page_title: Jiro Horikoshi
section_title: Aircraft designer
hierarchical_section_title: Jiro Horikoshi / Aircraft designer
caption_attribution_description: Employees of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. posed for the photograph on July, 1937. Yoshitoshi Sone (left), Jirō Horikoshi (center).
context_page_description: Jiro Horikoshi was the chief engineer of many Japanese fighter designs of World War II, including the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter.
context_section_description: Jiro Horikoshi's first work was the flawed Mitsubishi 1MF10, an experimental aircraft that never passed the prototype stage after some flight tests. However, lessons learned from this design led to the development of the far more successful Mitsubishi A5M (Allied codename "Claude") which entered mass production in 1936.
  In 1937, Horikoshi and his team at Mitsubishi were asked to design Prototype 12 (corresponding to the 12th year of the Shōwa era). Prototype 12 was completed in July 1940, and it was accepted by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Since 1940 was the Japanese year 2600, the new fighter was named as "Model 00" or "Zero" or A6M Zero, in Japan also known as the "Rei-sen" (literally meaning "zero fight", shortened for Model zero fighter airplane). Subsequently, he was involved with designing many other fighters manufactured by Mitsubishi, including the Mitsubishi J2M Raiden ("Thunderbolt") and the Mitsubishi A7M Reppu ("Strong gale").
caption: Horikoshi (center) and members of the A6M1 design team, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (July, 1937)
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