Comment on Samurai Zero by hylajaponica
This would be the A6M. It had 2 13MM Heavy Machine guns that replaced the usual rifle caliber 7.7 gun in the engine cowling. An 2 13MMs in each wing with the 2 20MM guns in each wing. My favorite version the A7M had armour plates in the windscreen, one for the pilor and self-sealing fuel tanks and also a water-methanol supercharger. INCREDIBLE PICTURE!! The A6M was built with more powerful Mitsubishi Kinsei engine.
Very true on all counts but you're talking about the A6M8, the final version of the Zero. Most variants of the A6M were given the Nakajima Sakae, which was okay, but not great by Western standards. And no, the Zero was NOT fragile. The airframe was pretty strong (carrier-launched planes need to have strong frames to endure landing stresses at sea) and could pull just as many G's as the Grumman F4F. The problem was a lack of pilot seat armor and the lack of self-sealing fuel tanks. Don't assume that you can easily set the Zero on fire or head-shot the pilot unless all of your bullets are armor-piercing-incendiary rounds (assuming that you are flying a plane yourself), and even then you'd need to play "Boom and Zoom," since the Zero's strategy of domination is "Turn and Burn."
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