Customer Reviews

Koga's Zero: The Fighter That Changed World War II

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a new edition of Jim Reardon's previous book but has been repackaged. It is quite good and a reader can actually find it in the stores or order it from Amazon.com.

I highly enjoyed this book and it make a very valuable addition to a WWII reader's library. To understand the Zero is to understand the Japanese war machine. Like the German counterpart, the BF-109, it would have been impossible for Japan to have had such a successful record from the period of 1941 until late in 1942.

My favorite part of the book was the recovery and repair of the Zero from the Alaskan bog. Had Koga not landed with his wheels down then he would have survived and had the ability to destroy the Zero. Conversely, since the Zero had flipped upside down his comrades in the other fighters were loathe to machine gun the aircraft into flames.

The whole recovery of the Zero is sheer luck. A plane slightly off course discovers the wreck. The US Navy jumps at the chance to recover the aircraft. Note, it's best the US Navy had found the wreck. The wing spars were intregal to the aircraft and a prior US Army salvage wrecked that captured aircraft. The Navy ships the Zero to San Diego, the craft is rebuilt, and it plays a staring role in giving the US military intelligence into combating the Zero.

What is missing is a lack of performance data on the various models of the Zero. Example, the early models of the Zeros were not in the same class as the later models. Example, the never exceed speed of the later Zeros was only slightly less in a dive than the F4U Cosair. The Zero had a much better turning ability than the heavier US fighter. If the Japanese had a pilot training program to match that of the development of the Zero then the debacles of 1944 and 1945 may not have been in such heavy US favor.

I was very happy with the "fly off" chapters against various American fighters. I thought it quite curious that Koga's Zero was always in excellent flying shape but the American machines were often plagued with mechanical faults. Was this to be future shades of the problems the American Automotive manufacturers were to face against the Japanese Automotive manufacturers? The reader can draw their own conclusion but this is not the first time I've read about the maintenance problems with American fighters and the better ease of maintenance with the Zero, BF-109, FW-190, and almost any of the Soviet Machines. But the point is Koga's Zero was flow against the best fighters the USA had and it gave good performance, often superior to the American machines.

The lenghty write up of the salvage of the Zero is not boring. Koga is given a decent burial and the removal of his body from the Zero is a little distasteful to read. Such is war. I was surprised to learn the Japanese 20mm cannons were largely scaled up copies of the US M-2 machine gun and a Navy Petty Officer is able to field strip the weapons in the bog to the great amusement of his fellow sailors, they razz him of his prior service in the Imperial Japanese Navy. That was light reading after Koga's body removal.

I will have to agree with a prior reviewer that this book is only four stars. The recycled items on Pearl Harbor, the early Pacific campaigns, the naval battles at Coral Sea and Midway, then the attrition in the Southern Pacific are all covered better in other books. If a reader wants to read about the damage done by the Zero then they should investigate the excellent book series Bloody Shambles Bloody Shambles : Volume One : The Drift to War to the Fall of Singapore , BLOODY SHAMBLES VOLUME TWO: The Complete Account of the Air War in the Far East, from the Defence of Sumatra to the Fall of Burma, 1942 , AIR WAR FOR BURMA: The Concluding Volume of The Bloody Shambles Series. The Allied Air Forces Fight Back in South-East Asia 1942-1945 (v. 3) . These three books give the definitive reasons for the Zeros success: excellent pilot training, excellent weapon, excellent command. Those are the elements of a winning military.

So, I highly endorse this book. A person who wants to learn about one of the most important weapons of WWII can glean a lot from this book. The Zero was the key to Japan's early success in the Pacific. The lack of a good pilot training program was the root cause of Japan's failures in the post 1943 period.

This book is a must for all interested in the Pacific War. The Zero was Japan's primary fighter throughout the war. It came as a very nasty shock to US fliers and it took awhile to develop tactics to use against it until newer planes (the Hellcat and Corsair) could reach the front lines. Imagine capturing your enemy's best, Top Secret weapon and you can understand the importance of this story.

A lot of the early part of the Pacific War is forgotten or misunderstood by the West. Not many even remember that Japan captured several US islands in the Aleutians (part of Alaska). This is where we found an intact Zero, rebuilt it and flew it against American fighters to learn of the strengths and weaknesses of the Zero. We all know now that it was highly maneuverable, had a good punch and fantastic long range. But, it came at a cost - no self sealing fuel tanks. Heavier US planes learned to slash and dash - dive through Japanese formations and not engage in dogfights.

My favorite part of the book is the last chapter where the actual combat test results are reported - the Zero vs. US fighters and what each type should do to fight and win.

Not a book for modelers, no color plates, but really a great book to have that adds an important part of the early war years while the US struggled to fight outnumbered, with inferior equipment against a very experienced and determined foe.

This 1995 book is of historical value to students of the WWII Pacific theater naval air wars, particularly combat between fighter aircraft.
However,the content of this book is a word for word copy of a book issued in 1990 by the same author, Jim Reardon, titled "Cracking the Zero Mystery:How the US Learned to Beat Japan's Vaunted WWII....". It just has a different title. I bought both books thinking they were different, and was disappointed to find that between the covers, the two books were virtually identical, format, pictures, chapters, et all.
So, one could buy this book OR "Cracking the Zero...., but don't buy both.

The incident of the downing of Koga's Zero was the topic of an email sent to me. I got online and found the book.

Koga was a Japanese petty officer pilot whose plane was hit by anti-aircraft in the attack on the Aleutians -- part of the Battle of Midway. He was killed when he crash-landed his plane in what he thought was a field but in fact was a bog on Akutan Island. His wingman was ordered to destroy the plane but fearing Koga was unconscious he disobeyed and returned to his carrier.

US intelligence analysts recovered the plane, learned its strengths and weaknesses, and saved many American pilot lives by teaching them how to defend against a Zero on their tail.

Good book. Quick read. I've blogged about the Battle of Midway in the posting entitled "June 4, 1942: The Battle of Midway Begins" at [...].

There aren't many reading this book, I would guess, who have actually stood on the spot where Tadayoshi Koga crash-landed his Zero on Akutan Island in June of 1942; thereby turning both himself and his airplane into an important historical event. A small stone cairn now marks the approximate site of Koga's demise. It wasn't there when I hiked up from the beach at Broad Bight in search of whatever I could find. Forty plus years after the fact, there wasn't much to see.

The recovery of this plane was an intelligence coup of the first order. Ten months into WW2, the Zero dominated the sky wherever it appeared, outflying every fighter we put up against it. The information gained from putting this plane back together and flying it saved the lives of a lot of American pilots.

Jim Reardon did a tremendous amount of research in the course of putting this book together. He and I were both in the Aleutians, and quite possibly even on Akutan, at the same time, but our paths never crossed. Not surprising, considering that he was working on a book and I was blasting large amounts of rock out of the hillside on the north side of Akutan harbor to provide Trident Seafoods with fill material for the construction and later on the expansion of their processing plant.

Ok, enough reminiscing and back to the book. For anyone interested in the the Aleutian campaign, this book is an essential companion to Brian Garfield's "Thousand Mile War." For the layman, these two works form the definitive account of that brutal 15 months. A certain amount of Reardon's book is information overload. The accounts of the Zero's role in the early months of the war in the Pacific could have been condensed into a single short chapter to emphasize the importance of the plane. Once he got to the actual downing, recovery and reconditioning of Koga's Zero, and the subsequent flight testing, things get much more interesting. Reardon is an accomplished writer, and his descriptions and observations are accurate, informative and eminently readable.

One thing did give me cause to wonder, however. In the epilogue, where he is describing his attempts to locate Koga's grave, he states that he was unable to find anyone either in Dutch Harbor or in Akutan Village who was willing to help him in his endeavors to get to the crash site, citing the swift tides and high waves around Akutan as the reason he had to charter a helicopter to fly him from Dutch Harbor to the beach at Broad Bight. This doesn't quite agree with my experience. For one thing, there were regular flights from Dutch Harbor to Akutan Village at that time. Also, the men I knew from Akutan Village were some of the finest small boat handlers I have ever seen anywhere. Weather permitting, a trip from Akutan Village around to the Beach at Broad Bight would have been nothing out of the ordinary for many of them. It certainly wasn't when they took me there, so I'm not sure why Reardon had so much trouble. It is also, I have been told, possible to reach the site by going overland southwest from the end of of Akutan Harbor. That would involve a pretty strenuous hike.