Mitsubishi A6M7 Model 63 , 82729 "210-118B"
History
The aircraft preserved at the Yamato Museum is an A6M7 variant, one of the final wartime developments of the Zero series. The A6M7 Model 63 was designed in 1945 as a fighter-bomber and dive-bomber adaptation. It could carry a 250-kg bomb beneath the fuselage and was increasingly associated with special attack, or kamikaze, missions during the final months of the war. Production of the type began very late in the conflict, around May 1945.
This specific aircraft carried the tail code "210-118B" and belonged to the 210th Naval Air Group (210th Kokutai), a Japanese naval aviation unit that operated during the desperate final defense of Japan in 1945. According to museum and aviation records, the aircraft was based at Meiji Airfield in Aichi Prefecture before being assigned to operations supporting the defense of southern Japan during the Okinawa campaign.
On 6 August 1945 — the same day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima — the aircraft suffered engine trouble during flight and crashed into Lake Biwa. The pilot survived the incident. The wreck remained underwater for more than three decades before being recovered in January 1978.
After recovery, the aircraft underwent a careful restoration process. Former pilot Sub-Lieutenant Tsuneo Azuma reportedly assisted with identifying details and helping restore the aircraft authentically. Because so few original A6M7 aircraft survived the war, the restoration of 210-118B became highly significant for aviation historians and museums.
The aircraft is now displayed at the Yamato Museum, also known as the Kure Maritime Museum. The museum focuses on the naval and industrial history of Kure, once one of the principal naval bases of Imperial Japan and the construction site of the battleship Yamato. The Zero is exhibited alongside other wartime naval artifacts, including submarines, torpedoes, and scale models of Japanese warships.
The surviving aircraft's manufacturer number is recorded as 82729, making it one of the few authentic late-war Zero fighters preserved anywhere in the world. Aviation historians consider it especially valuable because genuine A6M7 aircraft are extremely rare, and many surviving "Zero" displays elsewhere are reconstructed from wreckage or are earlier variants.