Reading historical stories, the zero has to be one of the most overrated planes ever.
It was technically innovative, but that seemed to be the equivalent of strapping guns to a Toyota pickup because there were no alternatives. The Zero applied a new type of material because the Japanese engines were bad.
We can see that the hype that the zero was an world beater, mostly thanks to its elite pilots. But even with elite Japanese pilots and novice American pilots (before Jimmy Thatch), the Americans still got an 1.5 kill ratio with their F4F wildcat against the zero
In Midway, group of zeroes lost against a group of SBD bombers, with some (?) zeroes being damaged (but not shot down or set on fire, amazingly).
I will not mention the disastrous combat results of later Zero encounters, say, against F6F and F4U because the Japanese pilots were bad and you already know the results.
On the other side, the planes N1K2 and Ki-100 seemed to do much better. The elite IJN kokutai were mostly even with elite US planes with their shidan Kai, so was the ki 100, based on the few skirmishs we can see.
It was a horrible interceptor too; the Ki-45 actually shot up B-29s and in some cases, rammed them, producing some Ki-45 aces, for example.
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No the zero is not overrated, it dominated the first 1/3 of the war, and only became obsolete when Americans developed tactics to counter them and Japan was loosing all there good pilots faster then they can replace them.
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The zeroes faced mostly obsolete planes in China and SEA theater. (i-16, HAWK, hurricane, p 40)
Of course it dominated them. But that fell apart when the F4F came.
Plus, having planes that kill your elite pilots is a really poor deal, especially for a country like Japan.
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kinda yeah, in wt they are mostly also overtiered a lot
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The higher up you get in the zero class in the game, the worse they are in relative to their BR. The late A6M5 and A6M6, heavily armored (for its frame) and armed, they are too heavy and loses all energy in a turn.
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Rare W from you cant lie.
It was a damn good plane for the late 1930s. kicked the crap out of everything it faced in the invasions across asia
however when it came to facing more modern aircraft such as Spitfire mkVc tropicals over Darwin in 1943 it quite quickly got shown to be a paper tiger for the contemporary fighters
It turned damn good but that doesnt matter when your enemy is faster, higher and better trained than you
that and that western powers actually modernised their aircraft
It didn’t even really need modernisation - the F4F’s flying in the Solomons and Midway, the P-40’s and P-39’s in New Guinea - these were all essentially initial versions of those aircraft.
both were eventually able to beat Zero’s in those theatres before better a/c came along - essentially due to training and tactics - the Zero was effectively a 1 trick pony, and couldn’t adapt when the opposition did.
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The Aussies lost something like 38 Spitfires in return for 5 Zero’s. How is that a paper tiger??
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That 38 spitfires lost includes aircraft destroyed by at least 1 ARMY raid of Helens and Oscars, plus those destroyed due mechanical (ie engine) failures - usually the prop constant speed unit, ran out of fuel or or crashed on landing. On many raids over 50% of the Spitfires lost were due to mechanical failure!!
The 5 Zeros has no such figures because we do not know.
And to the 5 Zeros might also be added 1 Oscar, 6 Dinahs, 9 Bettys and 3 Helens - and an unknown number of battle damaged a/c that might have been written off later.
Plus the Spitfires had all the disadvantages of defending fighters with poor advanced warning, plus lack of maintenance and really, REALLY bad weapon reliability - with as many as 90% of pilots who fired their weapons in some days experiencing some form of weapon failure.
I’m pretty sure you know all this and have seen this video - you just decided to not give more complete numbers!!
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I don’t think I’ve ever seen the A6M being hailed as gods gift to aviation, it earned it’s reputation early war but the compromises that made it outstanding for a carrier based fighter at the time caught up with it very quickly, and was essentially forced into frontline service until the wars end by over production and the gradually worsening situation of the war.
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The Spitfire by 1943 is a mature airframe and is post-Battle of Britain. I didn’t include the other planes because they are not Zeros and this thread is about Zeros.
I don’t see how the air battles over Darwin prove that the Zero is a “paper tiger”…if anything it proves that it was still a very decent fighter in the Pacific even by 1943 standards with it maintaining a positive kill to loss ratio against the best short range interceptor the Aussies were fielding. This should also be understood in the context that the Japanese fighters either had no radios, or extremely poor radios. And the A6M had an operational range that was many many times greater than that of a Spitfire.
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does this make the F6F a better fighter than the spitfire IRL?
I’m surprised if the IJN worked with the IJA on coordinating air attacks.
NGL, i would say its overrated, but not by that much.
History as commonly taught is simplified a good deal, and in that leads to some things like the zero taking up a fair part of the spotlight. IE, most non-military nerds probably cant name a single WWII JP fighter besides the zero. However, for what it is, and to everyone who does more research then reading the first paragraph off of wikipedia. They get a fairly accurate glimps of it to a point where i wouldnt call it overrated. It was a seriously important aircraft to japan, and early on it had significantly impressive results. But technological advancement in WWII was insanely rapid, and it did not progress as well as other designs, primarily due to just how many resources the US had to throw at actually fielding the new designs of their own.
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I would say that USN pilot training and experience coupled with the F6F made it a better fighter.
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While the A6M does over-performing in WarThunder, its historical role should be recognized. The Zero was a well-built, well designed aircraft and was among the best fighters in the early war. It is way better designed and built compared with Army’s Ki-43, the latter had weaker structure and inferior aerodynamic performance.
It was rugged ( structurally at low speed), manoeuvrable, stable and easy handling, matured as soon as entering service, and formed an tactical advantage when the opponents messed up with their NextGen naval fighters ( the Corsair should have replaced the Wildcat in 1942, but they fucked it up). The F6F was a story that repeats what the zero did, but this time it was the Japanese messed up their NextGen fighter, the A7M.
The Zero had advantages over the F4F, though the performance gap wasn’t that huge. By using proper tactics the Wildcat was able to fight it. The Zero had significant weaknesses on high speed manoeuvrability and protection, but that should not deny its early success. It fact, the A6M was still able to make 0:9 exchange rate against P-38J, F4U and F6F as late as Jan.1944.
No - it isn’t overrated. -Dons Professional Work Hat On
It was a dangerous opponent in the early war, flown by experienced and well-trained aircrew. It was however overtaken by the allies getting better in terms of pilots and rolling out much better hardware at a startlingly rapid pace.
Combine that with the fact of most of the experienced Axis pilots being progressively killed off and very poorly trained replacements being thrown into their place. Both the Germans and Japanese tended to keep their crews in the fight until they were dead - rather than rotate them out after a tour to train the next generations like the RAF or USAAF.
The same is true of the Bf 109. Very capable but outpaced by better stuff that comes along later - flown by a cohort of increasingly untrained and inexperienced pilots.
Takes off work hat and returns to flippant self.
I wouldn’t call the Mitsubishi A6M an overrated fighter. It was an aircraft with specific design requirements, requiring maneuverability and range. When the Mitsubishi A6M2 arrived in China, American observers warned about it, but the US ignored these warnings. The Americans believed the Japanese were incapable of building such an aircraft, and US intelligence mainly reported that the Japanese were using Nakajima A4N and Mitsubishi A5M aircraft. However, as early as 1940, based on reports of a Japanese super fighter, the US developed tactics that allowed them to fight the Japanese. This prevented the Americans from completely vanishing in the Pacific. However, the Japanese were overjoyed by their successes in 1941 and 1942 and waited too long to begin work on a successor to the Mitsubishi A6M. The Japanese couldn’t have developed a better naval fighter than the Mitsubishi A6M in 1940-41. Furthermore, one must remember the psychological effect. At the beginning of the Pacific War, the legend of the “Zero” was created, which was so strong that American pilots saw Mitsubishi A6M planes in every Japanese fighter (although often these were army fighters like Ki-43 or Ki-44). More overrated are the Ilyushin IL-2 attack aircraft, which often boast 1000% inflated effectiveness; the Junker Ju-87 anti-tank aircraft, which often couldn’t even destroy a single tank; and the North American P-51 fighters, which “single-handedly” wiped out the Luftwaffe and the Japanese Air Force (they weren’t carpet bombings at all). The Mitsubishi A6M is a fighter that’s neither good nor bad. It was designed for a purpose other than its final purpose. It’s similar to the Japanese Ha-Go and Chi-Ha tanks, which were designed to support infantry but had to fight other tanks in the Pacific.
