Zero Above the Pacific

The picture of the dogfight between the Zero and Corsair leaves out a lot of the details, so I'm putting up larger individual versions for each fighter.

Anyways, WWII aircraft were really cool. The Zero-Sen was an elegant little plane built by the Japanese during WWII. Because Japan had recently industrialized they had little experience with engines and were forced to build the Zero around a very small 1,100 hp engine (compare that to the near 3,000 hp of the Corsair). However, by removing all armor and finely tuning the aerodynamics they were able to turn the little Zero into a highly maneuverable fighter that was on par with (and superior in some ways) to the planes of other countries. Unfortunately for the Zero, the bombing of Japanese companies stopped improvements and by the end of the war the Zero was outclassesd by the newer and improved American fighters. Most were doomed to be spent in Kamikaze crashes.

I think it's a very pretty plane though. A very simple but very clever design.

Done in Photoshop 6.0 with a tablet and a scanned sketch for reference. I really enjoy using my tablet, but I just can't seem to sketch well with it so I usually use a scanned pencil sketch.

I updated the "death above the pacific" and the corsair picture, so if you want to see the changes check them out.