If your aircraft took a hit during combat, even if it didn’t cause you to immediately crash, it often manifested as major damage soon enough. I keep repeating this, but Guadalcanal was 1,000 kilometers away from Rabaul. An airplane is a very delicate piece of machinery. The smallest bit of engine trouble could render it inoperable.
There was also the fuel issue. Like I said, Zeros carried just enough fuel for the round trip to Guadalcanal. If you burned up too much fighting above the island, you didn’t have enough left to get back to base. If the fuel tank was shot and leaking, you weren’t going to make it back. If you made a navigational error and lost track of your position, same thing. The slightest detour could prove fatal.
Pilots like Saburo Sakai who made it back alone and severely wounded were miracles. They were few and far between.
After a mission, your exhaustion didn’t go away after a day or two. Yet before you had the chance to recuperate, you were ordered to sortie again. Three or four times a week wasn’t rare. Many airmen, including myself, were going into battle close to our limits. I’m sure many ended up getting shot down thanks to mistakes brought on by sheer fatigue. When Lieutenant Sasai was shot down, he had sortied every day for the previous five days as formation leader. Had the pilots, including Lt. Sasai, been granted enough time to recover, we surely would have had far fewer casualties.
On the days I was not on a mission, I slept. It was Miyabe-san who taught me to do so.
“Izaki, listen carefully. When you have the time, rest. Eat as much as you can, then sleep. Get the maximum amount of rest like you’re fighting for it.”
I followed Flight Leader Miyabe’s instructions to the letter. Whenever I had some free time, I simply slept. It’s such a strange thing, but getting sleep is a kind of skill. Once you absolutely decide to, you can fall asleep no matter how noisy or bright the room is.
After the war I started a freight company, and I always told my employees until I was blue in the face to get a good night’s sleep and not try to soldier through with willpower, guts, and all that. I’m not sure if that’s the only reason for it, but our drivers have caused almost no major accident.
But some of the pilots badmouthed Flight Leader Miyabe behind his back. This was due to his tactics while on escort duty for the medium bombers.
On those missions, we were ordered to protect the bombers even if it meant giving up our own lives. Protect the bombers loaded with deadly ordnance until they reached the enemy’s airfield, then ensure the success of their bombardment of the target. That was the duty of the escort fighters, and many highly skilled Zero pilots died protecting bombers.
Meanwhile, even though Flight Leader Miyabe fought off hostile aircraft that attacked the bombers, he would never place his plane in the line of fire to shield the bombers nor allow those of us under his command to do so. Some other pilots thought he was “a weasel” for this. As I was often part of his flight, they thought the same of me, too.
What did I think? That’s a tough question to answer.
Zeros had just one seat, while the bombers had seven. If the loss of one life could save seven, then perhaps that’s a sacrifice that should be made, tactically speaking. But if we were to lose a superior pilot like Miyabe-san, wouldn’t we suffer more casualties eventually? Guess that doesn’t really answer your question. And I don’t know what Miyabe-san himself thought.
Well, I bet he probably just didn’t want to die.
* * *
—
Beginning in the latter half of 1942, the Americans’ battle tactics for engaging Zeros totally changed.
They had rarely come after Zeros before then, but from mid-’42 they plainly avoided dogfighting with a Zero. The American fighters stuck to hit-and-runs and two-on-one attacks, and these new tactics bewildered us.
I learned well after the war that the Americans had gotten hold of a relatively intact Zero in July of ’42 and had studied it to come up with anti-Zero tactics.
Apparently, that Zero had crash-landed on Akutan Island during the Aleutian Islands Campaign. The pilot had died on impact, and the fuselage was discovered by a U.S. patrol plane.
Until then, the Zero had been a mystery fighter for the Allies. They’d been doing their utmost to capture a Zero fighter but only obtaining the wreckage of downed planes, so it was a godsend for them to discover a near-perfect one.
The Zero was brought back to the mainland where it was thoroughly researched. It was then that the U.S. was able to peel back the veil of secrecy that had cloaked the mystical fighter.
They say American aviation personnel were shaken by the test results. The “Japs” they’d derided as “yellow monkeys” had created a truly fearsome plane. Astonished, they were forced to acknowledge that at that stage, the U.S. did not have a fighter capable of taking on a Zero on equal terms. That answer appears to have been a scary one for them.
But at the same time, their research granted them insight into the Zero’s vulnerabilities: the total lack of bulletproof armor, limited diving speed, reduced performance at high altitudes, etc. And so the U.S. military worked out battle tactics that mercilessly exploited the Zero’s weaknesses.
The Americans issued “three absolute no-no’s” regarding Zeros to all of their pilots: never dogfight a Zero; never perform the same maneuver as a Zero at speeds lower than 300 mph; and never pursue an ascending Zero at low speeds. Those who violated these rules would end up gunned down by a Zero, they were told.
Thus the Americans completely switched to using hit-and-run attacks on us, and their pilots were ordered to number two or more planes for each Zero.
It was thanks to the American forces’ ample materiel that they could employ such a method. And we suffered attrition from these new battle tactics that relied on their ability to mass-produce fighters.
* * *
—
While the Americans pressed with ample materiel, they valued the lives of their pilots. I think it was that autumn when a captured American pilot was sent to Rabaul.
An American fighter had been shot down in a dogfight over Guadalcanal, and the pilot was picked up by one of our destroyers and held as a prisoner of war. What he said astounded us. After participating in battle for one week, American pilots were moved to the rear and allowed to fully recuperate before heading back to the front lines. And after a combat deployment lasting several months, they were removed from the front entirely.
When we caught wind of this, we were at a loss for words. Here we were, almost never granted any leave, forced to sortie nearly every day.
We were losing our most seasoned pilots like an overused comb. In fact, they were the first to perish. Inexperienced pilots were at greater risk of getting shot down and wasting precious aircraft, so our veteran pilots were called on first. Our superiors valued the planes more than our lives.
I am repeating myself again, but we had to fly over three hours one way to protect bombers in skies where the enemy lurked in ambush, only to make a three-hour-plus return journey, day in, day out. Our stamina and concentration levels inevitably deteriorated. One mistake and we were done for. It wasn’t an easy world where you simply tried not to make the same mistake twice. Just once was all it took. “That single careless pitch was fatal,” they sometimes say in pro baseball, and for fighter pilots it was literally fatal.
This is off the subject, but after the war I received quite the shock when I looked up records of German flying aces. At the top was Hartmann with 350 kills, and there were dozen others with over 200 kills each. Such numbers were unthinkable in the Imperial Navy. I think it’s that they had the advantage of fighting over Germany. Their terrain greatly favored them. Even if they were shot down, they could parachute down to safety, or make an emergency landing in the case of engine failure. Hartmann had been shot down a number of times but parachuted each time. I believe the fact that they were intercepting was also big. They
were going up against incoming hostile aircraft, so they could set up ambushes and didn’t have to worry about conserving fuel. We were never given a second chance. Pilots like Tetsuzo Iwamoto and Hiroyoshi Nishizawa who were able to down over a hundred enemy aircraft each even under such circumstances were true masters.
Anyway, the latter half of ’42 saw the start of an incredibly tough battle.
Replacements for lost aircraft were slow to arrive, as were fresh pilots to replace the men who died in action. Actually, the latter deficit was truly dire. With aircraft, at least, they could send them and that was that, but veteran pilots were irreplaceable. It took years to nurture expert pilots. Resupplying wasn’t a possibility when it came to them.
One time Zeros were deployed to provide a screen for destroyers. I mentioned their “rat transportation” before, but even the speedy destroyers couldn’t make the journey to Guadalcanal within nighttime hours. They had to make the approach while the sun was still in the sky, which allowed enemy aircraft to launch from Guadalcanal and attack them. Thus three Zeros were deployed from the base at Buin to provide cover. They protected the airspace over the ships, and a fresh flight of three Zeros relieved them when their fuel started to run low. However, the base at Buin was not equipped for night landings, so the replacement Zeros were to ditch in the ocean near the destroyers. In the rough seas, the three pilots lost their lives—all of them veteran with years of experience.
The crew of the destroyers risked their lives to get food to the starving soldiers on Guadalcanal, and in turn the pilots of Rabaul fought to the death to protect the ships.
The conflict over the tiny island in the South Pacific assumed the aspect of an all-out battle between Japan and the U.S. No matter how many blows we landed on the enemy, they kept sending out fresh forces. It was as if they had unlimited supplies.
I said earlier how I was floored by the sheer number of warships that I had seen anchored at Guadalcanal on my first mission there, but there was another spectacle I’ll never forget. In September of 1942, thanks to an air raid and the brave fighting of our Zero pilots, we were able to make vast military gains. We shot down many enemy aircraft and destroyed many more before they could take off. When I glimpsed the airfield at Guadalcanal two days later, however, it had an equal number of planes. The sight made my hair stand on end. I feared we were battling an immortal monster.
That reminds me—of the time Flight Leader Miyabe machine-gunned an American who was parachuting down.
I think it happened on September 20th, two weeks into the Guadalcanal conflict. We were on our way back to Rabaul from an air raid when two Grummans jumped us. We must have been about 100 nautical miles from Guadalcanal. The Grummans abruptly emerged from the clouds above and swooped down to attack our formation. We were utterly taken by surprise. A Zero burst into flames before my eyes.
I immediately dove down to give chase, but they easily shook me off. A Zero, with its limited diving speed, couldn’t keep up. Damn it, I thought, but there was nothing I could do.
Just then I saw a Zero in hot pursuit of a Grumman. It was Flight Leader Miyabe. He had caught on to the surprise attack and preemptively gone into a dive, hanging below. I saw his machine guns blazing and then the Grumman exploding.
The other Grumman pulled a 180 and went after the flight leader. This seemed to take him completely off-guard. Just when I thought they were headed for a mid-air collision, Flight Leader Miyabe dodged the enemy by a hair. The next instant, the Grumman caught fire. The pilot escaped from the falling aircraft, and I could see his parachute opening.
That did me good. Even so late in the game, I felt new admiration for my flight leader. But what happened next was shocking.
The flight leader’s plane wheeled around, aimed its nose towards the escaping pilot, and fired. The bullets tore up the parachute, and the American pilot plummeted toward the sea along with his collapsed parachute.
Seeing this made disgust wash over me. Why did he have to go and do that? I thought. Sure, we had lost one of ours, but this was war, and it couldn’t be helped. It didn’t mean you had to open fire on a defenseless enemy pilot.
Many other aircrew must have witnessed the incident. When we returned to Rabaul, the formation leader immediately confronted Flight Leader Miyabe and yelled, “You bastard, don’t you have a shred of samurai mercy?”
None of the other pilots said a word, but their eyes were filled with reproach for my flight leader. And as his wingman, I felt ashamed.
“Why take the life of an enemy when you’ve shot down his plane?”
“Yes, sir,” my flight leader answered.
“We fighter pilots should be samurai. What you did was akin to skewering a fallen warrior with a bamboo spear. Don’t ever do that again.”
“Yes, sir.”
Word of this exchange spread like wildfire through the unit. I overheard many pilots gossiping about what had happened. Most of the remarks amounted to “He’s a damn disgrace to all of us.”
Flight Seaman 1st Class Koyama, our third man, was also angry. He grumbled, “I don’t want to be in his flight anymore.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” I said. “Do you have no idea how many times he’s saved your life?”
“That’s got nothing to do with this, Izaki. So you think what he did was right?”
“They killed one of ours right before our eyes. It’s only natural to avenge a comrade.”
“The flight leader did that by downing the guy’s plane. I don’t think there was any need to kill the pilot.”
I was stumped as to how to respond.
Koyama had for some time been dissatisfied with Flight Leader Miyabe. Being called “weasel” behind his back by some other airmen was taking its toll.
A few days later, I worked up the courage to bring the matter up with the flight leader.
“Sir, there is something I would like to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“Why did you shoot that parachute the other day, sir?”
The flight leader looked me right in the eye and said, “To kill the pilot.”
To be honest, I was hoping to hear him say that he regretted his action. His words caught me off-balance.
“We are at war. In war, you kill the enemy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Americans have incredible industrial might. They can crank out fighters instantly. What we have to do is kill their pilots.”
“Sir, yes sir. But—”
At this point the flight leader yelled, “I think of myself as a murderer!”
“Yes, sir!” I replied without thinking.
“I think the American fighter pilots are murderers, too. With every bomber that goes down, seven Japanese lose their lives. But if a bomber blows up one of their ships, many more American troops die. Their pilots murder our bomber crew to keep that from happening.”
“Yes, sir.” I had never seen the flight leader shouting like this, and in such a vehement tone.
“I do battle against aircraft, but I believe my true enemies are the pilots. If I could, I’d strafe them as they stood on the ground, rather than fight them in the air!”
“Yes, sir.”
“That pilot was very skilled. He figured out our return route and hid patiently in a cloud. And when he pulled a 180, one of his bullets came through my windshield. If the shot had been just a foot in the wrong direction, it would have pierced my torso. He was formidable. Maybe he’d downed dozens of our planes. It was out of sheer luck that I won. If I’d let him return alive, he would have gone on to kill more Japanese. Maybe even myself.”
So that’s why, I thought. I felt like I’d realized for the first time that we were in a war. He wasn’t whitewashing what our battles really were. In the end, we were all just killing each other. In war, the objective is to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible without getting
killed yourself.
Even so, I had never seen the flight leader get so worked up before. Seeing him that way, I understood: Flight Leader Miyabe had suffered intense agony even as he opened fire on the parachuting pilot.
* * *
—
There’s a surprising sequel to this tale.
That American pilot survived the ordeal—and I met him after the war, in 1970, at the WWII Air Show in St. Louis. Many American, Japanese, and German former fighter pilots were in attendance. The local newspaper gave the memorial ceremony major coverage, calling it a “Grand Reunion,” and many Navy and Marine pilots who had served with Guadalcanal’s Cactus Air Force were there.
A good number of the American pilots approached me to chat in a friendly manner. This was very odd, but the instant we met, it felt like greeting long-lost friends. I even met an ace who had downed more than twenty Japanese aircraft. In somber terms, he’d killed more than twenty of my compatriots, but for some reason I didn’t feel an ounce of hatred or resentment. Perhaps it’s true that time heals all wounds. Or perhaps it was because we’d fought like men in the skies. It seems they felt the same way about us.
They all said, “The Zeros’ pilots were amazingly good.”
I met a former Marine captain called Tony Bailey who had been stationed at Henderson Field in Guadalcanal. Tony was there from 1942 to 1943, meaning he’d fought on the same battlefield, during the same period.
We compared our log books and learned that he and I had fought on the same day seven times. And then we embraced. Isn’t that funny?
But Tony had an odd story for me. He said that he had been shot down by a Zero once. He wanted to know if it was my doing by any chance.
When I pressed for details, he said that it had occurred on September 20, 1942. It was indeed the date of one of my missions.
The story blew my mind. That day, he and his wingman had lain in wait in the clouds to ambush Japanese aircraft regrouping on the way home. Just as Tony began his assault, however, a single Zero noticed them and proceeded to take out his wingman. Having witnessed his comrade’s demise, Tony chose to strike back rather than flee. But he was fired on head-first, and his engine got hit. So he parachuted away from the falling aircraft.
The Eternal Zero Page 15
