The Japanese Zero

On today's date, December 7, in 1941, a strike force of 360 airplanes attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  The Japanese planes included a fighter plane whose performance astonished the U.S. Army Air Corp.  This was the Japanese Zero.  The Zero is named for the year that it was first made, the year 2600 in the ancient Japanese calendar.  It was highly superior to any fighter the U.S. had in manueverability, range, and speed, at least in the first years of the war.  It had a rugged airframe, retractable landing gear, and a drop tank that gave it a 1000 mile range.  U.S. tactics were developed to counter the superiority of the Zero, such as to attack by diving from above, and to fight in pairs against the Zero. 

To give you an idea of the power of the Zero, it can be compared to a plane roughly its size, the Cessna 152.  The Zero is about 40 feet from wingtip to wingtip, and about 30 feet long.  It weighs about 6000 when fully loaded with gas and ammo. The Cessna has a wingspan of 33 feet, and a length of 20 feet.  With roughly comparable sizes, the Zero had an engine 10 times as powerful as the Cessna.  The great power combined with small size and light weight gave the Zero its speed, manueverability, and range.

It had some disadvantages, even at the start.  Its fuel tanks were not self sealing, and there was no armor around the pilot.  These defects made the Zero somewhat fragile, and easy to shoot down, it a pilot could get a shot at it.  Airplanes developed by the U.S. later in the war could deal with the Zero in every way, and were much more sturdy.  But early in the war, the Zero was a total surprise to the U.S. airplane designers.

Comments

[Mike Brown]

I think you may have picked a poor example - the 152's about as small as commonly produced General Aviation aircraft get, and as a trainer it wasn't particularly overpowered. The Zero was half again bigger in each dimension, and five or six times the weight, and a clean retractable gear plane vs. a strut-braced fixed gear trainer. In the end, it's not raw power which matters, but excess of power over weight (drag).

Comparing weight to power ratios at gross, the Zero would be about 5.5 lb/HP, with the 150 at 14.5 lb/HP. That's larger, but not quite the 10-to-one ratio which otherwise appeared. The Zero gets its 1000 mile range at 340mph, about three times the cruise speed of the 150.

Comparing something more representative, say a new Cirrus SR22, you'd have a wingspan of 38 feet and a length of 25 feet - much closer to the Zero's dimensions - with 310 horsepower and a weight of 3400 pounds, for a weight-to-power ratio of about 11 lb/HP, or twice that of the Zero. The range is comparable, at half the speed of the Zero (but four seats).

[clark]

this may be a dumb question but why were some of the zero planes white and others green? where they different models or for no reason at all?

[Khaled Hamid]

This is very informative, helpful and amazing.

[gary stellern]

Greetings,

Where did the original idea/design of the Zero comte from? I once heard a rumor that it was an American who designed the vehicle, subm,itted the plans to the U.S. government, but they were rejected. Any truth?

Thanks, Gary

[Greg Staie]

Gary,
Growing up as a boomer (born in 47)and as an irtraffic controller in the Marines during th Nam era, I was an aviation nut and it was touted everywhere that the Zero design was stolen from a Howard Hughes design shown in an airshow in the 1930's. I believe it.

[Arch]

Gary, my father was born in 1903 and was in aviation all his life. He told me an American (not Howard Hughes)designed it and tryed to sell it to the U.S. Army. They didn't want any part of it so he sold the design to the Japanese. This was before we went to war with Japan, of course.