Hi roycv;
First of all,thank you so much for your friendly comment on my previous post.
As for WW2 Japanese warplanes and their pilots,I understood like you mentioned.
Design concept was focused mainly on long range flight capability and dog fight maneuverability for which
a plane must be as light as possible.A light plane is normally able to load more fuel to fly a long distance as over the ocean
like the Pacific or the continent.For these purposes and traditional Japanese way of thinking about disregarding peoples'
lives,no self sealing structure around fuel tanks and no special protection for a pilot and his parachute were too natural for the
military leaders of Japan in pre-war days.What is worse,Japanese soldiers long have been educated not to return alive to the country from the battle fields.
"The soldiers should be die for their Emperor and HIS nation if required...."
This will be an origin or the background of the above mentioned.
I suppose Christian countries may never think and believe such thoughts as above....
By the way,I also have become slow and sedate in recent years as I was born in a few years later the end of WW2
and therefore I have spent much time in operating RC boats rather than building them.
I already have many RC model boats, tanks,RC cars and Rc planes by which there is hardly enough space to store.!
I don't know how long I am able to enjoy the RC models to come in the future with these models to which I poured
the huge amount of time and money so far...Unless I enjoy operating the models NOW,I wonder why I made them seriously.
I "ll show you an interesting pic for you tonight.
The center old man is so famous Japanese Zero fighter pilot Saburo Sakai around 83 years old at this stage,who is well-known as to shoot down 64 enemy planes,max record as a Japanese pilot survived the WW2.He passed away some years later.
Right is also a pilot of Navy interceptor Shidenkai("George"by US code name)
Left is,of course,me when too young.
The airplane is my George at 1/9 scale.