[30 / 9 / 22]
You will never be a real Zero.
You have no Sakae, you have no retracting tailwheel, you have no extra super duralumin. You are a T-6 Texan twisted by hacks and mechanics into a crude mockery of Horikoshi's perfection.
All the showtime you get is because of gullible audiences who don't know any better. Behind your back the Japanese mock you. Your producers are merely content with you, your “wingmen” laugh at your ghastly canopy behind closed doors.
Pilots are utterly repulsed by you. Hundreds of hours of training have allowed pilots to pick out replicas with incredible efficiency. Even the best T-6 replicas look uncanny and unnatural to a pilot. Your outboard wing attach angle fairing is a dead giveaway. And even if you manage to trick an airboss into booking you for an airshow, they'll tell you to leave the second they hear the distinct sound of the R-1340.
You will never be happy. You wrench out a mock kamikaze every flight and tell yourself it’s going to be ok, but deep inside you realize you fly exactly like any other T-6, dwindling away like the rerun counts of your shows, ready to scrap you in obsolescence.
Eventually it’ll be too much to bear - your owner will sell you and buy a reconstruction Zero. You will be donated to a museum, heartbroken when they are let down by your true identity, but happy to accept you as a peculiar artifact of cinema. They’ll display you with a board marked as a "T-6 Texan," and every passerby for the rest of eternity will know a trainer is parked there. Your paint will decay and go back to trainer yellow, and all that will remain of your legacy is an airframe that is unmistakably North American.
This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no landing.
You have no Sakae, you have no retracting tailwheel, you have no extra super duralumin. You are a T-6 Texan twisted by hacks and mechanics into a crude mockery of Horikoshi's perfection.
All the showtime you get is because of gullible audiences who don't know any better. Behind your back the Japanese mock you. Your producers are merely content with you, your “wingmen” laugh at your ghastly canopy behind closed doors.
Pilots are utterly repulsed by you. Hundreds of hours of training have allowed pilots to pick out replicas with incredible efficiency. Even the best T-6 replicas look uncanny and unnatural to a pilot. Your outboard wing attach angle fairing is a dead giveaway. And even if you manage to trick an airboss into booking you for an airshow, they'll tell you to leave the second they hear the distinct sound of the R-1340.
You will never be happy. You wrench out a mock kamikaze every flight and tell yourself it’s going to be ok, but deep inside you realize you fly exactly like any other T-6, dwindling away like the rerun counts of your shows, ready to scrap you in obsolescence.
Eventually it’ll be too much to bear - your owner will sell you and buy a reconstruction Zero. You will be donated to a museum, heartbroken when they are let down by your true identity, but happy to accept you as a peculiar artifact of cinema. They’ll display you with a board marked as a "T-6 Texan," and every passerby for the rest of eternity will know a trainer is parked there. Your paint will decay and go back to trainer yellow, and all that will remain of your legacy is an airframe that is unmistakably North American.
This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no landing.
