An original Zero fighter aircraft used by the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II is gearing up for its first flight in Japan since the end of the war.
According to organizers of a project to put the plane back in the air, the long-range fighter was found in Papua New Guinea in the 1970s and thousands of hours have been spent repairing it. It was purchased by a Japanese owner in 2008 and had been kept in Anchorage before being shipped to Japan recently. Images of the plane in flight were used for the film “Pearl Harbor.”
Project organizer Zero Enterprise Inc. is in the process of filing the necessary papers to the transport ministry to gain approval for takeoff.
“We launched the project to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, so it would be ideal to have the Zero fighter take flight sometime this year. But there is a chance the ministry might not allow us to do so,” a spokesman at Zero Enterprise told Japan Real Time.
The spokesman said only about six Zero fighters in the world are still capable of flight, excluding replicas. Two different Zero fighters were flown in Japan in the 1970s and the 1990s, and they were likely the only postwar flights by Zero aircraft in the country, he said.
According to the National Museum of Nature and Science, the Zero fighter, created by the Mitsubishi industrial group, was one of the most advanced planes in the world when it was initially developed. More than 10,000 Zero fighters were manufactured in total.
In an article published in September 1942 in The Wall Street Journal, former Tokyo correspondent Ray Cromley chose the airplane as one of the military advantages with which Japan began the war against the U.S.
“The famous Zero has great speed, maneuverability. This was accomplished by sacrificing armament. This saves badly needed aluminum. It also makes the machine fragile. But men are cheap. Japan thus has turned a number of its weaknesses into strengths,” he wrote.
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