User blog comment:WolfgangBSC/The Random Chat Room/@comment-13740085-20160430020630/@comment-24142455-20160509041935

Harb, Zeroes were fragile as hell, especially in a dive. F4F is durable.mBeing heavy aircraft with small control surfaces and big engines, American planes invariably dove like rockets. The Zero could not catch a Wildcat in a dive, and sane pilots never tried...

because the Zero had serious, often lethal, compressability problems. In a dive its large control surfaces would lock up and the stick froze as if it were rooted in concrete. All the pilot could do was throttle back and hope the denser air at lower altitudes would allow him to level out.

The F4F had two advantages basically, it could dive longer (Zero was to fragile to keep diving on high speeds as said before) and it was virtually invulnerable to the Type 97 guns (7.7mm) mounted on the zero. The fact that Type 99 cannons were also sh8tty was not helping much.

AND there is the thatch weave..... So story time!

There was six Wildcats under the command of Jimmy Thach. Two of his fighters were flying 500 ft. above and directly below. ... Thach's own foursome trailed further behind, and some 2,000 ft higher.

Thach est. that 15 to 20 Zeroes from Kido Butai's CAP attack his division of Wildcats. He lost one quickly to an enemy Zeke ... the faster Zeros penned the Wildcats and it looked like another quick, routine victory for Kido Butai's Kansen pilots.

Then, Jimmy Thach boldly bet his life & those of his remaining men to a new defenseive tactic. He implemented the 'Thach Weave'.

For the next 25 minutes, Thach's two-element div. was under constant attack by a bevy of Zekes. The three remaining Wildcats used Thach's weaving tactics to shoo away any Zero trying to get behind any other Wildcat's tail and likewise take a snapshot fire against the Zeros in the closed head-on attacks.

This tactic shocked the Japanese. Not only did this maneuver allow Thach & his two wingmen to survive the numerous assaults, they were able to shoot down three Zekes in the process.

This time, in increasing levels of frustration in their inability to get an edge over the constantly maneuvring Grummans that cover each other's tail & took snapshots at them, this was the first concrete measure in which American Fighters were meet and fought their Japanese counterparts to a near standstill & still able to prevail a tiny bit. It was a sensation that Nagumo's Kansen pilots didn't relished. Also, 6 .50 cals love to eat zeros