Once they saw that the tide had turned, the enemy pulled back. Instead of giving chase, though, we formed up again and proceeded to the skies above Port Moresby. Our side had not suffered any casualties during the surprise attack.
No aircraft lay in wait for us above Port Moresby, and we only encountered anti-aircraft fire. When we landed back at our base after the air raid, I went straight over to Miyabe-san to thank him. He merely laughed in reply.
“Did you see the enemy above the clouds back there, sir?”
“Yes, I caught sight of them through a break in them. I fired off a round of machine-gun fire to alert the formation leader. Then I ascended to fly out past the formation, but the enemy dove too quickly and I didn’t make it in time. If I’d managed to notify all of you sooner, it wouldn’t have been an ambush at all.”
I let out a silent groan. The pilots in that day’s formation of Zeros were all Rabaul stalwarts. But Miyabe-san had discovered the lurking enemy before any of us, and even beat them at their own game. I thought, This man is a first-class pilot.
But there was one thing that bugged me. In the chaos that followed, Miyabe-san wasn’t the terror I’d witnessed at the beginning of the ambush. He behaved like a different person, almost. He assiduously backed up the flight leader but hardly shined. I don’t know, he just wasn’t aggressive. Instead of shooting down hostile aircraft, he seemed to be more focused on not getting shot himself.
Soon Miyabe-san became the talk of the unit. Specifically, the way he always scanned his surroundings during missions did. Once, when a group of aircrew were chatting, a conversation like this took place.
“I can understand being cautious, but that’s going too far,” a veteran pilot said.
“I mean, we’re all plenty vigilant if we’re somewhere we might run into the other side. But he’s on guard the instant he takes off from Rabaul and keeps it up the whole time until he returns.”
“He’s gonna give himself a nervous breakdown at that rate.”
“Maybe he’s had some bad experiences that make him like that.”
“Or he is a born coward.”
Most of the group laughed at that, including myself. But there was someone who did not—Flight Petty Officer 1st Class Hiroyoshi Nishizawa.
“I personally think we should follow his example,” FPO1 Nishizawa said, and everyone else fell silent.
FPO1 Nishizawa was a master dogfighter, the best or thereabouts even amongst the aircrew at Rabaul. The Americans would come to fear him, calling him the “Devil of Rabaul.” He and FPO1 Sakai had exceptionally sharp eyes, always spotting the enemy before the other side saw them.
While you may think that aerial combat involves locking in a grapple like in judo, and that’s true in part, it’s far more effective to discover the enemy before they see you and to attack them from a higher position. Spotting the enemy even a second sooner gives you a serious advantage in the air, which is why good eyes are a major weapon. And by “good eyes,” I don’t just mean sharp vision. You need concentration, and a certain type of intuition as well. Singling out enemy aircraft as small as ants in skies that are wide open 360 degrees around you is easier said than done. Having 20/20 vision doesn’t guarantee it.
Anyway, everyone fell silent at PO1 Nishizawa’s words. But even so, more than a few still thought that Miyabe-san’s extreme cautiousness stemmed from cowardice.
What about me? Well…
To be honest, I did too. Caution and cowardice are two sides of the same coin, but in Miyabe-san’s case, I thought that cowardice won out; and that his performance during his first mission was a sort of fortuitous byproduct of his cowardice. I know it was pretty wrongheaded to think that about someone who’d saved my life.
In short order, Miyabe-san was made flight leader, and I became part of his flight. I made use of the opportunity to ask him to please stop using formal speech with me.
“You’re the flight leader, sir. Please speak to me more sternly like the superior you are.”
“Is it so awkward for you?”
“That’s part of it, sir. And the crews of other flights might think it strange.”
Flight Leader Miyabe thought about it for a moment, then laughed. “Okay, sure thing, Izaki.”
Even after becoming flight leader, Miyabe-san still kept up his signature persistent watch-keeping. He incessantly checked his six o’clock. Every time he did so, his aircraft banked, so as his wingman it was a bother. He would also frequently flip over and fly inverted.
Nearly everything below an aircraft is a blind spot, but since most of the time the enemy approached from above, taking advantage of a higher altitude, we didn’t really need to worry about what was underneath us all that much. Pilots often neglected the airspace beneath them, and in that sense it could be considered the most dangerous area. In fact, Sakai-san sometimes chose to sneak around behind and below an enemy aircraft he’d spotted in order to skewer its underbelly. The risk involved in attacking from below was being discovered by the enemy before you could take them by surprise, in which case they could strike from the dominant position above you. As I mentioned earlier, in a tangle between fighter planes, being at a higher altitude gave you an overwhelming advantage.
Even though I understood that you could never be too careful when it came to being on the lookout, I thought that Flight Leader Miyabe’s cautiousness was a little too extreme.
His fighting style was the other reason I thought him a coward. It was something I learned once I was part of his flight, but he never stayed for very long in the area of combat. Once the fight turned into a mêlée, he promptly took refuge and went after enemy aircraft that similarly fled the combat zone.
Since I was young at the time, once a mêlée started I would become entranced, hoping to take out at least one enemy aircraft. But when the flight leader breaks away, his wingmen must follow. Many times I came very close to making a kill only to let the opportunity slip through my fingers. Those moments always left me feeling extremely disappointed.
Once, however, I tore away from my flight leader to pursue a hostile fighter.
I clung fast to the tail of a P-40 Warhawk that was attempting to withdraw after attacking one of our medium bombers. The Warhawk went into a dive to throw me off, but I went around, cut in close, and got on his tail. He tried his damnedest to escape, but I didn’t let him. I drove him close to the surface of the ocean and fired on him with both my 7.7-mm machine guns and 20-mm cannons until his aircraft crashed into the waves. It happened then—a tracer bullet streaked past the side of my plane. I was being fired on from behind.
I turned around and looked back to find two P-40s hard on my tail, catching me in a pincer attack. I could’ve sworn they hadn’t been there when I’d checked behind me a moment before.
There was still some distance between us, but the unfriendlies dove down, quickly closing the gap. I saw tracer bullets speed past both sides of my aircraft. I would be struck down whether I tried to flee left or right. I prepared for death.
In the next moment, the tracers that had enclosed me suddenly vanished. I looked back to see one of the planes spout fire and fall into a tailspin. The other one dove down and sped away. There was a Zero behind me. It was my flight leader. That was the second time Miyabe-san saved my life.
When we landed back in Rabaul, I addressed Flight Leader Miyabe. “Thank you very much for today, sir.”
“Listen up, Izaki,” he said with a very serious expression. “It is far more important to avoid getting shot down than it is to shoot down the enemy.”