I recently went to Tokyo so I decided to drop by a local war museum. I am a bit of a World War II fan so I went to see the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Inside that complex is the Yūshūkan, a war musuem which displays WWII Japanese weaponry. I don't want to mention anything about the horrors of the second great war, instead I just want to talk about the Mitsubishi A6M Zero or otherwise known as the "Zero" fighter plane. For the record, I do recognize that Japan committed attrocities during WWII but that should be for another article.
Back in 2001, I saw the movie Pear Harbor. It was the first time I saw the Zero fighter in action. I've read about it on books but I was just so curious about the unique and ingenious Japanese innovation in those times which would then render battleships obsolete. The Japanese first used this kind of fighter aircraft against Chinese biplanes during the second Sino-Japanese war and they were proven to be very effective. The Japanese were also the first ones to utilize fighter planes on carriers and used it to so much effectiveness during the Pearl Harbor attack. It was the best dogfighter of its day, capable of outmaneouvering allied fighters during the early years of the war.
For the specs, he Mitsubishi A6M Zero is crewed by one pilot, has a length of about 9 meters and has a wingspan of about 12 meters. Its weight when fully loaded with weapons and armament is about 2,800 kilograms and it is powered by a Nakajima 14-cylinder air-cooled 940 horsepower engine. It has a maximum speed of 660 kph and a range of 3,104 kilometers. It's maximum altitude is about 10,000 meters and it's rate of climb is about 15.7 meters per second.
I'll update this article from time to time, so for now I'll end it here.
