Zero

by Masatake Okumiya

  There is little question that, had our air combat forces received adequate support through construction of new air bases and the proper maintenance of existing facilities, we could have destroyed many more enemy planes and ships, and might have influenced the ground fighting in our favor. However, the situation deteriorated steadily as Japanese construction crews seemingly delayed endlessly their efforts to build new air bases. As late as September 6, 1942, the Navy had managed to construct only one new air base, and that was a single installation at Buin, on the south end of Bougainville Island, which lies between Rabaul and Guadalcanal.

  The Army’s third general offensive intended to retake Guadalcanal suffered the same fate as the two previous attempts. Six months of bitter fighting, during which we had expended many hundreds of planes, many warships, the lives of thousands of men, and staggering amounts of materiel, went for naught. On February 7, 1943, the last troops abandoned Guadalcanal.

  For our land and surface forces, the period immediately following the evacuation of Guadalcanal came to be a tem­porary lull in the war; the absence of major action afforded the opportunity for regrouping and strengthening. There was, however, no respite for the naval air arm, which launched large-scale air attacks.

  The first of a number of heavy air assaults against the enemy was the so-called “I-go” operation which was car­ried out from early to mid-April. The strategic air cam­paign was under the direct command of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet.

  The land-based air force under the command of Vice-Admiral Jinichi Kusaka constituted 190 planes; 160 carrier planes under the command of Vice-Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa were likewise thrown into the operation. While the 350 aircraft participating in the I-go campaign represented considerably more strength than had been hurled against the enemy at Guadalcanal, the total number of aircraft was less than that of the Nagumo Force which had smashed Pearl Harbor.

  Air attacks in strength were directed against Guadal­canal and southeast New Guinea, striking in particular at Port Moresby, Oro Bay, and Milne Bay. Four heavy raids appeared to have achieved the desired results in destruction of enemy aircraft and ground facilities, but disaster struck even as the new aerial offensive gained in momentum.

  En route to an inspection trip on the front, flying in a bomber escorted by nine fighters, on April 18 Admiral Yamamoto was ambushed over the southwestern tip of Bougainville Island by Lockheed P-38 fighters of the American Thirteenth Air Force and was killed in the devas­tating attack. His loss was a severe blow to the Japanese forces.

  By now it was obvious to all our military leaders that the outcome of any conflict, whether waged on the sea, on land, or in the air, depended upon the ability of our fight­ers to establish control of the air. Accordingly, requests for air support made by sea and land commanders invariably were for fighter planes which could guard the sea and land forces against enemy destruction from the air.

  The concept of important air battles may be simplified by imagining the clashing of great air fleets, the core of which is constituted of fighter planes. The fighter planes opposing the enemy should be superior in performance and range. Every effort should also be made to insure numeri­cal superiority, for the difference even of a single fighter can decide the outcome of a major conflict.

  By the time the I-go operation had been launched, it was obvious that the dour prewar predictions concerning a struggle with the United States and Great Britain were to be realized. The insistence of numerous Japanese military and industrial leaders that “a war against the United States and Great Britain might well become a prolonged battle with little prospect of victory for a nation of such limited resources as Japan” was now assuming ominous reality. In the Guadalcanal campaign, the inability of our Navy to replace the Zero fighters lost in combat with the enemy became clear, and this crack in our airpower wall spread ever wider as the war progressed. Replacement of Zero fighters on every front was becoming more and more diffi­cult, and never achieved the numbers requested by combat leaders. Japan lacked other fighters in sufficient number to replace the Zero, and our air strength was steadily whittled down, even as enemy power gained monstrous proportions.

  (The average monthly output of Zero fighters, from April of 1942 through June of 1943, totaled 221 aircraft, even with the combined production facilities of Mitsubishi and Nakajima.)

  A severe handicap of the Guadalcanal campaign was the inability of the Army properly to integrate its air strength into combined operations with naval air units. The Navy should have received support at least to the extent that half of all missions were carried out by Army air power. Unfortunately, this ratio was never attained, partly due to the fact that the majority of operations were con­ducted over a vast expanse of ocean.

  Consequently, the Navy’s Zero fighters, which were designed for carrier use and originally assigned to fleet divisions, were forced to fight in inferior numbers against all types of fighters and bombers which were divided into categories consisting of carrier-and land-based craft. Float-type reconnaissance planes and Zero observation sea planes were forced to undertake what were virtually sui­cide missions. Superhuman efforts were demanded of our pilots because of the insufficient number of Zero fighters. The qualitative superiority of our Navy planes could no longer compensate for the lack of numbers.

  In June of 1943 the Allied Powers resumed their offen­sives from both the Solomon Islands and New Guinea fronts. The Navy poured hundreds of Zero fighters and Type 1 land-based attack bombers into this decisive theater in an attempt to destroy the effectiveness of the enemy’s air power, but the battle of land-based air forces resulted only in imposing an increasing burden upon our Navy.

  Our position worsened steadily as American air strength inexorably gained the coveted position for which it struggled so relentlessly. How many of our “farsighted” planners and military leaders then arose openly to regret that the air arms of our Navy and Army were not welded into a single coordinated force resembling that of the Americans!

  This desire for coordinated air control was no mere wish to ease our command structure; the inability of Japanese forces effectively to utilize air power lost us the Gilbert Islands. This bastion fell to enemy hands in late November of 1943, and for precisely the same reason—lack of naval air strength—we lost the key points of the Marshall Islands in February of 1944. This loss seriously threatened our combat potential in the entire Pacific.

  The effectiveness of the enemy’s incessant air blows raised a losing battle to the status of a tragedy. To prevent an almost complete loss of our forces in the Rabaul area, Admiral Mineichi Koga, the new Commander of the Com­bined Fleet, reluctantly ordered all naval air units to aban­don Rabaul, the only major air base in the Southwest Pacific opposing the advancing enemy. On February 20, 1944, our unit (Masatake Okumiya’s) evacuated the island as the last air unit of the withdrawal, leaving behind only our ground forces.

  These successive withdrawals from our airbases could be regarded as nothing less than major disasters. Every base which was abandoned meant another enemy advance toward the heart of Japan, and another key point from which the enemy could dispatch his far-ranging bombers. Each air base lost involved not only ground installations taken over by the Americans, but a never-to-be-regained loss in our ability further to resist the enemy. Furthermore, those ordering the hasty withdrawals from advanced air bases often overlooked and abandoned the numerous maintenance crews. Men whose skills represented the experience of many years were deserted, despite desperate rescue operations undertaken by plane and submarine, in remote jungle facilities. Thus, we lost forever their ability to contribute to subsequent air operations; this loss became increasingly evident as the enemy’s pressure mounted.

  The absence of these invaluable mechanics and mainte­nance crews greatly affected our operations. Maintenance suffered disastrously, and mechanics rushed through hasty training programs proved woefully inadequate for their tasks. Our already enormous difficulties
were increased by the fact that mechanics with little experience were forced to work on aircraft which had been rushed through expanded production lines. On too many occasions pilots and aircrew members fell prey to enemy guns because vital plane parts failed in the crucial moments of combat.

  We were faced with a vicious circle of attrition for which there appeared to be no solution. The shortage of new fighter planes meant that we must often send our best pilots into combat with worn and damaged planes. Their chances of survival against an enemy whose strength was growing daily were thereby greatly lessened.

  As enemy attacks and our own deficiencies placed a steady drain on our fighting strength, the Americans were free to strike and fight at their discretion. Although the Navy still possessed the two monster battleships Yamoto and Musashi, each of nearly seventy-four thousand tons’ gross weight and each mounting nine eighteen-inch guns, we were forced carefully to husband our strength for only the most critical battles.

  The hunters had become the hunted.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Guadalcanal Campaign: Evaluation of American Warplanes

  THE FIRST FORMIDABLE OPPONENT which the Zero fighter encountered was the four-engined Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. Before the war, thirty-five of the heavy bombers were reported deployed on Luzon Island, but the majority of these planes were destroyed on the ground before the war was yet a full day old. Those few B-17s which managed to take to the air were attacked by Zero fighters in such number that they were overwhelmed and shot down before our overeager pilots could study their characteristics.

  During the period between these initial attacks and the successful completion of the Dutch East Indies campaign in March of 1942, the B-17s increasingly interrupted our operations with unexpected bombing raids. Their great radius of at least 750 nautical miles enabled them to fly from bases far beyond the reach of our Type 96 and Type 1 land-based bombers, upon which the Navy had placed such high hopes.

  Thanks to the excellent protection afforded by their bristling 12.7-mm. machine guns, self-sealing fuel tanks, great load capacity, and far-reaching range, the B-17s con­tinued to harass our forces in courageous and tenacious attacks. Our commanders believed the B-17 to be the enemy’s only hope in the almost helpless plight in which he found himself in the early part of the war.

  Immediately after our occupation of Rabaul in late Jan­uary of 1942, B-17s based at Port Moresby launched a series of persistent day and night attacks which rained bombs on our installations. Zero fighters of the Tainan Air Corps, a veteran fighter unit which had fought constantly against enemy planes since the outbreak of war, swarmed up to intercept and destroy the big bombers.

  It was not long before the Zero fighter pilots realized that they were confronted with an enemy plane well capa­ble of defending itself, and one which could survive tremendous damage from the guns and cannon of the Zeros. On numerous occasions the Boeings flew undaunted on their bombing and reconnaissance missions despite the attacks of Zero fighters which swarmed about them and which the enemy’s heavy machine guns too often destroyed.

  Flying Fortresses on reconnaissance discovered the Japanese invasion convoy bound for Port Moresby in May of 1942; this led directly to the savagely fought Coral Sea Battle. Without the B-17’s tremendous range, many of our operations would have been successfully executed without encountering enemy interference.

  The Midway Sea Battle of June, 1942, was also due to far-reaching B-17s, which scoured the ocean surface in search of our invasion fleet and radioed the position of our ships to powerful American bombing forces. In the Guadal­canal campaign, the movement of our forces was constantly exposed to the prying eyes of B-17 crewmen. We came to learn that it was almost impossible to conceal our activities within seven hundred nautical miles of any base which might harbor Flying Fortresses, and within eight hundred nautical miles of bases from which consolidated-Vultee B-24 Liberator bombers might take off. The B-17s and B-24s seemed almost to ignore the intercepting Zeros as they flew into any area of their choice.

  Sun, the great Chinese strategist, once wisely said: “Those who know the enemy as well as they know themselves never suffer defeat.” This historical statement was never proved truer than by the probing missions of the B-17 and B-24 bombers, which endowed the Americans with a tremendous advantage in the far-flung Pacific War.

  For years the Japanese Navy had followed a strategic concept laid down by tradition: that a small Japanese force could achieve victory over superior enemy strength only so long as we were informed of the enemy’s strength and movement, while ours remained hidden. With the B-17s and B-24s thundering constantly over our ships, airfields, and staging areas, the situation was reversed. We were in the position of the traditional enemy and handicapped by the same limitations we had always regarded as the oppo­nent’s weakness.

  Placed in the uncomfortable position of having our every movement fully known to the enemy, we were com­pelled to discard plans long prepared and resort to the application of mass strength and force in battle. The strength of quantity could well outweigh the value of qual­ity in a modern war in which new pawns could be hurled into the theater of decision as rapidly and as long as the accumulated reserves would permit, especially in sea and air conflicts where the machine, not man, played such a decisive role. Mechanical strength in overwhelming quantity also had a direct bearing on the fighting ability of ground troops, whose fate in the Pacific War depended solely upon marine transportation and supply.

  By September of 1942 the reconnaissance-mission-flying B-17s and B-24s had become a grave problem, and the Japanese Navy tried every possible means of destroy­ing the troublesome raiders. With the Guadalcanal cam­paign in full swing, our fighter pilots became desperate, but failed to achieve any notable advance in increasing the number of destroyed American bombers. Only overwhelm­ing numbers of Zero fighters could destroy the enemy marauders, and there was little hope that we might acquire fighter planes with heavier fire power than that of the Zero.

  Although the B-24 lacked the protection of the B-17 in total number of defending guns and other characteristics, the two airplanes were unique in their ability to defeat enemy fighter attacks. Neither Britain, Germany, nor Japan produced bombers capable of protecting themselves as well as the Fortresses and Liberators.

  We believed that the heavy American bombers, with their great defensive power and amazing aggressiveness in battle, stemming from a great national strength and a national policy which at all times proved itself to be aggressive, were fundamentally responsible for the defeat of Germany and Japan.

  Before we could unearth a satisfactory solution to the problems presented by the Flying Fortresses and Liberators, we faced another dilemma with equally severe conse­quences; this was posed by the Army’s twin-engined Lock-heed P-38 Lightning fighter planes.

  Although the American Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk and Bell P-39 Airacobra fighters featured high diving speeds, and the Navy’s Grumman F4F Wildcat exhibited good maneuverability, their general performance failed to measure up to that of the Zero. Like these fighters, the P-38s first used in combat against the Zeros appeared to lack any distinctive features other than speed at great altitude and a very high diving speed.

  The strange Lightnings made their combat debut in the Solomon Islands during the fall of 1942. Soon they were appearing in ever-increasing numbers, often challenging our Zero fighters. To the great delight of our pilots the P-38 pilots would attempt to dogfight with the Zeros, which managed to shoot down many of the enemy planes.

  It was obvious, from contrast with later combat, that the Americans had not as yet learned the most favorable characteristics of the big, heavy P-38, and that the airplane was at first more misused in combat than properly flown.

  Before long, however, the painful lesson of burning P-38s changed the situation. The Americans soon adopted new tactics which made the most of the P-38’s superior performance at high altitude. Once the enemy pilots became aware of the Zero’s poor high-altitude
performance and its inability to dive at great speed, we were faced with an enemy of terrifying effectiveness.

  It was no longer possible for the Zero fighters successfully to engage the P-38s, except under the most unusual conditions, which, unhappily, seldom presented themselves. The P-38s would patrol at extreme height, above the altitude at which the Zeros could fly. Their great speed at high altitude enabled them to maneuver into the most advantageous positions; then the big fighters would plunge from the sky to smash into the hapless Zero fighters.

  The peculiar sound of the P-38’s twin engines became both familiar and bitterly hated by the Japanese all across the South Pacific. Our ground crews, especially those serv­icing the Zero fighters, could only shake their fists in futile gestures as the P-38s with their high-pitched roar flew dauntlessly over Buin on Bougainville Island, Rabaul, and other South Pacific bases.

  Pilots too were often heard cursing the speedy P-38s, which flaunted their flashing performance. The P-38 pilot was in a most enviable position; he could choose to fight when and where he desired, and on his own terms. Under such conditions, the Lightning became one of the most deadly of all enemy planes.

  If the P-38s appeared to challenge our fighters, the Zeros were forced to wait until the P-38s attacked under conditions most favorable to themselves. A Japanese vic­tory was possible only when the enemy fighters made a positive bid to engage in a dogfight. Since the P-38s could choose the exact place and moment of combat, however, such opportunities were exceedingly rare.

  There is in this lesson of P-38 vs. Zero the fundamental difference between air battle and those conflicts which occur on the land or sea surface. The only possible means of commencing major air combat at a desired moment is through the possession of aircraft superior to those available to the enemy. To enhance the possibility of success in air conflict, the maximum possible number of aircraft should be committed to battle.