Wildcat vs Zero

Overview of the presentation Wildcat vs. Zero - Resetting the Record. The conventional wisdom is that the F4F Wildcat was significantly inferior to the Japanese AsM Type 0. This is simply not true. This presentation compares the advantages and disadvantages from a pilot's and tactics perspective to help the reader understand why the Wildcat pilots shot down 5.9 Zeros for every Wildcat lost by February 1943 that increased to 6.9 to one by the end of the war.

[wrathofatlantis]

Agree on the Wildcat: It is not for nothing that it was kept in high production right up to 1945... I do not give much credence to the claimed kill ratios in air to air combat, because of overclaiming. In Osprey's "F4U Corsair vs A6M", a detailed statistical analysis is made of aerial combats with loss/claims from both Japanese sources and US sources, using the squadron location and failed to return logs, and correlating with known actions. For its entire first year of combat, with 671 airframes in 18 Squadrons, the Corsair was shot down, air to air, 129 times (78 killed/51 rescued) plus 8 times due to enemy ground fire. To this was added 175 operational losses (41 deaths), for a total of 312 airframe losses and 119 killed. Correlating with Japanese operational logs, the US official COMAIRSOL tally overclaimed by 4:1. The Japanese, for their part, overclaimed by 5:1. P. 74: "The ratio of actual kills scored by either types is one to one." (During the F4U's first year)

In addition, historian Justin Pyke did some intensive research into US Intelligence archives concerning the Zero, and the results of what he found are quite revolutionary to our understanding of air combat during the Pacific War. US pilots noted that one of the biggest tactical problems of the Zero was that, in full compliance with actual WWII Japanese Navy Navy doctrine, the Zero avoided turning and low speeds at all costs, and only attacked in dives using higher speed and altitude (often followed by the Hineri Komi twisted loop maneuver). In September 1942, one US Navy Wildcat pilot said: "Zero pilots have generally poor fighter tactics. If they would only chop their throttle and turn with us, they could just sit on our tail." So one of the major tactical problems of the Zero was that its pilots adhered to high speed tactics that avoided turns... Another major Zero problem, which I feel is drastically underestimated, is the slow rate of fire and ballistic mismatch of the wing cannons: Even a tailing N1K with 4 of these would fail to cause rapid damage to a Hellcat or Wildcat, just because of the slow rate of fire, which became even slower in the later higher velocity type 99-IIs models (480 rpm). Saburo Sakai claimed most Zero kills were achieved with the 7.7 mm nose guns alone, this mostly due to the ballistic mismatch.

I believe the turn rate difference between the F4F and the Zero was very small, and this is a major factor in the Wildcat's success... Furthermore, in 1944, when the FM-2 came up against the shorter span A6M5, the US fighter was definitely at least equal, even in low speed turn rate (high speed turning being, at the time, of little use). The Wildcat had a bigger wing area than the Ta-152H (24 square m vs 23), and the F6F had by far the biggest wing of all WWII fighters (31 sq m)... Even the F6F would routinely attempt turn fights against the A6M5, and I do think this close parity in turns was also a major factor in its success. Neither Grummans could turn with the Ki-43 Oscar however, but that was really the only exception in the Japanese arsenal (aside the Ki-100). Japanese Army doctrine was not as dead set against turn fighting as the Japanese Navy doctrine was, and new research shows this was increasingly a sounder approach on all fronts. The high speed hit and run model, despite 1930s assumptions, was increasingly used as a supporting tactic at the actual front lines, despite the 1930s style training emphasis on speed. The reason was that high deflection or high rate overtaking attacks required an unaware target, and thus forced firing at point blank range to avoid warning the target. Otherwise the high speed approach was easily disrupted by the target simply turning... The prop era was quite different to the jet era, in part due to the low hit rate of WWII guns.