I don't know about the A6M2 being outclassed by the P-40. By the E model, yes certainly. The E model has the power to dictate the fight on its own terms and the fire power to end fights with a brief snapshot.
The B model on the other hand I don't think so. I spent 45 minutes in the DA with 68Cactus before last night trying to find an advantage the P-40B has over the Zero. The only thing going in its favor was the flimsy construction of the zero meaning its whole clip had a chance of taking down a bird. Once the Zero's cannon was expended, its was effectively done. However, the Zero out accelarated, out dove, out climbed and obviously out turned at all speeds the P40b can realistically maintain.
Boom and Zooming has been mentioned as the preffered approach to taking on Zekes, but that's kind of tough when you merge co-alt 50' below the alt-limit or are trying to engage or keep buffs alive. And once engaged, the P40B simply cannot maintain E or regain it fast enough to dictate the fight that way. Our only counter to all this was to accept you are going to get in a turn fight and to maintain tight unit cohesion so you always have a chance to turn into a buddy who can clear your tail. I believe this is all pretty true to reality where US pilots knew in a 1 v 1 against a Zeke, they were in trouble, but felt 2 or more cooperating planes could take on larger numbers of - on paper - superior Japanese aircraft.
It worked reasonably well in two frames (last week has been struck from the annuls of the 68th
). However in both frames 1 and 2, whilst we scored kills, we were eventually all but wiped out because we were unable to disengage and eventualy pinned down by successive waves of zekes arriving.