70th Anniversary D-Day - No Coverage???

[Tony Wheeler]

It certainly would be odd if it were true David! Of course, in respect of the Zero it's anything BUT true. The Zero had a two-stage supercharger long before the Americans even entered the war, and long before the British introduced them as well. Any suggestion that the Zero could have benefited from Allied technology is laughable, it took the Allies at least 3 years to match its capabilities, and they were never successfully packaged into one single aircraft like the Zero.

Unfortunately this kind of spurious critique is typical of post-war assessments of the Zero, which the West finds difficult to admit was the best fighter of WWII. Had it been in Allied hands it would have changed the course of the war. It's particularly interesting to speculate on what British could have done in 1940 with a fighter that could outrun, out turn, out climb, and out gun the Spitfire, and fly to Berlin and back.