B-17engineer
Colonel
Wasn't Suburo Sakai shot up by a squadron of SBD's tail gunners? I heard he was hit in the eye and various other places. Right before he was shot to pieces didn't he shoot down a Wildcat? Am I correct ?
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
....Right before he was shot to pieces didn't he shoot down a Wildcat? Am I correct ?
In desperation, I snapped out a burst. At once the Grumman snapped away in a roll to the right, clawed around in a tight turn, and ended up in a climb straight at my own plane. Never before had I seen an enemy plane move so quickly or gracefully before, and every second his guns were moving closer to the belly of my fighter. I snap-rolled in an effort to throw him off. He would not be shaken. He was using my favorite tactics, coming up from under.
He was a fantastic pilot!
During the air group's first missions of the battle of Guadalcanal, Sakai was seriously wounded in combat with Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless dive bombers from USS Enterprise's Bombing Squadron Six (VB-6). Mistaking SBD Dauntless dive bombers, with their rear gunners, for American F4F fighters, near Tulagi Sakai attacked an SBD flown by Ensign Robert C. Shaw. Sakai fired 232 rounds at the SBD but with its armor, self-sealing fuel tanks and twin machine guns in the rear cockpit, the dive bomber proved a tough adversary. A blast from the SBD rear gunner, Harold L. Jones, shattered and blew away the canopy of Sakai's Zero.
edd
The book 'Samurai' does say that...but it's not a reliable book. Not even reliable as to what Sakai said, even besides the usual problem of things looking different from the US and Japanese sides. The written combat report of the Tainan Kokutai of that action survived, and says the targets were SBD's, which they clearly were according to US accounts as well, no TBF's were attacked by Zeroes that day but SBD's were, in circumstance similar to what Sakai described. And Sakai later denied saying, or said he couldn't recall having said, a number of things in that book.According to the autobiography I have, it was the Avenger Torpedo Bomber.
"The enemy group tightened formation; perfect! They appeared to be Wildcats, and tightening their formation meant that i had not been sighted.
If they kept their positions I would be able to hit them without warning, coming up from their rear and below. Just another few seconds ... I'd be able to get in at least two on the first firing pass. I closed in as close as possible. The distance inthe range finder shrank to 200 yards - then 100 - 70 - 60 ...
I was in a trap! The enemy planes are not fighters, but bombers, the new Avenger torpedo planes, types I had never seen before."