Mitsubishi A6M Zero
The Zero
“The fighter that owned the Pacific sky, until it didn't.”
Mitsubishi · military
In 1941 nothing could turn with a Zero. Mitsubishi built it light, with a long range and a big wing, and for a year it outflew everything the Allies had. The cost was no armour and no self-sealing tanks, and once American pilots learned to fight it with speed instead of turns, the Zero's day was over. Nearly 11,000 were built; a handful fly today, and only one or two of them still run an original Japanese Sakae engine.
The Zero's range, over 1,900 miles with a drop tank, let it fly from Rabaul to Guadalcanal and back in 1942, a round trip of over 1,100 miles that no Allied fighter of the day could match.
A slim fuselage, a long greenhouse canopy and a big, rounded wing with the tips sometimes clipped square. Most fly in Imperial Navy green over grey with red hinomaru roundels.
One might be overhead right now.
Bogey turns the The Zero from a dot in the sky into a card in your logbook.
