Japanese ability to analyze American aircraft

At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan could claim some of the best pilots on the planet. They already had years of experience in China and had honed their skills under combat conditions. The Zero was a fast, small and nimble aircraft. What the plane did not have was self sealing fuel tanks, armor protection for the pilot and good aiming systems. It was the skill and experience of the pilot that that determined when to shoot or to drop the bomb or to let the torpedo go.

American planes had excellent aiming systems which meant that a relatively unskilled pilot could make as good a shot as a highly experienced Japanese pilot. Zeros lit right up when hit with incendiary shells. Once we knew where to hit them they went down pretty easy. And even if they did not catch fire, leaking fuel meant that many never made it back to base. Lack of armor protection did not help the pilots either.

One other thing that the Americans did that the Japanese did not was rotate their pilots out of the combat theaters after specific lengths of time. Many of them became instructors and were able to pass on the lessons they had learned to a new generation of pilots. The Japanese never did this. Pilots stayed at the front. This led to all sorts of psychological problems, fatigue, lethargy and fatalism. These resulted in a loss of combat efficiency and a decrease of flying skills. They never rotated home to train new pilots and use the knowledge they had gained to train new pilots. It died with them.

Meanwhile American fighter pilot named John Thach developed a defense tactic called the Thach Weave that effectively neutralized the advantage in maneuverability that the Zero had. it required a lot of discipline on the part of the American pilots, but it saved many lives. It was first used during the battle of Midway. It's success there led to Thach being reassigned so he could teach the tactic to other pilots.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdVc-Hkr2Og

 

Limited knowledge here, but I do understand that the Japanese could develop decent aircraft and not need to examine American aircraft to develop them, it was more to see if the Japanese were able to obtain American aircraft and determine any weaknesses that their pilots could exploit. As in, when the Americans found an almost intact Zero on one of the Aleutian islands and was able to get it back to the states, get it flight worthy again, and run it through its paces to find its strengths and weaknesses. Another question would be, did the Japanese ever get their hands on in intact Norden bombsight and determine its effectiveness? Yet another, since they had such problems with their engines not performing as well as the American engines, would they not have examined the engines for determining alloys used in high heat areas, superchargers, octane of gases used? There are tons of questions that could be put out there and not sure how many could be answered.