World War II Database

1.  Bill says:
9 Nov 2009 06:04:07 PM

Information above photograph:
Line up of Zero 21's, at Truk, Japan's great naval base in the Carolines.
Taking off from from this island base, with
a 76 gallon drop tank a pilot with good fuel
management, by leaning the fuel mixture and throttling back to a slow cruise speed of 130 mph, a pilot could keep his Zero in the air between 10 and 12 hours.
This was a feat unapprochable by any fighter
of the time.

2.  Bill says:
9 May 2010 01:55:21 PM

Mix of A6M2 "Zeke" Model 21(foreground) and A6M3 Model 22 "Hamp" waiting takeoff.
Their mission is in support of Japanese Naval
Operations in the Soloman Islands Campaign.

3.  Bill says:
18 Nov 2010 07:18:28 PM

Aircraft are from the 582nd Air Group they
are ex-Zuikaku aircraft.
Other sources say photograph was take at
Buin (Kahili airstrip) late 1943.

4.  Bill says:
12 Jan 2012 08:37:33 PM

Not all Imperial Naval pilots were carrier
qualified this was the Navy's goal, but once
the war in China started it was abandon and impractical taking land-based pilots and reassigning them to carriers.

The land-based pilots would have to retrain
and qualify for carrier duty.
The Navy had already trained its carrier qualified pilots it took about two years to
train a pilot based on pre-war training the
pilot losses at Pearl Harbor was 1/4 of a
pre-war class this type of slow pace pilot training couldn't keep up with combat losses.
As the war continued, replacement pilot training was rushed the men who went through this war time training, would never have been selected or completed pre-war pilot training the pre-war high-standards lost out to the demand for pilots.