The Zero Had a Secret — a Bog in Alaska Broke It

The Zero had a secret, and a bog in Alaska broke it. On 4 June 1942, a Japanese A6M2 Zero with no armor and a 940-horsepower engine flipped onto its back on Akutan Island, and 36 days later an American patrol plane found it nearly whole. From that October, the Zero would never again fly against an enemy who had not flown one. This documentary follows Zero number 4593 from the 1937 specification that left out its armor, through the Dutch Harbor raid, the salvage of 11 to 15 July 1942, and 24 test flights by Lieutenant Commander Eddie Sanders at North Island, San Diego. It covers what the Navy measured in the ailerons, the roll and the float-type carburetor, the dive-and-roll rule that followed, and how the Grumman F6F Hellcat, with 2,000 horsepower against the Zero's 940, carried that rule into the Marianas on 19 June 1944. The script is built from Navy history, quoted test reports, squadron records and loss tables. It separates claims from losses, and it corrects the popular story that the Hellcat was designed from this captured Zero. Subscribe for the definitive history of the United States in the Second World War — new documentaries every few days. #WW2 #WorldWarII #PacificWar #USNavy #WWIIHistory #A6MZero #AkutanZero #DutchHarbor #Hellcat #MilitaryHistory #USAInWW2