“To economize on fuel, I had been running the engine on such a lean mixture that it did not start up again when I switched to another tank. I released the control stick and moved the throttle lever back and forth with my right hand, switching as rapidly as I could between these movements to manipulate the fuel pump.
“The Zero was almost into the water when the engine caught. I had been frantically operating the throttle lever, working the fuel pump, and trying to stretch my glide—all with a paralyzed left arm and left leg, and a blinded right eye.
“I was soaked with cold perspiration.
“Before long I sighted New England Island. Rabaul was not far away, and my hopes for reaching my own base rose high. I began to climb slowly, trying to gain altitude so I could take the shortest route by crossing the island.
“Climbing required much fuel. Despite the drain on my rapidly dwindling fuel reserves, I had to try to gain some altitude. Abruptly my hopes were dashed. A black squall cloud appeared directly before me when I had climbed to 5,000 feet. My only alternative was to detour along the coast of the island. I did not dare chance flying through the squall.
“I changed course to a southwest heading. Below me there appeared several white streamers on the water; they appeared to be from Japanese warships heading south at high speed.
“ ‘If I land in the water alongside the ships,’ I thought, ‘I can be rescued. But that might mean diverting the ships from an important mission. I cannot do that.’ I held my course for Rabaul.
“The minutes fled by as the engine droned. Even though I was very tired, I was no longer beset by the attacks of drowsiness which had nearly caused my death before. After a while—I don’t know how long it was—I searched the island below my right wing. I noticed a large crater in the ground . . . it was the crater by the airstrip!
“‘It’ Rabaul!’
“I could hardly believe what I saw. It all seemed like a dream. Later, I found that I had been in the air for eight and a half hours that day.
“Landing the Zero would be extremely difficult, since my left leg was numb and my rudder control would be very poor. I had little hope of making a safe landing, since the Zero had been so badly shattered by enemy fire that it was a miracle the plane had remained aloft. In this case, the standing rule was to land on the sea. Even if the plane sank, the pilot could be rescued by the crash boats which would be waiting.
“I prepared myself for the crash landing, gently easing the throttle lever back. Gradually the plane lost altitude as I turned into the wind. Even as I dropped toward the water I changed my mind.
“I was sure my hours were numbered. ‘Even if I make a successful water landing and am rescued,’ I thought, ‘I will not live very long. I am ashamed that I have considered causing so much trouble to my friends, who will rescue from the water a man who will be of no further use. Although it is more dangerous, I shall land directly on the field and save all the trouble a water landing will create.’
“I pulled up from my slow descent and circled the field, studying the strip for the best way to come in. After making one unsuccessful pass at the strip, I pulled up and decided to see if the landing gear would lower. I had little hope that it would work, since the plane had been so badly shot up. But the green light in the cockpit lit up, indicating that the two landing legs had lowered properly. I was even more amazed when the landing flaps slid below the wings. ‘It’s not hopeless, after all,’ I thought.
“Prospects for a safe landing appeared to be good, once the undercarriage and the flaps had lowered. I circled the runway at one end of the strip and began my letdown. Since I could not tell what might happen upon landing—the undercarriage might collapse, for example—I cut the ignition switch to reduce the chance of fire or explosion. Usually I could cut off the ignition switch with my right hand with ease, but it was impossible to do so now. I managed to hit the switch with my right leg, after squirming about as much as my paralyzed left leg and arm would permit.
“Judging my altitude and my rate of descent by the top of a coconut grove which I could dimly make out, I drifted toward the runway. I controlled the plane in a daze, until I thought I felt the wheels strike the ground.
“Since the ignition switch was already off, the propellor stopped whirling immediately after the plane touched the earth. I could feel the ship slow down as it rolled along the strip.
“The indescribable feeling that I was at last back on the ground safely filled my whole body and mind. It is a supreme moment that belongs only to a pilot, and cannot be explained to anyone else.
“ ‘I’ve come home!’ The thought surged joyously through my mind. Perhaps because of the sudden release of tension, I felt again the waves of drowsiness washing over me. This time there was no fighting back; I drifted into a dim world of red haze. I remember almost nothing of what happened after that.
“Before I lost consciousness completely, I felt hands striking my shoulder and voices calling my name. They were shouting, ‘Sakai! Sakai! Never say die!’
“Several men clambered onto the wing of the battered Zero. They were Commander Kozono, the air officer, Lieutenant Commander Nakajima, my group commander, and Lieutenant Sasai, my squadron leader. The three men unfastened my parachute and safety belt, lifted me from the cockpit, and carried me gently to the ground.
“I was told later that my face was bloody and swollen so terribly that I appeared as a strange being from another world, so that even my own pilots feared me and stood aloof.”
***
The story of Saburo Sakai is a tale almost beyond belief. Not only in the Japanese Navy, but also among the other navies of the world, this episode stands out above other great tales of courage and heroism. We do not believe that the performance of Saburo Sakai and his single-seat, single-engine Zero fighter, has been equaled in the entire war. This is in no way a deprecation of other truly heroic air war episodes, with which the writers are familiar. Sakai flew his small fighter airplane for nearly nine hours, including combat time in which he downed four enemy aircraft to run his total kills to sixty, and covered a distance of 560 nautical miles during his bitter struggle to return to his home base. The deeds established by Saburo Sakai and the unit to which he belonged testify most vividly to Sakai’s unusual skill and to that of his battlemates. It was a skill achieved only through constant combat experience, and ably supported by the high quality of the Zero fighter airplane.
Sakai remained in a hospital, undergoing medical treatment, for a year after this battle. He recovered from all wounds except that inflicted to his right eye, the sight of which he never regained. In June of 1944, when American forces launched a massive assault against the Marianas, Sakai was dispatched to Iwo Jima from the Yokosuka Naval Air group, to which he had been assigned after his hospital discharge. Despite blindness in one eye, he returned to air combat and succeeded in shooting down two American navy fighters over Iwo Jima. He later shot down two other American warplanes to bring his total to sixty-four planes destroyed.
Sakai flew with a seventeen-plane “Kamikaze” mission for an attack on the American Navy’s Task Force 58. Thirteen planes were destroyed by defending enemy fighters before reaching their goal. The four remaining aircraft, including Sakai’s, returned to Iwo Jima, where American bombers destroyed them on the ground.
A courier plane was rushed to Iwo Jima to pick up Sakai and sixteen other stranded pilots. All pilots were returned to Japan; thereafter, Sakai fought against the enemy B-29s which were carrying out mass raids against Japan’s cities.
In March of 1945 Sakai (now an ensign) and a fellow pilot were commended by Admiral Soemu Toyoda, Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet, for their exemplary record in destroying enemy planes. In August of 1945 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant (J.G.). Sakai ended World War II as the leading surviving ace of all our pilots.
On August 7, 1942, the same day Sakai experienced his terrible ordeal, our naval air forces reported the destruction of fifty-eight
enemy aircraft in combat; on this date the United States Navy announced that it had lost twenty-one planes in battle.
The desperate air struggle which exploded with the initial attack of August 7 were the start of a series of long, wearisome battles in which Japanese air strength was inexorably sapped. The constant air war between American and Japanese air forces gradually, as though with some power of the Devil himself, sucked our naval air forces, and ultimately our army and naval surface strength, into a bottomless swamp wherein waited only defeat.
CHAPTER 17
Succession of Air Battles After Guadalcanal
ONE OF THE MOST formidable enemies confronting the Japanese Navy in the drawn-out struggle for Guadalcanal Island was its own negligence. The Navy had not considered the many possible threats which might result from a battle in which Guadalcanal and its environs were the stakes, and neglected to construct air bases on the islands which stretched for 560 nautical miles from Rabaul to Guadalcanal. Before the months-long fighting ended in defeat, this scarcity of base facilities proved to be a threat equally as serious as the American air attacks.
Our air crews of the smaller bombers were forced to the limit of their endurance, and too frequently these bombers dispatched from Rabaul failed to return because they ran out of fuel. Such incredible missions as that performed by Saburo Sakai, notably in the matter of flight endurance, came to be regarded as the rule and not the exception.
Bomber crews soon wearied of the strain of missions from which their return was mathematically doubtful and often, in the cases of their flying mates, impossible. We could not maintain the pressure indefinitely, even with experienced and excellent air crews which were thrown into the fierce struggle for the vital Guadalcanal Island.
Medium bombers and Zero fighters based at Rabaul had sufficient range to attack American forces in the lower Solomons, and still return. Our Type 99 dive bombers, however, were dispatched in missions on which their crews despaired of survival. Simply stated, the airplanes could not carry sufficient fuel to make the round-trip flight from Rabaul to Guadalcanal and return. Within two days of the American invasion, we lost eighteen Type 99 bombers, but only a few planes fell to the enemy’s guns. Their fuel ran out as they struggled to reach Rabaul, and all bombers crashed.
It was a terribly depressing situation. At the outset of the invasion, our Zero fighters were superior in almost every respect to the American planes which they opposed, yet their combat effectiveness was steadily being sapped by the strain which the pilots suffered from too many hours spent in the cramped confines of the planes’ cockpits. This disintegration of our effectiveness in air attack was enough to drive the combat commanders to the verge of insanity; they had spent years in developing their air units to peak efficiency, only now to have them shackled by strategic blindness.
Had Japan possessed even one fifth of the American capacity for constructing air bases, the Guadalcanal air campaign might have ended differently. Had we possessed such air bases, we could have brought several times as much power to bear upon the American forces. One of Japan’s greatest blunders in the Pacific War certainly lay in its failure to devote proper study to such matters as logistical and engineering support of our combat air forces.
Air combat units superior to the enemy’s were shackled by a denial of adequate ground facilities. Such deprivation operated as effectively in the enemy’s favor as actual destructive bombing of our personnel and planes.
Shortly after the Guadalcanal invasion we received urgent requests for Zero fighter planes of improved performance, with emphasis on increased maneuverability and extended flight range. American air opposition was constantly increasing in strength, and the enemy’s fighter planes were rapidly improving in quality.
The wingspan of the new-type fighter (Zero) was restored to its original length, which served to improve the maneuverability. This increased wingspan likewise permitted the installation of additional fuel cells in the outer wing, appreciably extending flight range.
The initial phase of the land, sea, and air struggle ended within three days of the invasion. Despite our predominant strength in warships, we not only failed to prevent the enemy from successfully assaulting the island but also lost the ability to sustain a heavy air attack against the invaders. In those first three days we tallied forty-two of our planes destroyed and missing in combat, in addition to numerous aircraft lost in crash landings and many more heavily damaged in air fighting.
Despite the superior quality of our fighters, the combat efficiency of the Japanese naval air forces almost immediately fell to less than half that of normal. Those planes capable of making the round-trip missions from Rabaul to attack the American forces were rapidly being depleted, and the remaining aircraft types had become “one-way-mission” planes which meant an ever more rapid deterioration in our strength.
It was not until August 21, when the Army’s Ichiki Detachment launched its first offensive to recapture former Japanese airstrips, that our naval air forces in this theater were able to resume attacks in strength against the enemy. We received badly needed reinforcements of both carrier and land-based warplanes, and prepared to launch a sustained aerial assault against the American forces.
But the gods of war decreed otherwise. Although the Buka airbase on the northern tip of Bougainville Island was made available to our fighters and bombers by August 27, poor weather seriously handicapped our aerial operations. On numerous occasions, Zero fighters took off in dangerous weather and, after reaching Guadalcanal Island, were forced by even worse weather conditions to return to their bases without contacting the enemy.
During the twenty-three days from August 21 to September 12, just prior to the launching of the Army’s first general offensive with the Kawaguchi Detachment on Guadalcanal, our ground forces received air support on only ten days. The terrible weather conditions encountered en route broke up four major bombing attacks. During the remainder of the time, the weather was so bad that the planes could not even get off the ground.
The troops on the front could only curse and fume at the solid sheets of rain and blanketing fog, while our bombers sank deep in mud at the air bases. For the twenty-three-day period during which heavy air support was needed, Zero fighters flew the meager total of 237 sorties, and our land-based medium attack bombers made only 312 sorties.
Under such conditions we could not prevent the enemy fighters and bombers from attacking our supply lines; our communications were savagely bombed and machinegunned. This aerial interdiction proved fatal; we were unable to transport the minimum quantities of ammunition and foodstuffs required by the Army forces on Guadalcanal. The Army’s first general offensive against the invading enemy ended in failure.
During the Guadalcanal campaign, the numerical superiority of the enemy warplanes was not so great that it could not have been more than equalized by the superior performance of our Zero fighters. As the battle got under way, the American fighter planes opposing us did not match the agility of the Zero in combat; nevertheless, the enemy air forces enjoyed a tremendous advantage through their ability rapidly to construct and constantly to supply new air bases.
As of September 24, following a month of bitter fighting in the theater, our actual naval air strength was as follows:
The normal complement of aircraft consisted of at least 232 Zero fighters and 180 land-based medium attack bombers, the latter group made up equally of Type 96 and Type 1 bombers. Our fighter strength, therefore, was only 34 per cent of the minimum desired, and medium attack bomber strength, only 44 percent of that deemed necessary effectively to combat the enemy.
The Guadalcanal situation demanded action and the Army planned for another general offensive to commence in late October. Repeated attacks were mounted against enemy forces on the island; 480 sorties were flown by Zero fighters, and 307 sorties by medium attack bombers during the period of September 28 to October 25. The attacks were pressed with determination, but our air forces fa
iled to strike a decisive blow against the enemy.
On the night of October 13, naval support was brought up in the form of our battleships Kongo and Haruna. The two heavy warships steamed offshore near an enemy airfield and shelled enemy aircraft and installations with great success. Despite this, our Army’s second general offensive, which began the night of October 24, was crushed by the savage fighting of the enemy defenders.
Two days later our carrier forces inflicted telling damage on the enemy in the Battle of Santa Cruz. Despite the losses which the enemy sustained, his position remained strong, and recapture of the dreadful Guadalcanal Island appeared more difficult than ever.
Our air forces in the Rabaul area were steadily reinforced with new fighters and bombers from Japan, but many of the aircraft we threw into the battle were lost, and therefore represented only a wasted effort. By October 28, after a month-long struggle with an enemy which fought fiercely, the six air corps in the theater could muster a total of only thirty Zero fighters and sixty-six land-based medium attack bombers. Our airmen fought desperately, but were unable to stem the tidal wave of enemy power.
From the beginning of the operation to recapture Guadalcanal, launched by the Ichiki Detachment on August 21, until the termination of the Army’s unsuccessful second general offensive, air battle casualties for both sides were as follows (seaplane combat not reported):
Three hundred and forty enemy aircraft were destroyed, and sixty-nine aircraft probably destroyed, for a total of 409. Our naval air forces had lost seventy-eight Zero fighters, forty-two land-based medium attack bombers, and fifty-four other types, all either destroyed or missing.
Before the third general offensive designed to throw the American forces off Guadalcanal was launched, the air war had taken a downward course from which there seemed to be little hope of salvation. We were unable to supply the landbased naval air forces in the theater with sufficient aircraft to maintain more than an average strength of 160 planes in combat at any one time. Although we resorted to desperate measures to build up an overwhelming air strength, they were of slight avail.
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