Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (43 page)

This was done at a field such as Williams, outside of Phoenix, Arizona, where he got more ground school, classroom instruction, and another seventy hours of flying over two months. Gunnery School was next, at someplace like Matagorda, Texas, or Las Vegas, Nevada. Fighter pilots flew AT-6 Texans with a single, fixed .30-caliber gun and used 16 mm cameras to evaluate their performance. As with the aviation cadets, the West Pointers finished with about two hundred hours and were as prepared as possible under the circumstances—certainly much better prepared than their fathers had been in 1917. Navy and Marine pilots followed a very similar path albeit on a smaller scale.

Twenty years before, in June of 1921, an Army pilot named Billy Mitchell shocked an audience of old-school admirals and generals by sinking the captured German battleship
Ostfriesland
with just eleven bombs.
^*
A year later the American navy razed down USS
Jupiter,
a ten-year-old collier, gave her a flight deck, and recommissioned her as USS
Langley—
the first U.S. aircraft carrier.

During the early years only Naval Academy graduates could apply for flight training and then only after serving two years at sea, but as war approached this changed. Naval Academy cadets trained while in school and, just like West Pointers, graduated with wings and a commission. But neither service academy could meet the wartime needs of the expanding military, so the Naval Air Cadet program was established. With two years of college and ten hours of flying time, a man could apply for entry. If admitted as a cadet, he would start with Basic flight training at a civilian contracted field. Check rides were given at each twenty-hour mark, and if he passed, the student would advance to the Intermediate phase. This concentrated on formation flying, aerobatics, and navigation. It was here, again based on his performance, that he was selected for the type of aircraft he’d fly. There were VP (multi-engine), VO (surface ship reconnaissance), and VC (carrier) categories.

After a final check ride, a man chosen for fighters would go on to the Advanced phase. This was essentially a transition course that focused on instrument flying, gunnery, and tactics. A cadet who completed this wore the gold wings of a naval aviator and was a commissioned officer in either the Navy or the Marine Corps.

The last step in the process was a short assignment to the Advanced Carrier Training Group. This usually operated off Key West, where the new aviator had to make eight successful carrier landings (traps) and pass an evaluation from fleet pilots. He was now carrier qualified and on his way.

The Navy, like the USAAF, used limited numbers of enlisted pilots. Called naval air pilots (NAPs), these “bluejacket” pilots had to pass the standard entry exams and went through the same training. About 95 percent were eventually given temporary commissions as officers, and a very few retained their status after the war. The Marines, being perennially short of pilots, were less picky. Sergeant Ollie Michael was a good example of an enlisted aviator and sank three Japanese ships in late 1942.

So these were the men wearing wings in 1941 who stood up to fight the Germans, Italians, and Japanese in the air. In the Pacific they did it nearly single-handedly and against an implacable and often vicious enemy. Besides the expansion of its empire, Japan desperately needed the rice, rubber, and oil its conquests provided. Prewar Allied embargoes had left Tokyo with less than a twelve-month reserve of critical resources, so it was absolutely necessary that they resolve the diplomatic impasse or invade quickly. Any delay could have severe consequences, as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet, was well aware. He had plainly stated to his prime minister, “If I am told to fight regardless of the consequences, I shall run wild for the first six months or a year, but I have utterly no confidence for the second or third year.” Yamamoto very well knew that America was truly a sleeping giant that had now been thoroughly and angrily aroused.

At the root of most conflicts lies the quest for resources. It may be disguised as ideology, nationalism, or even religion, but without an economic motive there is no lasting impetus for war. The Japanese islands, totaling roughly the area of Montana, supported 73 million people and needed to import much of their rice from China. The islands produced no oil, no rubber, and less than 50 percent of the steel required. Nickel, essential for alloys, batteries, and magnets, was nonexistent and there was no bauxite for aluminum.

Japanese leaders, especially Army Minister (later Prime Minster) Hideki Tojo, were painfully aware of their situation. Though a Fascist and nationalist, Tojo was not a racist or a raving fanatic, as he is often portrayed. He was a product of the Imperial Japanese Military Academy and believed utterly in his nation’s right to invade and subjugate others in order to survive.
^*
He was as anti-Communist as he was anti-Western, and envisioned a Greater Asia controlled by Japan.

China, with her vast population and resources, was seen to be a solution, especially given Japan’s control of the South Manchurian Railway. This was part of the Russian reparations package granted in 1905 and was patrolled by the Japanese Army. In September 1931 a section of track happened to blow up, giving a pretext for invasion.

However, the track had been blown by the Japanese themselves. When the Manchurian Incident, as it was called, was exposed, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations and joined Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as diplomatic pariahs. Indifferent to world opinion, Tokyo had occupied most of littoral China by 1938, sparking protests and economic sanctions from Europe and the United States. In an effort to stall the Japanese, the British closed the Burma road, shutting off supplies to China. With the fall of France and Holland in 1940, imports to Japan were resumed from the Dutch East Indies, and the new Vichy French government quickly gave up basing rights in Indochina.

President Roosevelt countered by extending Lend-Lease to China in March 1941. In July the United States froze all Japanese assets and suspended critical exports of oil and aviation fuel. Washington also pressured the British and Dutch to embargo exports from their remaining Asian colonies, which they did, essentially throwing fuel on the fire. Japan retaliated by signing the Tripartite Act with Germany and Italy in September, thus joining the Axis. The Imperial Navy immediately began training carrier-based torpedo bombers in Sakurajima Bay, which bore remarkable similarities to Pearl Harbor, home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Peace negotiations continued through October, but by the beginning of November Tokyo’s decision had been made. Early on November 25, 1941, the Japanese Kido Butai (Carrier Strike Task Force) slipped quietly from Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands and disappeared to the southeast. Detouring around commercial shipping lanes, the fleet avoided detection for twelve days before it suddenly reappeared 200 miles off the Hawaiian coast. Under the command of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the task force consisted of the 1st Carrier Division (
Kaga, Akagi
), 2nd Carrier Division (
Soryu, Hiryu
), and 5th Carrier Division (
Zuikaku, Shokaku
). Between them they could put up more than four hundred dive-bombers, torpedo bombers, and fighters—the largest armada of naval aircraft in the world.

A typical Japanese fleet carrier was 740 to 840 feet long and contained anywhere from 1,100 to 1,700 men. Capable of about 30 knots, each ship was protected by 5-inch guns and an array of smaller anti-aircraft batteries, depending on the class of carrier.
Soryu
and
Hiryu
were the smallest and fastest, while
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
were the newest—both completed just months before Pearl Harbor. Both
Akagi
and
Kaga
had been designed as capital ships but had been converted following the Washington Naval Treaty.
^*

Each carrier had its own air group, which usually comprised three squadrons: a fighter squadron of eighteen planes, plus two squadrons of dive-bombers and torpedo bombers, each containing twenty-seven aircraft. There were six additional aircraft of each type kept for spares. A typical
hikotai
(squadron) was based on flights of nine aircraft with a
shotai
, a three-ship Vic, serving as the normal fighting unit. Later in the war, as in nearly every air force, the Vic was replaced by basic fighting pairs.

There were several ways to become a Japanese naval pilot in the years before the war. Officer pilots came from the Imperial Naval Academy at Etajima and, after passing the additional required aptitude tests, could apply for flight school following a year at sea. Officers could also come through the reserves if they were university graduates and then similarly apply for flight school. Certain civilian pilots could seek a commission as well; if selected, they would enter military flight school through the reserves.

However, pilots were always in short supply, so exceptions had to be made in the rigid Japanese military caste system. Free public schooling was provided only through the elementary level and after that advancement to the comparatively few slots available was extremely selective. Much like the German
Gymnasium
system, it all hinged on aptitude test results. Private schooling was possible but very expensive, and quite beyond the financial ability of an average family. The Japanese navy was astute enough to recognize this waste of resources, so they created two alternative paths for young men of ability but limited finances.

A young man could simply enlist, spend a year at sea, then apply for permission to take the entrance exams for the
Soren
, a flight preparatory course. If a thousand men applied, then about 10 percent gained admission, and of those maybe fifteen graduated.
Yokaren
was another method by which the navy completed a teenage boy’s education in return for military service. The men were taught standard military history, etiquette, and traditions, along with mathematics, navigation, and engineering, with English and Chinese grammar thrown in for good measure. Like a S
oren
graduate, a product of the
Yokaren
system would remain an enlisted man, although he’d be a naval aviator. Some five thousand boys applied for the first class, though only seventy-nine were selected—but it offered opportunities that would otherwise be unobtainable.

Basic flight school lasted a year and consisted of aircraft handling, takeoffs and landings, aerobatics, and some formation flying. Again, progression into the fighter pilot world was based on performance and instructor evaluations. If picked, the new pilot would then spend another six months in advanced training learning how to fly a fighter. All told, the program took a good two to three years depending on which pathway to wings the pilot took.

These, then, were the men staring down the decks as their carriers swung into the wind on December 7, 1941. They launched in two waves, one hour apart, and flew toward the north shore of Oahu. Led by Lt. Cmdr. Mitsuo Fuchida, a highly experienced veteran pilot from the
Akagi
, at 7:40 a.m. local time they reached the action point north of Kahuku Point and split into three attack groups.
^*
The high-level bombers swung wide over the southwest shore, then headed into Pearl Harbor. Torpedo bombers, painted in ugly shades of green, brown, and black, came in over the trees just inland from the beach. They would hit the battleships and the three aircraft carriers believed to be present.
^*
Another group would fly down the center of the island and attack the air bases at Wheeler Field and Ford Island. All told, 183 planes took part, including forty-three A6M2 Zero fighters to deal with any American resistance.

There wasn’t any.

At least at the beginning.

Every Japanese pilot that morning believed he was at war with the United States, and most expected to die. They were unaware that diplomatic relations had not been formally broken and that the Americans were not on full war alert. Not that there was any doubt in Pearl Harbor that an attack was imminent. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox had written: “If war eventuates with Japan it is believed easily possible that hostilities would be initiated by a surprise attack upon the Fleet or the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor.”

Gen. Walter Short, commander of the Army’s Department of Hawaii, had written his own analysis of the situation. In part, it read:

It appears that the most likely and dangerous form of attack on Oahu would be an air attack. It is believed that at present such an attack would most likely be launched from one or more carriers which would probably approach inside of 300 miles.

In a dawn attack there is a high probability that it could be delivered as a complete surprise in spite of any patrols we might be using and that it would find us in a condition of readiness under which pursuit would be slow to start.

The Japanese swept in, catching the defenders mostly by surprise. Four hours earlier a Navy minesweeper had sighted a periscope within two miles of the Pearl Harbor channel. The destroyer USS
Ward
then attacked it with depth charges and reported the incursion, which was ignored. The raiders had also been detected by radar but dismissed as a scheduled flight of B-17s due in from California. But by then it was too late.

Pearl Harbor was only about 40 feet deep, and despite the fate of the Italian battle fleet at Taranto in 1940, the American navy felt safe from aerial attack. But the Japanese had carefully studied the British methods at Taranto, adjusting their weapons and tactics accordingly. The same type of wooden-fin arrangement was utilized to prevent the torpedo from diving deep once released. The attack was also carried out at a 100-foot run in altitude instead of the normal 300 feet, with the weapon hung slightly nose low so it wouldn’t skip across the water like a stone.