CHAPTER 8
Zero Fighters Assure Victories: Operations in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies
THE NATURE OF THE Hawaiian Operation prevented the Zero fighters from demonstrating fully their exceptional combat performance. Our planes so quickly eliminated all enemy aerial opposition that the Zeros confined their sweeps mainly to strafing attacks. In the Philippine Islands and the Dutch East Indies campaigns, however, our success rested directly on the ability of the Zero fighters to establish control of the air. Neither campaign could possibly have achieved its success with a fighter plane of lesser performance than the new Zero which so completely surprised the enemy.
Our main land-base air strength lay in Formosa, to which our planes flew immediately prior to the war. Separating these bombers and fighters from crucial Clark and Iba fields on Luzon was the impressive distance of more than four hundred and fifty nautical miles. We considered these two bases, as well as the city of Manila, which lay some five hundred nautical miles from Formosa, as targets of the highest priority. Our intelligence reported that at Clark and Iba fields rested the bulk of American air power in the Philippines; it was necessary to destroy this if our operations were to proceed with any degree of safety.
This distance between our Formosa bases and the Philippine Islands created a tremendous obstacle. Our planes in China often flew long missions, especially between Hankow and Chungking, but the proposed Formosa-to-Philippines-and-return raids exceeded even the most strenuous flights of the Sino-Japanese Incident. Further complications arose from the fact that the greater portion of the Formosa-Philippines flight would have to be made over water, which increased the possibilities of navigational error. Even were these obstacles to be overcome, we still faced the hazards of excessive bomber losses, since the distances involved appeared far beyond the maximum capabilities of our fighter planes. The Chinese with inferior fighters had effectively defended their cities against our unescorted bomber formations, and we realized only too well that the superior caliber of American pilots and planes promised severe bomber losses.
It was possible that in the Zero we possessed the world’s first fighter airplane capable of flying the nine hundred nautical miles for the round trip between Formosa and Luzon. Actually we would have to provide for the equivalent of at least thirteen hundred nautical miles of flight, since the Zeros would inevitably be called on to engage in fuel-consuming dogfights.
We had also to consider additional factors. The effective flight range of an airplane is determined by more than merely still-air flight. The size of the formations would in great part determine the eventual fuel consumption of our planes, and much would depend upon our pilots’ flying skill. Experience had taught us that a pilot well versed in the art of flying “by the seat of his pants” could extend by a considerable margin the maximum range of his airplane, as compared to the individual who flew mechanically. In China we always realized maximum efficiency from our formations, and were assured that our men possessed the highest flying skill. Circumstances then permitted us to select for Zero fighter operations only our crack pilots, and our formation flights never exceeded in size the thirty-Zero mission against Chengtu.
Once we placed the Zero in mass production and assigned large numbers to operational fleet units, we forfeited the luxury of critical pilot selection. Our commitment to a decisive war with America and England demanded the use of every available Zero fighter against the enemy, although we might lack what we considered a desirable number of “crack pilots.” Consequently, in the summer of 1941 we assigned to our aircraft carriers half of those pilots who had fought in China under Lieutenant Saburo Shindo’s command. The remaining veterans, under Lieutenant Tamotsu Yokoyama’s leadership, were transferred to the land-based air forces.
Thus the difficulties of the Formosa-Philippines operation mounted steadily. To raid Luzon with Zero fighter planes, we were required to use the relatively few seasoned pilots as a nucleus around which we built a force of nearly two hundred and fifty Zero fighters, including spare planes which we assigned to the Tainan and the 3rd Air Corps.
The magnitude of the forthcoming Luzon assault demanded that we employ larger fighter-plane formations than we have ever sent into combat. The difficulties of maintaining formation with large groups of airplanes complicate enormously the pilots’ efforts to maintain minimum fuel consumption. The mass formations inevitably resulted in a reduction in the Zero’s operating radius of action.
Perhaps our greatest worry lay in the fact that the American and Philippine forces would expect our attack and consequently would be able fiercely to resist our planes with a maximum number of interceptors. Since we were to open the war with the Hawaiian Operation, the Philippines would have ample time in which to bolster their defenses. The unfavorable timing demanded that we attack Luzon with every available airplane. Everything depended upon the ability of the Zero fighters to wrest control of the local air from the defenders. Cognizant of our difficulties, the General Staff in Tokyo and the Combined Fleet General Staff ordered every possible action taken to increase the flight endurance of the Zero fighters in Formosa. Again we were faced with a problem other than that of range. We had to calculate the effect upon our pilots of the long hours spent in the air within the small Zero cockpits; our pilots must engage American fighters after spending what we considered was a prohibitive number of flying hours before entering combat.
In early October of 1940 three small aircraft carriers, the Ryujo, Zuiho, and Kasuga-Maru, arrived in southern Formosa. We commenced special deck take-off and landing training, for our plan was to move the carriers as close as possible to Luzon before launching our attack in the Philippines. By so doing we would reduce effectively the time spent in the air by our fighter pilots; further, our planes would not have to take off in early-morning darkness to coordinate their attack with that of the Nagumo Force (there is a difference of five hours and twenty minutes in the time of sunrise between Pearl Harbor and Luzon). The carrier operation would allow our planes to attack Luzon, engage in air combat, and return directly to Formosa.
Subsequent events forced us to review critically our proposed carrier attack. Our larger carriers were all committed to specific operations for the morning of December 8, 1941, and the three carriers assigned to the Philippines campaign were maddeningly slow, had small carrier decks, and could accommodate no more than seventy-five planes in all. For long months our pilots would be limited to practicing carrier operations, and would never receive the special simulated combat training which they required. The performance of each plane would suffer from the added weight of aircraft-carrier-operation equipment.
In early 1941 there were in Formosa many of Japan’s outstanding fighter-plane strategists and pilots, including Commander Motoharu Okamura, Commander Yasuna Kozono, Commander Takeo Shibata, Lieutenant Hideki Shingo, and the China veteran, Lieutenant Tamotsu Yokoyama. For months the renowned flier Captain Masahisa Saito of the Tainan Air Corps and Captain Yoshio Kamei of the 3rd Air Corps drove their pilots near to exhaustion, steadily improving the range of their Zero fighters, increasing the efficiency of formation flights, and extending the flight-endurance time of the fighters. Captain Saito and Captain Kamei were hard taskmasters; day after day they sent their pilots into the air under conditions which exceeded our worst experiences in China.
The severe training discipline reaped a golden harvest. Saito’s pilots steadily increased the endurance time of their Zeros, ranging further and further in nonstop flights from their home bases. Ten-hour flights became routine; then this figure jumped to eleven, and finally our fighter pilots flew simulated combat missions of twelve continuous hours in the air. In flights up to and exceeding ten hours, our pilots reduced their fuel consumption to twenty-one gallons per hour. Flight Petty Officer Saburo Sakai achieved the amazing fuel consumption of only eighteen gallons per hour.
The reduction in fuel consumption with its accompanying greater range and flight e
ndurance brightened the prospects of the Luzon attack. With a guaranteed minimum of ten hours of flight time, the Zeros would be able to fly from Formosa to Luzon, combat the American fighters, and return to their home bases with fuel to spare. Our biggest problem was solved. Vice-Admiral Nishizo Tsukahara, Commander in Chief of the Eleventh Air Fleet and the commander of land-based air forces in the Formosa theater, informed Navy General Headquarters that the three aircraft carriers were no longer required for the Philippines attack.
Here was concrete proof that our ceaseless efforts to achieve in the Zero hitherto “impossible” performance had paid handsome dividends. The fighter’s unparalleled range enabled the Navy to relieve the three carriers of their intended mission; the Ryujo steamed to Palau Island to join in the campaign against Davao (Mindanao Island), and the Zuiho and Kasuga-Maru returned to Japan for other assignments. On the very eve of the impending war we thus gained the equivalent of three vitally important aircraft carriers for our initial thrusts against the enemy.
The intended naval air force distribution for the opening of the Philippines campaign on December 8, 1941, was:
Japanese Name Chinese Name
Takao Air Corps
3rd Air Corps Takao Base Kaohsung
Tainan Air Corps
1st Air Corps Tainan Base Tainan
Kanoya Air Corps Taichu Base Taichung
1001st Air Corps Kagi Base Chiai
Toko Air Corps Toko Base Tungkan
We assembled at these bases a total of 184 Zero fighters; 192 land-based attack bombers (120 Type 1 and 72 Type 96); and twenty-four Type 97 flying boats. Only 108 Zeros and 144 attack bombers were capable of joining the difficult long-range operations; later this number diminished even further when we transferred to southern French Indochina approximately half the strength of the Kanoya Air Corps, leaving us with 117 operational attack bombers.
Our intelligence selected as priority targets the well-equipped Clark and Iba fields on Luzon Island; we dismissed as unimportant the secondary Nichols Field in the Manila suburbs.
Early in the morning of December 8, 1941, thick fog rolled in from the sea completely to shroud our air bases. On the very first day of the war, when a coordinated effort was of the utmost importance, our planes could not leave their fields. We cursed and fumed, for even as we paced helplessly in the swirling gloom the Nagumo task force planes turned Pearl Harbor into a shambles. If the enemy in the Philippines had the opportunity to counterattack quickly, he could disrupt completely our carefully laid plans. Finally the initial reports of the Pearl Harbor raid reached us through Tokyo; still the fog did not lift.
After long hours of chaining us to the ground, the fog dispersed before the morning sun. We wasted no time and, as quickly as their engines could be warmed, the fighters and bombers thundered from the field and headed southward. As the gods of war would have it, the crippling fog proved to be a tremendous asset in our attack against the American air bases. Our planes reached Luzon Island at 1:30 P.M., Tokyo Time, several hours later than we had originally scheduled. By this quirk of circumstances, we caught the American fighters completely off guard. Receiving the reports of the Pearl Harbor attack, the fighters took to the air in anticipation of a forthcoming raid. After waiting in vain for several hours for our planes, which were then sitting helplessly on the ground, the enemy planes, their fuel exhausted, returned to their fields. Almost immediately afterward our fighters and bombers swept in to attack.
Admiral Tsukahara’s battle report of the day’s events follows:
“On the morning of December 8, fifty-four Type 1 land-based attack bombers, the majority of the 1st Air Corps, bombed and destroyed forty to fifty of the sixty enemy planes on Clark Field. Thirty-four Zero fighters of the Tainan Air Corps led by Lieutenant Shingo flew escort; immediately following completion of the bombing runs, the Zeros descended to treetop level and in sweeping attacks strafed and destroyed almost all the remaining enemy planes. Fifty-four Type 96 land-based attack bombers of the Takao Air Corps, escorted by fifty Zero fighters of the 3rd Air Corps under command of Lieutenant Yokoyama, bombed and destroyed all of approximately twenty-five planes at Iba Field.
“Two of our Zero Fighter Units encountered an estimated fifteen enemy planes in the air and in the ensuing battle shot down the entire enemy fighter force. The effectiveness of our attacks has exceeded our fondest expectations.”
The sweeping raids reduced in a single stroke the major American offensive power in the Philippines. Our intelligence estimated an enemy strength of some three hundred airplanes throughout the Philippine Islands on the first day of the war; our initial attack destroyed at least one third of this number. The sudden destruction of so large a segment of the air power of the United States, an enemy whom we expected to offer bitter resistance, infected our air crews with the desire to destroy the remaining enemy air force completely. (After the war we learned that the United States Army Air Forces had on Luzon Island on December 8, 1941, 160 planes, including thirty-five B-17 heavy bombers. Our initial attack destroyed or rendered useless at least sixty of these.)
On the war’s second day, severe storms reduced the effectiveness of our attacking planes. High winds and rain forced several fighters into the sea. On December 10, however, a savage aerial attack effectively neutralized the Cavite Naval Base area in south Manila. Forty-eight hours later not a single enemy plane remained on Luzon Island to contest our rampaging Zero fighters. Within these three days the aerial operations against Luzon Island ceased; by the fourth day, December 13, we dismissed the possibility of any form of enemy aerial counterattack. In three days our Zero fighters had given us absolute aerial supremacy in this theater of war.
At first glance these successes closely resemble the operations of the German Air Force in its overwhelming victories against Poland and France in the early days of World War II. A closer appraisal of the two air campaigns, notably of the numbers of aircraft employed both by our naval air forces and those of the Luftwaffe, reveals the slim numerical margin with which our forces operated. Ours was a battle resting entirely upon qualitative superiority and tactics, while the Luftwaffe, as can be seen in the accompanying charts, enjoyed both qualitative and overwhelming quantitative advantages.
GERMAN OPERATION AGAINST POLAND
Type of Plane Poland Germany
Bomber 180 2,000
Fighter 400 500
Other 200 (multipurpose) 500 (mainly Stuka dive bombers)
GERMAN OPERATION AGAINST FRANCE
Type of Plane France Germany
Bomber 1,500 3,000
Fighter 1,500 (including RAF) 1,500
Light Bomber 200 500 (mainly Stuka dive bombers)
JAPANESE NAVY OPERATION IN PHILIPPINES
Type of Plane U.S.A. Japan
Fighter 110 123
Attack 440 (est.) 146
Other 66 (36 flying boats) 39 (24 flying boats)
After the beginning of the war, we learned that, although the Zero fighter had appeared in battle in China more than a year prior to December of 1941, the Allies professed astonishment at the sight of our new fighter and were caught completely unaware by the Zero’s performance. Months after the Philippines campaign, the Allies still did not realize the true flight capabilities of the Zero. When Zeros raided Port Darwin, Australia, early in 1942, the enemy accepted without question the fact that the Zeros must have flown from our carriers, when in reality they flew from our newly captured land bases on Timor Island.
In every operation in December of 1941 we quickly attained numerical as well as qualitative superiority. We fully appreciated the fact that the geographical isolation of the Pacific and Asiatic battle areas would prevent the enemy from rapidly reinforcing his air forces, and that by quick, decisive onslaughts we would not only achieve local air supremacy but would retain this advantage.
Within ten days of the opening bombing attack, the enemy planes disappeared entirely from the Philippines. Our forces wasted no time
in pressing their newly won gains. On December 25, our task force swarmed ashore on Jolo Island in the southern part of the Sulu Sea and occupied its airfield. To obtain local air coverage we dispatched twenty-four Zero fighters of the Tainan Air Corps in a mass nonstop formation flight of twelve hundred nautical miles. The flight of the single-seat fighter planes was unprecedented in aviation history.
Our fighters experienced little difficulty in ridding the skies of the remaining enemy planes; by early March of 1942, our naval land-based air forces had landed in the string of south Pacific Islands. Quickly the entire Dutch East Indies came under the control of our air force. The Tainan Air Corps advanced to Bali Island in the Dutch East Indies through Jolo Island, Tarakan, Balikpapan, and Bandjermasin; the 3rd Air Corps flew to Davao, Menado, and Kendari (Celebes), then divided into two groups, the first of which advanced through Makassar to Bali Island. The second group moved into Dilly on Timor Island by way of Amboina.
Under Admiral Tsukahara’s command, the naval land-based air forces in the southern Pacific area definitely shot down in air combat and destroyed on the ground a total of 565 enemy planes from December 8, 1941, until the close of the Java Operation. Of this number, our Zero fighters accounted for 471 planes, or 83 per cent of the total.
We can judge the effectiveness of our Zero fighters by observing that in all our operations in the first months of the war, the Zero fighters of our land- and carrier-based air forces destroyed 65 per cent of all the enemy planes lost. This accomplishment contributed directly to the success of our operations in many respects other than the destruction of the enemy aircraft; without control of the air, our bombers and torpedo planes could not possibly have eliminated enemy resistance so thoroughly.
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