The Purifiers

The Japs have a new fighter, more formidable than the Zeros.* Maine's Senator Ralph 0. Brewster (see p. 13) declared last week that the ratio of U.S. air victories has begun to drop, that Major General Claire Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force flyers in China were so surprised by their first brush with Japan's new fighter that they lost five out of seven bombers.

Pilots in New Guinea said that the new plane was about the same size as the old Zeros (about 38-39 ft. wingspread, 28 ft. long); was powered by an in-line V-type engine (the various Zeros have radial, air-cooled engines); had armor; carried one 7.7-mm. machine gun in each wing and two 12.7-mm. machine guns in the nose. In armament, the Japs had evidently borrowed some ideas from the Americans' destructive .50-caliber machine guns, to which the 12.7 roughly corresponds. New Guinea flyers said that the newcomer could outdive the P-38 but could not outclimb it.

Navy flyers in the South Pacific reported that a "Type 3" Jap fighter, probably equipped with a self-sealing gas tank, did not burn and explode as readily as the light Zeros do. But they also said that Type 3 was no match for the new Vought Corsair.

There was no doubt that something new had been added to Japanese air power. Tokyo recently broadcast that three new types were in action. The types: a patrol plane, the Shite (the doer); a heavy bomber, the Donryu (the destroying dragon); and a fighter, the Shoki (Righteous Purifying Spirit). "In annihilation operations," Tokyo boasted, the new planes had "made the enemy America and Britain shiver with fear."

* There is no one "Zero"; there are several Army and Navy types varying slightly in armament, wing contours, performance.

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