Australian Spitfires

[rldunn]

Troy and others,

I won't add too much to this except to say few people know the Japanese were not flying the latest model Zero against the Spitfires over Darwin. The 202 Kokutai had no model 22 Zeros during most of the the period it contested the Spitfires. It had few model 32s. Almost all the Zeros flown against the Spitfire were the model 21, essentially the initial 1940 version of the Zero. Several of the posts in this thread contain errors. The last Zero - Spitfire action over Darwin occured in Sept 43 not August as one post says. In the raid on 2 May 43 mentioned in one post, the Japanese actually suffered no aircraft shot down.

Much has been published on this subject yet much misinformation persists. Also regarding the comment that Spitfires were there to contest the bombers. This fails to consider that several of the Japanese missions were essentially fighters sweeps and that on other occasions certain Spitfire Squadrons were assigned to confront the fighters not the bombers.

RLD