would be enough to counter two to five enemy fighters. This belief was shown during the Pearl Harbor strike in Dec 1941, in which only 108 of the 400 Zero fighters available to the Japanese Navy at the time were deployed in the attack; the naval commanders thought 108 were enough to handle American fighters at Pearl Harbor.

ww2dbaseInitially, these commanders were correct, as the American and British had no fighters that could match the Zero fighters' high performance and long range. In the first three months of the Pacific War, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the end of the Dutch East Indies campaign, Zero fighters claimed 471 kills out of 565 of all enemy planes destroyed. They continued to hold a technological advantage over their American counterparts until the introduction of Grumman F6F Hellcat, Vought F4U Corsair, and Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighters later in the war.

ww2dbaseZero fighters were typically deployed in three-fighter flights, each called a shotai. Unlike western flights, the Japanese flight leader flew far ahead of the two wingmen, while the wingmen weaved left and right and up and down, covering more blind spots than their western counterparts. When attacking, instead of the entire flight attacking the target, the three Zero fighters would attack in succession, thus never giving the target any chance for a break during the entire attack. When the flight was attacked, however, the shotai, given the distance between the flight leader and the wingmen, was easily broken up, leaving each fighter to fend for itself. Early in the war, when the Zero fighters were by far the most maneuverable fighters, they relied on the maneuverability to recover from the occasions when the flights were broken up.

ww2dbaseDuring the Battle of Midway in Jun 1942, Japan lost four fleet carriers and 234 aircraft. What caused the most harm was the loss of more than ten percent of the navy's experienced fighter pilots. In response, the Japanese Navy recalled many veteran fighter pilots back to Japan to train replacements. Meanwhile, Mitsubishi worked on the next major variant of the Zero fighter, which was revealed in Oct 1942. The powerplant was upgraded to the supercharged Sakae 21 engine, which was rated at 1,130 horsepower, although the armament remained the same; despite the engine upgrade, however, performance remained roughly the same. Meanwhile, Allied fighters continued to improve. In order to counter the fact that Zero fighters were becoming out-classed, the three-fighter shotai was revised to four fighters each, hoping to use new tactics to bring balance to the dogfights, but by then it was already too late to make a difference. Additionally, poor Japanese fuel quality toward the end of the war also plagued the remaining Zero fighters; the fuel was so bad that the Zero fighters often emitted a thin trail of dirty smoke behind them when they were at wide-open-throttle, at times even letting out bright flashes of flames from exhaust ports (interestingly, these fuel issues sometimes led to US pilots believing they had successfully damaged the enemy, which in turn led to inflated kill scores).

ww2dbaseToward the end of the Pacific War, the large numbers of Zero fighters in service and their high maneuverability made them ideal for suicide special attacks, more popularly known to westerners of the day as "kamikaze". Out of the 2,363 Japanese Navy aircraft that participated in special attack missions, 1,189 of them were A6M Zero fighters.

ww2dbaseBy 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.

ww2dbaseAfter 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.

ww2dbaseSources:

Bruce Gamble, Target: Rabaul

Donald Nijboer, Seafire vs A6M Zero

Dan van der Vat, The Pacific Campaign

Wikipedia



Last Major Revision: Jan 2010

A6M Zero Timeline

SPECIFICATIONS

A6M8 Model 64



Machinery One Mitsubishi MK8P Kinsei 62 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial, rated at 1,560 hp for take-off, 1,340 hp at 2,100 m and 1,180 hp at 5,800 m, driving a three-blade metal propeller Armament 2x wing-mounted 13.2mm Type 3 machine guns; 2x wing-mounted 20mm Type 99 cannon; external stores carried 2x60 kg bombs (1x250kg for suicide missions) Crew 1 Span 21.44 m Length 9.24 m Height 3.64 m Wing Area 21.30 m² Weight, Empty 2,150 kg Weight, Loaded 3,150 kg Service Ceiling 11,200 m

A6M2 Model 21



Machinery One Mitsubishi Zuisei 13 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial, rated at 780 hp for take-off and 875 hp at 3,600 m, driving a two- or three-blade metal propeller Armament 2x7.7mm Type 97 machine guns in the upper fuselage decking; 2x20mm wing-mounted Type 99 cannon; external stores carried 2x60 kg bombs (1x250kg for suicide missions) Crew 1 Span 21.44 m Length 9.06 m Height 3.05 m Wing Area 22.40 m² Weight, Empty 1,680 kg Weight, Loaded 2,410 kg Weight, Maximum 2,796 kg Speed, Maximum 533 km/h Rate of Climb 15.70 m/s Service Ceiling 10,000 m Range, Normal 1,600 km Range, Maximum 3,105 km

A6M3 Model 32



Machinery One Nakajima NK1F Sakae 21 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial, rated at 1,130 hp for take-off, 1,100 hp at 2,850 m and 980 hp at 6,000 m, driving a three-blade metal propeller Armament 2x7.7mm Type 97 machine guns in the upper fuselage decking; 2x wing-mounted 20mm Type 99 cannon; external stores carried 2x60 kg bombs (1x250kg for suicide missions) Crew 1 Span 21.44 m Length 9.06 m Height 3.51 m Wing Area 21.50 m² Weight, Empty 1,807 kg Weight, Loaded 2,544 kg Service Ceiling 11,050 m

A6M5 Model 52



Machinery One Nakajima NK1F Sakae 21 fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial, rated at 1,130 hp for take-off, 1,100 hp at 2,850 m and 980 hp at 6,000 m, driving a three-blade metal propeller Armament 2x7.7mm Type 97 machine-guns in the upper fuselage decking; 2x wing-mounted 20mm Type 99 cannon; night version carried one fuselage-mounted oblique-firing 20 mm Type 99 cannon; external stores carried 2x60 kg bombs (1x250kg for suicide missions) Crew 1 Span 21.44 m Length 9.12 m Height 3.51 m Wing Area 21.30 m² Weight, Empty 1,876 kg Weight, Loaded 2,733 kg Service Ceiling 11,740 m

Photographs

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