Pity me. And the other 150,000 morons who waited in-line for the gates to open for an hour, walked over a mile to the flight line. shot pics for 4 hours, and then crawled a couple of miles back to the car, (in my case to do a second shot at the botanical gardens). I am...so...sore!

Mitsubishi Zero?

Yeppers!

This is one of my fav planes from WWII. The P-51 'Stang and the A6M Zero. Too bad they had to fight against each other.

Now is that really a Zero or is it another plane made out to look like a zero.

I now we reworked a batch for TORA, TORA, TORA, but they claim this was authentic. I'm reserving judgement until I get some research done.

Okay. These days its pretty hard to tell if it's orginal, reproduction, or some other plane painted to look like one.

Yeah that's a T-6 Texan through and through. A6Ms are rather more elegant, standing on higher gear. The biggest giveaway for a Texan though is the fairings for the knock-down outer wing panels. T-6 has a two spar rectangular center section with no dihedral and removable (rail transport requirement initial design) outer wing panels with single spars. Outer wing panels were changed a few times through series production.

Zeros have a nice long slim wing with uninterrupted dihedral from root to tip, with the last foot or two of the wingtip folding. Didn't help deck stowage, but a full folding wing would've increased the weight, which is the last thing a Zero needed.