Spitfire vs Zero

Hi; I was wondering how would a spitfire of late 1942 vintage ( spitfire 5 ?) stack up against a Zero of the same time if the pilots were of equal skill and experience ?

 

So long as the Spitfire pilot keeps his speed up and dogfights at about 275 to 300 knots the Zero is in serious trouble. The only thing the Zero pilot has in his advantage in such a dogfight is turning ability. He cannot out roll the Spitfire, cannot out climb it nor, out dive it. However if it comes down to a turning contest the Spitfire will lose.

 

Wow!!! to out turn a spitfire , the zero must of had quite the tight turning circle. Then again allied pilots no doubt would have learned quickly to avoid the lower speed turning fight and to play to their own strengths .

 

well, dive or climb is basically an initiation to engagement (or a break-off.) now, which can spiral faster upwards (in countering a belly attack) or downwards (in countering a diving attack)?

 

The Zeke has a HU-U-UGE advantage in range.

 

Yes they were sent to the British Pacific Fleet and saw plenty of action and they were called seafires.
Supermarine Seafire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
British Pacific Fleet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If i remember they lacked the range and carrying compacity of other carrierborne aircraft.

 

I think the first Spitfires to meet Japanese fighters were land based ones, and they would be fighting the JAAF not the JNAF so no zeros but the similar Ki-43 (oscar) that was slightly inferior. IIRC at the time of the "indian ocean raid" by the Japanese carrier fleet there were no Spitfires but just Hurricanes that didn't do too well agaist the A6M. At the time of the raid Sommerville's carriers had a mix of Fulmars, Martlets (Wildcat), and Sea Hurricanes but no Seafires yet.

The second generation Merlins of the Spitfire V (the Seafire III was equivalent to the land based Spit VC and the Griffon engined Mk XV were not deployed in time) had a 30 to 50% advantage over the engines of the Zero and Ki-43. AFAIK the first Spitfire combats were not very successfull as the pilot tried to use the same tactics that worked against the less manouverable German fighters, but I'm not so sure about this as by the time Spitfires reached the theater the limitations of the Japanese fighters were well known.

At one stage only Indefatigable of the British carriers "east of Suez" had Seafires while Indomitable, Victorious and Illustious had Corsairs and Hellcats, and the Seafires were restricted to CAP duty due to their short range and vulnerability to ground fire of the liquid cooled engines. The Seafire, though an excellent fighter, was not an unqualified success, some sources state it's undercarriage was too weak for arrester landings and British carriers had armoured decks to protect them from crashing Seafires (can't find the source right now but the ratio of accidental to combat aircraft losses for some RN operations is surprising).

 

Did the Seafire and Spit mark 5 solve the carburetor float issue? Had heard that early marks engine would cut out momentarily if plane went inverted? Were the Japanese Zero's fuel injected? If not, did they also have the same issues with carb?

 

Spit 5s saw combat with Zeros in Northern Australia and PNG...They had some success, but the biggest problem was that the Spit was designed for cold (dense) air and its wing, props etc weren't tuned for Tropical weather. The other was the amount of Glycol still in the engines...The amount of Spitfires up here that just seized mid air! More seizures than shot down i think. lucky we have flat beaches and country side here in the Territory so it wasn't a dire as it may seem...PNG was another story though.

 

Thanks for the info, it's interesting to see how much work it took to get the spitfires ready for tropical weather. There has been allot written and filmed comparing American built fighters to Japanese fighters, not so much concerning the famous British ones .

 

The first seafire victories over the A6M were on 1 April 1945 with 2 confirmed kills by lt. Reynolds from 894 NAS Sq flying out of HMS Indefatigable, the recent seafire vs zero osprey book reports around 20 victories before was end, so quite a late contributor.
IIRC the carburator issue was solved with the Mk II and was definetly not present in the Mk V that was the base for the Seafire III.

 

My dad was a signalman on H M C S Uganda with the British Pacific fleet at this time, he told me during action stations the carriers would send a sequence of signals something like "Carrier turning into the wind preparing to launch fighters "they would send it once and they didn't repeat it so you better get it the first time..

 

The Spitfire V versus Zero was discussed over on The Great Planes website also ,it didn't turn out too well for the Spitfire V's. Of course there were several reasons for this but one thing about the Zero that is undisputable is that it could escort IJN/IJAAF bombers from Timor to Darwin whilst the Spitfire V couldn't do the same from Darwin to Timor. of course one could say the same for the IJAAF Ki-43.

Spitfires vs Zeros; the Darwin debacle - The Great Planes and warbirds Community

and also on J-Aircraft.com

Zero versus Spitfire V...

and also on the Axis-History Military forums.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=175294

I've started several threads on the matter in several forums to get several view points .

 

If you;re really curious, here's the book: Seafire Vs A6M Zero: Pacific Theatre - Google Books

 

I've wondered the same thing. I'll check it out.

 

Spitfire Mk.V and Zero A6M2/21 (the PH Zero) are close contemporaries. Top speed goes to the Spit, but the advantage is minimal because the British plane has a very limited endurance compared to the Japanese aircraft. Unless he's fighting over his own base the Spitfire pilot had better not rely on his speed advantage too much, else he's going down in the drink. Rate of climb goes to the Zero, but again its a minor advantage.

The Spitfire has 2 Hispano 20mm cannons with 60 rpg. Ditto for the Zero, in fact the Zero's cannon are also Hispano (licence-built, that is) The RCMG are .303 and 7.7mm respectively, about as evenly matched as two weapons could be. The Spit has four versus 2 on the Zeke, but the Spits guns are outboard in the wings, while the Zero's guns are mounted in the cowling, so the Zero has full concentration at any range. However, the Spitfire has 40% more MG ammo than the Zero. So advantage Spitfire, but once more only marginal.

Armor: 100% advantage to the Spitfire.

Dive: Advantage Spitfire by a considerable margin.

Endurance: Advantage Zero by a dominating margin.

All in all it looks like a slight -- but definite -- advantage goes to the Spitfire. In fact if we confine the combat to low to medium altitudes the same could be said about a fight between a Zero and a P-40, yet no one would say the P-40 could dominate the Zero routinely.

The plain fact is neither plane gives its pilot an overwhelming advantage. If the Spit gets on the Zero's six, the Zero can escape and perhaps reverse the situation by turning into the attack. If the Spit is tailed by the Zeke, the British airman can escape by a steep dive followed by a high g zoom, a maneuver the Zero can't follow and keep his wings on. The issue will be decided by the first pilot who makes a mistake, or runs out of gas (the Spitfire) or runs out of ammo (the Zero), not by the quality of his mount.

Actually, this kind of comparison is always misleading. We look at the stats and wonder how come the Zero dominated the Pacific for a year and a half. Then we look at the stats of the F6F, the aircraft usually credited with ending the Zero's reign of terror, and see that in gross numeric terms the Hellcat isn't much different from the Spitfire, a plane available to Allies from the outset. Why wait 20 months to kick their asses?

Of course the answer is obvious, but we can't see it because we're using the wrong terminology. We commonly say the Zero was a fighter, and we also say the Spitfire was a fighter -- but that's the mistake. The Zero was an air superiority fighter designed from the outset for long range carrier-based operations. The Spitfire (at least the early marks) was a point defense interceptor, well-suited to Britain's home defense needs in 1940. We get used to this implied equality by using the term "fighter" because today's planes are multi-role by design. Not so in the 1939-1945 war.

 

​

Good question. The carburetor problem was solved by a woman working as a draftsman for Rolls-Royce. The BBC had a rogram about some years ago as an "unsung" female hero of the war. (They would have ignored the inventor it it were a man)

Because of the fragility of the Zero they typically would avoid making dives that were steep and abrupt enough to stave the engine.

 

I think over Darwin it was like 26-32 Spitfires V's lost in air to air combat to like 3 Zero's & 1 Ki-43. Further remember that the Zero's had to fly 400-500 miles to tangle with the Spitfires then fly 400-500 miles back. Then you look at the USMC F4F-4's at Guadalcanal ,the Zero's flew 500 miles one way from Rabaul but there the loss ratio was more like 1-1.
The Darwin campaign has always intrigued me. Of course the 202nd Kentai seemed to be a very,very crack fighter force.

Now per comparing fighters the Australians conducted a test between a Spitfire V & a P-40 Kittyhawk concluding that the P-40 was equal to the V below 15-16K but of course at altitude the Spitfire V was superior . Another thing to consider the USN was the only airforce in 1942,early '43 to fight the IJN & it's Zero's to a standoff.

 

Tactics must have been the factor. By the time of the Guadalcanal campaign Navy and Marine Wildcats had tangled with Zekes many times in large and small engagements, which created a corps of veteran pilots who knew much more about the Zeke's capabilities than an Australian pilot could be expected to know in the early months of 1942. Also one must remember the Akutan Zero, which was recovered and restored to full capability by 20 September 1942, in plenty of time to gather and dissimulate tactical intelligence regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the A6M2/Mod21. Between intel on the Zero's reduced capability in a dive and sluggishness to roll to the right, and the "beam defense position" developed by Lt. Commander John Thach, the Americans had the tactics to escape, evade and even turn the tables on the Zero -- all available to any ensign pilot who listened to the lectures, read the intel circulars, and trained like hell -- and all in time for Guadalcanal.

Aussie pilots in early 1942 were all either trainees, recent qualifiers waiting for deployment to North Africa, or long service veterans serving as instructors, i.e. men with no real knowledge of the Zero and without any tactical doctrine to apply to the problem. All the really skilled pilots with recent combat experience were in theatre half a world away fighting German and Italian pilots flying machines very different from Mitsubishi's miracle weapon. I don't know the particulars or even the date of the encounter you referred to, but I can imagine a defense force of dozens of Spits flown by newly qualified pilots with plenty of tactical doctrine against the Bf-109 in their heads, letting themselves get involved in turning dogfights -- you attack from the rear, the enemy turns to evade, you turn with him to get lead... all perfectly instinctive and reasonable when used against the 109, and perfectly suicidal when used against the Zeke.