The Crashed Japanese Fighter That Changed WWII

Just ran acrosss this:
The Crashed Japanese Fighter That Changed WWII

It was great that we got our hands on it but I don't think the course of the war would have changed appreciably if we had not.

Nice to know a good getaway tactic if you got bounced though.

I agree. It really wasn’t that important.

There was other Zeros that were captured but just didn't arrive back in the USA before that one.

There also was a certain American in China who was ignored.

While it definitely helped refine tactics and airplane design, the Americans had already started to exploit the Zero's weaknesses by June 1942, and were pretty much holding their own by the fall.

I often also see credit for the F6F's design attributed to lessons learned with the Aleutian Zero, but the F6F design process was mostly complete by that point (the first prototype flew only about three weeks after that Zero crashed).

+1

My top complaint with many of these online WW 2 articles is that they often have exaggerated click-bait headlines that do not mesh with the historical facts. In my opinion it's best to stick with scholarly books and articles written by actual military historians.

And months before it was recovered and restored to flying condition.

And then you still have to read 20 books on one plane, tank, battle etc, stir them all round in a pot and it will finally spew out a fairly acurate clear picture

The amount of 'definitive' books i've read on a certain subject only to be surpassed by another definitive book or 'redefined' book by historians, actual participants etc seems to be a never ending thing. Which isn't all bad as new things do come to light or are looked at from a different perspective, plus hindsight.

The thing that galls me though is how the same old rubbish like 'the Nazis nearly had an A bomb!' or 'this Japanese super sub could have nearly turned the tide' and the like is continually trotted out in articles and videos.

Yup! These also amuse me:

1. The Polish cavalry charged German tanks in 1939!

2. Hitler wanted to conquer the entire world!

3. The tide of the war in Europe was turned after D-Day!

Tough crowd!

But yeah, you're right.

It's SimHQ. We are rivet-counters extraordinaire.

Or this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Himmler

No one ever mention that.

You are correct that this is largely unknown among the general population and it goes to show that even the leadership of the Third Reich recognized that many of the things they were doing were not "socially acceptable" to other nations.

That's the Nazi version of the Gulf of Tonkin.

No

No? Why not? Like the 2nd Gulf of Tonkin attack which to this day is still questionable as to it ever happen.

Totally different circumstances for starters.

Or you watch a 5mins guide about the Zero on Youtube. Not that I, or more like the creators claim it to cover it all and be ultimately conclusive. - and all that in 150mins on a channel dedicated to naval history

Here is another of these overblown claims. The Mosquito was an excellent multi-role aircraft, but it didn’t save Great Britain.

Youtube can be great but its open nature also means that any Tom, Dick and Harry can make their own WW 2 "informative" video and upload it.

As a title, "The Mosquito was an excellent multi-role aircraft" doesn't sell as much as "The plane that saved britain", whatever the actual content is, though.

Akutan Zero much likely didn't change war's final result, but it probably helped a few naval aviators being more efficient against it, amongst those who were given the chance to train against / in it ?

Edit: thanks whocares for the link, very informative vid.

You are exactly correct and you pointed out one of the fundamental problems which unfortunately is a part of ingrained human nature.

The Japanese Zero and the German battleship Bismarck have had great propagandists post war that have grown their reputations to mythical proportions far beyond their actual technical abilities.

+1

Concerning the Bismarck, the Royal Navy did indeed over-react to its deployment in 1941 so it made the post war sensationalism and myth creation that much easier.

If she never golden bb'd a semi refitted WWI batlecruiser the whole Bismark thing would have ended up a foitnote more than likely. That being said, as a kid i read about the Bismark escapade in a Readers Digest Special in the early '80's. Dad had a subscription to them and Nat Geo and they were always laying around. As a 12 year old it was a story full of adventure, tension and excitement and a last stand against insurmountable odds. It totally elevated my thinking of the Bismark far beyond what she was.

Fun crappy fact, while i was reading it Laura Branigans Gloria was one of the current hits the radio flogged within an inch of its life Still now, 38 flipping years later, Gloria plays in my head upon the mere mention of Bismark.

The "Hitler wanted to conquer the entire world" statement is not really a myth. Nazi ideology and economic plans (to the extent the latter existed) sort of assumed perpetual expansion and warfare, with intervals of "peace" that would have continued to involve constant low-level border wars and imperial policing, along the lines of how Hitler understood the history of Imperial Rome or American western expansion. While the initial phase of conquest would have stopped mostly with European Russia and whatever of the African and Middle Eastern colonies he could have gobbled up, Hitler's long term goals (in the pre-war and early war time frame) did include building a navy and air force that could threaten the United States and expansion into the Western Hemisphere by the 1950s. One can debate whether, even assuming a German victory over the Soviet Union and negotiated peace with Great Britain, Hitler's plans were realistic, and whether the German people or economy would have withstood the probably ruinous effects of even a successful execution of this Hitlarian "utopia," but the concept did exist.

I would recommend the works of Gerhard Weinberg on the subject.



As to the Zero, it is too bad more people do not read Lundstrom's work, and realize that the USN fighter pilots were actually achieving basically even kill ratios with the A6M right off the bat. A lot of the Zero's initial success had as much or more to do with strategy and logistics (i.e. US, British, and Allied fighters deployed in small numbers and ordered to mostly conduct defensive patrols that further put them at a numerical and positional disadvantage in combat) than with the superiority of the Zero or the Japanese pilots.

I will say, I do not think, given what the British did and did not know about the Bismarck, that they really overreacted. Unlike later on, when the RAF drove the Kriegsmarine surface force out of France to be mostly bottled up in Norway, in 1941 the French ports were still considered a major threat to the convoy routes. The Royal Navy believed they had to sink the Bismarck while she was out, not because she was a existential threat to individual British battleships, but because if she could operate from France (and especially if Tirpitz managed to join here there), she would force the RN to commit most of their battleship force to blocked duties and/or convoy escort, at a time when the RN was also still dealing with an active Italian navy, the possible threat of a French navy going over to the Germans, and rumblings of war in the Indian Ocean and Pacific.

Moreover, unlike the USN (who relegated their Standard class battleships to second line duties once it became clear the IJN could not or would not seriously threaten the West Coast), the Royal Navy still depended on their WWI-era battleships for a significant portion of their naval combat power. Their slow speed allowed them to operate in convoys just fine (though there would not have been enough of them to guard every convoy and also counter the Italians), but most of them were not really suitable to the more mobile operations that would have been necessary to deal with a Bismarck, or especially a Bismarck/Tirpitz task force breaking out into the Atlantic from France. In 1941, that would have left Hood, two KGV-class, and two Renown class battleships that could actually counter the Bismark and Tirpitz. Given that the Germans would have been able to pick the timing of any raid, and given that ships would have had to cycle in and out of port for maintenance and replenishment, and the RN had a justifiable fear that most of their available battleship strength would have been occupied countering those two German battleships.