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Admiral Beez wrote:

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It still comes down to the pilot knowing and exploiting the weaknesses of the Zero. General Chennault trained his AVG pilots to take advantage of the P-40's good qualities versus the more nimble Zeros. On paper, a P-40 shouldn't stand a chance against a Zero, but in the right hands the Warhawk prevailed nicely.

The AVG never encountered Zeroes, only Japanese Army fighters and mostly Type 97's ('Nates'). They did do better against that same opposition than Brit/Dutch Buffalo and Hurricane units, or USAAC P-40's in the Philippines in their few encounters with JAAF fighters. The old 'Nate' held its own against all of them but was bested 3:1 by the AVG (per all actual combats for which results on both sides are known, added up). Tactics may have been one reason, but also the average military flying experience of AVG pilots was quite high compared to typical 'mass produced' wartime fighter units of most air arms, though OTOH only one AVG pilot had any previous combat experience which some Brit pilots in SEA in 1942 did have from Europe/Med. Anyway it's not directly relevant to the Zero.

I think in fact there's a myth of the myth of the Zero . Early war JNAF fighter units were very good, they didn't have in fact some simple achilles heal by which they could easily be defeated, that concept is IMO a fossilized holdover of Allied propaganda/morale booster accounts during the war, also based on exaggerated Allied claims (though unlike some people today, the Allies knew a lot of those claims were exaggerated via codebreaking). The unit encountered over Darwin in 1943, the 202nd Air Group, had compiled an excellent record in 1942 (as the 3rd AG) and hadn't been committed to the Solomons in meantime, had at least a fair nucleus of the same pilots. It just wasn't easy to beat; It had had months to consider the hit and run tactics 49th FG P-40's used against it over Darwin in 1942 with occasional success (though much less than was claimed). And of course the IJN's own preferred fighter doctrine based on China pre Dec '41 was to emphasize hit and run tactics with close cooperation among pilots of the 3 plane 'shotai' (though both hit and run and aerobatic type tactics were observed in 1942). It's not surprising IMO that the change in tactics by Spits, which they claimed to have made in the later combats of that series over several months in 1943, didn't reverse the situation. They were up against a very good fighter unit. The relatively moderate, in the big scheme of things, differences in Spit V and P-40 performance were probably not that important (as noted above the RAAF considered those two types about equal at low-med altitude, and the Spit was notoriously more sensitive to primitive field conditions).

Back to 'Dogfights' they don't want to challenge the accounts of the pilots from whose side they are telling the story. They'd probably love incidents documented from both sides to match what the claiming pilot perceived, but those are rare. Again some of their best known episodes 'document' outcomes the other side specifically says didn't happen that way. In cases of 'ship dogfights' each side got over the fact that they'd overclaimed a long time ago (eg. the claims at the time for the Solomons surface actions were highly overstated, but no one even remembers those claims now). In the air case the TV show might be viewed as the ones bringing up the discrepancy, being 'revisionists' (even if countering info has been in print for years it's usually not as well known). They don't want to be in that position. It's somewhat understandable, but junk history nonetheless.

Joe