Larger scale kill ratios from Pacific are claims, while own losses are real losses. The source you are referring to appears to list war time American claims. It doesn’t mention any kill ratio for A6M. Loss records from both sides haven’t been properly compared until very recently and those are still specific engagements or at most few units on a specific area. 2-3 time overclaiming was very common and the highest overclaims from single engagements have gone up to 7 times. Specially air to ground claims went highly over few cases.
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It was good early on but matched by the F4F and then outclassed by later American fighters
Like I said above - some of it was hardware but a decent percentage of the factor was the pilots.
IJN Flyers (particularly Kido Butai) were among the best naval aviators in the world. In 1941 anyway. However, they were progressively wiped out over time and what was left over by 1943 really wasn’t all that good. You could give them Hellcats and they’d probably still suffer in the later Pacific battles.
Even an ‘average’ USN or FAA pilot would reach his squadron with more hours in his logbook, more training, better knowledge of his aircraft and a good standard of airmanship in general - long before he got anywhere near a carrier deck. Get a squadron of such people, get them working well together and whatever they happen to be flying will be very capable of tackling the late war IJA or IJN.
THEN give them Seafires, Corsairs, Hellcats, etc. and the overmatch becomes almost comically one-sided.
Isn’t Ki-100 an army plane?
Yes it was. The IJA and IJN didn’t tend to share their toys with each other.
The only planes that used IJA and IJN simultaneously were the Mitsubishi Ki-15/C5M and the Mitsubishi Ki-46
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Have a plus for putting me onto the Ki-15 - never knew that thing existed. Every day a school day…
Both are reconnaissance aircraft, but could use Ta-Dan anti-aircraft cluster bombs, so from a War Thunder point of view they could be useful
The Zero is not overrated, at least when it could still be considered a top of the line fighter. An aircraft can’t be too bad when your opposition has to develop special tactics just to bring them down.
For their time they were fast, climbed well and at lower speeds would out turn pretty much anything whilst having a massive range to go with it. To paraphrase Eric Brown “It was the finest fighter of early WW2”.
Considering the man’s record I’m in no position to doubt him.
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Overrated? I doubt that. It did really well. You guys gotta keep that in mind it is designed for carrier operations. Those carriers are used for power projection over long distances. It had great range, it was nimble and robust. In that regard it was a great aircraft early on.
It wasn’t bad compared to it’s contemport F4F either. Only later fighters truly dominated it as it fell behind and Japs failed to come up with a better design to replace it.