impossible

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by edward allen

The P-38 also climbes pretty fast, but I still wouldn't try to outclimb a zero.

Depends on how its done, at best climb speed you will probably be meat on a platter in a short time. But if you climb fast then you will outclimb and outrun the Zero at the same time.

Originally Posted by edward allen

You can turn with them just fine above 200mph. But you only want to turn while you can pull lead.

Zeroes are nimble little buggers in the lower speed region, but at higher speeds they lose maneuverability a lot.
What is even worse than the high speed turn of the Zero is their high speed aileron response - and the P40/P39/F4F/F4U have good to excellent roll rates all along. And you can always use your roll rate to follow them turning, google "lag displacement roll"

Besides that, Ki-43 should turn as well as Zero, and nearly any biplane in this sim, too.

[IceFire]

This sounds like a comment from a P-38 pilot in World War II. The most interesting statement I read about Zero pilots was that they had great confidence (the veteran ones) at lower speeds managing very extremely tight turns...however, even veteran pilots felt that the Zero was not a competent turn fighter at higher speeds. The stick forces and maybe even the seat of the pants feel of the aircraft at that speed caused many of them to turn less than the maximum for the aircraft at that speed.

Compare and contrast to the P-38 which, although it has its flaws, was a solid airframe and pilots often felt confident in being able to turn the plane with no fears of overstressing the airframe. This is seat of the pants feel rather than true ultimate abilities of each.

So its possible and even likely that pilots flying the Zero at high speed felt more restricted in their turn rates than P-38 pilots and that closes the gap on how fast each could turn. Also keeping in mind were probably talking about a break turn... 90 degrees turn at most before breaking off. P-38 pilots were trained and most knew well enough not to engage in an actual turning battle.