The Eternal Zero

by Naoki Hyakuta

  I spoke first: “Sir, I heard that my grandfather was a cowardly pilot.”

  Ito gave me a puzzled look. “Cowardly? Miyabe?” he repeated the word as a question. Yet he didn’t refute it. Then he looked up, seemingly a bit lost in thought. “Well, to be sure, I don’t think that Miyabe was a particularly heroic pilot. But he definitely was an excellent one.”

  * * *

  —

  As I told you over the phone, I don’t have many memories of Miyabe. Of course, I did converse with him. But it was over sixty years ago, and it’s not easy to recall every little thing.

  I fought alongside Miyabe for over half a year, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the Battle of Midway. We were both crewmembers on the carrier Akagi.

  Short for “aircraft carrier,” a carrier is a warship loaded with planes. A small airstrip spans the length of the ship so planes can take off and land. The Akagi was the strongest warship of the Greater East Asian War.

  After graduating from higher primary school, I enrolled in the Naval Preparatory Flight Training Program. I had grown up seeing the Iwakuni Naval Air Unit’s planes near my childhood home and longed to become a pilot. I was a military brat of sorts. At the time the preparatory flight training program was very popular and the acceptance rate was about one out of a hundred. I jumped for joy when they took me. My program was distinct from the pilot-in-training course. The prep program’s graduates entered the Navy as pilots, whereas the pilot-in-training course recruited sailors and turned them into pilots. Miyabe was a graduate of the latter.

  After completing flight training I was ordered to the Yokosuka Naval Air Corps. I was with them for over two years before joining the crew of the Akagi in the spring of 1941. It was there that I flew the new state-of-the-art fighter. Yes, the Zero. We generally called it “the new-model fighter” or the reisen (Zero fighter).

  Why was it called the reisen, you ask?

  The nickname comes from the last digit of the Imperial Year 2600, when it formally entered service. Imperial Year 2600 was 1940. Nobody uses the Imperial calendar these days. Similarly, the Navy Type 99 carrier-based bomber was introduced the year before, in Imperial Year 2599. And two years prior, Imperial Year 2597, saw the introduction of the Type 97 carrier-based attacker. All three of these planes played major roles in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Zero’s official name was the Mitsubishi Type Zero Carrier-Based Fighter Plane.

  The Zero was an incredible aircraft. Its combat performance was a full cut above the rest. Most impressive were its turning and looping abilities. It had a very small turning radius. That’s why it was unbeatable in a dogfight. It was also very fast. In the early days of the war at least, I think it was probably the fastest aircraft in the world. In essence, it had both speed and maneuverability.

  Typically, those two factors ran counter to each other. If too much emphasis was placed on combat performance, an aircraft’s speed would drop. And if speed was the focus, then combat performance would suffer. But the Zero was a magical plane that somehow managed to excel in both areas. They say it was made possible thanks to the blood and sweat of two passionate young engineers, Jiro Horikoshi and Yoshitoshi Sone.

  In addition to the standard 7.7-mm machine guns it was armed with powerful 20-mm cannons. The 7.7-mm guns could only put holes in airplanes, but the cannons were loaded with shells that exploded upon contact. You could blow apart an enemy plane with one shot. The cannons’ slow muzzle velocity and low-capacity magazine were their weaknesses, though.

  But the Zero’s truly formidable weapon was its incredible cruising range. It could easily cover 3,000 kilometers. Most single-seat fighters at the time had a range of only a few hundred kilometers, so surely you can see how overwhelming a 3,000-kilometer range was in comparison.

  This is a digression, but in the end, Germany was unable to defeat England. That’s because the Germans had a weak navy. They made up for it by bombing England in the Battle of Britain. Nearly every day, German bombers crossed the Straits of Dover to assault England, but the Royal Air Force waged an all-out counterattack and eventually forced the Luftwaffe to abandon their air raids.

  The Luftwaffe was defeated by the RAF because its bombers weren’t sufficiently protected by fighter planes. Laden with heavy explosives, bombers lack both speed and agility, rendering them helpless against nimble fighters. That’s why bombers need escorts, but the Luftwaffe’s fighter planes weren’t quite up to the task.

  The Germans had an excellent fighter plane in the Messerschmitt, but it had a fatal flaw: a very short flight range, which meant it could only spend a few minutes fighting in British airspace. If a dogfight dragged out for too long, it was unable to get back across the Strait of Dover and plunged into the sea. Struggling to complete a round-trip crossing of a mere forty-kilometer strait…

  In comparison, a Zero could have fought in the skies above London for over an hour and established total air supremacy. It’s an absurd supposition, but if the Germans had had Zeros, England would have suffered terribly.

  The Zero was designed to have such a long flight range because it was a requirement for a fighter that had to do battle above the vast Pacific Ocean. An emergency landing on water meant death, which is why the Zero had to be able to fly continuously for 3,000 kilometers. Battles over China’s immense landmass was also part of the picture. An emergency landing there meant death just like on the ocean.

  Warriors of old used to say that a fine horse can gallop a thousand miles out and back home again. The Zero was indeed a fine horse. It was an unparalleled fighter that combined the virtues of superior combat performance, speed, and an incredible flight range. And the most surprising aspect was that the Zeros were not land-based fighters but rather could take off from and land on narrow carrier decks.

  Back then, Japan’s industrial capability was considered much inferior to that of the West, yet out of nowhere it produced a fighter that set a new world standard. This is something that Japanese should really be proud of.

  Experiencing war is certainly nothing to brag about. But even now, rushing about in the great skies in a Zero is one of my proudest achievements. I’ll be eighty-five this year. In the span of such a long life, the time I spent piloting a Zero, not even two full years, is but a brief period. But those two years were so very fulfilling, and they’ve only taken on a greater significance in the twilight of my life.

  Whoops. I got carried away a bit. There’s no point in telling such things to a young person. Even I forgot about my experiences as a fighter pilot once the war was over. It was all I could do to put food on the table, and I devoted myself to providing for my family. I really worked my tail off.

  Perhaps it’s that in old age I can look back on my life and notice the brilliance of my youth. Probably when you’ve grown old, too, you’ll look back on your life and see yourself as you stand now from a totally different perspective.

  Sorry, I wandered off the subject.

  * * *

  —

  Miyabe joined the crew of the Akagi in the summer of 1941 after serving in China. Several pilots who had fought in China were transferred to the aircraft carrier around the same time.

  The first thing they practiced after joining the crew was landing on the carrier deck. Unlike runways on land, it’s extremely difficult to touch down on a carrier as it pitches and rolls on the sea. It was daunting to many pilots who had never done it before.

  Navy aircraft differed from Army planes in that they basically used a three-point landing. This was in order to catch the arresting cables strung across the deck with the plane’s tail hook. If the hook failed to catch the wire cables, then there was no landing on the short deck.

  But in order to execute a three-point landing, you needed to raise the aircraft’s nose just before landing. The nose would then obstruct your view, forcing you to rely solely on intuition to find the unseen deck. Rush the landing and you cr
ashed into the stern. If you feared that and got over-cautious, your hook missed the arresting gear and you collided with the brake plate installed near the bow. In the worst-case scenario, you fell off the front of the ship into the ocean. In fact, it wasn’t rare to see planes screw up their landings and plunge into the drink. For this reason, destroyers called “dragonfly catchers” were on stand-by right behind the carrier during landing drills. Planes that ended up in the ocean were hauled up by cranes, making them look like captured dragonflies.

  Incidentally, though it seldom happened, the arresting cables could snap, which was terrifying. The severed cable would turn into a whip that raced down the length of the carrier deck. I witnessed a crewmember’s leg get sliced off in such an incident. I was unable to eat for the rest of that day. I would go on to witness countless harrowing scenes on the front, and developed a tougher stomach…

  We went onto the deck to watch the carrier landing drills of the newly transferred pilots in order to observe their skills. As expected, their first landings were a mess. They were all seasoned pilots who had fought in China, and while most of them somehow managed to put their planes on the deck, there were some who fell into the ocean. We split our sides laughing at them.

  But there was one among them who pulled off a top-notch landing. He approached at a shallow angle and gently set the plane down near the middle of the deck, caught the arresting cable closest to the bow, and came to a stop right before the brake plate. It was an ideal landing.

  There were about ten arresting cables strung across the deck, starting aft and progressing forward. Catching the foremost cable and coming to a stop certainly made it easier for the deck crew to maneuver the aircraft out of the way, allowing other planes to come in for landings almost immediately. But it was a highly risky move, because if a pilot failed to catch the final cable, he would crash into the brake plate or fall off the bow. But that plane easily caught the foremost cable.

  “Holy mackerel,” we marveled. And that pilot was Miyabe.

  “That’s gotta be a damn fluke,” someone said.

  I called out to Miyabe after he completed his landing. As we were both Flight Petty Officers 1st Class, I didn’t need to stand on ceremony, but it was also because I stood in awe of his display of skill. Miyabe was tall, probably close to six feet in height.

  “That was really top-notch.”

  Miyabe gave a cheerful smile in reply, a very affable smile, and said, “That was my first carrier landing, but I managed thanks to following my senior aviators’ instructions.”

  A pilot must have a really keen awareness of his aircraft to be able to pull off such a landing on the first try. At that point I had done over thirty carrier landings but still got nervous each time.

  “I don’t know anything about carriers, so please look after me,” Miyabe said and bowed his head.

  I was slightly taken aback because it was odd to hear anyone in the military talk that way. Of course, we were polite when we addressed our superiors. We had to be, or else they’d strike us. But Miyabe used the same form of speech with those of his own rank, and even those who ranked beneath him. Such people were rare specimens in the Imperial Navy.

  His polite speech was probably the reason he was looked down on by much of the other aircrew. The Navy was a rough-and-tumble place, and I’ll not mince words, aviators especially were a bunch of punks. The fact that we led such a precarious existence likely contributed a great deal to this. Most young men developed an attitude in that milieu, but Miyabe was different.

  I somehow took to Miyabe the moment I met him. I was a hotheaded roughneck given to fighting with my squadron mates. Perhaps it was a case of opposites attracting.

  Some of the lower-ranking crewmembers treated Miyabe with disdain, too, but he never let it bother him, always answering them politely, which only served to fuel their scorn. But nobody ever made fun of him to his face because they knew his skills as a pilot were first rate.

  After his first landing, some sarcastic crew had said, “That’s gotta be a damn fluke,” but that was incorrect. Miyabe continued to land right near the bow of the ship. In time, a Miyabe landing became a must-see event for many of the crew. It’s possible that he was the most adept pilot at carrier landings in the entire Imperial Navy.

  Of course, landing skills didn’t equal combat skills, but Miyabe was just as impressive in mock dogfights. Apparently, he’d downed over a dozen enemy planes over the Chinese mainland. Back then, anyone with five or more kills was considered a mosa, a stalwart. Overseas they’re called “ace” pilots, yes?

  In Miyabe’s case, the disparity between his flying accomplishments and his everyday demeanor invited much malicious talk behind his back.

  * * *

  —

  For you to better understand our battles, I should probably explain the difference between attack bombers and dive bombers. You might not be familiar with the terms, but on both the Japanese and American sides, no other aircraft fought costlier or tougher battles than those bombers. And their crews had the highest fatality rate.

  Attack bombers were three-seat carrier-based planes generally used in torpedo attacks. Torpedoes weren’t only used by submarines. These were the most dreaded type of attack for a warship because they could tear open the hull, causing water to gush in and sink her. The so-called unsinkable battleships Yamato and Musashi both suffered that fate.

  Dive bombers were two-seat carrier-based planes chiefly used in dive bombings. Those, too, were fearsome. Diving from a height of 2,000 meters, the planes dropped bombs that crashed through the deck and exploded inside the ship. A warship was filled with explosives, fuel, and such. If any of it caught fire, the result was catastrophic. If the ship’s propulsion system was hit and exploded, the damage was fatal.

  Warships were fitted with anti-aircraft cannons and machine guns to repel aerial attacks, but this was quite a challenge. Using cannons and machine guns to shoot down an aircraft flying at over 150 meters per second was a tall order.

  That is why fighters were the most effective defense against attack or dive bombers. The fighters would shoot down the bombers before they had a chance to attack the ship. As I said before, bomber planes were loaded with heavy bombs and torpedoes, so they were practically defenseless in the face of light, nimble fighters. Thus they flew with fighter escorts. Carrier-based fighters had two missions: protecting the fleet from hostile bombers and escorting friendly bombers to their targets.

  Miyabe and I were fighter pilots.

  * * *

  —

  We began an extremely intense training regimen from the moment we boarded the Akagi. For months we were worked nearly to death with literally no rest. Yes, the infamous MMTWThFF. During that time, the number of flight hours completed by pilots with the First and Second Carrier Divisions easily exceeded 1,000 hours each. We were all super-veterans, the mightiest outfit in the world, if I do say so myself, the world’s best pilots flying the world’s best aircraft.

  It was the middle of November when the carrier group completed intensive training, gathered in Saeki Bay, and set course to the north. The aircrew was furnished with winter clothes, but they didn’t tell us anything about our destination. We sensed that something special was in the works but had no idea as to the specifics. We were in the thick of the Sino-Japanese War at the time, and the Chinese alone were giving us plenty of trouble. We knew, however, that America and Britain were putting terrific pressure on Japan. Our allies the Germans were already fighting the British, so there was a sense that we, too, would end up fighting the Allied forces. Plus, the Navy had for a long time run drills where the hypothetical enemy was the United States.

  * * *

  —

  We reached Hitokappu Bay on Iturup Island. The Sea of Okhotsk was frigid in November. A large number of military vessels of the Navy’s Combined Fleet assembled in the freezing mist. It was quite a sp
ectacle.

  Then, on November 26th, once the entire aircrew from all the carriers was gathered together, the flight commander announced, “Simultaneously with a declaration of war, we will attack the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.”

  I was astonished but at the same time thought, “So the time has come at last.” My whole body brimmed with tension like never before. I’m sure that all the other aircrew felt the same. No one even flinched at the thought of attacking Pearl Harbor. Everyone looked forward to making the hated Americans froth at their mouths.

  After that, they announced our individual assignments for the mission. My name wasn’t on the list of members of the attack force. Everything before my eyes went black. I was being delegated to combat air patrol. I would be milling in the skies above the fleet and protecting my mothership from hostile aircraft.

  I tearfully begged the commander to let me join the attack force. Even though I knew that it wouldn’t change a thing, I just couldn’t accept it without complaint. Other aircrew excluded from the attack force or assigned to the reserve component were crying and pleading with the commander too. That night, several fights broke out among the pilots. I understood how they felt. We had all undergone excruciating training just for that day. If the operation was successful, even if it resulted in our deaths we’d have no regrets. There were some particularly intense displays of dejection among the attack and dive bomber pilots who found themselves in the reserve component.

  That night, Miyabe called out to me on the afterdeck. There were two decks under the flight deck, fore and aft, reminders that the Akagi had originally been designed as a battle cruiser before it was rebuilt as an aircraft carrier.

  “Ito-san, CAP is a very important mission.” Miyabe had been chosen to participate in the first attack wave.

  “Can’t you understand my disappointment?” I shot back.