Let's Talk The Mitsubishi Zero

As those of you on CDF know, I have a grudge with MirageIII over arguments over the Zero. My point of view is that the Zero was an exceptional aircraft for its program specifications, and that its pilots were phenomenally talented and trained, but it was doctrinally inferior to contemporary Allied aircraft. Once Western pilots were properly trained learned to exploit its weaknesses, it was toast.

MirageIII, on the other hand, disagrees, pointing to the Zero's exceptional combat performance in the early stages of WW2, and argues that the main failing of the Mitsubishi Zero was that it was not properly upgraded, and that later on in the war, the dearth of skilled pilots shrouded its true combat performance.

And as those on CDF know, we got into ad hominem attacks over the Mitsubishi Zero.

My ultimate view is that the Zero is a myth, held up by Japanese nationalists as an exemplar of its skill and creativity. But there are better planes for that, like the radical canard-pusher prop configuration of the unfinished Shinden or the Mitsubishi Raiden, which was a beast in its era, less maneuverable than Zeroes of the same era, but of greater cruising speed and greater dive speed, and it also was able, in the hands of a skilled pilot, to put Hellcats in their place. What they are ultimately trying to cover for is that the Japanese high-command gave out the wrong performance specs; and once it became obvious that the Zero was inadequate, they failed to adapt their tactics for the changed environment. Jiro Horikoshi, for instance, got into huge fights with Japanese high command for his demand to sacrifice maneuverability, up-armor the Zero, and make it better suited to the Boom and Zoom tactics that became prevalent towards the middle of the war. And even once the Zero was obsolete, there was no concerted effort towards retooling and producing newer and better aircraft, like the Shiden Kai or the Raiden, the total production of either never exceeding a tenth of the total wartime production of the Zero.

What does SDF think?

To me, irespective to you two, is that the Zero was a good aircraft for its time and its performance is not really a myth. As I am short on time, the zero actually held its own untill the introduction of the hellcat in 1943; which by that time.. we should really be comparing to the Ki84 and the N1K; both of which proved formidable/no-push-over in combat.

It is hard to find a carrier based fighter with the similar performance introduced in 1940; or even land based fighter as well.

Ofcourse it has limitations too, the weak engine, lack of armor (as the engine cannot lift it) and the light weapons (and poor cannons).

The issue of growth of the airframe is unfair, what happened to all the buffalo, hawks and wildcats? they didn't get upgraded to perform and they were replaced on the front line.

It is also not true that no aircraft replaced the zero, the KI84, and N1K were. ~6000 exmple in total was produced. The Shiden Kai N1K had 1500 examples or Raiden well is not a carrier fighter and is meant as an interceptor, not a fighter. I also won't fault them as the allied bombing campaign is starting to take a toll on factories.

The biggest advantage of the Zero is its extreme range. Compared to other aircraft, the Zero can fly longer and farther than other craft; Pearl Harbor was in part only possible because of the ability of the Zero to deploy far away from its target. IIRC, a lot of the Pacific campaign had Zeros deploying far away from their home base, allowing the IJAAC / IJNAC to strike even after losing sea superiority.

On the other hand, the "superb maneuverability" of the aircraft might be fact, but it was irrelevant. The Zero is most powerful at low energy regimes where its large and powerful ailerons, low drag, and extremely low wing-loading can be put to best effect. However, at higher speeds, the Zero's large ailerons became almost impossible to move, and the Zero lost agility as a result. The lightweight construction of the Zero also resulted in its low dive-speed, as any faster would cause the airframe to disintegrate, allowing competing Allied fighters to dive out of the way of the Zero, even if they had lower cruising speeds. As long as Allied fighters had enough altitude to dive with, they could prevent the Zero from scoring casualties.

A compensating factor, however, was that the Zero had an exceptional climb speed, allowing it to regain altitude after dives faster than Allied fighters, and if the Zero saw its opponent first, it could begin the battle with an altitude advantage. However, if it began the fight with less altitude, it was in trouble, because while the Allied fighters could outdive the Zero, the Zero couldn't outdive competing Allied fighters due to its fragility and the lock-up of its ailerons.

Some of these problems were fixed in later models, but please note that while later Zeroes were more durable, like their Allied counterparts, the Allies did not design their aircraft to be more agile, instead favoring more armor, more speed, and greater climb.

About the lack of replacement as a carrier fighter; one thing to note is that most replacements for the Zero came after 1943 and that they were land-based. By then, the Battle of Midway had already finished, wiping out two-thirds of the Japanese carrier force. The F4U, which could outclimb and outrun the Zero, rendered the latter aircraft fully obsolete as there was no longer any way for the Zero to control the battle.

You are also a bit off regarding the total number of replacements; the Hayates numbered 3500 and the Kyofus numbered 1500. I actually made a mistake in my original post, when I said Raiden, I meant to say Hayate, as the Raiden was a local defense interceptor. An odd thing, however, is that when the Zero became obsolete due to the emergence of aircraft like the F4U, the Japanese kept on building Zeros. Production actually was mostly constant during the war, even when the Zero's lack of armor, speed, and climb rate made it inviable past 1942.

The A7M Reppu which was the Japanese counterpart to the Hellcat only ever had 8 units made due to circumstances, but even if it reached full production pilot losses and difficulty of training replacements in quantity would hinder effectiveness anyway. This was true for the Hayates, Shidens or even Ki-100s as well.

Strategically speaking, though, the Japanese lost the war by the end of the Battle of Midway. None of the things they did would have really mattered, but that doesn't disguise the fact that the cult of the obsolete Zero became a burden to their war effort.

Inst said:

Strategically speaking, though, the Japanese lost the war by the end of the Battle of Midway. None of the things they did would have really mattered, but that doesn't disguise the fact that the cult of the obsolete Zero became a burden to their war effort.

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Adding new designs during a war is a difficult proposition to begin with, and the US was one of the only ones to do so during the war, whereas most of the other major combatants kept updating their existing designs over the course of the war. This makes sense given limited resources for things such as machine tools.

Inst said:

Production actually was mostly constant during the war, even when the Zero's lack of armor, speed, and climb rate made it inviable past 1942.

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The issue of production is really dependent of the manufacturing technology that was employed. American and Soviet production was mainly production line with subcontracted sub-components. German, Japanese and British production were more batch production with subcontractors producing parts for final assembly, with Japan being more cottage production.

What this means is, the US and USSR can shut down production and retool for a new design, then resume production in around 3-6 months. The bombing and the increasing need of more equipment meant that it was very hard for Japanese and German factories to retool, and it was a nightmare controlling what product subcontractors are producing. e.g. if subcontractor A, B, C are a;; producing wing assemblies, it could take a couple of months to switch them over to a new design and during that time, finished old wing design will be in transit and arrive in another 2-3 months. Thus you end up with mismatched models - and you can't just switch over to a completely new design as there will be a lot of wastage.

This is very prevalent in Panzer production, and you do have a wide range of mix and match.

Here's the problem. Despite American bombing destroying the Japanese industrial base, the Japanese Zero production, admittedly for a single producer, remained mostly constant. This implies that resources were diverted to keep the Zero production up when they would have been better off switching to newer aircraft.

Also, Lezt, do you agree or disagree when I describe the tactical problems with the Zero? For instance, the range was a huge advantage, but you have to think about Shimpu operational issues, where the practice of one pilot per target resulted in ineffective deaths, when saturation attacks would have been able to defeat American air defense as well as deal enough damage to sink major ships. The Japanese were rather overconfident with their Zeros, even though the Zeros were tactically vulnerable due to their lack of high-speed maneuverability and their inability to maintain a dive. The range, however, allows the Zero to achieve force clustering, where a numerical advantage could be used to compensate for tactical inferiority.

Inst said:

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Here's the problem. Despite American bombing destroying the Japanese industrial base, the Japanese Zero production, admittedly for a single producer, remained mostly constant. This implies that resources were diverted to keep the Zero production up when they would have been better off switching to newer aircraft.

Also, Lezt, do you agree or disagree when I describe the tactical problems with the Zero? For instance, the range was a huge advantage, but you have to think about Shimpu operational issues, where the practice of one pilot per target resulted in ineffective deaths, when saturation attacks would have been able to defeat American air defense as well as deal enough damage to sink major ships. The Japanese were rather overconfident with their Zeros, even though the Zeros were tactically vulnerable due to their lack of high-speed maneuverability and their inability to maintain a dive. The range, however, allows the Zero to achieve force clustering, where a numerical advantage could be used to compensate for tactical inferiority.

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Thats a speculation; it could also be that the zero technology is so well understood at that moment that dispersed manufacturers can continue making them and that not one single specialist producer is the Achilles heels. Or that the bombing campaign have missed the zero factories.

The issue with Japan in WW2 is that they were designed to fight the last war, i.e. WW1. So they focused on Mahanian Jutland style crashes for their battleships; favored heavy crusiers which can fight in a battle line and developed battleship shells that can dive under battleship armor belts. Similarly with their air force, they are still in the mode for highly maneuverable fighter like WW1; like the red baron.

Now, is maneuverability obsolete? ask the SU37

I am not willing to put in the connotation of tactics and strategies excellence; we are looking at it after the fact. Can a saturated attack penetrate american flak and hold american fighters at bay? I doubt it. American firepower is significantly heavier than Japanese; and ships are more resilient as we can infer from the Fourth Fleet Incident 1935 which typhoon greatly damage the Japanese fleet, but the 7th fleet passed relatively unschaved. American 5 inch, bofers 40mm, and orliken 20mm are basically the best fleet AA in WW2; the radar timed fuse of the 5" is phenomenal. So, as the battle of Philippine sea shows...

So I don't think it mattered.

But yeah, I do agree with with the strength and weakness of the zero as you have said.

Fighter to fighter, ask Saburō Sakai; he certainly thinks that the Zero is good enough and managed to shoot down 64 planes until the end of the war in his Zero. He definitely felt that the the A7M is equal to any American fighter. And, also don't forget that even late war FW190s were easy prey to allied fighters as they are flown by the hitler youth.

Your argument about the Kamikazes is incorrect. Despite heavy American air defense, some Kamikazes were still able to break through, even on the "1 per ship" role, and I believe the Japanese killed a light carrier. Imagine what they would have done if they had done a proper saturation attack, instead of sticking to Bushido 1-man 1-ship nonsense.

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About the Zero, you're right about one thing; the Japanese were preparing for the last war, and the Zero was designed as a fighter that would have been superlative in fighting the last war. Recall that against WW1 fighters operated by the Chinese, the Zeros managed to defeat everything the ROC threw at them without a scratch, causing Jiang Jieshi to ground the ROCAF.

Moreover, against even experienced Battle of Britain veterans, the IJAAC/IJNAC more than managed to hold its own, because RAF pilots were trained both in peace and in war for low-speed maneuvering fights, a type of battle in which the Zero had no equal. Even when they revised tactics, the Spitfire faired poorly until the engine was upgraded, because it was designed too closely to the Zero's tactical specifications, unlike the BF109.

Lastly, please do note what happened with Allied fighter development during WW2. Allied fighters did not become more like the Zero, critically more maneuverable, but they became more like their own fighters. The engines were uprated and supercharged so that the Allies could cruise at higher altitudes as well as achieve higher max speeds, which allowed the F4U to dominate the Zero. The pace of Japanese development, on the other hand, did not follow its own tendencies; in the Japanese military establishment there was a reluctance to lose the high maneuverability of the Zero, and that made the job of Japanese military designers harder, but later Japanese aircraft were less maneuverable than the Zero, but faster and more armored.

If I come off as rude, I apologize, I dislike arguing with Engineer and I guess there's a bit of emotional transferrence.