Interviewer: Did your men have strengths and weaknesses in their flying skills?
Saburo Sakai: Our strength was the individual skill of our pilots (i.e. how to fight one-on-one, and the marksmanship of the pilots - we didn't let our skills lapse, we kept practicing the same things over and over). That was the only strength of Japan in the war. Our weakness on the other hand was our group tactics. When you talk about features of a car or an airplane, they are just machines. They themselves don't fly. They don't try. It's the combination of pilot and machine. The pilot who can maximize the feature of the machine - that is the strong pilot. The good pilot. The Zero pilot can see three hundred and sixty degrees and can find anything much quicker. The pilot of the American fighters can't see behind him (because of the fuselage). Because of that, we targeted to the rear. But the American planes had armor to protect the pilot but the Zero, to maximize its horsepower didn't add anything like armor. The Zero pilot had to use his ability to see the enemy first, instead of armor. The American airplanes' powerful engines and the machine guns were much better than the Zero. When they received hits, the Zero often exploded or burned - it's quite fragile and easy to burn. But the American planes were very strong and were designed to protect the pilots' lives. The Japanese pilot as well as the aircraft were regarded as "consumables". That was the philosphy - a foolish philosophy. Also, the Japanese Navy placed too much emphasis on the warship. They thought the navies would fight each other by huge war vessels so they didn't place much emphasis on the airplane. The Americans had a much better philosophy -America produced more aircraft and trained more, eventually catching up with the Japanese. It was fighter against fighter in WWI, but in WWII it was group against group. The Japanese were very bad at this, but the Americans used the philosophy of American football - teamwork. Excellent.
Interviewer: Other than by actual combat, how did you learn of new enemy planes? Was there any intelligence on this? How did everyone share information on fighting against different enemy planes such as the P38, the Wildcat, the Hellcat and the Corsair? What did you think of these planes?
Saburo Sakai: The only information we were given on enemy planes was a single page of specifications of pre-war American, British, and Dutch planes. As the war went on we were also not given any information about new enemy aircraft, and were forced just to deal with them as we could when we encountered them.
Interviewer: What are your thoughts about the men you fought against? Did you find them to be skilled?
Saburo Sakai: I don't think they were as skilled in individual combat as the Japanese were. But the boom-and-zoom tactics they developed to take advantage of the Zero's inability to dive well were very effective.
Interviewer: Did the U.S. pilots use more teamwork in combat than the Japanese?
Saburo Sakai: I am confident that Japanese pilots were superior on a one-on-one basis. But the ability to work as a team both offensively and defensively that the Americans had was very impressive. Perhaps this comes from the team spirit and thinking they developed playing American football. This hit us particularly hard in the air engagements from the middle war onwards (teamwork and search patterns).
They all wanted to win. Combat makes the pilot's will to win stronger. With every fight they become much stronger. I got stronger with each victory. The first fight I didn't remember anything or understand anything. My first kill, there were many things that I should have done but I forgot everything. I didn't know what I should do. After coming back I was not rewarded: I was disciplined. I broke all the rules I should have respected and because the other pilots supported me, that's the reason why I was able to survive. I was heavily disciplined - they hit me with a wooden stick - a very heavy blow. But as I got more kills I began to have the confidence that I would never be defeated as long as I was in a Zero.
Interviewer: Did you bracket the enemy first with MG, then fire your 20mm cannon when he was in range?
Saburo Sakai: No, no no that was never true.
Interviewer: Did you set convergence on your guns?
Saburo Sakai: Yes, we had convergence. We counted on the 7.7mm because we had plenty of ammo. The ballistics was very good and fired very straight.
Interviewer: What was your convergence range for the 20mm cannon?
Saburo Sakai: In the Japanese Navy, the setting was 200 meters on the cannon. But all the pilots wanted a much closer convergence. I asked my subordinate to adjust it because it's much better closer in. So we asked the men to adjust the convergence to become much shorter.
Interviewer: At Rabaul and Lae did you fly the same plane?
Saburo Sakai: No, we changed. Two hundred hours was the maximum flying time before the plane needed an overhaul and disappear from our squadron. Therefore we switched planes often. There were no specific airplanes assigned to our pilots. They continuously switched engines in our planes and sometimes we saw change after change. Only the commanding officer had an airplane to himself, and he scarcely flew it! I never had a dedicated airplane. The first day of the war, the was a specific airplane for each pilot and was numbered according to position in the formation. But after engine trouble and damage, the planes had to be changed. So by the second day there was no order to the numbering.
Interviewer: Did you ever use radio when you flying in combat?
Saburo Sakai: The radio was useless. We knew a week before the opening of the war that it was useless. It just made bunch of noise - if there was a worst piece of equipment in the Japanese Navy, it was the radio for the fighter planes. You couldn't hear anything at all. Close to the opening of the war, we pilots realized the radio was heavy and useless so I removed mine to save weight, as well as the wooden antenna pole. I cut that off. My commander, a very difficult man, saw this and yelled, "What did you do with this airplane?" I told him, "I need to make my airplane lighter to fly to Manila. It's much better." He replied, "Please, take mine out too!"
Interviewer: Did you use hand or aircraft signals to your wingmen?
Saburo Sakai: There was nothing to communicate. We flew from practice. From the movement of the leader's head, we were able to understand what he was thinking. Once you're in a dogfight, you don't think, "Who's flying way over there?" You can never tell. You never can tell who is who in a big dogfight. If you're above a fight and announce that an enemy is behind you, then everyone in the fight will look back! You can never tell. There's nothing to talk about in a dogfight.
Interviewer: Did you have a specific bomber escort technique?
Saburo Sakai: Unlike the United States, Japan was a very poor country and had a very small number of aircraft. So we would fly a few minutes ahead of the bombers first, to the targeted area. Ninety-nine percent the Allied were sure of where we were going so they were waiting for us. When we were strong in the beginning of the war, the enemy aircraft would all retreat and we'd clean them up. That was at the very first, but later, as you know, the situation was reversed.
So we sent one group ahead and a second group flew five hundred meters above the bombers, and slightly ahead of them.
Interviewer: How would you be recognized by your superiors in the field?
Saburo Sakai: It's true that I didn't receive any award. The squadron commander knew about my achievements, but nobody else knew. It was quite regrettable. Entertainers were awarded medals and so on, but I didn't receive anything. In Germany it was very different. Pilots were awarded medals regularly during World War II but the Japanese Army and Navy - nothing.