The Zero in History

[madgamer2]

I have read in several non historical books that the Zero design was more than a just a passing singularity to a design submitted to the USAAF in the mid thirties by a well known aircraft company (Hughes Aircraft?) which was rejected and somehow found its way to Japan to become the Zero. I was wondering if there is any truth to this story.

Madgamer

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: madgamer

I have read in several non historical books that the Zero design was more than a just a passing singularity to a design submitted to the USAAF in the mid thirties by a well known aircraft company (Hughes Aircraft?) which was rejected and somehow found its way to Japan to become the Zero. I was wondering if there is any truth to this story.

Madgamer

Virtually all that I know of the the A6M design history is from Zero! by Horikoshi, Caiden, Okumiya. Based on this, it is highly unlikely that there is more than a coincidental relationship with any foreign design; OTOH it is unlikely that the designer would come right out and say it if it were true. However the book brings out the designer's intention to create a highly maneuverable design utilizing the concepts of the Claude but in a super streamlined aircraft. I lost my copy years ago, but I remember the discussion of the effort that was put into maximizing thrust by painstaking tuning of the exhaust stubs.

[ChezDaJez]

ORIGINAL: madgamer

I have read in several non historical books that the Zero design was more than a just a passing singularity to a design submitted to the USAAF in the mid thirties by a well known aircraft company (Hughes Aircraft?) which was rejected and somehow found its way to Japan to become the Zero. I was wondering if there is any truth to this story.

Madgamer

One need only look at the internal design elements to recognize that the design was entirely Japanese in nature. There are many aircraft designs out there that have a pasing resemblance to another but when you look internally, the differences becomes obvious. Japan did copy or purchase under license several components that found their way into the Zero such as the licensed Hamilton Standard propeller. Also many of their aircraft engines were based upon licensed built foreign engines and upgraded throughout the war with less than stellar results in most cases.

IMO, most of the stories you see about the Zero having its origins in the Howard Hughes racer originate from the prevalent racial prejudices of the times that believed all Japan could do was copy foreign designs. The design itself is purely Japanese though some of the components were not.


Chez

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: madgamer

I have read in several non historical books that the Zero design was more than a just a passing singularity to a design submitted to the USAAF in the mid thirties by a well known aircraft company (Hughes Aircraft?) which was rejected and somehow found its way to Japan to become the Zero. I was wondering if there is any truth to this story.

Madgamer

Northrup sold the early SBD design to the Japanese, and it was used as the starting point for the Kate design.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

ORIGINAL: madgamer

I have read in several non historical books that the Zero design was more than a just a passing singularity to a design submitted to the USAAF in the mid thirties by a well known aircraft company (Hughes Aircraft?) which was rejected and somehow found its way to Japan to become the Zero. I was wondering if there is any truth to this story.

Madgamer

One need only look at the internal design elements to recognize that the design was entirely Japanese in nature. There are many aircraft designs out there that have a pasing resemblance to another but when you look internally, the differences becomes obvious. Japan did copy or purchase under license several components that found their way into the Zero such as the licensed Hamilton Standard propeller. Also many of their aircraft engines were based upon licensed built foreign engines and upgraded throughout the war with less than stellar results in most cases.

IMO, most of the stories you see about the Zero having its origins in the Howard Hughes racer originate from the prevalent racial prejudices of the times that believed all Japan could do was copy foreign designs. The design itself is purely Japanese though some of the components were not.


Chez

What Chez wrote is entirely correct!

BTW, at the beggining of WWII in Pacific even USN officers claimed that Germans flew German made aircraft against them because the Japenese would never ever be able to produce anything worth while and fly it... this is old racial prejudice (similar to all portraits of Japanese as small men with "coke bottle" glasses)...


Leo "Apollo11"

[sspahr]

ORIGINAL: herwin
Northrup sold the early SBD design to the Japanese, and it was used as the starting point for the Kate design.

Northrop exported a Gamma 5A to the IJN in 1935. It does bear a certain resemblance to the Kate and is a distant ancestor to the SBD. The direct predecessor to the SBD was the Northrop BT-1, which was not exported to Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Gamma

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

ORIGINAL: madgamer

I have read in several non historical books that the Zero design was more than a just a passing singularity to a design submitted to the USAAF in the mid thirties by a well known aircraft company (Hughes Aircraft?) which was rejected and somehow found its way to Japan to become the Zero. I was wondering if there is any truth to this story.

Madgamer

One need only look at the internal design elements to recognize that the design was entirely Japanese in nature. There are many aircraft designs out there that have a pasing resemblance to another but when you look internally, the differences becomes obvious. Japan did copy or purchase under license several components that found their way into the Zero such as the licensed Hamilton Standard propeller. Also many of their aircraft engines were based upon licensed built foreign engines and upgraded throughout the war with less than stellar results in most cases.

IMO, most of the stories you see about the Zero having its origins in the Howard Hughes racer originate from the prevalent racial prejudices of the times that believed all Japan could do was copy foreign designs. The design itself is purely Japanese though some of the components were not.


Chez

What Chez wrote is entirely correct!

BTW, at the beggining of WWII in Pacific even USN officers claimed that Germans flew German made aircraft against them because the Japenese would never ever be able to produce anything worth while and fly it... this is old racial prejudice (similar to all portraits of Japanese as small men with "coke bottle" glasses)...


Leo "Apollo11"

Well, at least someone could say that Japanese were small men. [;)]

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez




One need only look at the internal design elements to recognize that the design was entirely Japanese in nature. There are many aircraft designs out there that have a pasing resemblance to another but when you look internally, the differences becomes obvious. Japan did copy or purchase under license several components that found their way into the Zero such as the licensed Hamilton Standard propeller. Also many of their aircraft engines were based upon licensed built foreign engines and upgraded throughout the war with less than stellar results in most cases.

IMO, most of the stories you see about the Zero having its origins in the Howard Hughes racer originate from the prevalent racial prejudices of the times that believed all Japan could do was copy foreign designs. The design itself is purely Japanese though some of the components were not.


Chez

What Chez wrote is entirely correct!

BTW, at the beggining of WWII in Pacific even USN officers claimed that Germans flew German made aircraft against them because the Japenese would never ever be able to produce anything worth while and fly it... this is old racial prejudice (similar to all portraits of Japanese as small men with "coke bottle" glasses)...


Leo "Apollo11"

Well, at least someone could say that Japanese were small men. [;)]

Not all. The coal miners of the Kuriles are commonly over 6 feet tall.

[wdolson]

In the 1930s, there were a lot of cross polination of aviation ideas.  Few nations were spending much money on military designs, so aircraft makers were focusing on civilian projects.  Airliners advanced dramatically during that time.  These advances then fed into bomber designs when war loomed near.  In some cases, the wings were retained and the fuselage was redone, such as with the B-18 (derived form the DC-2), in other cases, the airliner advances had more subtle effects.  The B-17 benefitted from knowledge gained developing the 247, and the engine and propeller advances that had come along to feed the growing airliner market.

Some designers moved to find work too.  The Ju-88 had a couple of Americans on its design team.

Fighter design was less influenced by airliner advances, but they were affected by air racing designs.  The Spitfire evolved from a Supermarine race plane of the 1930s.  Most fighters owed something to air racers by the dawn of WW II.

The Zero almost certainly benefitted from foreign designs.  The engine and propeller are known to be American designs built in Japan (most flying Zeros today use American built engines, though one in Chino, CA uses the original engine).  The airframe itself was an original Japanese design though.  Just as much as the Spitfire was British and the Me-109 was German.

Bill

[mdiehl]

The Zero was a conventional, almost entirely Japanese design with a strong but largely superificial resemblance to other basic mid-1930s mono, radial engine designs. It was particularly suited to Japanese needs. Being lightweight, it did not require a large engine, could go a long way on mediocre gas (which made it very good for the vast expanses of the Pacific and SE Asia), and had outstanding good climb rates and low speed turning ability. The fuel economy and light weight (the latter imposing relatively low economic material needs for a fighter) in turn made it suitable for Japanese industry -- which was vastly underproductive compared to western industry. The same light weight was the plane's downfall, as it was a poor dogfighter at high speed and highly vulnerable to any kind of damage.

[mlees]

One of the reference books I got goes into the design history of the Japanese aircraft (oddly enough, titled Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War, by Francillon) mentions that the Japanese designers kept a close eye on what the other leading nations were doing in regards to new developments in technology and engineering.
 
In the twenties and thirties, the aviation design community was surprisingly "open", and sometimes even shared ideas with each other. An American company (or Italian, or whatever) may try to generate buisness during the Depression by selling aircraft to foreign countries. South America, China, Eastern Europe, etc, were all potential markets for an aircraft company trying to earn a living.
 
If the Japanese liked a particular feature (for example, variable pitch propellors, or something), they would either obtain a licence for it, or try to reverse engineer their own version. Then they would incorporate that feature into their own aircraft designs. That does not make that plane (in the OP's case, the Zero) any less of a "Japanese" design. 
 
IMO, a foreign design (presumadely licence built) would be, for example, the Douglas DC-2's that Fokker in Netherlands constructed, intended for use by European customers.
 
Admittedly, I am not an aviation historian, and there may be some grey areas, but I don't think the Zero is one of them.

[ChezDaJez]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

The Zero was a conventional, almost entirely Japanese design with a strong but largely superificial resemblance to other basic mid-1930s mono, radial engine designs. It was particularly suited to Japanese needs. Being lightweight, it did not require a large engine, could go a long way on mediocre gas (which made it very good for the vast expanses of the Pacific and SE Asia), and had outstanding good climb rates and low speed turning ability. The fuel economy and light weight (the latter imposing relatively low economic material needs for a fighter) in turn made it suitable for Japanese industry -- which was vastly underproductive compared to western industry. The same light weight was the plane's downfall, as it was a poor dogfighter at high speed and highly vulnerable to any kind of damage.

Nice synopsis.

Chez

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

The Zero was a conventional, almost entirely Japanese design with a strong but largely superificial resemblance to other basic mid-1930s mono, radial engine designs. It was particularly suited to Japanese needs. Being lightweight, it did not require a large engine, could go a long way on mediocre gas (which made it very good for the vast expanses of the Pacific and SE Asia), and had outstanding good climb rates and low speed turning ability. The fuel economy and light weight (the latter imposing relatively low economic material needs for a fighter) in turn made it suitable for Japanese industry -- which was vastly underproductive compared to western industry. The same light weight was the plane's downfall, as it was a poor dogfighter at high speed and highly vulnerable to any kind of damage.

When they tested that recovered Zeke from Alaska, they over-rated aspects of its' performance as they were using a higher octane gas than what the Japanese themselves were using.

[Big B]

About the simplest, fairest, most accurate synopsis I have read.

To the Allies in both World Wars - any enemy machine (including AFV's) that was as decent, or better, than their own equipment - was a bogeyman....the Western Allies always had a deep loathing of anything that was about as good as their own equipment.

I guess it all stems from a deep seated loathing of a 'fair fight'...and in that regard they may not be wrong (the prevailing philosophy, as stated today is, "if you're in a fair fight - you already screwed up").

B

ORIGINAL: m10bob

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

The Zero was a conventional, almost entirely Japanese design with a strong but largely superificial resemblance to other basic mid-1930s mono, radial engine designs. It was particularly suited to Japanese needs. Being lightweight, it did not require a large engine, could go a long way on mediocre gas (which made it very good for the vast expanses of the Pacific and SE Asia), and had outstanding good climb rates and low speed turning ability. The fuel economy and light weight (the latter imposing relatively low economic material needs for a fighter) in turn made it suitable for Japanese industry -- which was vastly underproductive compared to western industry. The same light weight was the plane's downfall, as it was a poor dogfighter at high speed and highly vulnerable to any kind of damage.

When they tested that recovered Zeke from Alaska, they over-rated aspects of its' performance as they were using a higher octane gas than what the Japanese themselves were using.

[ChezDaJez]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

The Zero was a conventional, almost entirely Japanese design with a strong but largely superificial resemblance to other basic mid-1930s mono, radial engine designs. It was particularly suited to Japanese needs. Being lightweight, it did not require a large engine, could go a long way on mediocre gas (which made it very good for the vast expanses of the Pacific and SE Asia), and had outstanding good climb rates and low speed turning ability. The fuel economy and light weight (the latter imposing relatively low economic material needs for a fighter) in turn made it suitable for Japanese industry -- which was vastly underproductive compared to western industry. The same light weight was the plane's downfall, as it was a poor dogfighter at high speed and highly vulnerable to any kind of damage.

When they tested that recovered Zeke from Alaska, they over-rated aspects of its' performance as they were using a higher octane gas than what the Japanese themselves were using.

Though they used a higher octane fuel, the engine wasn't producing full power due to being unable to develop full manifold pressure. Also, the tail was tweaked 2 degrees out of true and one of the landing gear doors wouldn't fully close, both of which created additional drag. So all in all, I would they probably obtained as close a realistic performance measure as could be done under the circumstances.

The book, "Koga's Zero" goes into great detail over what repairs were needed and they were quite extensive.

Chez

[mdiehl]

IMO the performance issues of the Zero are best understood from the Japanese tests rather than the Koga Zero tests. The latter were conducted on a slightly cocked up aircraft that in a combat zone have been grounded for repairs.
 
If there is an area where the US of American avgas made a plane look better, it is in the later model Japanese a.c. No Japanese plane ever made was capable of >390 mph other than using perfect fuel under non-combat loaded test conditions.