by Rich Leonard
(son of VF-3/42 pilot and captured Zero
test pilot William Leonard)
(See The Roundtable Forum, issue
#2008-06)
3 Feb 2008
I don’t know about biplanes. I do know that my father said he remembered
reading the McHugh report (Major James H. McHugh, USMC, assistant naval attache
for air in China) on the performance of the Zero while in VF-42 in the very
late summer to early fall of 1941 (“ . . . around the time we were married . .
.” which was 13 September 1941). VF-42
would have been, more or less, permanently aboard Yorktown by then and still on
the east coast. McHugh actually
forwarded to ONI two reports, one, in December 1940, was based upon
interrogation by the Chinese of a Japanese pilot and accurately described
speed, armament and rate of climb. The
second was in June 1941 and was based on information drawn on, and analysis of
a Zero that had been shot down in May. I
don’t know which report Dad read. He did
say it came from BuAer [U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics] with information from
China; my bet is that it was a synthesis of what was available.
I have never been totally
clear on whether it was these McHugh reports that, about the same time, kicked
off Jimmy Thach’s VF-3 ruminations and experiments on defensive weave tactics
at North Island or whether it was, perhaps, a BuAer copy of the Chennault
report that started the process. Yes,
Chennault did deliver a report on the performance of the Zero to the Army,
indeed, to General George Marshall, probably drawing from the same sources as
McHugh, on 12 December 1940—long before before the AVG [Flying Tiger] days; in
fact just before any serious discussion of an AVG got started.
There was another report
filed with ONI by Lieutenant Stephen Jurika, Jr., the last pre-war USN air
attache in Japan based on his observations in an aviation exhibition in Tokyo
in January 1941 where the Japanese, in a surprising lapse in their obsessive
security, actually allowed him to sit in the cockpit of a Zero. Jurika reportedly copied the information
from the side plate, and from labels inside the cockpit, providing information
on the plane’s engine, overall design, metallurgy, and landing gear. There was still another report issued by
another Marine Major, Ronald Boone, of ONI in the summer of 1941 that
accurately described the Zero’s speed, range, and climbing ability, but discounted
its maneuverability.
In the days after his
meeting with Chennault, General Marshall, informed the attendees at another
conference of this new Japanese fighter over China that had, effectively,
eliminated the CAF. Marshall also wrote
to General Short in Hawaii in February 1941 telling of the Zero’s armament and
performance, though also, incorrectly remarking on its self-sealing fuel tank
armor protection. Marshall had to have obtained
his information from somewhere.
And it was not just
Generals chit-chatting back and forth.
There was certainly information available, though its questionable the question on how far it was disseminated, both
in terms of organization and distance.
I have a PDF file of the
US Army FM-30-38 Identification of Japanese Aircraft that was published 10
March 1941. You can download your own
copy from a list of manuals found on the WWII Aircraft Forum. The
March 1942 version is the fifth on the listing; the March 1941 version is
sixth.
The March 1941 edition
superseded an earlier version from 25 June 1940 (imagine how paltry that
missive would have been). It addresses
the Zero on page 12 thusly [my notations]:
Fighter 100 (Also called Zero type)
Description: Monoplane with
hooded cockpit and retractable landing gear
Armament: Two 20 mm cannon
wing guns; two fixed machine guns
Ammunition: [no entry]
Bombload: [no entry]
Radio: Radio telephone
Armor: [no entry]
Motors: Single, 14
cylinder, twin row, radial air-cooled engine.
Maximum speed: 344 miles
per hour (307 knots). 300 miles per
hour (268 knots), cruising speed.
Rate of climb: Fast
Service ceiling: Maximum
ceiling, 10,000 meters or 6.2 miles
Maximum range: 6 to 8 hours
endurance with use of belly tank. 150
gallons auxiliary. Total gasoline
capacity, 1,200 liters or 324 gallons.
Remarks: Employs dive
tactics but avoids use of acrobatics.
Can operate from carrier.
So, some close, some a
little odd, e.g., “. . . avoids use of acrobatics.” From my reading of other sources, I suspect a lot of this came
from the Chennault report, especially the 344 mph reported top speed and,
again, the “avoids use of acrobatics” part.
Against the then available aircraft of the CAF, the Zero was
overwhelmingly superior without a whole lot of effort. Chennault, of course had been in China for
quite some time, arriving in 1937. His
report given Marshall dates from his time as an advisor/trainer for the CAF and
not from his later AVG days.
The entry for the Zero is
the fourth aircraft described in the manual.
FM-30-38 starts with the “Type 96” which we know as the Mitsubishi Type
96, A5M “Claude” series; then comes the “Fighter 97 Nakajima” which we know as
the Nakajima Type 97, Ki-27 “Nate” series.
The next entry is “Fighter 98 Seversky (Also called Navy Model
12)”. According to the writeup, it is a
two-seat fighter apparently copied from a Seversky design. Looks more like a Tachikawa Ki-36 “Ida”
observer liaison airplane to me, but the Japanese did have a couple of
Serversky types in their inventory.
Then comes the Zero as
noted (but with no photos or drawings) followed by the great phantom Japanese
fighter of the early Pacific days, noted in the manual as the “Fighter BFW
Messerschmitt 109.” Looks like a 109E
to me. More on this later.
Following the 109, the
next two entries are also of interest.
The first refers to an obvious fantasy, a “1940 Mitsubishi Fighter”
which seems suspiciously like someone’s vision of a Japanese P-38. After that is a “Fighter (1941 Program)
Mitsubishi” which, if you added the scant information provided on that model to
that provided for the Zero, you’d end up with a better picture of the actual
Zero.
The last two fighters
noted in the manual are the “Fighter (1941 Program) Kawasaki (still undergoing
tests)” for which the sole descriptors are “Mitsubishi air-cooled 1050-1350 hp”
engine and a max speed of 375 mph; and a “Fighter (1941 Program) Nakajima” with
the only information provided lists “2 20 mm cannon wing guns and 4 mgs” for
armament, a “Mitsubishi 1050-1350 hp at 13,000 ft” engine and a max speed of
387. My suspicion is that we are
looking at some of the first references to the Kawasaki Ki-61 “Tony” (despite
the reference to an air-cooled engine) and the Nakajima Ki-43 “Oscar” (despite
the overly heavy armament).
The are no biplane
fighters in this manual, although, besides some float-plane types, there are
entries for the “Dive Bomber 96” which corresponds to the real-life Aichi Type
94 D1A1 “Susie” that was a copy of the Heinkel He 66. This type was already pretty much replaced by the Aichi Type 99
D3A series “Val.”
Also, “Torpedo Bomber 96,”
which is the Mitsubishi Type 96 B4Y “Jean.”
The B4Y was largely replaced by the Nakajima B5N series (“Kate”) by the
beginning of the war. The carrier Hosho,
accompanying the “main Body” at Midway, carried them.
The March 1942 edition of
this manual has 180 pages as opposed to the March 1941 edition’s 76. It is also just chock-a-block full of what
we would recognize now as obvious, and sometimes silly, errors, e.g. Zeros and
“Nagoya” Zeros in the Army fighters section and not a few other spurious entries,
which from a 2008 perspective, apparently arose from someone’s fevered
imagination. In the Navy section there
are two different “Type 95” biplane fighters mentioned: a Nakajima, apparently thought to be a
Curtiss Hawk knockoff, and another with no manufacturer noted and suspiciously
similar to the Nakajima Type 95 that precedes it in the manual. The Mitsubishi Type 00, Zero, A6M series
does not appear in the Navy section at all, apparently morphing into an JAAF
fighter...go figure.
My opinion is that multiple
entries for single aircraft types were the root of the identification problem
that permeates the early war reports.
Pilots variously reported encounters with “Type 0,” “Type 00,”
“Mitsubishi Zero,” “Nagoya Zero,” and just about any permutation of those terms
you might be able to create.
Here is where I get back
to the Messerschmitt 109. My thesis is
that the more exposed one was to some of this intelligence, the more likely one
was to make an incorrect identification.
In my opinion (and I believe the 1942 edition of FM 30-38 only proves my
point) reliable intelligence on Japanese aircraft types was, to be kind,
somewhat lacking in the early days. At
Coral Sea, USN VF pilots from VF-2 and VF-42 were facing IJN carrier type
aircraft for the first time. IJN
nomenclature/designations were generally unknown, or at best, barely understood
and only by a very few, and, thus, one finds in the reports reference to Zeros
(Type 0), Nagoya Zeros (Type 00s), and other oddities, including Me 109s
(though for the most part Shoho’s Type 96 A5Ms were correctly
identified). VF-2’s CO Paul Ramsey was
even given credit for downing a 109.
Much of the problem with identification came from intel
briefings that were somewhat less than helpful in the long run. Me 109s are the prime example of this
problem. There was, apparently, some
discussion of Japanese types at Pearl Harbor and this information was being
disseminated to squadron personnel as
late as the run-up to Midway and even beyond.
So, one finds Ramsey reporting action against Me 109s at Coral Sea and
Bert Earnest of VT-8 (Det) reported being shot up by the same at Midway. There were even reports of 109s wandering
around in the early days of the Solomons campaign. One evening in the Pensacola Officers Club, Bert Earnest gave me
a wry grin when I mentioned it and said “We were told at Pearl to expect to see
109s, so that’s what I reported. I
really didn’t know or care, all I cared about was they were shooting at me.”
Was Ramsey the only one
who saw 109s at Coral Sea? No, he was
not. For example, in an interview at
BuAer on 16 June 1942, LT Noel Gayler, in discussing the Coral Sea action
states:
“After we ran out to the end of our navigational leg we were in
very poor weather and no sign of the Japs.
So Commander Ault, who was the Group Commander, directed the torpedo
plane commander by radio to fly a box.
He turned 90º to the left and after about two minutes on that leg came
to a comparatively large clear area.
Under the rail squalls on the far left side of the area, say 20 miles
away, we saw the Jap outfit. The first
thing we saw was the smoke of some big ship burning. She had been attacked by the Yorktown’s air group. Then you could see white wakes over there.
“We immediately headed toward them. The Group Commander tried to get the bombers back in contact with
us and directed the torpedo planes to circle and wait for them, so the attack
could be coordinated, but without any success.
The dive bombers never did find the target, and finally had to jettison
their bombs and go home. Four dive
bombers, lead by the Group Commander, did attack with the VF.
“After about two minutes in this clear space, we were jumped by fighters
from the Jap carriers. I should say
there were probably four or five Jap fighters.
At first they were all air-cooled type Zeros or some modification—it was
the first I’d seen of them. Then, after
a minute or two of fighting, more fighters appeared on the scene that were
liquid-cooled jobs that looked very similar to the ME–109F. I can’t say definitely what they were, but
they were planes similar to them. Those
planes I never saw take any real part in the action. All I saw was them coming at us.
“The
Jap fighters have excellent performance; their rate of climb is as good as that
of any plane I’ve ever seen. They can
climb at an attitude that most planes won’t climb in, and their general
maneuverability is very good. They have
big ailerons on the trailing edge and are extremely maneuverable. The Jap pilots, however, make mistakes and
quite often give you a good shot at them.
A typical attack is for them to take the topside from you if they can
and come out on your tail at so much speed that they overrun. That’s a typical mistake they make. Realizing they’re in a bad spot they will
pull out directly in front of you. They
climb so fast that they open the range on you as you’re shooting at them. About the time you get well on them your
Grumman will run out of flying speed and you drop out of it. Then they come back at you. However, they do give you a good shot at
them and if you can shoot, you should be able to hit them. If they came down with reasonable speed they
could stay behind you and ride you all afternoon long—there’d be nothing to
it. On the other hand, the Zero fighter
is apparently not protected at all and in addition it has very poor armament;
two light machine guns and two slow firing 20 mm cannon which are not as
damaging as you might think, even if they get hits. And they don’t get hits.”
What we are working
against is the reporting of events, i.e., encounters with enemy types based on
the knowledge that the individual unit had at the time. It has been related to me that the folks in
VF-42 never heard of the possibility of encountering Me 109s, which might
explain why they never made such a report.
On the other hand, VF-42 pilots’ knowledge of actual Japanese types and
nomenclature was sketchy at best (even though BuAer’s writeup of the report by
the Naval Air Attache for China had floated through the ready room during the
late summer of 1941). VF-42 had been
deployed on Yorktown in the Coral Sea/Solomons area for more than 80 days at
that point and perhaps had not received the dubious benefit of the latest
thinking of the intel types. On the
other hand, VF-2 was freshly deployed from it’s transition to F4Fs from F2As
and had the opportunity to partake of the intel wisdom...which spoke of various
breeds of Zeros and warned of the presence of Messerschmitt fighters.
You don’t see Me 109s
being reported by VFs at Midway.
Probably because VF-3 pretty much carried the ball, VF-wise, in the
battle and Thach was already up on Japanese VF types, at least so far as to not
expect to see the Me 109. The majority
of his divisions and sections were led by VF-42 veterans, and they were still
untainted by the possibility of sighting wayward 109s. The 16 pilots from VF-42 that filled out
Thach’s VF-3 went from landing their F4F-3s at Ewa and the next day riding over
to Kaneohe to report to Thach. The rest
of their time was spent getting organized and squared away in the new F4F-4s. There was no intel briefing on Japanese
aircraft before Midway for VF-3.
It was not until after
Midway that identification of aircraft types started to settle down become
standardized.
Ships were a different
matter altogether. While identification
of actual ships by individual pilots might be somewhat iffy, most of the
information available was pretty accurate.
I have an original 1942 Janes Fighting Ships which covers
everybody rather thoroughly. The War
Department publishication FM-30-58 “Identification of Japanese Naval Ships”
dated 28 December 1941 (also downloadable from the site noted above) has most
of the basics correct. And there is
always the fairly accurate ONI 42 series that covered the Japanese Navy long
before and into the war years until replaced by the 222 series in 1944. I also have a document published at NAS
Maui, (sometime in the winter of 1942-1943) which provides a quick description
for ship types, both USN and IJN. It
runs seven pages legal size and the descriptions are just snippets, for
example, in the Japanese battleship descriptions:
SINGLE STACKERS - No turrets amidships.
(a)
Mustu and Nagato.
1. 32,700 tons, 700 ft. long, and 95 ft. beam
2. Four twin
mount turrets of 16 in 45 cal. Guns
3. Characteristic
side guns.
4. Broken Pagoda
tower.
5. Tripod main mast.
6. Hoist atop of
turrets.
No pictures though, just
typewritten, then mimeographed descriptions.
I think it probably
safe to say that at the beginning of the war there was considerably more known
about the ships of the Japanese Navy than there was known about its aircraft,
or for that matter the aircraft of the JAAF.
Return to Top
Return to Home
Page