We returned to Lae twenty minutes after the other fighters landed. We told no one of what we had done. As soon as we could get together by ourselves, we broke into loud laughter and whoops. Ota howled with glee, and even the stoic Nishizawa slapped our backs with enjoyment. Our secret, however, was not to remain ours very long. Just after nine o’clock that night an orderly approached us in the billet and stated that Lieutenant Sasai wished to see us—immediately. We looked at each other, not a little worried. We could receive serious punishment for what we had done.
No sooner did we walk into Sasai’s office than the lieutenant was on his feet, shouting at us. “Look here, you silly bastards!” he roared, “just look at this!” His face was red and he could hardly control himself as he waved a letter—in English-before our faces. “Do you know where I got this thing?” he yelled. “No? I’ll tell you, you fools; it was dropped on this base a few minutes ago by an enemy intruder!”
The letter read:
“To the Lae Commander: We were much impressed with those three pilots who visited us today, and we all liked the loops they flew over our field. It was quite an exhibition. We would appreciate it if these same pilots returned here once again, each wearing a green muffler around his neck. We’re sorry we couldn’t give them better attention on their last trip, but we will see to it that the next time they will receive an all-out welcome from us.”
It was all we could do to keep from bursting out with laughter. The letter was signed by a group of fighter pilots at Moresby. Lieutenant Sasai kept us at ramrod attention and lectured us severely on our “idiotic behavior.” We were ordered specifically never to stage any more flying exhibitions over enemy fields. It was a good joke, and we enjoyed every minute of our Danse Macabre over Moresby.
None of us knew that night, however, that the next day was to be a true Dance of Death executed without aerial histrionics. Seven Zeros from our wing escorted eight bombers for an attack on Moresby. Hardly had we reached the enemy base when at least eighteen fighter planes plummeted upon us from every direction. This was the first defensive battle I had ever fought. We were hard pressed even to defend the eight bombers from the swooping attacks of the enemy planes. Although I drove several fighters away from the bombers, I failed to shoot down any planes. Three Allied fighters fell to the other pilots. The bombers meanwhile released their missiles—none too accurately—and then shakily swung into their turn to head for home.
We saw a P-39 plunge with tremendous speed into the bomber formation, but could not move in time to disrupt the attack. One moment the sky was clear; the next the Airacobra was spitting shells into the last bomber in the flight. Then it rolled and dove beyond our range. The bomber streamed flame; the airplane seemed familiar as I closed in to watch. It was the same Mitsubishi which had landed at Lae; its pilot was the one with whom we had talked in the billet. The flames increased in fury as the bomber nosed down and skidded wildly. It lost altitude quickly, and seemed on the verge of going out of control. At 6,000 feet it was only a matter of seconds; the flames were engulfing the wings and fuselage.
Suddenly, still blazing fiercely, the nose lifted and the bomber went into a climb. I gaped at the plane in astonishment as its pilot started to draw a loop—an impossible maneuver for the Betty. The pilot—the same one who had told us he wished to loop in a fighter—hauled her back and up. The bomber went up; hung on its nose in a half loop, and then burst into a seething ball of flame which blotted it out entirely.
The flaming mass fell. Just before it struck the ground a violent explosion shook the air as the fuel tanks went off.
CHAPTER 17
THE THREE months of May, June, and July were filled with almost constant air battles. It was not until after the war that I discovered that our Lae Wing was the most successful of all Japanese fighter plane operations against the enemy and that our continued successes were by no means repeated with such regularity elsewhere. Lae was nothing less than a hornet’s nest of fighter planes to the enemy. Despite its position as a major base for our bombers and for surface shipping, not even Rabaul figured so highly in the destruction of enemy aircraft as we did during the four months from mid-April to mid-August.
We flew what was then the outstanding fighter airplane of the entire Pacific theater. Our pilots enjoyed a clear-cut superiority against the enemy, many of them having gained their greater experience through combat in China and through the rigid and exacting training requirements of pre-war Japan.
It was not surprising, therefore, that the enemy suffered such grievous plane losses against the Zeros which flew from Lae. To us, however, it seemed that the courage of the pilots and crews who manned the B-25 Mitchells and B-26 Marauders was deserving of the highest praise. These twin-engined raiders lacked the firepower and the armor protection of the rugged Flying Fortresses, yet, time after time, they flew against Lae and other targets minus the fighter escort our own high command deemed indispensable for the survival of bombers.
They always came in low, anywhere from 1,500 feet above the ground to such a low level that they were actually slicing through the top of tree branches, as we saw more than once. They combined with their courage the highest piloting skill, and it was unfortunate for their ability that their airplanes proved no match for the maneuverable Zero fighter. Nevertheless, on more than a few occasions, their formations endured the very worst our fighters had to offer as they fled after their attacks. They were undaunted. They continued to come, continued to hit us with everything they had. Day and night their bombs slammed into the Lae base and their gunners strafed anything which moved. Their morale was marvelous, despite the terrible toll we exacted of their ranks in the late spring and summer of 1942.
On May 23 seven Zeros caught five B-25s over Lae, and sent one into the sea thirty miles south of Salamaua. The following day six bombers returned to Lae. Unfortunately for their crews, our island warning net sighted them far from Lae, and eleven fighters stormed the hapless bombers, burning and shooting down five, and badly crippling the sixth. I flew in both interception missions, and the records of Imperial Headquarters credit me with three bombers shot down on those two days.
The tempo of attacks increased as May drew to a close. For the first time, on May 25, four B-17s attacked with an escort of twenty fighters. Over the towering Owen Stanley Mountains, all hell broke loose when sixteen Zeros plummeted into their ranks. Five enemy fighters went down, but the Fortresses escaped. Three days later five unescorted B-26s returned to Lae; I chalked up another victory. On June 9 I sent two more B-26s crashing into the ocean.
The days seemed to blur into one another. Life became an endless repetition of fighter sweeps, of escorting our bombers over Moresby, of racing for fighters on the ground to scramble up against the incoming enemy raiders. The Allies seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of aircraft. A week never went by without the enemy suffering losses, and yet his planes came, by twos and threes and by the dozens. Through the passing years many of the details of these battles have faded, despite the help of a religiously kept diary. But several episodes stand out clearly.
Unforgettable was the slaughter of May 24 when an alarm of incoming planes threw Lae into an uproar. Six stand-by planes were already off the ground when the rest of us, clutch-the sideboards of the swaying truck which brought us from our billet to the runway, reached the field. We were airborne without a moment to spare; my own fighter cleared the ground even as a stick of bombs tore the runway apart directly behind me. At least eleven Zeros were airborne by the time six B-25s completed their runs and turned to flee for Moresby. Nishizawa and Ota were the first to reach the enemy planes, and they each hit one bomber, raking the Mitchells with cannon fire. In a few seconds both B-25s were enveloped in flames. They crashed just beyond our airstrip. The rest of us jumped the four remaining bombers which, by excellent evasive flying, dodged our firing passes and reached the open sea. All eleven fighters winged in hot pursuit of the enemy.
Off Salamaua, we pressed home the a
ttack. Again it was a case of poor formation flying on the part of our pilots. Every man seemed to think the battle was his own, and raced in against the bombers without regard for his fellow pilots. Zeros banked sharply to evade ramming other fighters, and more than one pilot rolled desperately to evade the fire of another Zero shooting blindly at the bombers! Once they were over the water, the B-25s dropped to the deck, skimming not more than ten yards over the waves. Their tactics were sound; we could not dive too steeply and we were denied climbing passes. One Zero, screaming down in a dive at the lead bomber, misjudged his distance and plunged at full speed into the ocean.
I caught the last bomber in a firing pass from above its tail. The B-25 held a straight course, and it was not difficult to concentrate my fire into the fuselage. In moments the air was filled with fire and smoke as the bomber reeled to the left and exploded as it hit the ocean.
At sea-level height the B-25s were almost as fast as the Zero fighter, and we were hard pressed to keep up with the bombers and also go into our firing passes. Three enemy planes were still in the air, when the six stand-by fighters turned for home, out of ammunition.
Lieutenant Sasai chalked up the fourth bomber, and we kept hammering at the two surviving planes. I got the fifth when, with its gunners apparently out of ammunition, the B-25 made a run for home after breaking away from the other remaining plane. The Mitchell took 1,000 rounds of machine-gun bullets in its fuselage tank and exploded flame from the right wing; it skidded wildly and hit the water, where it exploded. It was a good day. Five out of six planes definitely destroyed.
Several days later I was involved in a new aspect of air combat, and one which proved—even after all our battles—sickening. I caught a lone B-26 over Lae, and pursued the enemy plane over the sea, shooting up the fuselage and right wing. The Marauder burst into flames over the water, but before it crashed four men bailed out. Each landed safely on the sea, and the next moment a small bright life raft popped up. As I circled the raft, I saw that the men clung to its sides. Since they were only two miles from the Lae air base, it was only a matter of time before a boat would pick them up and make them prisoner.
Suddenly one of the men thrust his hands high above his head and disappeared. The others were beating fiercely at the water, and trying to get into the raft. Sharks! It seemed that there were thirty or forty of them; the fins cut the water in erratic movements all about the raft. Then the second man disappeared. I circled lower and lower, and nearly gagged as I saw the flash of teeth which closed on the arm of the third man. The lone survivor, a big, bald-headed man, was clinging to the raft with one hand and swinging wildly with a knife in the other. Then he, too, was gone.
When the men on the speedboat returned to Lae, they reported that they had found the raft empty and blood-stained. Not even a shred of the men was visible.
CHAPTER 18
On May 20 we fought the highest air battle in our history, when Commander Nakajima led fifteen Zeros into the enemy zone at Moresby at a height of 30,000 feet. It took us an hour and twenty minutes, fighting for altitude all the way, to reach Moresby from Lae. We relied on our height to give us the advantage of surprise, and were astonished to encounter an enemy formation several miles ahead of us at the same altitude.
I was doubtful of the Zero’s ability to perform aerobatics at this height. My personal record height with the Zero was 37,720 feet, achieved with an oxygen mask and an electrically heated jacket. At that height the plane was extremely sluggish at the controls and refused to climb another foot. Consequently, it seemed unwise to fight with the Zero at a height of 30,000 feet.
There were ten enemy fighters, apparently P-39s of a new design. I led the attack and was engaged at once. The fourteen other Zeros met the head-on attack of the remaining planes.
The controls were sluggish in the thin air. As the other plane came at me, I tried for an advantageous position from which to fire. We seemed almost to be moving in slow motion. I kept edging closer to the other fighter in a tight spiral, and maneuvered in for a quick burst. I yanked the stick over hard—too hard! Something seemed to crash into my chest, and the oxygen mask slipped down to my chin. Afraid to release the controls because I might spin out of control, I fumbled helplessly in the cockpit, and then everything faded into darkness. I had blacked out.
It seems that when a man is concentrating with all his power on a certain action, even a loss of oxygen fails to prevent him from carrying out to some extent what he had originally planned to do. I felt, even when I seemed to fall into unconsciousness, that my hands had frozen on the controls and kept the plane descending in its spiral maneuver. For when my head cleared and vision returned, I was at 20,000 feet, the plane still under control.
I snapped out of the turn instantly, for it was likely that the Airacobra had followed me down and was setting me up for the kill. But the other plane was also in trouble! Possibly the pilot had turned too sharply at that height and had spun out, or, perhaps he, too, suffered from lack of oxygen. Whatever the cause, there he was at 20,000 feet with me, spiraling around slowly. I shoved the throttle forward and headed for him, even as he came out of his seeming stupor. The next instant his wing was up and around and the P-39 came at me with all guns blazing. But the Zero was back in its element. I came out of a turn with the Airacobra above and to my right. One quick burst with my cannon and the plane broke in two. Only one other pilot registered a victory that day. Ota managed to bring down another P-39.
The following day I got my first enemy fighter without firing a shot, in a battle which was exactly the opposite of the maximum-height encounter. This time, on May 26, we fought a wild running duel at treetop level. We were in a group of sixteen Zeros when we encountered a strange enemy formation, four B-17s flying in a column, with about twenty fighters flying in echelons of two and three planes grouped around the Fortresses. We were below the enemy planes, and were able to catch them almost unawares in a steep climbing attack. I flamed one P-39, and then the sky erupted into a swirling mixture of fighter planes clawing at each other in individual dogfights.
Most of the enemy fighters broke for the deck, pulling away from our own planes. A few, however, were forced to pull out of their dives by higher peaks and went into evasive maneuvers, as we hoped they would. I dropped to the tail of one P-39 directly over the jungle. The pilot was fearless; he seemed to brush trees and rock outcroppings as he turned and dove, banked and climbed with me on his tail. Every time he climbed, turned, or rolled, I cut down the distance between our planes. I snapped out a burst, which the Airacobra evaded by rolling violently to the left. The next moment the pilot dove again, directly into a tortuous valley, flanked closely by towering crags.
Before I knew it, I was within the dangerous mountain pass, hot on the tail of the P-39. There was no time to concentrate on firing; I had all I could do to stick to the enemy fighter, which banked and wheeled in its hair-raising escape between the peaks. In no time at all I had forgotten my original purpose. I was drenched in my own sweat. The motor seemed to thunder louder and louder in my ears, and the peaks and rocks swept perilously close to the Zero as I rushed by at several hundred miles an hour.
Then the mountain caught up with the enemy plane. The P-39 came out of a tight turn and without warning faced a tremendous overhanging rock cliff which blocked our path. Instantly the pilot jerked the Airacobra upward and rolled to get his wings out of the way. It was not enough. The wing hit and the fighter snapped around, then exploded with a terrifying roar in the canyon.
I saw the pieces hurtling by me only vaguely; no sooner did I see that rock than I hauled the stick back with every ounce of strength in my arms and kept it back. The Zero whipped upward in a violent loop, and for an eternity of a split second it seemed that I would meet the wall just as the Airacobra had. But the Zero responded perfectly and I cleared the cliff by what appeared to be a matter of inches.
It took me a few minutes to calm down and to wipe away the perspiration that drenched my face.
I eased off on the throttle and climbed slowly, trying to relax, to shake off the tension. That was my thirty-seventh conquest and, although I had not personally destroyed the plane, this was one of the most harrowing air battles I’d known! I found out later that day that Nishizawa and Ota had both done almost exactly the same thing, chasing two P-39s down a mountainside and whipping away in almost impossible rolling turns as the fighters in front of them smashed and exploded. That night the billet roared in jubilation over the day’s events.
CHAPTER 19
DURING the last week of May the Lae Wing carried out maximum-effort fighter sweeps of the Moresby area, and in three days of wild air fighting scored tremendous successes against the Allied planes. Accordingly, Moresby was judged ripe for a knockout blow. On June 1, eighteen bombers from Rabaul, escorted by thirteen fighters from Lae and eleven others from Rabaul, tried for the finishing stroke against the vital enemy bastion.
We did not consider it possible for the Allies to mount any strong fighter opposition after the preceding battles, but we were wrong in this estimate. Twenty fighters roared into the big Japanese formation; once more it was a one-sided fighter-versus-fighter battle. Seven enemy fighters fell in flames, one from my guns. But they accomplished their purpose, scattering our bombers and destroying the accuracy of their aim.
On the return to Lae one of our bombers dropped out of formation, weaving erratically in the air. I dropped down with five other fighters to fly cover. The bomber was a flying shambles. Bullet holes and gaping openings from cannon shells riddled the wings and the fuselage and gave it the appearance of a sieve. I pulled up close to the nose and stared into the cockpit. Even at that distance I could see the blood on the instrument panel and on the seats. It was a miracle that the plane flew at all.
Samurai! Page 14