Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Mitsubishi Zero

And others

There were a few American-built planes that uses a lot of magnesium, but none that I can recall that actually entered service. Northrop tried magnesium in several designs. The prototypes of the P-61 Black Widow night fighter used welded magnesium in the tail booms, but that was dropped in favor of aluminum for production versions. Their P-56 Black Bullet was all magnesium. Perhaps the most extreme example was the Northrop XP-79B Flying Ram, a plane made almost completely out of magnesium. The plane was designed to deliberately ram into the tail of enemy planes. It flew exactly one time, crashing after 14 minutes and killing the test pilot.

The A6M Zero caught fire for many reasons. For example, it had almost no armor* and lacked self sealing fuel tanks. It was a very lightweight plane with exceptional maneuverability, but a quick burst from machine guns firing tracers would quickly kill the pilot and/or light the plane on fire. I honestly don't know if magnesium contributed much to the fire hazard. Many Japanese planes of the war had similar flamable tendencies.

*Japanese pilots didn't want to give up any maneuverability in the name of pilot protection. Many of them refused to wear parachutes because they interfered with movement in the cockpit. Yes, they were indeed very brave, but suffered a terrible fatality rate.

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