JAPAN’S MYSTERY FIGHTER

Japan was a nation at war long before its attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese offensive in China that began in 1937 offered U.S. military officers a first-hand look at Japan’s military capabilities. Their reports, and reports from other informed military and civil aviation experts then in China, should have immediately altered the assessment of Japan’s air forces. Instead, these reports were often met with incredulity, sometimes ridiculed, and routinely ignored. So it was that in the months following Pearl Harbor, American pilots were stunned by the flight characteristics of a mystery fighter, the Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero. They need not have been surprised.

Beginning in the late Spring 1940, Claire Chennault pieced together a substantially accurate assessment of the capabilities of the Zero then being flown in combat against Chinese forces. In December 1940, Chennault was able to explain the Zero’s fighting and flying capabilities directly to General George C. Marshall, the Army’s new chief of staff. Marshall seems to have taken Chennault’s report, and the threat posed by the new Japanese fighter aircraft, very seriously. Deeply concerned about the shortage and the lagging performance of American pursuit planes, Marshall passed Chennault’s information to Lieutenant General Walter C. Short in Hawaii during the first week of February 1941. A similar warning about the deficiencies of the U.S. P-35 pursuit aircraft then used in the Philippines went to Major General George Grunert at the same time:

While the number of your pursuit squadrons has been increased from one to three and new planes have been made available, we realize these are not at all up to the standards of the performance that you should have though there has been a decided improvement in numbers and quality. When compared to the performance of the present carrier based Japanese plane the deficiencies are only too evident. Incidentally, the new Japanese plane is rated at 322 miles an hour, with a very rapid climb, with leak-proof tanks and armor, and with two 20 mm machine guns and two .30 caliber guns.1

In early 1941, the Tokyo-based attaché´ , Stephen Jurika, actually climbed into the cockpit of a Zero on static display at a Japanese air show. Dutifully, he recorded the information found on the cockpit data plate and reported it to ONI. That information was reviewed in Washington, and dismissed as obviously inaccurate: the performance statistics were so far out of line with that of previous Japanese aircraft types that it had to be a mistake. Jurika was told to be more careful in writing future reports.2 The information available on the Zero—excepting a photo or silhouette— made its way into a MID field manual in March 1941, the last issue published before Pearl Harbor. Postwar accounts suggest this manual did not move through commands to the squadron level. Pilots in the Philippine-based pursuit squadrons, for example, say they knew little or nothing about the quality of Japan’s air forces. Moreover, they believed Japanese aircraft to be inferior to their own, and thought Japanese pilots to be physically incapable of really rigorous combat flying. Pilots who saw the manual regarded the information with skepticism if not outright ridicule. 3 Historian William Leary notes that, ‘‘Although American intelligence possessed abundant technical information about Japanese aircraft, MID and ONI, viewing their function primarily as one of communicating technical data to staff and operational levels, usually left assessment to the ‘customer.’’’ 4 Left to individual U.S. airmen, these assessments could easily be colored and quickly subjected to the biases and racial stereotypes of the times. In addition, in 1941, with only a rudimentary intelligence organization in place, no formal process existed to create finished intelligence, develop assessments, and then brief the pilots who would confront the Japanese in combat. Technical data on the Zero was simply not exploited to develop tactics, weapons, or counters. 5

1 Larry I. Bland, ed., The Papers of George Catlett Marshall II (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 411–416.

2 John Prados, op. cit., p. 39. NOTE: Despite an article stating such a quote by Steven Jurika…whatever aircraft Steven Jurika sat in, in January 1941, it was NOT the infamous A6M Zero. The first public showing of that plane WAS at Haneda Field, but in early November 1941. The public events at Haneda Field were to exhibit Hokoku/Aikoku (IJN/IJA Presentation aircraft to the public) and were done at many other airfields and quite often…many more than once a year. One plane

was even a gift of the “Japanese people living in [Old] Mexico”.

The first report on the Zero came to the US hand carried by a USAAF Captain,

retired, who was working for the Chinese Government. And that “retired USAAF Captain” was, of course, Claire Lee Chennault, who did render a full report on the Type 0 fighter to Washington.

Prados quoted a source with the Steven Jurika quote. Prados did cite things correctly, it is just that Jurika did not. Jurika just did not know what plane in which he was seated.

Lt. (JG) Stephen Jurika, then the current Assistant US Naval Attaché for Air in Japan, seemed skeptical of the reports coming out of China. News and rumors in Japan had never told of the fighter. Finally, he found some information on a “Type 100″ airframe. His November 9, 1940 report listed the characteristics for a “Mitsubishi Type Zero 1940 Fighter”, a twin engine plane which “the basic design…is the Dutch Fokker D-23″. This turned out to be the Japanese Army Type 100 bomber, Ki-46, built by Mitsubishi, later coded “Dinah” by the Allies.

In his 7 April 1941 report about the Hanada ceremony, Jurika gave a list of distinguishing characteristics of the new “Type Zero Zero” fighter, including “two droppable auxiliary wing tanks”, and suggested the plane was only a “new version of the old Type 97 single seat fighter with retractable wheels and increased power.” The Type 97 fighter to which he referred was the Army Ki-27, later called “Nate”. Perhaps he was sitting in a NATE and guessed at what an updated version would look like?

The first time the Zero was exhibited was during a Aikoku/Hokoku ceremony on 8 November 1941. The plane was given the Presentation number 433. Photos made during that ceremony are in the book: Japanese Army Wings (Burindo Pub 1972).

Cheers,

David Aiken, a Director: Pearl Harbor History Associates, Inc.

http://www.pearlharbor-history.org/

3 William Leary, op. cit., p. 276.

4 Ibid.

5 John B. Lundstrom recounts that Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Thach received information on the Zero in a Fleet Air Tactical Unit Intelligence Bulletin in the summer of 1941. Reportedly, he was so impressed by the credibility of the information that he immediately began to devise and practice tactics to counter the Zero’s astounding rates of climb and speed and great maneuverability. Those tactics were the foundation of the Thach Weave Defense. If Lundstrom’s account is correct, then Navy pilots had both timely and accurate information on the capabilities of the Zero. U.S. air combat losses because of faulty tactics might then be ascribed to the failure to disseminate the report widely among pilots, its lack of credibility with them, squadron commanders’ failure to understand the import of the information, or a combination of all three. The episode is included in Appendix 4 of Lundstrom’s The First Team: Pacific Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985), pp. 480-481.