My decision was fortunate, indeed. No sooner had I turned and pushed the throttle all the way forward than I sighted three Airacobras rushing down from the east, skimming over the water, obviously answering the distress calls of the Fortresses. They closed in on the eight pursuing Zeros, which had no warning of their approach. It was a unique situation. The three P-39s began climbing after eight unsuspecting Zero fighters, and I came around in a wide sweeping turn on the three unsuspecting enemy planes.
The first P-39 moved into firing position against the last Zero when I hit him in a shallow dive. The enemy pilot never knew what happened; bullets and cannon shells smashed into his fuselage at the wing roots and the airplane disintegrated, one wing flipping wildly through the air. My gun reports carried to the other Zeros, and at once two fighters clawed around in a tight spiral and fell upon the other two P-39s. It was over in seconds. I recognized the planes of our two peerless aces, Nishizawa and Ota. Each pilot fired but one heavy burst, and the Airacobras fell in flames. The three enemy pilots had attacked three times their number in Zero fighters; regrettably, their skill failed to match their courage.
But there was still unfinished business in the air: the lone surviving Fortress, which now turned from the land and headed back for the sea. Its speed was visibly reduced, and with its crippled engines it was only a matter of time before we cut the bomber out of the air. I had barely come out of a long climb after pulling out of my dive against the Airacobra when the B-17 moved before my nose. It happened too suddenly to enable me to aim properly, but I snapped out a heavy burst. The shells went wild, and I rolled up and turned to come back for another attack.
The crippled Fortress was still full of fight. I was climbing past the bomber, watching the tracers arcing through the air after me, when suddenly the Zero shuddered violently. The sounds of hammers beating against metal startled me, and something shook me wildly in the cockpit. My right hand went numb. The Zero skidded crazily, its belly up, and flipped downward out of control. I searched the instruments with fear, but the engine kept up its powerful drone. No flame or smoke; relief swept over me, for I was prepared to go over the side if necessary. A burning Zero doesn’t stay in one piece for very long.
I was less than 1,000 feet over the water when I brought the fighter out of its careening plunge. The plane had been hit badly, but its vital parts had not been damaged. Back in normal flying position, I looked at my right hand. A piece of metal was sticking through the glove where it had penetrated the palm. Good fortune was certainly with me today; the jagged piece of metal had been ripped loose by a passing bullet, but without enough energy to cause any serious injury.
The Fortress lost altitude steadily, trailing a long streamer of white smoke. The Zeros kept at the bomber in their long column, each one snapping out a burst as the pilot dove against the crippled bomber. One fighter broke away from the pack harassing the B-17. It went into a wide, lazy turn and began a gradual descent across the island coastline. A thin white film trailed in the air behind it. The plane did not seem to be seriously damaged; its wings were level. But it lost altitude and speed steadily. I turned and glanced at the bomber, which now plunged toward the sea, obviously out of control. By the time I looked again for the lone Zero, the airplane was gone.
A wild ovation greeted us at Lae as we told the mechanics of our destruction of five Flying Fortresses. The men leaped and shouted in glee as they heard the details. Five Fortresses and three Airacobras—an excellent day!
Nishizawa was the seventh pilot to land. He climbed out of his cockpit and ignored the hilarious cheers of his ground crew. He asked one question. “Where’s Sueyoshi?” Silence fell on the crowd.
“Where is my wingman?” Nishizawa demanded. Takatsuka climbed from his fighter and walked silently up to Nishizawa.
“Hasn’t Salamaua radioed in?” Nishizawa cried. “What’s the matter with all of you? Hasn’t there been any word?”
Nishizawa went wild. There had been no news from Salamaua, and no one had seen Sueyoshi’s fighter after it dropped toward the coast. “Refuel my plane and load my guns!” Nishizawa ordered. We tried to dissuade him from going out on what seemed to be a hopeless search, but Nishizawa would not be dissuaded.
Two hours later he returned, misery written on his face. Sueyoshi, one of the most popular young fliers at Lae, was never found. The day’s victory turned bitter in our mouths.
CHAPTER 22
ON August 3 Rabaul called back most of the Zero fighters assigned to Lae. We welcomed the transfer, for it promised relief from the daily patrols over Buna and an escape from the nightly bombings. We left behind us at Lae our personal belongings, fully believing we would soon return. We were wrong. Our first four days at Rabaul we flew reconnaissance and fighter sweep flights to Rabi, which rapidly had been built up into a major enemy fighter nest comparable to Moresby.
On August 8, after receiving our patrol orders from the Command Post, we started walking across the airfield to our fighters. Most of the eighteen pilots were in their cockpits when orderlies ran after us shouting that the flight had been canceled. We were to report back at once to the Command Post. The CP was in a wild turmoil. Orderlies and messengers ran to and fro, and the officers who passed us wore worried expressions on their faces. Commander Nakajima, who was to lead today’s mission, came out of the admiral’s room, obviously angry, and shouted to us, “Today’s mission has been called off. We’re going somewhere else.” He looked around the room. “Where the hell is that orderly? You,” pointing to a startled messenger, “get me a chart, quick!”
He spread the map on a large desk and began plotting a course with a compass. He paid no attention to any of the pilots as he pored over the map. I asked Lieutenant Sasai if he knew what had happened; Sasai questioned Nakajima, received a curt explanation, and rushed into the admiral’s rooms without speaking to any of us. Several minutes later he returned, and signaled the pilots to gather about him. His words were like a bombshell. “At 0520 hours this morning a powerful enemy amphibious force began an invasion at Lunga, on the southern end of Guadalcanal Island. Our first reports indicate that the Americans are throwing a tremendous amount of men and equipment onto the island. They also have struck in simultaneous attacks at Tulagi on Florida Island. Our entire flying-boat flotilla has been destroyed. As soon as the commander has worked out our new routes, we will take off at once for Guadalcanal to attack the enemy forces on the beaches.”
Orderlies passed out charts of the islands to each pilot. We studied the maps, searching for the unfamiliar island which had so suddenly become important. The men murmured among themselves. “Where is that damned island anyway?” cried one exasperated pilot. “Who ever heard of such a crazy place?”
We checked the distance from Rabaul to Guadalcanal. There were low whistles of disbelief. Five hundred and sixty miles! We would have to fly that distance to the enemy beachhead, engage his fighters, and then fly the same mileage back to Rabaul. The distance was unheard of. It meant a round-trip flight of more than 1,100 miles, without allowance for combat or storms, which would consume fuel in prodigious quantities.
That was enough to stop all speculation. We waited silently for the commander to lift his head and give us our new orders. In the meantime one orderly after the other rushed into the admiral’s office with fresh reports from the battlefront. We heard one messenger tell Nakajima that all contact had been lost with Tulagi, that the garrison had died to the last man.
Sasai turned pale at the news. I had to ask him several times if anything was wrong. Finally, staring straight ahead, he spoke quietly. “My brother-in-law was assigned to Tulagi.” There was no denying the certainty of his words. He referred to his sister’s husband in the past tense. If Tulagi was now occupied by the enemy, then his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Commander Yoshio Tashiro, a flying-boat commander, could no longer be among the living. He would fight to the last. (His death was confirmed later.)
Nakajima called for order. “You are going t
o fly the longest fighter operation in history,” he warned us. “Don’t take any unnecessary chances today. Stick to your orders, and, above all, don’t fly recklessly and waste your fuel. Any pilot who runs short of fuel on the return from Guadalcanal is to make a forced landing at Buka Island. Our troops there have been instructed to be on the lookout for our planes.
“Now, to fly to Guadalcanal and return to Buka means covering roughly the same distance as we flew from Tainan to Clark Field in the Philippines, and return. I am positive that we can fly that distance without trouble. Returning to Rabaul is another matter. You should be able to make it, but there may be trouble. So I repeat my warning: don’t waste fuel.”
(Commander Nakajima told me in Tokyo after the war that the admiral wished him to take to Guadalcanal on August 7 every Zero fighter at Rabaul which could fly. Nakajima protested, and offered instead to take the twelve best pilots in his wing, because he expected to lose at least half of his men during a mission of such extreme range. A bitter argument raged between the two men until they reached a compromise on the figure of eighteen fighter planes, with the understanding that the stragglers who landed on Buka were to be picked up later.)
As soon as we had our orders, the pilots broke up into trios. I told Yonekawa and Hatori, my two wingmen, “You’ll meet the American Navy fliers for the first time today. They are going to have us at a distinct advantage because of the distance we have to fly. I want you both to exercise the greatest caution in every move you make. Above all, never break away from me. No matter what happens, no matter what goes on around us stick as close to my plane as you can. Remember that—don’t break away.”
We ran out to our planes and waited for the runways to be cleared. Twenty-seven Betty bombers thundered down the airstrip before us. Commander Nakajima waved his hand over his cockpit. By 8:30 A.M. all the fighters were airborne. The maintenance crews and the pilots who were not flying that day lined both sides of the runway, waving their caps and shouting good luck to us. The weather was perfect, especially for Rabaul. Even the volcano was quiet; its eruptions had ended in June, and only a thin streamer of smoke drifted to the west.
We took up our escort positions behind the bombers. I was surprised to see that the Bettys carried bombs instead of torpedoes, the usual armament for attacking shipping. The bombs disturbed me; I knew the problems of hitting moving targets on the sea from high altitude. Even the B-17s, despite their vaunted accuracy, wasted most of their bombs when attacking the shipping off Buna.
We gained height slowly, then flew to the east at 13,000 feet for Buka Island. About sixty miles south of Rabaul, I noticed a particularly beautiful island on the water. Brilliantly green and in the shape of a horseshoe, the atoll was listed on the map as Green Island. I had no idea that the eye-catching qualities of the colorful atoll would later prove the key to saving my life.
Over Buka the formations turned and flew south along Bougainville’s west coast. The sun beat down warmly through the canopy. The heat made me thirsty, and, since we still had some time before reaching the enemy area, I took out a bottle of soda from my lunchbox. Without thinking I opened the bottle; I had forgotten the altitude. No sooner had I made a slit in the cork than the soda water geysered violently, the pressure escaping in the rarefied air. In seconds the sticky soda water was over everything in front of me; fortunately, the strong cockpit draft dried it almost immediately. But the sugar in the soda water dried on my glasses and I was unable to see! Disgusted with my own stupidity, I rubbed the goggles. I could see dimly.
For the next forty minutes I struggled to clean not only my goggles but the windscreen and the controls as well. I had never felt more ridiculous. My fighter wandered all over the formation as I scrubbed with increasing irritation. By the time I could see clearly in all directions we were already over Vella Lavella, about midway between Rabaul and Guadalcanal.
Over New Georgia we went for higher altitude and crossed Russell at 20,000 feet. Fifty miles ahead of us Guadalcanal loomed out of the water. Even at this distance I saw flashes of yellow flame against the blue sky over the disputed island. Apparently battles were already under way between Zero fighters from bases other than Rabaul and the defending enemy planes. I looked down at Guadalcanal’s northern coastline. In the channel between Guadalcanal and Florida hundreds of white lines, the wakes of enemy ships, crisscrossed the water. Everywhere I looked there were ships. I had never seen so many warships and transports at one time.
This was my first look at an American amphibious operation. It was almost unbelievable. I saw at least seventy ships pushing toward the beaches, a dozen destroyers cutting white swaths through the water around them. And there were other ships on the horizon, too far distant to make out in detail or to count.
Meanwhile the bombers swung slowly for their runs. Dead ahead of them small clouds drifted at 13,000 feet. To our right and above was the sun, its blinding glare blotting everything from view. I was uncomfortable; we would be unable to see any fighters dropping from that angle. My fear was soon realized. Without warning six fighter planes emerged from that glare, almost as if they had suddenly appeared in the sky. A snap glance revealed that they were chubbier than the other American planes we had fought. They were painted olive green, and only the lower sides of the wings were white. Wildcats; the first Grumman F4F fighters I had seen.
The Wildcats ignored the Zeros, swooping down against the bombers. Our fighters raced ahead, many of them firing from beyond effective range, hoping to distract the enemy planes. The Wildcats plunged into the bomber formation, rolling together, and then disappeared in dives. Over the water just off Savo Island, the bombers released their missiles against a large convoy. I watched the bombs curving in their long drop. Abruptly geysers of water erupted from the sea, but the enemy shipping sailed on undisturbed.
It was obviously stupid to try to hit moving ships from four miles up! I could not understand the failure to use torpedoes, which had proven so effective in the past. Our entire mission had been wasted, thrown away in a few seconds of miserable bombing inaccuracy.
(The following day the bombers returned, this time carrying torpedoes for low-level attacks. But by then it was too late. Enemy fighters swarmed all over the bombers, and many fell blazing into the ocean even before they could reach their targets.)
The bomber formation banked to the left and picked up speed for the return to Rabaul. We escorted them as far as Russell, beyond the enemy fighter patrols, and turned back for Guadalcanal. It was about 1:30 P.M. We swept over Lunga, the eighteen Zeros poised for combat. Again bursting out of the blinding sun, Wildcats plunged against our planes. I was the only pilot who spotted the diving attack, and at once I hauled the fighter up in a steep climb, and the other planes followed me. Again the Wildcats scattered and dove in different directions. Their evasive tactics were puzzling, for nothing had been gained by either side. Apparently the Americans were not going to pick any fights today.
I turned back to check the positions of my wingmen. They were gone! Things weren’t as obvious as they seemed; the enemy would fight, after all. I looked everywhere for Yonekawa and Hatori, but could not find them. Sasai’s plane, the two blue stripes across its fuselage, regained formation, several other fighters moving up to position behind him. But not my wing-men.
Finally I saw them, about 1,500 feet below me. I gaped. A single Wildcat pursued three Zero fighters, firing in short bursts at the frantic Japanese planes. All four planes were in a wild dogfight, flying tight left spirals. The Zeros should have been able to take the lone Grumman without any trouble, but every time a Zero caught the Wildcat before its guns the enemy plane flipped away wildly and came out again on the tail of a Zero. I had never seen such flying before.
I banked my wings to signal Sasai and dove. The Wildcat was clinging grimly to the tail of a Zero, its tracers chewing up the wings and tail. In desperation I snapped out a burst. At once the Grumman snapped away in a roll to the right, clawed around in a tight turn, and ended
up in a climb straight at my own plane. Never had I seen an enemy plane move so quickly or so gracefully before; and every second his guns were moving closer to the belly of my fighter. I snap-rolled in an effort to throw him off. He would not be shaken. He was using my own favorite tactics, coming up from under.
I chopped the throttle back and the Zero shuddered as its speed fell. It worked; his timing off, the enemy pilot pulled back in a turn. I slammed the throttle forward again, rolling to the left. Three times I rolled the Zero, then dropped in a spin, and came out in a left vertical spiral. The Wildcat matched me turn for turn. Our left wings both pointed at a right angle to the sea below us, the right wings at the sky.
Neither of us could gain an advantage. We held to the spiral, tremendous G pressures pushing us down in our seats with every passing second. My heart pounded wildly, and my head felt as if it weighed a ton. A gray film seemed to be clouding over my eyes. I gritted my teeth; if the enemy pilot could take the punishment, so could I. The man who failed first and turned in any other direction to ease the pressure would be finished.
On the fifth spiral, the Wildcat skidded slightly. I had him, I thought. But the Grumman dropped its nose, gained speed, and the pilot again had his plane in full control. There was a terrific man behind that stick.
He made his error, however, in the next moment. Instead of swinging back to go into a sixth spiral, he fed power to his engine, broke away at an angle, and looped. That was the decisive split second. I went right after him, cutting inside the Grumman’s arc, and came out on his tail. I had him. He kept flying loops, trying to narrow down the distance of each arc. Every time he went up and around I cut inside his arc and lessened the distance between our two planes. The Zero could outfly any fighter in the world in this kind of maneuver.
When I was only fifty yards away, the Wildcat broke out of his loop and astonished me by flying straight and level. At this distance I would not need the cannon; I pumped 200 rounds into the Grumman’s cockpit, watching the bullets chewing up the thin metal skin and shattering the glass.
Samurai! Page 18