The Eternal Zero

by Naoki Hyakuta

  “That was mature of them,” PO1 Ohta admitted of the Allies’ bigness.

  A few days later, they sent bombers to hit our base at Lae. But I heard their planes also dropped copies of a letter that read: “Your formation loop the other day was spectacular. We’re ready to welcome your next visit.”

  This happened between bouts of mortal combat, but it only ever did because the Rabaul aircrew were so skilled.

  I think Rabaul Air Corps’ Zero fighter force was truly the best in the world at that point in time.

  * * *

  —

  Miyabe-san came to Lae in mid-July that year. Around then, aircrew arrived intermittently from the interior, and some had served on carriers.

  It was never announced, but rumors quietly spread among aircrew that we had lost four carriers at Midway. We thought it was dreadful, but the news didn’t carry a real sense of danger. We were practically invincible, and we were hardly scared of American and British fighter planes. We figured we’d never lose so long as we had the Zero.

  I’d heard that the newly arrived aircrew included fighter pilots from the First Carrier Division, and that stirred up a spirit of rivalry in us. Sure, carrier pilots had to be excellent, but it wasn’t like they saw aerial combat every day. We felt something akin to pride over the fact that we were risking our lives day in, day out. And to be honest, we thought that they wouldn’t have screwed up so badly and lost their carriers if they were indeed so excellent.

  Guided by medium bombers, Miyabe-san and the others flew Zeros from the mainland, arriving at Rabaul on a 6,000-kilometer course via Taiwan, the Philippines, and Truk Lagoon. After we were dismissed from the official welcome-aboard for them, one of the pilots called out to me.

  “I’m looking forward to working with you,” he said. It was Miyabe-san.

  He was a tall man. I glanced at his insignia and saw that he was a Flight Petty Officer 1st Class, the highest subordinate rank.

  Flustered, I raised my voice and replied, “The pleasure’s all mine, sir.”

  Miyabe-san smiled. “So how do you fight here in Rabaul?”

  “Yes,” I said, unsure as to how to reply.

  “How do the enemy fighter pilots fight?”

  “They are rather not bad either, sir.”

  “Interesting. I look forward to hearing all about it.”

  I was greatly puzzled by his politeness. Rank was everything in the armed forces. There was an enormous gap between a Flight Petty Officer 1st Class and a Flight Seaman 1st Class.

  I could only reply loudly, “Flight Seaman 1st Class Izaki, sir!”

  “FS1 Izaki, is it? I’m FPO1 Kyuzo Miyabe. Think well of me, please,” Miyabe-san said, slightly bowing his head.

  I had no idea how to respond. My military career wasn’t long by any means, but I had never before met a superior like him. I figured he was either extremely well-bred or a fool.

  “Flight Petty Officer Miyabe, sir. If I may ask, were you on an aircraft carrier?”

  He momentarily clammed up. I immediately realized that what had happened at Midway was a military secret and was about to quickly change the subject, but he spoke first.

  “Yes, I was on the Akagi,” he said, following it up straightaway with, “But that’s no longer a possibility.”

  The rumors were true, then, I thought.

  “Don’t take the U.S. forces lightly. They are formidable opponents,” he stated firmly.

  I couldn’t press him for details. We fell into a brief silence, after which I informed him about our standard method of aerial combat. I told him that the other side preferred fighting air battles in formation, just as we did, and that they sought opportunities for surprise attacks. I explained how they sometimes waited for the moment we were regrouping after an air raid. Miyabe-san listened intently to everything I said.

  His attitude was wholly unexpected. More than a few veteran pilots who had fought in China were extremely proud of their records and didn’t care to listen to anything aircrew like me had to say. There, most air battles were one-on-one dogfights, but here the enemy attacked in formation, using radios to coordinate among themselves. Many a veteran pilot downplayed this and chased an enemy too far, believing it would be no different from their engagements in China, only to be taken out by a third plane.

  * * *

  —

  The next day we sortied to Port Moresby. We the tactical air control team consisted of three flights, or nine planes. Miyabe-san was PO1 Hashimoto’s plane two, me the third man.

  The skies over New Guinea were dotted with clouds that day. They were a huge bother to pilots since we couldn’t see if the enemy was lurking on the other side. A cloud straight ahead was one thing, but any to the side or rear were unsettling. An enemy aircraft could appear all of a sudden and shoot us down. Of course we used clouds to our advantage as well, but more often than not cloud cover worked in favor of the intercepting side lying in ambush.

  On our way I looked towards Miyabe-san a number of times. He seemed agitated, constantly scanning the area, occasionally repositioning his aircraft, keeping a sharp lookout. On more than one occasion, he rolled so he was flying upside-down, not neglecting to pay attention to the blind spots below. He sure is cautious, I thought. The pilots at Rabaul were as cautious as anyone, but I thought his vigilance was a bit too extreme.

  About an hour in, all of the crew were visibly laughing at his bizarre movements. Here as we flew in neat formation was a single aircraft restlessly shifting about to check the surroundings, and it sure did stand out.

  I thought he either had a terribly prudent mindset or was just a big coward.

  The Owen Stanley Range came into view. The magnificent mountain range had 4,000-meter-class peaks and divided New Guinea in half lengthwise. Port Moresby lay to the south of this range, and our base at Lae was on the north.

  Actually, I loved those mountains. They had a severe sort of beauty. It sounds strange, but flying over them gave me courage.

  After crossing the Stanleys and just when Port Moresby was about to come into view, enemy planes suddenly pounced through a break in the clouds in the sky ahead. It was a perfect sneak attack. We banked hard to the left, but my flight in the far rear of the formation was late in making the turn. The enemy’s lead plane took aim at me and latched on. I was positioned such that my topside was exposed to him. Oh boy, I’m a goner! I thought.

  Just then, the plane that was pursuing me suddenly burst into flames and blew apart. A piece of its fuselage hit my plane. The next instant, a Zero slipped past me incredibly fast. It was Miyabe-san’s plane two. His Zero shot down another enemy plane, then made a sharp turn and got behind yet another one that was attempting to flee, pelting it with bullets until it, too, fell from the sky. This all took place in a matter of seconds.

  What remarkable technique! And so fast!

  It gave me goosebumps. I didn’t even know when Miyabe-san managed to move into a position to attack the unfriendlies. He’d been flying alongside me.

  Our formation of Zeros reassembled and took it to the enemy with great ferocity. As they had the initial advantage, they gave us one hell of a fight at first, but we quickly turned the tables. Even I got it together and downed one plane.

  Once they saw that the tide had turned, the enemy pulled back. Instead of giving chase, though, we formed up again and proceeded to the skies above Port Moresby. Our side had not suffered any casualties during the surprise attack.

  No aircraft lay in wait for us above Port Moresby, and we only encountered anti-aircraft fire. When we landed back at our base after the air raid, I went straight over to Miyabe-san to thank him. He merely laughed in reply.

  “Did you see the enemy above the clouds back there, sir?”

  “Yes, I caught sight of them through a break in them. I fired off a round of machine-gun fire to alert the formation leader. Th
en I ascended to fly out past the formation, but the enemy dove too quickly and I didn’t make it in time. If I’d managed to notify all of you sooner, it wouldn’t have been an ambush at all.”

  I let out a silent groan. The pilots in that day’s formation of Zeros were all Rabaul stalwarts. But Miyabe-san had discovered the lurking enemy before any of us, and even beat them at their own game. I thought, This man is a first-class pilot.

  But there was one thing that bugged me. In the chaos that followed, Miyabe-san wasn’t the terror I’d witnessed at the beginning of the ambush. He behaved like a different person, almost. He assiduously backed up the flight leader but hardly shined. I don’t know, he just wasn’t aggressive. Instead of shooting down hostile aircraft, he seemed to be more focused on not getting shot himself.

  Soon Miyabe-san became the talk of the unit. Specifically, the way he always scanned his surroundings during missions did. Once, when a group of aircrew were chatting, a conversation like this took place.

  “I can understand being cautious, but that’s going too far,” a veteran pilot said.

  “I mean, we’re all plenty vigilant if we’re somewhere we might run into the other side. But he’s on guard the instant he takes off from Rabaul and keeps it up the whole time until he returns.”

  “He’s gonna give himself a nervous breakdown at that rate.”

  “Maybe he’s had some bad experiences that make him like that.”

  “Or he is a born coward.”

  Most of the group laughed at that, including myself. But there was someone who did not—Flight Petty Officer 1st Class Hiroyoshi Nishizawa.

  “I personally think we should follow his example,” FPO1 Nishizawa said, and everyone else fell silent.

  FPO1 Nishizawa was a master dogfighter, the best or thereabouts even amongst the aircrew at Rabaul. The Americans would come to fear him, calling him the “Devil of Rabaul.” He and FPO1 Sakai had exceptionally sharp eyes, always spotting the enemy before the other side saw them.

  While you may think that aerial combat involves locking in a grapple like in judo, and that’s true in part, it’s far more effective to discover the enemy before they see you and to attack them from a higher position. Spotting the enemy even a second sooner gives you a serious advantage in the air, which is why good eyes are a major weapon. And by “good eyes,” I don’t just mean sharp vision. You need concentration, and a certain type of intuition as well. Singling out enemy aircraft as small as ants in skies that are wide open 360 degrees around you is easier said than done. Having 20/20 vision doesn’t guarantee it.

  Anyway, everyone fell silent at PO1 Nishizawa’s words. But even so, more than a few still thought that Miyabe-san’s extreme cautiousness stemmed from cowardice.

  What about me? Well…

  To be honest, I did too. Caution and cowardice are two sides of the same coin, but in Miyabe-san’s case, I thought that cowardice won out; and that his performance during his first mission was a sort of fortuitous byproduct of his cowardice. I know it was pretty wrongheaded to think that about someone who’d saved my life.

  In short order, Miyabe-san was made flight leader, and I became part of his flight. I made use of the opportunity to ask him to please stop using formal speech with me.

  “You’re the flight leader, sir. Please speak to me more sternly like the superior you are.”

  “Is it so awkward for you?”

  “That’s part of it, sir. And the crews of other flights might think it strange.”

  Flight Leader Miyabe thought about it for a moment, then laughed. “Okay, sure thing, Izaki.”

  * * *

  —

  Even after becoming flight leader, Miyabe-san still kept up his signature persistent watch-keeping. He incessantly checked his six o’clock. Every time he did so, his aircraft banked, so as his wingman it was a bother. He would also frequently flip over and fly inverted.

  Nearly everything below an aircraft is a blind spot, but since most of the time the enemy approached from above, taking advantage of a higher altitude, we didn’t really need to worry about what was underneath us all that much. Pilots often neglected the airspace beneath them, and in that sense it could be considered the most dangerous area. In fact, Sakai-san sometimes chose to sneak around behind and below an enemy aircraft he’d spotted in order to skewer its underbelly. The risk involved in attacking from below was being discovered by the enemy before you could take them by surprise, in which case they could strike from the dominant position above you. As I mentioned earlier, in a tangle between fighter planes, being at a higher altitude gave you an overwhelming advantage.

  Even though I understood that you could never be too careful when it came to being on the lookout, I thought that Flight Leader Miyabe’s cautiousness was a little too extreme.

  His fighting style was the other reason I thought him a coward. It was something I learned once I was part of his flight, but he never stayed for very long in the area of combat. Once the fight turned into a mêlée, he promptly took refuge and went after enemy aircraft that similarly fled the combat zone.

  Since I was young at the time, once a mêlée started I would become entranced, hoping to take out at least one enemy aircraft. But when the flight leader breaks away, his wingmen must follow. Many times I came very close to making a kill only to let the opportunity slip through my fingers. Those moments always left me feeling extremely disappointed.

  Once, however, I tore away from my flight leader to pursue a hostile fighter.

  I clung fast to the tail of a P-40 Warhawk that was attempting to withdraw after attacking one of our medium bombers. The Warhawk went into a dive to throw me off, but I went around, cut in close, and got on his tail. He tried his damnedest to escape, but I didn’t let him. I drove him close to the surface of the ocean and fired on him with both my 7.7-mm machine guns and 20-mm cannons until his aircraft crashed into the waves. It happened then—a tracer bullet streaked past the side of my plane. I was being fired on from behind.

  I turned around and looked back to find two P-40s hard on my tail, catching me in a pincer attack. I could’ve sworn they hadn’t been there when I’d checked behind me a moment before.

  There was still some distance between us, but the unfriendlies dove down, quickly closing the gap. I saw tracer bullets speed past both sides of my aircraft. I would be struck down whether I tried to flee left or right. I prepared for death.

  In the next moment, the tracers that had enclosed me suddenly vanished. I looked back to see one of the planes spout fire and fall into a tailspin. The other one dove down and sped away. There was a Zero behind me. It was my flight leader. That was the second time Miyabe-san saved my life.

  When we landed back in Rabaul, I addressed Flight Leader Miyabe. “Thank you very much for today, sir.”

  “Listen up, Izaki,” he said with a very serious expression. “It is far more important to avoid getting shot down than it is to shoot down the enemy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Or do you want to trade your life for that of a single American?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then how many enemy lives is your own life worth?”

  I thought for a moment and then replied, “About ten might do, sir.”

  “Idiot.” Flight Leader Miyabe finally cracked a smile. Then he said in an uncharacteristically blunt tone, “Is your life so cheap?”

  I burst out laughing, in spite of myself.

  “If you fail to kill an enemy but manage to survive, you’ll have the chance to kill him later on. However,” Miyabe-san continued, his eyes no longer smiling, “if you are shot down just once, Izaki, it’s all over.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Miyabe-san took on an authoritative tone at the end. “Therefore, Flight Seaman 1st Class, prioritize your own survival.”

  His words reverberated deep within my heart. Ma
ybe I was able to take it especially seriously because his advice had come not long after I’d prepared to die. It was thanks to Miyabe-san’s words that I managed to survive the innumerable air battles that followed.

  * * *

  —

  That wasn’t the only thing I learned from Flight Leader Miyabe.

  He always left his quarters in the dead of night and disappeared for over an hour. When he returned, he was covered in sweat and a little out of breath. Ridiculously enough, I thought maybe he had a habit of going somewhere far from our quarters to, you know, pleasure himself.

  All of us were healthy young men in our late teens and early twenties. Even though we spent our days in battle not knowing if we’d live to see tomorrow, we had sexual appetites. Or rather, it was precisely because we lived in such close proximity to death that we felt such powerful urges. Oh, I don’t know. We had but one adolescence, and it’s impossible to compare it to some other life.

  This is embarrassing to say, but I did it too, many times, in my bunk or in the toilets. Sometimes I wandered off away from the barracks where no one was around and did it out in the open. There were military brothels at Rabaul and I made use of those as well, but there weren’t any around Lae. If someone like me was beset with sexual desire, I imagine a married man like Miyabe-san felt even more restless. That is why I never inquired as to where he went on his midnight sojourns.

  Then one evening, making my way back from fishing in a river some distance from the barracks, I heard groaning from a thicket. At first I was startled, but then, unable to contain my curiosity, I quietly crept closer toward the source of the voice.

  In the shadows of the thicket was a man lifting something. It was him. Stripped to the waist, Flight Leader Miyabe was gripping the barrel of a broken aircraft machine gun in his right hand and lifting it up repeatedly. Since I’d snuck up, I was unable to announce myself and ended up peeping at what he was doing.