Board Thread:Wikia Discussion/@comment-25683568-20150318062713/@comment-25683568-20151106032138

By common sense. 零式艦戦 is a formal complete designation. So Type 0 Fighter is more accurate. Whereas 零戦 is a contraction of that designation (the japanese love to abbreviate), taking the　零, zero, and 戦, which in military aviation is often used to represent "fighter" (and indeed you can see this kanji on the equipment icon for Carrier-based Fighters). Therefore 零戦 can be accurately translated as Zero Fighter, and in the process, preserves the difference in the original Japanese text.

This convention was also implemented ages ago with the translation changes that came with the Lua system. I even made special note of it, and no-one objected.

It's not changing unless you have a really damn good reason.