Survivors
Several Zero fighters survived the war and are on display in Japan (in Aichi, Tokyo's Yasukuni War Museum, Kure's Yamato Museum, Hamamatsu, MCAS Iwakuni, and Shizuoka), China (in Beijing), United States (at the National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of the United States Air Force, the National Museum of Naval Aviation, the Pacific Aviation Museum, the San Diego Air and Space Museum), and the UK (Duxford) as well as the Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand. A restored A6M2-21 (V-173 retrieved as a wreck after the war, and later found to have been flown by SaburÅ Sakai at Lae) is on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. A little known museum, the Museum Dirgantara Mandala in Yogyakarta, Indonesia has an A6M in its collection.
Another aircraft recovered by the Australian War Memorial Museum in the early 1970s now belongs to Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida. Along with several other Zeros it was found near Rabaul in the South Pacific. The markings suggest that it was in service after June 1943 and further investigation suggests that it has cockpit features conducive to the Nakashima built model 52b. If this is correct, it is most likely one of the 123 aircraft lost by the Japanese during the assault of Rabaul. The aircraft was shipped in pieces to the attraction and it was eventually made up for display as a crashed aircraft. Much of the aircraft is usable for patterns and some of its parts can be restored to one day make this a basis for a flyable aircraft.
Only three flyable Zero airframes exist; two have had their engines replaced with similar American units; only one, the Planes of Fame Museum's A6M5 example, bearing tail number "61-120" has the original Sakae engine, as seen in a flight demonstration video of this aircraft.
Although not truly a survivor, the "Blayd" Zero is a reconstruction based on templating original Zero components recovered from the South Pacific. In order to be considered a "restoration," the builders used a small fraction of parts from original Zero landing gear in the reconstruction. The aircraft is now on display at the Fargo Air Museum in Fargo, North Dakota.
The Commemorative Air Force's A6M3 was recovered from Babo Airfield, New Guinea, in 1991. It was partially restored from several A6M3s in Russia, then brought to the United States for restoration. The aircraft was re-registered in 1998 and displayed at the Museum of Flying in Santa Monica, California. It currently uses a Pratt & Whitney R1830 engine.
The rarity of flyable Zeros accounts for the use of single-seat North American T-6 Texans, modified externally and painted in Japanese markings, to stand in for the fighter in the films Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Final Countdown, and many other television and film depictions of the aircraft, such as Baa Baa Black Sheep (renamed Black Sheep Squadron). One Model 52 was used during the production of Pearl Harbor.
Read more about this topic: Mitsubishi A6M Zero
Famous quotes containing the word survivors:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)