零戦 その誕生と栄光の記録

An engineer's view of the Zero as an engineering/design project

This is an account of the Mitsubishi Zero fighter plane, written by its chief designer. I picked it up on a recent trip to Japan, shortly after seeing the new Ghibli film Kaze Tachinu; it was originally written in 1970, so this was a rerelease by the publisher to coincide with the film.

The book divides broadly into two parts: in the first half, Horikoshi recounts the birth of the Zero, starting with the initial impossible-seeming design brief from the military, working through design and engineering problems up to the initial test flights and subsequent modifications. He also describes two test flight accidents that resulted in the deaths of the test pilots and led to design fixes. The second half narrates the Zero's fortunes during WWII, and its arc from initial overwhelming successes through to later difficulties as the US was able to produce newer fighters with better engines that could outperform the Zero. It ends with a defence of the plane against some of its critics, and with the point that the Zero demonstrates that Japanese technologists are capable of true leading edge design and innovation, not mere copying and emulation of other countries' research (an argument which was no doubt current in 1970).

Comparing this book with Miyazaki's film, the key difference is that Miyazaki is telling a story about people, one of whom happens to be an aircraft designer, whereas Horikoshi is very much an engineer telling a story about an engineering project. He doesn't give us very much detail about his personal life or family, though he does mention that he had periods of ill health that forced him to take extended periods of time off from his work following the completion of the Zero's design. He doesn't go too deeply into technical detail, but there is quite a bit of technical vocabulary; mostly this is not too hard to pick up based on the kanji assuming you know roughly how an aeroplane works. If you prefer to look up meanings and readings for every unknown word you encounter you'll probably find this book slower going, though.

I enjoyed reading this book, and while I was reading I found myself thinking about whether a fighter plane designer bears any moral responsibility for what is done with the weapons they produce (largely prompted by the fact that the book stays firmly clear of this sort of ethical question, though it seems that since the Japanese Government had fairly strict news and information control Horikoshi didn't actually know much about the progress of the war while it was going on.). I'm still not sure what my view on that is, beyond that it seems to me that if the UK is allowed to glorify the Spitfire it seems only fair that Japan should be able to be proud of the Zero.