US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

392 Amphibians Came To Conquer
Support for the existence of this factor at this 1942 date is found in the
following passage by a historian of Marine Corps Aviation:
. . . It is necessary to remember th~t the Japmese Zero at this stage of the
war was regarded with some of the awe in which the atomic bomb came to be
held later. U. S. fighter pilots were apt to go into combat with a distinct
inferiority complex. Tales from the Pacific had filtered back to the U. S. . . .
which attributed to the Zero (and the Japanese pilots) a sort of malevolent
perfection. . . . The Japanese fighter plane had not been mastered at Coral
Se~ nor Midway . . . and the Zero certainly lost none of its prowess there.s3
Lieutenant Commander John S. Thach, USN, Commanding Fighting
Squadron Three in the Satatoga on 6-7 August 1942 and a veteran of Mid-
way, as well as the Marshall Islands and Salamaua-Lae attacks, said in ‘