There were some bad rumors whispered about him, too. Oh, what were they? Actually, I really don’t remember it all too well…
No need to hold back? Well, okay, I think I remember hearing words like “coward” being used to describe him.
It’s a fact that a number of airmen spoke of him in such a way. To be perfectly honest, I suspected that the rumors probably weren’t far off the mark.
By that, I mean he rarely came back from a mission with bullet holes in his aircraft. No matter how skilled the pilot, his ride didn’t come back unscathed all of the time. Especially on missions where you were escorting medium bombers, you tended to get hit. If you were guarding bombers, you were ordered to be their shield, literally if need be, so it was very difficult to come back without a single scratch. I think we lost many an excellent pilot thanks to that policy.
Yet Miyabe-san almost always came back with his aircraft totally clean, so at the very least he wasn’t catching any bullets for the bombers. Which made me think the rumors might be true.
There was another thing that made me wonder if he was a coward. He never came back out of ammo. It meant he wasn’t engaging in air combat all that much.
Of course, not every aviator in the Imperial Navy was a model warrior. There were some that just weren’t up to snuff. For example, a pilot might brag on and on that he scored a kill that day, but afterwards, while tuning up his aircraft, I’d discover that his magazines were all full. Wow, you downed an enemy plane without firing a single shot? Was this like judo master Mifune’s “air throw”?
It was pretty common for new pilots to come back with full magazines. In other words, they hadn’t engaged. Newcomers were terribly nervous, so they couldn’t even see the enemy on their first sortie, and participating in air battles simply meant darting around running away. Even so, first-timers were pretty lucky to come back at all. I say that like I was there, but this is all second-hand stuff I got from veteran pilots.
The fighters flown by the officers often came back with full magazines, too. This was because Naval Air Corps formation leaders had able NCO wingmen as bodyguards and often stayed at high altitudes, where they avoided combat and instead “directed” it. Back then, our aircraft radios were practically useless, so frankly, directing combat from on high was a bad joke.
In any case, in working on Miyabe-san’s aircraft I came to the conclusion that he didn’t do much fighting, that maybe what people said was true and he was extremely good at running away from fights.
And another thing. Well, this was just my personal feeling, but I found him irritating.
That’s because he was very meddlesome when it came to airplane maintenance. “It doesn’t feel right,” he was always telling us ground crew, and what he really meant was, “Redo it.” He was particularly sensitive about the engine. No, not just the engine—if he sensed anything was slightly off with the ailerons or some other part, he came to us. I thought maybe that side of him, too, was responsible for him being called a coward.
I mentioned before that standard operating procedure for Zero maintenance was to disassemble and tune their engines after 100 flight hours. But Miyabe-san would often ask for a full overhaul before it had reached 100 hours. He was so sensitive that he picked up on the tiniest change in the sound of his engine. If he detected even the slightest hint that something was off, he’d come right over to the mechanics’ area, so there were many among the ground crew who openly despised him.
You know, it might seem like I’m contradicting myself, but Miyabe-san wasn’t merely being oversensitive. A fairly high percentage of the times he came to us suggesting something was wrong with his engine, there would, in fact, be something faulty. Of course, this just made the mechanics resent him even more.
Yet he never forgot to express his appreciation to the ground crew. He would always say, “It’s thanks to your diligent work that I’ll be able to fight to my fullest.”
Some badmouthed mechanics liked to mutter behind his back, “What ‘to my fullest’ when he won’t fight at all?”
For some reason, Miyabe-san seemed to favor me. “When you work on my aircraft, I feel at ease, Nagai,” he’d say.
Coming from him, it somehow made me very happy. I guess that’s what people are like, huh?
To be honest, I was very confident in my skills as a mechanic, and it made me glad to have someone recognize them. In the Imperial Navy, it was very rare for an NCO to praise the work of the rank-and-file. So while I disliked Miyabe-san’s cowardice, I liked him as a person.
Working on his plane was actually a breeze. That’s because he never pushed it to its limits.
Airplanes are finely crafted machines, so we mechanics can tell right away if one has been handled harshly. For example, if a plane is taken into an excessive dive, the metal of the wings shows wrinkles or thin cracks. Or if the machine guns were continuously fired, they would overheat, resulting in malfunction. In some such cases, bullets from the plane’s own guns had struck the propellers. The weapons were designed to fire through the gaps in the propellers, but if the barrels overheated, bullets could fire without being triggered and sometimes hit the propeller.
Miyabe-san’s plane, however, always returned in great condition. It was pleasing to a mechanic to see an aircraft handled with such good care. The saying “Fine is the steed that survives intact” aptly described Miyabe-san for better or for worse.
Zeros were good planes, but starting in 1943, their quality began to deteriorate. While the changes were minor, their construction was shoddier than before. But it was something that we noticed because we were mechanics.
Surprisingly, Miyabe-san picked up on it, too.
“Doesn’t the new Zeros’ quality seem different?” he asked me one day while I was working on an engine.
Privately, I was astonished by his perceptiveness, but I couldn’t find it in me to just tell him yes.
“Not particularly, sir,” I said, standing at attention.
“Oh. Guess it was just my imagination,” he conceded, bowing his head slightly.
I felt bad about my misleading reply. “Well, sir, now that you mention it, they seem to have been a little lenient during the manufacturing process compared to before, but it should in no way impact their flight performance.”
“That’s reassuring to hear.”
“How did you notice, sir?”
Miyabe-san made a dubious face. “I can tell when I fly it.”
I was impressed. “This is only a rumor, sir,” I said, lowering my voice, “but I hear that we’re running low on skilled factory hands. The Army is sending out more and more draft notices, and they’re drafting even our best factory workers to become foot soldiers.”
“Is that so.”
“And the Zeros, as you know, are aircraft designed with an unusually high amount of aerodynamic lines. Not just on the outside, but the interior is made up of many intricate curves. Only the most skilled workers are able to cut such delicate curves with a lathe. Losing such workers must cause operations at the factories to suffer.”
“I had no idea the Zeros were being crafted by such experts. Come to think of it, the Zero is indeed a beautiful plane.” Miyabe-san touched the wing of the Zero. He whispered, “In war, the battle surely begins in the factories.”
“Yes, sir. Getting just one aircraft in the air requires the efforts of many people,” I said, deliberately referring to the maintenance crew personnel.
“I agree. The factory workers and the maintenance crew are extremely important.”
I felt slightly abashed. “Not that it’s my place to say, sir, but I think it’s no easy task to replace such highly skilled craftsmen. Back in the interior, they’re recruiting middle schoolers and ladies old and young to work in the factories instead. They’re just not capable of doing the same work as top-notch factory hands.”