The quick-zooming, vulnerable Jap Zero* fighter is a triumph for the
world's greatest adapters. How the underestimated little single-motored
plane could get away with such power and maneuverability was a mystery
for several weeks after Pearl Harbor. U.S. aviators soon found part of
the answer : no armor protection for pilot or
self-sealing fuel tanks, therefore less weight. The rest of the story
has come out gradually from examination of shot-down Zeros. In the pre-war days the Japs had plenty of opportunity to pick up plane
pointers from sales-minded U.S. and European manufacturers. They bought
one, two, or a few of each type that looked good, and
immediately set about copying them.
United Aircraft's Pratt & Whitney and Curtiss-Wright's Wright Aeronautical
Corp. licensed Japanese manufacturers to
make certain types of their motors. Hamilton Standard sold
their plans outright. Douglas Aircraft sold them the original DC-4. The Japs juggled parts and built experimental planes that would give any
orthodox designer the horrors. But they found out what they needed to
know. They put together a hodgepodge plane that fits in perfectly with
their headlong style of fighting. The prime virtue of the Zero is that it handles well—climbs fast and
maneuvers quickly. Its speed is good and its service ceiling is exceptional: 36,000 feet. It is light
and rather small . One type of Mitsubishi Finsei engine, essentially a copy of the U.S.
Pratt & Whitney Wasp with features of the Wright Cyclone and British
Bristol Hercules, is used in many of the Zeros. It is a 14-cylinder,
double-banked, radial air-cooled engine, rated 1,050 h.p. when run
on 95 to 100 octane fuel. Workmanship is spotty; some parts are finely
finished, others are very crude. The weakest point is the cooling
system; cooling area per cylinder is under 1,000 sq. in. compared to
2,800 in the genuine Wright Cyclone. The propeller is a duplicate of
the U.S.-made Hamilton Standard. The air frame is very similar to the
German Heinkel HE 113. Most of the other features are standard with
many other types of fighter craft now in use. The armament is heavy but
not unusually so: two 20-mm. cannon, one in each wing, and two
7.7-mm. machine guns on either side of the nose. Says a staff engineer of the Wright Aeronautical Corp. in a report to
the Society of Automotive Engineers: “The group responsible for the design did a very ingenious job. . . .
This is undoubtedly a highly dependable, even though not highly
developed, piece of equipment . . . probably produced under time and
tooling limitations which we would consider nearly impossible.” * Jap planes are numbered according to the last two digits of
the year they were produced. In the Japanese calendar, 1940 A.D. was
2600.
