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In World War II slang, a ‘zero’ was a loser, but the Mitsubishi ‘Zero’ fighter of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was anything but that in aerial combat. Rather, this much-feared warplane dominated the skies of the early war years.
Formally labelled the Mitsubishi A6M2 Model 21 Type 0 Carrier Fighter, the Zero took its name from the year 2600 according to Japan’s national calendar (1940), during which it had its debut. It had extraordinary strengths, but was not without significant weaknesses. It married excellent agility and high speed, but weight had to be shaved severely to achieve the long range demanded by the IJN. Protection for the pilot was sacrificed, as were self-sealing fuel tanks, and the machine could not be given heavy armament. The result was a light fighter that was deadly, but also very vulnerable.
Captured Zeroes were studied to discover methods of defeating them. ‘The very first [test] flight’, wrote one American aviator, ‘exposed weaknesses of the Zero which our pilots could exploit with proper tactics.’ This hands-on experience of the Zero gave American flyers an edge in battle. Further, the US Navy’s F6F Hellcat carrier-borne fighter, then undergoing development as a much-needed successor to the overmatched F4F Wildcat, was improved using what was learned.
More than 10,000 Zeroes were constructed. Ironically, the early superiority of the Zero held the IJN back from fielding a fighter to follow it. Though improved variants of the Zero were subsequently introduced, the Japanese struggled to keep pace with the Americans, who were themselves introducing better fighters.
Later in the war, bomb-laden Zeroes were used in kamikaze (literally meaning ‘divine wind’) suicide attacks, being deliberately crashed into Allied ships as part of Japan’s vain attempts to stem the relentless American advance.
