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It was in the second war with China that the Zero earned its first battle honours. One of the features of this conflict was the Imperial Japanese Navy's increasingly long range bombing raids which often meant the bombers were without fighter escort for a substantial period of time. This in turn resulted in mounting bomber losses.
The deployment of an initial batch of six pre production A6M2 Model 11s to the 12th Combined Air Group (Rengo Kokutai) in central China at the end of July 1940 for land based combat evaluation trials began the process of reversing this trend and establishing the myth of invincibility that would quickly become part of the Zero's folklore.
Another nine A6M2s were added to the group's strength before operations began. The first mission was flown on 19 August 1940 when 12 Zeros escorted 51 bombers over the then enormous distance of 930 miles (1,500km) during a raid on Chungking, the capital of Nationalist China. There was no combat on that occasion but it was not long before the Zero scored its first kill.
On 13 September, 13 Zeros took on 27 Chinese Polikarpov I-152, I-153 and I-16 fighters near Chungking, the ten minute battle resulting in the destruction of the entire Chinese force for the loss of no Zeros. Wnt Off Koshiro Yashimata became Japan's first Zero 'ace' as a result of this action after claiming five victories. Of interest is the fact that the Japanese pilots could claim only 22 kills from this action as two of the Chinese aircraft had collided and three others were abandoned by their pilots as soon as combat was joined!
