Just a Little Acro Fun

[MIflyer]

In the book Operation KE, about the Japanese efforts to evacuate its troops from Guadalcanal, the "Cactus Air Force" effort to intercept Japanese destroyers destroyers with SBD's escorted by F4F is described. The Marines flying F4F ended up forming a Lufberry Circle as a away to handle the large horde of aggressive Zeros that showed up. One pilot, MG Zielinski, ended up circling the opposite direction to the Lufberry and shooting at the Zeros trying to break into the Lufberry, head on, claiming hits on two. On the way back to Cactus he had a very unusual experience, described below.

I guess the Japanese pilot might have been out of ammo and decided that Zielinskiwould make a good playmate.

 

[MIflyer]

I was surprised at the number of cases mentioned in the book when both Cactus and Japanese pilots flew past each other with the attitude, "I've had enough for today. Leave me alone and I'll leave you alone." The US pilots, even those flying P-39's, were no longer afraid to engage Zeros, especially when the situation was favorable, but they did not go looking for trouble every day, either. In one case the IJN sent out a flying boat with a Zero escort to search for missing Zero pilots and the USN searched in the same area with a PBY. The two groups encountered each other and the Zeros left the PBY alone. They were both trying to rescue their people and had no problem with the other guy doing the same thing. I guess in some cases they were focused on the mission, such as rescue, recon, escort, etc, and not trying to add to their score.