I decided to stake everything on flying. I’m not exaggerating when I say I threw myself body and soul into training.
I think most of my fellow trainees felt exactly as I did. They all dove earnestly into flight training. It was a literal struggle, because not all trainees would become pilots. The instructors also gauged our natural aptitude, and those deemed unsuitable were delegated to be spotters or radiomen on bombers or attack aircraft. The ones who didn’t become pilots wept.
Depending on the pilots’ skills and aptitude, the instructors then separated them into separate pipelines for fighters, bombers, and attack aircraft. The cream of the crop were chosen to pilot the fighters. And I became a fighter pilot.
* * *
—
After graduating, I was assigned to Hankou in China. This was in the beginning of 1941. In China I flew the Type 96 carrier-based fighter. It wasn’t as good as the Zero, but it was a very decent fighter. I shot down numerous Chinese planes with a Type 96 fighter.
Late that year, the Greater East Asian War began. When I heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, I stamped my feet in frustration.
My dream had been to board the Akagi, an aircraft carrier with the 1st Air Fleet. I wanted to join that aircrew so I could fight the Americans. I was ready to die if I could be part of the Akagi crew.
But my dream didn’t come true. I was promoted from a Type 96 to a Zero fighter but never received orders to transfer to an aircraft carrier, and instead spent day after day fighting the Chinese Air Force. By then, the Chinese single-mindedly avoided engaging with Zero fighters, so I was never able to down any of their planes with a Zero.
Early the following year I was transferred to the 3rd Air Corps and sent to Borneo. The Tainan Air Corps had destroyed an Allied military base in the Philippines the previous year, and the Japanese military vigorously advanced, capturing territories in Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies. It was like our forces were invincible wherever they went.
As part of the Imperial forces’ invasion, we, too, advanced into Borneo, Celebes, Sumatra, Java. In Java, there were dark-skinned natives all over the place. Like the characters in Dankichi, the Adventurous Boy, both men and women wore very little clothing. They looked at us in wonder, too.
I ended up on a military base called Kupang on the island of Timor, which served as a foothold for our attack on Darwin, Australia. There for the first time I took on American and British fighters. On the first mission I downed a P-40. I had been told that combat with Allied aircraft was nothing like fighting the Chinese Air Force, but they weren’t really much trouble.
The Zero’s greatness impressed me all over again. It was really a magnificent fighter. American and British aircraft just couldn’t hold a candle to the Zero. When we tangled with them in a dogfight, we could easily get into shooting position behind them. We then blew them away with our 20-mm machine guns. I fought P-39s, P-40s, Hawker Hurricanes, and also the British Spitfires which had caused the German Luftwaffe so much agony over Europe. But none of them could equal the Zero.
The Zero was truly a heaven-sent warplane. The Zeros butchered many enemy planes on each mission. Our squadron must have downed over a hundred enemy aircraft while suffering fewer than a dozen casualties. I myself shot down five.
I always closed in tight on the enemy aircraft before firing. My squadron mates called it the Ishioka Ramming Tactic. Back then, my last name was Ishioka.
Most bullets failed to hit their targets. In training, we were taught to shoot at the target when it got within 100 meters. But in actual combat, out of fear most pilots started firing at a range greater than 200 meters. Of course, they missed. I would always get within 50 meters before firing. At such close range, the enemy plane fairly stuck out of the gun’s sights, which is why I rarely missed when I pulled the trigger.
In any case, combat was the best training. At the time, we were quite competent. Carrier pilots were said to be brilliant, but they had nowhere near our actual combat experience. I’m sure they were highly skilled when they were assigned, but it was, after all, proficiency in carrier launches and landings and being adept at mock dogfights.
No matter how good a pilot is in a mock dogfight, it isn’t the same as a real dogfight. There’s a tremendous gap between those who’ve engaged in mortal combat day in and out and those who haven’t. It’s the difference between kendo fencing in a dojo training hall and dueling on a battlefield. Even if you’re strong in a match with bamboo swords, that doesn’t mean you can win with a naked blade. Someone who has repeatedly cut down people would be the stronger fighter. I was certain, and proud, that my skills were superior to those of the carrier pilots.
I was transferred to Rabaul in the fall of 1942. With the start of the Guadalcanal Campaign that began that summer, part of the 3rd Air Corps advanced on Rabaul under the command of the Tainan Air Wing.
Guadalcanal proved to be a harsh battleground. It was a long flight, a thousand kilometers from Rabaul, and we’d never launched such a long-range attack. Just to get there took three hours. And the enemy’s aircraft were much tougher than the stuff at Port Darwin. On the first mission, two veteran pilots from the 3rd Air Corps who had been transferred to Rabaul along with me failed to make it back.
This is one helluva place, I thought.
We had combat sorties nearly every day, and lost many planes each time, a rare occurrence in Kupang. The Rabaul guys, though, didn’t blink an eye. It was expected there. Most of the planes that did make it back were riddled with bullet holes. Rare was the aircraft that came back unscathed.
Yet Miyabe always came back from such an intense battlefield unscratched. He came back looking as if nothing had happened even from tough battles where nearly half of our guys had bit it, his airplane as clean as when he’d departed. Most of the planes in flights under his command came back unharmed, too.
You might want to say that he was very skilled. But that’s not it.
I asked a veteran pilot stationed at Rabaul how Miyabe always came back unscratched. Was he really that good?
He laughed bitterly and said, “Yeah, at running away.”
* * *
—
You must understand this: aerial combat is totally different from fighting on land. Once planes from both sides get jumbled together in a mêlée, you lose sight of who’s friend or foe. In a way it’s much more terrifying than ground combat. There are no trenches in the air. Everything is laid bare. Not only is the enemy on all sides, they’re above and below as well. An enemy plane flies away, you give chase, and immediately another enemy fighter is on your tail. And behind him, there’s one of our guys in pursuit. It is fundamentally different from a land battle where you are on one side and the enemy is on the other.
Then I saw it.
It was sometime in mid-September. We got into a mêlée with Allied fighters that had lain in wait for us in the skies above Guadalcanal. They were flying Grumman F4Fs—short, stout, sturdy planes. They weren’t as nimble as Zeros but they could take quite a beating.
I was separated from my flight, and two F4Fs hounded me. They were very skilled. If I tailed one, the other one got right on my tail. If I shook it off and got behind it, the first one fell back on my tail. In formation air combat, it’s standard to cover each other’s blind spots, but we were never as thorough as these guys were. The big difference was probably due to the quality of their wireless communications. Our radios were very lame at the time, static making it nearly impossible to understand what anyone said. It was so bad that I had ripped out mine from the cockpit and sawn off the antenna. Getting rid of the useless thing reduced my flying weight, and I was glad to shed even the antenna’s marginal air resistance.
But the performance of the Zero was such that it wasn’t handicapped in a two-to-one fight. When one of the F4Fs tailed me again, I pretended to panic and flee, cutting right in front of the other F4F I’d
been targeting. For a moment, I had two F4Fs pursuing me. I’d been waiting for that moment.
I pulled sharply on the control stick and went into a loop. Both F4Fs followed my lead and looped as well, which was their fatal mistake. No fighter could best the Zero when it came to looping as it had an extraordinarily short turning radius. They should have been well aware of that but must have forgotten, thrilled at the chance to get me. After completing one loop I was snuggled right behind one of the F4Fs. One volley from my cannon and it burst into flames. The other one fled away in a full-speed dive. Because of the loop I had just done, my plane had lost speed and I had to give up pursuing him.
It was then that I realized I was far from the site of the battle. When aircraft repeatedly bank, they lose a great deal of altitude. And during the fight with the two F4Fs, I had descended about 2,000 meters. There were still many planes engaged in combat in the skies above. I pulled up the nose of the plane, aiming to get back in the action. I glanced skyward and saw three Zeros leisurely flying along some distance from the battle. It was Miyabe’s flight.
He apparently couldn’t leave the battlefield soon enough, bringing the two other Zeros with him to stand idly by. Of course, I have no proof. Maybe he had temporarily moved away from the action as I had. But I doubt it. Call it a conviction on my part.
Why, you ask me? Because he was a big coward.
He was paranoid when it came to keeping watch during flights. Of course, there’s nothing more important to a pilot than being vigilant. The best ones were all eagle-eyed, always keeping watch and spotting the enemy first. But he went completely overboard. Not a moment went by where he wasn’t looking around restlessly. Everyone was appalled by this. There were many who said he was just a scared SOB. It was surprising to find such a pilot among the renowned Rabaul Air Corps.
Rabaul was called the Airmen’s Graveyard. Yet he continued to survive there. Of course he survived. Do nothing but run away from the fight and you’ll be spared.
His “precious life” antics made him the laughingstock of the squadron. Everyone was aware of his infamous declaration: “I want to get back home alive.” I have no idea when and where he let the thought slip out, but given that it was the subject of so much talk, I assume he’d said it many times.
No member of the Imperial Navy ever said such things. Aviators, in particular, would sooner die than utter the words. We were not drafted into the military. We enlisted and then volunteered to become pilots of our own accord. And yet such a man had said, “I want to get back home alive”? If he had uttered the words in my presence, I’d have slugged him then and there. At the time he was a Flight Petty Officer 1st Class whereas I was just an FPO 3rd Class. I would face imprisonment for striking a superior officer, but even so.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—we were pilots. There is nothing a pilot is more intimate with than death. “Death” was always right by our side, ever since pilot training. Several of my classmates had bought the farm while practicing spins or nose-dive training. I’ve also heard that many test pilots got killed during the development of the Zero.
But in spite of that, and out on the front lines, he dared to say “I want to get back home alive”?
Your comrades are failing to return to base nearly every day. When you’re all fighting nonetheless with everything you’ve got, one guy wants to save his own skin? The nerve!
Ah, but there’s more. I’ve got another story concerning what a coward Miyabe was. It’s about parachutes.
He never failed to carefully inspect his parachute. One day I sarcastically asked him, “Flight Petty Officer Miyabe, just where do you expect to land with a parachute?”
In response he laughed and replied, “A parachute is a very important thing to have. I always make sure my flight’s planes are also fitted with parachutes.”
You look puzzled. You want to tell me that parachutes ought to be indispensable items? If so, you’re terribly mistaken.
We fought above the vast Pacific Ocean, usually in enemy territory. Even if we parachuted safely, we’d end up killed by the enemy anyway. And if we were returning from hostile territory and our aircraft failed, we’d be parachuting into the sea. We’d only drown or become shark food.
So at the time, none of us pilots had decent parachutes. Sorry to be indelicate, but we peed into them. Aviators spent hours inside their aircraft. When nature called, it wasn’t like on the ground where we could just take a leak on the roadside. We did in fact have paper bags to relieve ourselves in, but it was incredibly bothersome to whip it out and insert it into a bag while piloting the plane. Besides, an enemy might attack while you were relieving yourself. If anything, it was extremely dangerous to be distracted in such a way. And after you were done, you had to dispose of it by opening the canopy a bit and tossing the contents outside. But in doing so, more often than not, the bag full of urine got buffeted by the wind and you ended up drenched in the stuff. I doubt there was a single fighter pilot who didn’t get doused from doing that. So, what did we do? We urinated into the parachute. We placed it between our legs and let it gradually soak up our piss. Nearly all the pilots based at Rabaul must have done so, which is why most of the parachutes absolutely reeked. I didn’t even want to imagine what their condition was like on the inside.
To be sure, plenty of pilots on the mainland used parachutes leading up to the end of the war because they could land on Japanese soil. And since they weren’t invading, they weren’t trapped in the cockpit for hours on end, dealing with annoyances like having to go.
But Miyabe always had a parachute equipped even in Rabaul. What’s more, he would go so far as to regularly open up and inspect it just in case. It’s too bad he never had to use the damn thing.
One day I saw Miyabe folding up his parachute and said, “Since you inspect it so carefully, sir, I guess there’s no chance of it failing to open.”
Apparently oblivious to my sarcasm, he replied without hesitation, “I sincerely hope I’ll never have to use it.”
I was dumbstruck.
Oh, talking of parachutes made me remember something else. He shot and killed an American who was parachuting. This happened at Guadalcanal. After downing a Grumman, he machine-gunned the pilot parachuting away from the craft. Talk of it spread like wildfire. I didn’t see it happen myself but heard of it from one of my buddies there. There had been multiple witnesses.
When I heard what he’d done, I was disgusted. He was a disgrace to the whole Navy.
In a dogfight, once you down an enemy aircraft you’ve won. Of course an American pilot is an enemy, but is it really necessary to kill a man fleeing in a parachute from his wrecked airplane? Even in battle there is such a thing as showing mercy. What he did was equivalent to cutting down a man who’d lost his weapon on the battlefield and fallen, unable to fight. Once I’d heard what he did, I loathed him from the bottom of my heart. I’m sure there were more than a few other airmen who felt as I did.
I used my machine guns outside of dogfights, too. But it was to attack anti-aircraft emplacements or ships. I never once shot at an unarmed man. I believe only a coward would do such a thing.
Do you get it? That was the kind of man he was. He was always running from danger on battlefields but had no problem gunning down a defenseless human being. Or perhaps, it was because he was such a man that he was capable of doing such a thing.
* * *
—
Ever since I became a fighter pilot, I desired to fight bravely and die with valor in battle. In any case, I thought my life was forfeit, which was why I wanted to die heroically, like a man. I never ran away from dogfights. That’s my medal. I was never actually decorated, but that alone is my pride.
I lost an arm in an air fight at Guadalcanal in October 1942.
That day I was providing cover for land-based medium bombers, the Mitsubishi G4Ms used by the Imperial Navy. They were slow
, sitting ducks before enemy fire, which is why they always had a convoy of Zeros. Zeros were originally escort fighters.
The target for the bombers that day was a fleet of enemy transport ships. We had twelve bombers and twelve Zeros. Miyabe was part of the formation.
Enemy fighters were lying in wait for us in the skies above Guadalcanal. Their interception—yougeki rather than geigeki in Imperial Navy parlance—was particularly intense that day. There must have been over forty of them. We engaged the F4Fs while defending the bombers.
We did our damnedest to protect the bombers but the enemy avoided tangling with the Zeros and, instead, targeted the bombers. While we would pursue one enemy fighter, another one would swoop in and attack a bomber. One after another, the bombers burst into flames and plummeted. It was like being hunted by a pack of wolves.
Above all else, it was the duty of the escort fighters to protect the bombers. It was more important to keep the bombers from getting shot down than to shoot down enemy planes. If we went too far in chasing hostile planes and got separated, they’d take down our bombers. Each bomber had seven crewmembers and carried ordnance intended for a strike on the enemy’s airfield. The bomber crews were risking their lives for that single attack. We escort pilots had been ordered to protect the bombers even if it meant offering up our lives. That was our mission.
Just as the bombers were about to turn course for the bombing, a gap momentarily opened in our formation. Two F4Fs swooped in. I didn’t think I would make it in time, but on the spur of the moment I decided to slip in between a bomber and the enemy aircraft. It wasn’t a conscious decision—my instincts as an escort fighter took over.
The next instant, I was fired on from above. My canopy was blown off. Something crashed into my head and for a second everything went black. But I immediately regained consciousness and looked behind me. The bomber was safe.
The Eternal Zero Page 3