Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Akutan Zero" video.

Thanks, Mark. The biggest problem with the Zero until after mid-1943 was its weak armament. The A6M2 was armed only with two fast firing rifle caliber machine guns mounted in the engine cowling and two very slow firing 20mm cannon mounted one in each wing. This gave a very unsatisfactory convergence as the nose mounted guns were so fast (but light) that several hundred rounds were typically expended, using the machine gun tracers as aim points, before the first cannon shells would reach the enemy plane. This still worked as long as enemy aircraft weren't faster than about 200 mph. The introduction of higher performance USN fighters like the F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat along with the Japanese inability to produce a reliable engine of more that 1,350 horsepower doomed the Zero to obsolescence by mid-1943. Since the Japanese had nothing better, production continued at high rates all the way through the end of the war, with some of the highest production totals occuring during the last four months of the war. Since the Japanese were not producing replacement pilots at anywhere near the rate they were being lost, the last of these once world beating aircraft were used in kamikaze attacks or destroyed on the ground by Allied air attacks.
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