The Japanese Zero fighter in the early days of the Outbreak of the Pacific War can be described as a massacre, is the most important contributor to the attack on Pearl Harbor, at this time the Allied aircraft in both the control flexibility, mileage and firepower configuration were killed by the Zero fighter, but why after 1942, the Japanese Zero fighter slowly fell into a joke, killing the Zero fighter was jokingly called the Turkey Shooting Competition by the US Military? The Zero fighter is a carrier-based fighter that is an essential weapon for maritime aviation. After the signing of the Washington Treaty, Western countries strictly restricted the development of Japan's maritime armaments, and the tonnage and number of cruisers and battleships were limited, but they did not limit the development of Japanese aircraft carriers.
In 1937, the Japanese Zero fighter was put on the research agenda, and in 1940 it began to be included in the naval combat sequence, and this aircraft was built by The Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, with Jiro Horikoshi as the main designer. This fighter hangs all fighters in the world in the turning radius, low-speed combat and maximum range, and european and American fighters such as F2A fighters, F4F fighters, CW-21B, Hawker 75A, P-40 fighter jets are not its opponents. The performance of Japanese aircraft engines can not be compared with Europe and the United States, Horikoshi Jiro in order to meet the military's high-performance and high-range demanding requirements, can only imitate the German HE112 fighter for extreme weight reduction design, to meet the 8 hours flight of 1300 kilometers. The fuselage was all wrapped in a sheet of paper aluminum alloy, and even the pilot's protective parts did not have any armor, and the core structure in the cabin was actually wood. The aircraft is equipped with a Rising engine with a maximum horsepower of only 800 horses, which can only be done to meet the needs of ultra-long ranges. The safety of the aircraft and the protection of the pilot are not taken into account. The ultra-low weight gave the fighter the advantage in low-speed combat, and it was also equipped with two 7.7 mm machine guns and two 20 mm cannons, which were also very powerful.
The Japanese took most of the Pacific Ocean with this kind of aircraft, but the defects of the aircraft were also very obvious, and the British and American countries with strong technological accumulation could annihilate the Zero fighter as long as they wanted to improve their aircraft slightly. In 1942, the U.S. military found a perfect Zero aircraft in an island swamp in the Aleutian Islands, and its pilot died due to a broken neck, and they discovered the secret of the Zero fighter. The high performance of the Zero fighter is premised on sacrificing all protection. The fuselage is as thin as a piece of paper in front of the bullet, its flexibility can only be achieved in the case of low speed, because its fuselage strength is too weak, if it is carried out at a high speed, the fuselage will become very clumsy, climbing and tumbling are problems, and this aircraft also uses a floating carburetor, if this aircraft is brought to a high altitude, low temperature and low pressure environment, it will be extinguished.
The United States immediately researched new fighters such as the P47 and P51, which had twice the horsepower of the Zero fighter, and also studied a fighter incendiary bomb for the ultra-thin characteristics of the Japanese fuselage, which could easily pass through the fuselage to make the Zero catch fire. The US aircraft avoided low-altitude entanglement with the Zero fighter, first dived at a high altitude to disperse the Japanese fleet, and then forced it to fly at high speed, thereby reducing its flexibility, and easily killed the Zero fighter at a high altitude with its large power and high stability. In the ensuing Battle of Mariana, the Japanese dispatched 326 Zero fighters, which resulted in 315 downed by the Americans. American soldiers laughed and called it Mariana's turkey shooting match. At the end of World War II, the glory of the Zero fighter came to an end, becoming a suicide weapon for the Japanese Air Force and a standard for kamikaze. The Zero fighter's hegemony for a while only relied on opportunism, extreme weight loss, and no solid technical accumulation, a strong country and a strong army cannot steal and slip, and one step at a time is the right way.