In honor of the release of the A6M, I offer these sage words of wisdom from the legendary leader of the equaly legendary Flying Tigers, Gen. Claire Chanault...
From a report prepared by Gen. Claire Chenault’s intelligence staff in 1941, and circulated throughout the U.S. military flying community.
Concerning the P-40 and Zero the Universal rules are: 1. Take advantage of the sun and clouds whenever possible. Keep Looking Around. Never remain intent on a target, a flight of the enemy, or even one part of the sky for very long. Danger might be coming from any direction. Take one last look before making an attack, and take another good look as you break away. If possible, also take a good look around just before you come within firing range of your target. Basic tactics adopted with P-40s against Japanese fighters of superior maneuverability: 1.) Never Use Climbing Maneuvers unless you have excess speed from a dive because the Jap plane can outclimb you. 2.) Use the P-40’s best characteristics; namely – speed, diving and firepower (head-on runs). Never use maneuverability. Avoid acrobatics because the Jap planes can do them faster and in much less space. Never Dogfight Them. 3.) Altitude is good life insurance. If the enemy has two or three thousand feet altitude advantage on you, turn at right angles to his course, or even directly away from him and avoid him until you have enough distance to climb safely at lest to his altitude. Climbing straight up in to an enemy formation at 150 MPH is almost a sure way to lose pilots and equipment. 4.) If you have to bail out while the enemy is in the vicinity, wait as long as possible before opening your chute, because if a Jap see you, he will machine-gun you. [Many would claim today that the scenes in those old war-movies where the enemy pilots would strafe our pilots in their chutes were just propaganda, this official report would indicate otherwise. To be fair, I’ve seen enough anecdotal evidence to believe Axis pilots weren’t the only ones to engage in this behavior. It wasn’t until relatively recently that US forces codified the “Law of Armed Conflict,” which made chute-shooting a war crime – Sabre] 5.) Be patient; use the clouds and sun, and wait until you have an altitude advantage before attacking. If you have to dive away from the attack, it will take you twenty minutes to get back into it again. If you have an initial altitude advantage, you can dive, fire and climb again and repeat at very close intervals, thus doing more damage.”
Taken from “Fire in the Sky,” E. Bergerud, Westview Press, 2000
It was this report, amoung others, that led US tacticians such as LtCmdr Thatch to develop the formation tactics that effectively nullified the technologically superior aircraft and flying skills of the Imperial Japanese air arms at the time of the U.S. entry into the war.
------------------
Sabre, a.k.a. Rojo
(S-2, The Buccaneers)
