My D-Day

    

     

D-Day, 6th of June, 1944.  The Allies invaded Normandy and started the 11-month drive to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany.  Just after midnight on June 6, thousands of paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines to secure the flanks of the invasion beaches.

  

  

    

       

Over 45 years ago I read Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day and saw the movie.  John Wayne’s airborne landing at Sainte-Mère-Église captivated me and fired up my young imagination. 

  

Like every boy, I played with plastic toy soldiers.  I collected eight good soldiers.  I used toy cowboys and pirates for the enemy.  I learned to shoot the enemy with rubber bands.  They would be hiding behind chair legs or dominos and, BANG!  My rubber bands sent them flying.  I became a dead-shot rubber band sniper.  I provided my own sound effects, which, unknown to me, resonated through our house.  “Pow-pow-kapow, KABOOM!”

 

There was a day that I especially trained my soldiers for.

Every year on the night of June 5, I took my brave soldiers and threw them out the window onto the garden plants in our front yard.  They landed among the trees and hedgerows of Normandy and hunkered down all night, avoiding German patrols. 

On D-Day morning I would wake up, gather my tireless troops, and capture the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, just like in The Longest Day.

“Cover me, open fire!”

“ Covering fire!”  BANG!  CRACK-CRACK!  POW!

One year, the dog chewed off a grenadier’s head!  But it was ok — he stood tall even without a head.  Another year the maid picked up the toy soldiers strewn about the garden and put them back in my cardboard toy box before I woke up!  Aaarghh!  Captured before the war even started.   

Another year, the dog laid land mines all around the garden.  My soldiers landed in, uh, merde.  A bad year.

  

Unfortunately for my squad, I grew up.  My soldiers retired from these mishaps.  Girls and ‘growing up’ ambushed me, and the righteous gunfire faded away. 

I don’t know where those loyal, undying troops are now.

 

 

 

 

Today, D-Day is immortalized in books, websites, movies.  Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan portrays the horrific carnage at Omaha Beach.  HBO’s Band of Brothers (also Spielberg) captures the confusion of the drop zones in Normandy, during the deadly darkness of D-Day.

D-Day is even in the comics.  In the 1990s, Charles Shultz marked every D-Day anniversary with a special Snoopy cartoon.
  

    

 

Some 40 years after my toy soldiers ended their D-Day campaigns, I took my sons to the real Normandy.  We stood enthralled on Omaha beach.  We stuffed historic sand in our pockets.  And rocks from the ill-fated cliffs of Point du Hoc.
  

 

We drove and hiked all the airborne drop zones.  Scouted the hedgerow at Brecourt Manor where Dick Winters’ Band of Brothers destroyed a German gun battery, earning a DSC, three Silver Stars, nine Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts in three adrenaline-laced hours.

We gawked at the bullet-holed church in Sainte-Mère-Église, where paratrooper John Steele’s parachute snagged on the steeple. 
 

  

We took dozens of ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos.  Normandy is mostly unchanged in 67 years.  Well, actually for hundreds of years.

  

We toured the British sector also, running across Pegasus Bridge from the glider landing field.
   

 

How lucky I’ve been!  Over 45 years since The Longest Day, my memory overflows with sights I’ve seen, places I’ve been.  My toy soldiers fought here when I was a boy, but I never thought I would see the real beaches, hedgerows and towns of Normandy. 

  

   

Nor did I ever foresee flying a real airplane.

Last month, Carlo and I flew our Cessna 152 on a flour bombing mission at Woodland.  We missed the target on all three of our bomb runs, but that’s not the real story.

 

Carlo was packing 12 plastic toy soldiers, each with a working parachute.

To my amusement, my son studiously threw toy soldiers out the cockpit window on every pass.  His paratroopers drifted down among exploding flour bombs.

There was even a hangar dog down there somewhere. 

  

Full circle.
  

 

 

After we landed, Carlo tramped up and down the grass runway, assembling his plastic paratroopers.  Then he went to the airfield’s fence and gave them away to the watching children.
  

 

My lost squad from 45 years ago would have approved.

  

Posted from Bangkok, June 9, 2011, D plus 3.

 

 

 

Poignant links:

There are thousands of very good, very rich and very nostalgic books and websites about D-Day.  Here are three links, just for remembrance.  Click on the green links.

 

Why does Charles Schultz’s Snoopy recreate D-Day every year?
  

 

The Pied Piper of Lord Lovat.  A rare piece of excellent writing.  From The Economist.
  

 

Julio and I take the Band of Brothers tour and visit Brecourt Manor.

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Reconnaissance Flight Over Bataan

December 1941 to April 1942.  Over 70,000 American and Filipino soldiers retreated into Bataan, beside Manila Bay.  Typhoon-sheltered Manila Bay was the only strategic feature of the Philippines.  If the allies could hold out in Bataan the Japanese could not use the Bay. 

The plan was to hold out for 6 months.  America would send aid and reinforcements and drive the Japanese away.

    

     

    

      

Hot summer thermals pounded the airplane as I circled over Abucay, site of the first American defensive line in Bataan.  Imagine what it was like down there – fevered palms clutching baking rifles, cracked lips, skin stinging in the oven waves reflecting from the parched ground.  I’d rather be flying.

 

The “Abucay Line” stretched from Abucay town to the slopes of Mt. Natib.  Another defense line continued on the other side of the mountain to Morong on the South China Sea.  The defensive line across the Bataan peninsula thus had a gap in the center, where Mt. Natib was. 

 

McArthur didn’t have enough healthy troops for an unbroken line.  He didn’t think the Japanese had the sophistication to outflank him at Mt. Natib.

Guess what?  The Japanese did exactly that.

 

After the Japanese 9th Infantry Division turned the left flank of the Fil-Am 51st Infantry, the whole line was imperiled, and the entire USAFFE fell back to the secondary line of defense.  It was January, 1942.

  

  

Meanwhile, the Japanese landed behind the Philippine-American lines, in the southwestern tip of Bataan.  They came ashore at Longaskawayan Point near Mariveles, and Quinauan Point

 

The fighter pilots of the 3rd, 17th and 34th Pursuit Squadrons, who had been bombed out of Iba, Nichols and Del Carmen (now Basa) airfields in December, were now fighting as infantry. 

The US had over 100 fighters in the Philippines on December 7, 1941.  The next day, more than 50 were destroyed at Iba and Nichols.  By January, there were only 9 left. 

  

By now everyone was on 1000-calorie rations — a handful of rice and a tin of tuna shared among several men.  Per day.

The Japanese took their best men and went on to conquer the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).  Oil was more strategic than Manila Bay.

  

In April, the remaining Japanese troops attacked the starving Fil-Am army.  The second defense line stretched all across the Bataan peninsula, from Orion to Bagac (see first map above), the middle anchored on Mt. Samat.  

 

Mt Samat would have been a dominant position if the allies had any artillery left.  Instead, the defense disintegrated with the first attack on April 5-6.

 

By April 7 the Japanese had broken through and were driving towards the allied rear areas at Lamao, Cabcaben and Mariveles.

 

Delaying positions at Limay and Lamao were abandoned without a fight on April 7-8.  Faced with the prospect of Japanese spearheads breaking into hospital and supply areas, ranking US General King surrendered all forces in Bataan on April 9 at Lamao. 

                 

  

By that time of course USAFFE Commanding General Douglas McArthur had long abandoned his troops and fled to Australia.  Over 65,000 Filipinos and Americans marched into captivity from Mariveles to Camp O’Donnell in Capas, Tarlac.  Tens of thousands died or were slaughtered along the way.

 

Corregidor now stood as a lone American outpost, in the middle of Manila Bay.  It was April, 1942.

  

  

Posted from Vientiane, Laos, May 5, 2011

  

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Winged Samurai!

  

I’ve written here before about Saburo Sakai.

An American-styled education and a paucity of historical records from the ‘other side’ meant that I grew up with a one-sided view of history.  Yet Samurai! captivated me as a boy.  A Japanese pilot who could out-fly any Allied pilot.  Who could see stars in daylight.  Who shot down over 60 enemy airplanes, nearly twice the tally of his highest-scoring American counterpart.

  

 

 

  

I read Samurai! when I was 8 years old, and I WANTED to be a pilot.  Few autobiographies can captivate 8-year olds.  I built scale models of the Wildcat and the Zero, flew hundreds of dogfights in my imagination. 

But there were gaps in the story – I wanted visuals.  Sakai and the Japanese Navy’s Tainan Kokutai were the elite Japanese pilots in the Pacific.  What did they look like?  What were their airfields at Lae and Rabaul like?  There were no photos.

  

 

Forty-five years later, I found Winged Samurai, by historian Henry Sakaida.

  

Persistently researched, packed with rare illustrations, Sakaida’s book is the perfect companion piece to Samurai!

    

 

 

Some of the photos have been published elsewhere.

 

The left photograph, above, shows the top pilots in the Tainan Kokutai.  In Samurai!, Sakai deliciously describes head-on attacks flown by Nishizawa, Ota, Sasai and Takatsuka against five B-17s over Buna, August 2, 1942.  Each pilot dived to gain tremendous speed, then climbed in a rolling firing pass, cross-controlled aileron and rudder to stabilize the Zero on a precise point roll, gun sight nailed on the bomb bay of his target, then flashed through the formation’s defensive fire in a twisting power climb.

Nishizawa, Ota, Sasai, Takatsuka and Sakai.  In an actual photo.

The right photograph, which I have never seen before, is their airfield at Lae, New Guinea.  It was from Lae that Amelia Earhart took off when she disappeared into history, before the war.

  

  

Sakai credited Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, his friend and Japan’s top-scoring ace, with over 100 enemy airplanes shot down.

 

  

Ironically, Nishizawa died as a passenger on a transport flight.  Henry Sakaida’s book shows where.

   

Nishizawa was shot down by US Navy pilot Harold Newell on October 26, 1944, between Puerto Galera and Calapan in the Philippines, a spot I have flown over with Carlo!

  

 

On August 7, 1942, Sakai shot down ‘Pug’ Southerland over Guadalcanal in a dogfight well-documented on PBS, Discovery Channel and History Channel. 

Minutes later, Sakai attacked what he thought was a group of American Wildcat fighter planes.

 

Sakai was wrong.  They were SBD dive bombers – with rear gunners!  Sakai was hit by .30 caliber machine gun bullets over the right eye and in his skull.  In an epic struggle best described in Samurai! and Winged Samurai, Sakai leveled his plummeting Zero, treated his own wounds, and, half-blind and in agonizing pain, flew his damaged Zero fighter for nearly five hours back to Rabaul.

  

 

A year later, on June 24, 1944, Sakai, his right eye permanently blinded, was cornered over Iwo Jima.  He outflew 15 American Hellcats in an exhausting dogfight.  He snap rolled into left vertical spirals so many times that his right arm went numb.  When he landed, incredulous mechanics did not find a single bullet hole in his Zero.

 

US Navy pilot William McCormick described watching four Hellcats on the Zero’s tail.  The Zero was in a pure vertical left bank, in complete control, pulling a turn so tight that the American fighters stalled and fell out of the fight one by one, defeated by sheer aerodynamic mastery.

 

 

After the war, Sakai became a peace advocate, and kept a promise not to kill another living thing.  He sought out many of his former adversaries.  He was a guest at American military bases, leadership forums and veterans reunions. 

 

 

Perhaps the most interesting reunion was the one with the man who so nearly killed Sakai – SBD rear gunner Harold Jones.

 

Sakai brought his damaged leather helmet and gave the man who shot him the gift of friendship.

  

  

Sakaida collected many photos, including Sakai’s mother, who had a great influence on Sakai’s disciplined upbringing.

But one last photo I’d like to share, taken by Sakai himself with his precious Leica camera, is that of Hatsuyo.  They had been close since childhood, but it was only after Sakai was wounded did she reveal her frustration over his ignorance of her feelings for him.  She and Sakai married, and she did her best to take care of him. 

 

The post-war years were brutal for Japanese veterans, and Sakai had to sell his beloved Leica and do manual coolie labor.  And Hatsuyo fell ill, and died.

  

  

Sakai suffered a heart attack while reaching across a dinner table to shake an American’s hand.  He died in September, 2000.  I wish I could have met him.  He never refused anyone.  He was just an e-mail away.

But now I have something almost as good.  On the title page of my copy of Winged Samurai, bought from an Amazon.com reseller at random, I found this:

  

Saburo Sakai, the pilot I admire the most, signed my book.  

  

  

Posted from Berlin, December 10, 2010

  

Links to the books and authors:

Samurai! — Stories about Saburo Sakai

Samurai! – Current edition of Sakai’s autobiography, the acclaimed book by Saburo Sakai and Martin Caidin.

Samurai! – Hardcover edition, out of print, available from re-sellers

Winged Samurai – The featured book by historian Henry Sakaida

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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Another Childhood Dream Gets Crossed Off the Bucket List

Operation Market-Garden was the biggest airborne operation in World War II.  On September 17, 1944, 10,000 paratroopers from the British 1st Airborne Division jumped into drop zones 15 kilometers west of Arnhem, in the Netherlands.  Their goal was to capture the bridge over the Rhine, at Arnhem.  They were 100 kilometers behind enemy lines.

An armored ground force of British XXX Corps was to link up with them at Arnhem, driving up those 100 kilometers in 2 days.  Two other airborne divisions, the American 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne, landed 20,000 more paratroopers along that 100-kilometer route to capture vital river and canal crossings on the way to Arnhem.  It was a dramatic, exciting plan.

Epic fail. 

The British 1st Airborne’s drop zones were too far from the Arnhem bridge.  Of 10,000 British paratroopers, only a battalion of 600 got to the bridge.  They held for 5 days instead of 2, then were wiped out – dead or captured.  The remaining British were surrounded at Oosterbeek, and surrendered 3 days later.

By then XXX Corps’ tanks had fought 85 kilometers up to Nijmegen, just 15 kilometers south of Arnhem.  But the entire plan was really a bridge too far. 

The Arnhem bridge was never captured, and the Allies were left with an 85-kilometer corridor going nowhere.  Of the 10,000 paratroopers at Arnhem, 1,500 died and 6,000 surrendered.  Field Marshall Montgomery, the overall commander, called the debacle “90% successful”.

Incredible bravery in the field, catastrophic leadership at the top.  Tragic proof that efforts don’t count – results do.

The Netherlands was not liberated until the war ended 6 months later.

  

  

   

  

Sixty-six years later, I stood on the same drop zone that was too far from Arnhem.  Ginkel Heath would have been a meadow, except that it was sand.  Purple heather grew on it.

I’d spent the afternoon watching one of the best airshows I’ve seen.  Now came the best part.

Every young boy of my era knew Spitfires, Mustangs and B-17s.  But in my 53 years, I had never seen a real Spitfire before, nor had I ever seen a B-17 in flight.

All my boyhood wishes were about to come true.

 

Enveloped by the famous snarl of its 12-cylinder in-line Merlin engine, a Supermarine Spitfire streaked over our heads and banked hard, showing off its famous elliptical wings and stabilizer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Spitfire!  I flew that airplane all through my growing up years, dogfighting desperately with Messerchmitts over England, during the Battle of Britain.  There were no computers then, no PC flight simulators.  I flew all my missions in my imagination, with my first 1/72 plastic scale models.

 

 

The Spit performed several high-speed low altitude passes over the show line, then peeled off to the north.

 

YEEOOOOOWWW!  Another 1,300 horsepower worth of snarling decibels from another Merlin engine shattered the air.  P-51 Mustang, probably the most famous American fighter airplane from World War II!

 

I barely had enough time to pan and shoot a photo before the pilot whipped his mount low behind the trees.  Then he was back, loud and fast as ever!

High-decibel awesomeness!  In the DVD One Six Right, a former Mustang pilot reminisced about his World War II experiences by saying that nothing even came close to beating the magic of single-seat, single engine flying. 

 

The next act in the airshow was nothing less than my most fervent childhood dream come true.  The B-17 Flying Fortress is my piece of the True Cross, the icon of my boyhood flying dreams.  I watched precious episodes of “Twelve O’clock High” in the 1960s, and built a 1/48 scale model of this prettiest and most graceful of airplanes, yet one renowned for its immense strength and tolerance for enemy fire.

 

What struck me at once was how quiet this airplane was.  Four Wright Cyclone radial engines with nine cylinders each, and yet the B-17 overflew us with a restrained purr. 

   

Ten crewmen, 12-13 .50 cal machine guns – the B-17 certainly earned its “flying Fortress” tag.

   

Indeed, many B-17s returned from raids on Germany with engines shot out, wings and tails riddled with damage, and yet flew all the way home to bases in England. 

 

The only real B-17s I’ve seen in my life were the “Thunderbird” in the Galveston, Texas, flying museum, in 1997, and the “Nine-O-Nine” at Moffet Field in California last May.  After countless episodes of “Twelve O’clock High”, hundreds of bombing missions in my imagination, and repeated viewing of the movie “Memphis Bell”, I finally saw a B-17 in its natural element – in flight.

  

I was ready to call this airshow the best I had ever seen.  But the final act was to really win me over. 

Jets!

 

  

  

Posted from Prague, September 24, 2010

Yom Kippur

Next:  jets, attack helicopters and geese!

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Market-Garden, The Air Show

It was the most enjoyable air show I’ve seen.  All the more because it was completely unexpected.

Do you remember the movie, A Bridge Too Far?  Dick Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Eliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Kruger, Ryan O’Neal, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, Liv Ulmann. 

Operation Market-Garden, the biggest airborne landing in history, really happened.  It happened last weekend, 66 years ago.

Remember Robert Redford rowing a canvas boat full of paratroopers across a wide river, under heavy fire?  That was in Nijmegen.  The crossing point on the Waal river is just 4,000 meters from my hotel right now.

  

I am in Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, for meetings.  I’d completely forgotten the date.  The internet notices about the 66th anniversary of Operation Market-Garden were very sparse.  I thought I might see a few commemorative parachute drops during the weekend.

Then, on Saturday morning, a camouflaged C-47 troop carrier with Normandy invasion stripes banked hard 200 feet above me, and I knew I was in a very historical place and time.

  

  

  

           

Then I got to the old drop zone itself, at Ginkel Heath 15 kilometers from Arnhem, and WOW!

      

Soldiers in US 101st Airborne and British 1st Airborne uniforms drove jeeps flying the British 1st Airborne Pegasus flag.  Camouflaged tents sold World War II uniforms, flags, patches, books, even old World War II aircraft instruments.

        

  

A low-flying procession of C-47s, C-130s and C-160 Transalls disgorged 700 paratroopers on the heath.  There were American, British, Dutch and German paratroopers and aircraft – once adversaries, they now commemorated the event together.

      

  

  

  

   

  

  

  

  

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

Ginkel Heath is the original drop zone for the British 1st Parachute Brigade.  A 3-square kilometer sandy meadow, it is still carpeted with purple heather, virtually unchanged in 66 years.

 

In A Bridge Too Far, Sean Connery as Gen. Roy Urquhart listens in consternation as a briefing officer tells him that his drop zones are so far from his objective, the bridge at Arnhem, that they are off the map!  Gene Hackman, as Gen. Sosabowski, pointedly inspects at the briefer’s uniform.  “Just making sure which side you are on.”

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The printed programme for the air show included:

Boeing Stearman	CAP 10
Piper Super Cub	ASK21 aerobatic glider
Saab Safir	Pitts Special
Harvard	Fokker S-11
Antonov 2	Yak 52 formation aerobtics
Yak 3U	Fouga Magistere
P-51 Mustang	Breitling Jet Team
Supermarine Spitfire	Apache helicopter
B-17 Flying Fortress

     

Every young boy of my era knew Spitfires, Mustangs and B-17s.  But in my 53 years, I had never seen a real Spitfire before, nor had I ever seen a B-17 in flight.

All my boyhood wishes were about to come true.

    

     

The Stearman was loud, hefty and smoky.  The Super Cub with Dutch insignia and sneaked around the trees over the show line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

The Yak 3U is a Soviet fighter from World War II.  How many pilots have even seen this airplane, never mind seen it flying.

               

The other half of the Soviet pair, the Antonov 2, looks like a biplane, but a careful inspection shows a massive airframe. 

       

The cockpit is high above ground, almost like an airliner cockpit.  Ten skydivers jumped out of that monster cabin.

         

Then the pilots flew several chandelles right above the trees.  It was exhilarating to see a big airplane like that maneuvering up close.  

    

         

         

         

         

        

        

        

      

      

         

              

               

            

             

             

              

            

           

            

 

Other airplanes flew some very nice aerobatics.  I saw a Saab Safir for the first time, as well as a Falco F8 and that French aerobatic beauty, a CAP 10.

        

           

         

        

        

         

         

        

         

 

 

  

   

  

   

  

  

  

  

  

The next items on the program were the Warbirds:  Spitfire, P-51 Mustang, B-17 Flying Fortress.  Then there would be jets.

It was about to become a truly unforgettable afternoon!

  

  

Posted from Nijmegen, September 18, 2010  

66th Anniversary, Operation Market-Garden

Next:  P-51 Mustang, Supermarine Spitfire and a B-17 Flying Fortress

  

 

  

  

  

  

  

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Samurai!

  

  

He was a top-scoring fighter ace, one of the best pilots his country had.  His sharp eyes could spot stars during daylight.  He never lost a wingman in combat. 

With grievous wounds to his head, one eye blinded and another masked by blood, he flew his airplane 600 miles home from a dogfight, and insisted on reporting to his commander after he landed. 

He survived the brutal war.  After the war, he met and befriended many of his aerial opponents, including the man who shot and blinded him.  He prayed every day for his fallen opponents and comrades in battle.  He became a Buddhist acolyte and never killed a living thing again, not even a mosquito.

 

   

    

     

    

His name was Saburo Sakai.  He was Japanese.

 

He flew the Mitsubishi A6M Zero in World War II. 

He flew bomber escort in the devastating attacks on Clark airfield on December 8, 1941.  On December 10, he shot down Captain Colin Kelly’s B-17 over Clark.

 

Sakai flew against the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies.  He flew against Australians and Americans in the brutal aerial battles over the South Pacific.  After recuperating from terrible wounds, he flew again, half blind, in the desperate aerial battles in the Central Pacific.

Sakai was born to fly.  Excerpts from his autobiography, Samurai!, show why. 

 

The Wildcat was clinging grimly to a Zero, its tracers chewing up the wings and tail.  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.  I snap-rolled to throw him off.  He would not be shaken.  He was using my favorite tactics, coming up from under.

I chopped the throttle back and the Zero shuddered as its speed fell.  I slammed the throttle forward again, rolling to the left.  Three times I rolled the Zero, then dropped in a spin, and came out in a left vertical spiral.  The Wildcat matched me turn for turn.  Our left wings pointed at a right angle to the sea below us, the right wing at the sky.

  

I flew snap rolls and spins, during my aerobatic training.  A snap roll is a horizontal spin — two seconds of pure aerodynamic violence.  Spins aren’t even taught in pilot training anymore.  Many of today’s airline pilots have never been in a spin before, never mind having recovered from one.

Sakai flew snap rolls and spins while under fire.

 

We held to the spiral, tremendous G pressures pushing us down in our seats. My heart pounded wildly, and my head felt as if it weighed a ton.  The man who failed first and turned in any other direction to ease the pressure would be finished.

On the fifth spiral, the Wildcat skidded slightly, I had him, I thought. But the Grumman dropped his nose, gained speed, and the pilot again had his plane in full control. There was a terrific man behind that stick.

 

This is one of the most documented dogfights of World War II, and has been featured on History Channel and Discovery Channel episodes.

At Lae, in New Guinea (Amelia Earhart flew from Lae, on her last flight), Sakai flew with the sharpest pilots of Japan.

 

On May 7, four Zeros were ordered out for reconnaissance over Moresby, and, when each pilot saw who his wingmates were, he shouted happily.  We were the wing’s leading aces.  I had twenty-two planes to my credit; Nishizawa had thirteen; Ota now had eleven; and Takatsuka trailed us with nine.  Our four best aces!

Nishizawa rocked his wings and pointed at ten fighters coming at us in a long column, 2,000 feet higher.

All four Zeros nosed up in a rapid, almost vertical climb, instead of rolling away and scattering as the enemy pilots expected.  The first P-40 went up in a wild loop, trying to escape his own trap.  I snapped out a burst.  The shells caught him and tore a wing off.  I came out of the climb in an Immelman and saw each Zero hammering away at a P-40.  All burst into flames.  The remaining six fighters were on us.  We scattered to the right and left, coming up in tight loops and arcing over.  All of us came out with a fighter beneath us.  Three more P-40s disintegrated and burned; one escaped.  The three remaining fighters ran for it.

 

I read Samurai! when I was a young boy.  It inspired me to fly many battles in Zeros, Wildcats and Warhawks, all in my mind.  But my favorite story, with three of Japan’s best Zero pilots, PO1C Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, PO1C Toshio Ota and Saburo Sakai, did not involve any bloodshed.

 

I was back at Moresby, circling above the field at 12,000 feet.  Then two Zeros came in at my height.  Nishizawa and Ota grinned at me and I waved back in greeting.

I slid my canopy back, described a ring over my head with my finger, then showed them three fingers.  We were to fly three loops, all tied together.

One last look for enemy fighters, and I nosed down to gain speed, Nishizawa and Ota hugging my own plane.  I pulled back on the stick, and the Zero responded beautifully in a high arcing climb, rolling over on her back.  The other two fighters were right with me, all the way up and around in a perfect inside loop.

Twice more we went up and around, dove, and went back into the loop.  When I came out of the third loop Nishizawa pulled up to my plane, grinning happily, and signaled that he wanted to do it again.  I turned to my left; there was Ota, laughing, nodding his head in agreement.  We dove to only 6,000 feet above the enemy field and repeated the three loops, swinging around in perfect formation.  And still not a gun fired at us!  I thought of all the men on the ground watching us and I laughed loudly.

 

Sakai, Nishizawa and Ota were reprimanded for that stunt, after an American plane flew over their base and dropped a message promising an all-out welcome if the Japanese aces did it again.

   

 

Sakai was wounded in August, 1942, over Guadalcanal. 

Ota disappeared in a dogfight that same month. 

Sakai’s best friend Nishizawa was shot down in October 1944 in a Ki-49 transport airplane, over Mindoro in the Philippines, by two American Grumman Hellcats.  He had over 80 kills, one of Japan’s leading aces. 

  

Sakai survived the war with over 60 kills.

 

Saburo Sakai published his autobiography in 1957.  He became a peace advocate, critical of Japan’s role in starting the war.  A lot of people, complete strangers, looked him up or wrote him, after the war.  He never turned anyone down. 

I wish I could have met him.  As with most things in life, by the time you can afford it, it’s too late.

 

He was dining with American military officers at Atsugi Naval Air Station in September, 2000, and was reaching across the table to shake an American’s hand when he suffered a heart attack.  He was 84.

 

  

  

He was born in 1916 in a farmhouse, from a family descended from Samurai, and lived his life by the Bushido code of honor. 

Today is his birthday, August 25.

 

    

Posted in Bangkok, August 25, 2010

 

  

  

  

坂井三郎さんのトリビュート・ビデオを作ってみました。

  

  

Links to the best of Saburo Sakai’s stories on the web

Mercy over Java

August 7, 1942 – Sakai is grievously wounded over Guadalcanal.  A reenactment.  This is the video where he meets the gunner who shot him down.

Sakai’s helmet and scarf in the Nimitz museum, Texas

Sakai atones to a fighter pilot’s son, a moving story

Sakai as consultant to Microsoft for Combat Flight Simulator

The Discovery Channel video on the dogfight over Guadalcanal

Sakai’s video interview  

Excerpts from Samurai!, by Saburo Sakai, Martin Caidin and Fred Saito.

copyright 1957, illustrated edition by Bantam Books

 

 

  

 

  

  

  

     

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Too Many Stories

It’s been wa-a-a-y too long since the last flying story!

Two months!  It’s not for lack of stories — I have volumes of flying tales, dating back to this time last year. 

I had a toxic semester at work, plus the mayhem in Bangkok, plus the daunting task of assembling all the aviation stories and pictures of 2009.   Strangely, I was intimidated by where and how to start, what to rave about first.

  

  

  

 

 

 

Bangkok  😦   For six weeks, the city I live in was paralyzed by barricades, riots, and one of the bloodiest political confrontations in recent Thai history. 

    

We live just a few blocks from the epicenter of the final week’s violence.  Smoke plumes of burning buildings hung outside our windows, and a dawn-to-dusk curfew was punctuated by machine gun fire, rockets and the harsh clatter of armored vehicles and helicopters.  Bangkok is a modern, high-rise city of 8 million people, so the experience was both jarring and demoralizing. 

The situation is defused for now, but we were pre-occupied and anxious over it all.  Thanks to readers and friends who wished us well and offered advice.

 

 

In the past months, I’ve also had an insane schedule — Europe, Asia and the US.  My son Gino and I were in Brussels, Berlin and Amsterdam during an unprecedented event in aviation history, when the entire airspace of the UK and continental Europe was shut down by the Iceland smoker formerly known as Eyjafjallajökull. 

 

We were stranded for just a day (our flight home was one of the last to be cancelled), but the entire week was weighed down by anxiety.

 

 

Still, there was a silver lining to it all.  Gino and I saw the Ardennes battlefields — Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge. 

 

We also spent a day in Arnhem, site of another epic World War II battle. 

  

We have hundreds of pictures of battle sites that have captivated me since I was a child.  And we spent a day in Berlin, where World War II and the Cold War overlap in a surreal jumble of historical fragments. 

 

Where to start telling these stories?

  

 

A month later, in San Francisco for meetings, I caught a story in the paper about the Collins Foundation B-17, B-24 and P-51 classic World War II Warbirds at Moffett Field.  Just a half hour drive away.

  

The B-17.  I flew thousands of missions in that airplane, all in my imagination, as a child, fired up by episodes of Twelve O’Clock High.

I was captivated by the airplane immortalized in books and movies — Big Week, Memphis Belle, The War Lover.

  

  

On the other end of our pen, my son, co-pilot and co-writer Carlo has stories to share about a different kind of lift, and the magic of his dream job come true!  A lot of things have been going right for him, and he has been tremendously, happily busy too!

  

  

And I still need to write about the wonderful flight in a Cirrus SR22 last February (I finally got to fly Angelina Jolie’s airplane!). 

  

  

Then there was the hair-raising aerial adventure Carlo had with a malfunctioning pitot-static system, our enchanting flight to an island far out in the Pacific Ocean, and one of the most cherished aerobatics I’ve ever flown with Meynard, my aerobatic instructor.  We have in-cockpit video of that one.

  

    

                                   

There’s a lot to read and see, so watch this (air)space!

  

  

Posted from Bangkok, June 4, 2010

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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The Cup Runneth Over

I’ve often wondered how magical it would have been to take my Dad flying.  Pay him back for all the airplane stories he told me when I was a boy.  Sons secretly crave their fathers’ pride.  He is long gone, so I will never find out.

Or so I thought.

  

  

  

  

I’m am only son, third in a line of eldest sons.  I have three sisters.  Brothers were a  big mystery.  I envied my Ateneo classmates who had brothers.  When my third sister was born, I ran upstairs so no one would see me.

  

My Dad had one brother, Carlos.  When I was young, Uncle Carlos, affable and easygoing, would come to our house and raid the refrigerator.  He paid for his meals with stories about James Bond and hand grenades.  I listened wide-eyed. 

Uncle Carlos left the Philippines on a passenger ship.  My family stood on the pier, and he tossed us paper ribbons from the deck of the ship.  He held his ends of the ribbons, and we held our ends.  As the ship left the pier, the ribbons parted.  I watched the ship sail past the breakwater at Manila Bay.

  

  

My grandfather was an accountant — obsessive and disciplined.  Worked for decades at Tabacalera and never learned to smoke.  In retirement, he raised chickens and turkeys.  Once I watched him ink onto his ledger, in painstakingly precise script,

Two chickens killed by rat.

  

In the same precise writing, on stark white cards, he wrote stories.  He once wrote me a jewel about how my Dad used to recite the Our Father backwards at the Ateneo.  “Amen.  Evil from us deliver and, temptation into not us lead, … .”

“Hoy, Rivera!  What are you doing?”

  

       

My Dad told me lots of stories.  During World War II, he saw airplanes diving down from the sky to attack ships on Manila Bay.

He told me of a fighter plane that flashed past, just 20 feet above the rice fields, looking for enemy soldiers.  The pilot — a real pilot! — looked at my Dad.

  

My Dad died suddenly when I was 19.  He was 50.

Heartbroken, my grandfather lived but a few more years.  He never wrote me another story again, on those stark white cards. 

 

     

In America, Uncle Carlos’ daughter, Karla, overheard him tell a visitor about some risky surgery.  He didn’t think she understood their Filipino language.

Later that week, that same visitor came to see Karla at school.   Her father, my affable, easygoing Uncle Carlos, had died on an operating table.  Carlos did not tell anyone in our family about the open heart surgery.

  

The last storyteller was gone. 

  

  

I was the only paternal grandson.  If I had no sons, the family name would die with me.

But I have three sons! 

  

I tell them that if my Dad had lived long enough to retire, he would have waited for them at school everyday, to buy them ice cream and tell them stories.

Flight instructor Ina pins on my wings, Feb 1, 2003

Thirty years after my Dad died, I earned my pilot’s license.  My biggest regret was that I could never take my Dad flying.  I wondered how magical that would have been.

I also wondered if I would live longer than my Dad.  I had similar ailments.  If I lived past 50, I would take every day as a gift. 

  

   

   

Instructor Dey pins on Carlo's wings, Father's Day, 2006

The year I turned 50, my son Carlo also got his pilot’s license.

Carlo flew me as his first passenger! 

I knew then exactly what my Dad would have felt, flying with me.  I no longer wondered.  The magic overflowed in my heart. 

    

    

   

   

 

When Carlo flew me as his first passenger, a son flew with his Dad.  The circle closed.

Carlo's first passenger, Father's Day, 2007

  

  

Stories do count.  After our years run out, the stories are all that are left.  Without an oral history, everything that was us is but a flash in the universe.

As I watch three sons grow up as tightly-knit brothers, my cup runneth over with stories.

  

Imagine the stories the grandsons would have!  I can’t wait. 

Or maybe I can.

  

    

Posted from Manila, September 10, 2009.

Fifty-two years!  Every day is a gift.

  

  

 

  

  

  

  

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Reliving D-Day at Brecourt Manor

Today is the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion at Normandy.

My son Julio and I toured Normandy last month.  His first visit to Normandy, my third.  We rented a car and drove 1,100 kilometers in 2 days.

We visited the airborne drop zones.  Walked Omaha and Utah beaches.  Toured the famous battlefields — Brecourt Manor (detailed in HBO’s Band of Brothers) and La Fiere Bridge (inspired the final scenes in Saving Private Ryan).

And then we visited battlegrounds that very few people know about — the Timmes orchard, Angoville au Plaine, and Hill 314 at Mortain.

Literally hundreds of stories.  Nowhere to start.

  

  

I had used Battlebus, probably the best tour outfit in Normandy, in 2004 and 2005.  This year Julio and I signed up for their Band of Brothers Tour. 

Tour guide Dale put it best:  “If you haven’t seen Band of Brothers, for God’s sake sort your life out and see the best war story of all time!”

  

  

E Co., 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, is well documented on the internet and in Stephen Ambrose’s book.  Few Easy veterans survive today.  Winters is dealing with Parkinson’s Disease, Shifty Powers has cancer, Guarnere, the Band’s sparkplug then and now, has survived one heart attack.  Forrest Guth is still touring.  All in their late 80’s.

  

  

Our Battlebus tour followed Easy’s route on June 6, 1944.  We saw where Winters landed, on the road from Ste. Mere Eglise to La Fiere Bridge.

 

Winters dodged the flak gun at the crossroads and walked up his C-47’s flight path to roll up his stick, skirting Ste. Mere Eglise to the north.

Guarnere landed where the white sign is, within sight of the infamous massacre in the churchyard.

 

Winters, Guarnere, Lipton and other scattered paratroopers joined Col. Cole’s group, 150 men, mostly 502nd, 507th, 508th PIR — a real hodgepodge.  The large group could have captured Ste. Mere Eglise, but Cole was headed for his objective — Causeway #3 off Utah beach.  Cole had landed on a rosebush, so he was mad as hell. 

They ambushed a horse-drawn German supply unit delivering breakfast at the T-junction of D423 and D115.

   

Winters left Cole’s group and took his small band up the D115 to the D14.  Winter’s objective was Causeway #2. 

Cole saw little further action on D-Day (but he did lead the first bayonet charge since WWI five days later, for which he won the Medal of Honor — posthumously — for gallantry above and beyond the call of duty).

  

  

Winters had a bit more excitement on D-Day.

At this spot,  below, Malarkey met up with the German POW from Oregon. 

 

Speirs did not shoot this POW group down as in the HBO mini-series, but he had other incidents.

At the hamlet of le Grand Chemin, Winters met up with his battalion’s HQ. 

 

  

He was ordered to silence a German gun battery just 75 yards away, which was firing on Utah beach.

The Germans had not posted any sentries, and, deafened by their own artillery pieces, did not sense that there was a gathering group of American paratroopers just 75 yards away.

Winters briefed his men here.  The guns were just over the next hedgerow to the left.

 

  

copyright Paul Woodadge

  

  

Liebgot and Pleshe set up machine guns at a hedgerow in front of the battery. 

Lipton and Compton flanked to the right, and Winters attacked straight ahead.

There were German machine guns in the hedgerow behind the guns — the battery was a 360-degree defense strongpoint. 

There was another machine gun at the Manor itself, over a hundred yards away.

The attack took three hours. 

  

  

 

  

  

Battlebus tour guide Allan showed us the artillery hedgerow.  No trenches, no bunkers, just a ditch along the hedgerow. 

 

  

German machine guns nested across the field to the left.  Lipton’s tree stood among those in the middle distance, but has since been cut down.

Malarkey tried to get a Luger here.  Guarnere and Lorraine fired on fleeing Germans.  Wynn was shot in the butt, and Toye escaped injury from a grenade that Compton dropped.  All of that really happened.

 

  

Not shown in the movie — Malarkey ran past the last gun, jammed his mortar tube into the hedgerow, and fired 3 shells at the Manor, just out of sight to the right.

One hit a corner of the Manor.  One hit the lower window at left.  And one went right through the upper window at center and took the machine gun out.

 

Winters ordered everyone to run back to Le Grand Chemin.  Mission accomplished — the 105mm artillery guns were silenced.  He would not risk his men to silence the machine gun nests, which was not the mission.

That afternoon, Winters guided several Sherman tanks around the back of the battle site.  The tanks took out all the machine guns.

There is a photo of Malarkey revisiting Brecourt Manor with Battlebus in July, 2008.

  

Battlebus is the only tour group allowed on the field.  The Manor’s owner buried all four 105mm guns in his farm.  He left out a pair of arms from one of the gun traces. 

    

He has received bids for up incredible amounts of money in exchange for the guns, but he won’t sell.   Because the whole world wants them, and he has them.  Normans are like that.

The young son of the Manor’s owner was shot, apparently by Speirs, shortly after the battle.  He was treated at a hospital ship, and later became Mayor of Ste. Marie du Mont.

  

  

This battle is still studied at West Point as a lesson in small-unit tactics.  A Distinguished Service Cross, three Silver Stars and nine Bronze Stars were awarded for this action alone.

A monument to E Co. stands at the D14 crossroads. 

  

The stone plinth at the right has a granite tabletop etched with Winters’ hand sketch of the battle. 

   

  

Posted on June 6, 2009 from San Francisco, CA.

  

 

Like I said, a gazillion stories.  I’ll leave you with this one, for now.  Conspicuous gallantry above and beyond… :

 

Lt. Col. Robert Cole’s Bayonet Charge

“When Cole and the remaining men of the battalion reached Bridge 4 there was less than a Company of men left … .”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacques_wood/2752258773/

http://www.paratrooper-museum.org/

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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Our Beech B-25 Baron Bomber

Carlo’s first instrument flight.  At night.  In IMC.  In a multi-engine cockpit.  Left seat.  It doesn’t get more pressure-laden than that.

     

    

   

     

I’d had my turn.  Two runs.  It was time to give the other Captain a shot at it.

On the takeoff video, Meynard never stops teaching, even as Carlo accelerates to rotate speed.  Meynard leads the scan with his finger — altimeter setting, heading bug, airspeed, RPM, manifold pressure, airspeed.

    

Carlo rotates.

He is flying his first twin-engine retractable high performance airplane, night instrument departure.  Not many 22-year old English majors just out of university get to do that.

    

    

Carlo flies SID 27 to OLIVA intersection.  Meynard briefs Carlo on the procedures Manila Approach might use to bring us home.  Most likely radar vectors to the VOR/DME approach to runway 06 at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, the country’s biggest, busiest airport.

Sure enough, Approach begins vectoring Carlo through various heading changes and descents, first for traffic separation, and then the approach.

    

    

http://www.ozarkairfieldartworks.com

I sit in the back, thinking about Ted Lawson and his B-25 crew, in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

Their dusk flight from Tokyo to the Chinese coast, listening for the promised beacon at a Chinese airfield.

The weather was deteriorating.  Fuel was down to the last few gallons.  They skimmed the waves, looking for somewhere to land.

    

    

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com

The Doolittle Raid fascinated me as a child.  I first read Lawson’s 1943 book, my Dad’s copy, in the 1960s.

Lawson survived the raid but lost a leg due to injuries from his crash landing.

  

  

  

  

I built a scale model of the B-25B, and flew the mission many, many times in my imagination. 

http://www.DoolittleRaid.com

      

It was an endeavor of courage and integrity.  All-volunteer.

    

The twin-engined US Army B-25 bombers, designed for land operations, launched on April 18, 1942,  from the US Navy aircraft carrier Hornet just 650 miles from Japan, well inside the lion’s den. 

They were led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle, a proponent and champion of air power.

They flew a one-way mission.  There was no way to recover land-based bombers on a carrier deck.  The Hornet ran for safer waters as soon as the last B-25 took off.

     

    

It was the first bombing raid on Japan, barely 5 months after the Pacific war started.  Bataan had just surrendered nine days earlier.  Corregidor was still holding out.  Japan was not bombed again until 1944.

  

http://www.wingsoverelburn

Lawson and his crew hit targets in Tokyo.  They had flown from the lion’s den into the lion’s mouth.

After bombing military targets in five Japanese cities, the B25s flew on towards airfields in China.  Arrangements had been made for homing beacons and fuel in five Chinese airfields barely outside of Japanese-occupied areas.

     

    

    

But there were no beacons.  They had never been installed.

  

http://www.warbirdcollectibles.com

 

Lawson ran out of fuel over the Chinese coast.  He crash-landed his bomber, the Ruptured Duck, on a beach at Zhangzhou, in heavy rain.

  

Only one B-25 landed intact, in Russia.  All the others crashed.  None were shot down.

Of 80 men, 3 were killed in the crashes, 5 were interned in Russia (and eventually escaped via Iran), and 8 were captured by the Japanese.  They were tortured and subjected to a mock trial.  Three of them were executed.  One died in captivity.

The other 63 men, including Doolittle and Lawson, survived crashes or bailouts, and were taken by the Chinese to safety, over several weeks.  Over 250,000 Chinese were killed by the Japanese in retaliation.

Only 9 of the Doolittle veterans are living today (there were still 12 last year).  Already in their 80s, they still hold reunions in April, every year.

  

  

When Doolittle took off from the Hornet, he had only 467 feet of flight deck.  That’s an incredibly short takeoff run for a 31,000 lb takeoff. 

That’s a feat for a 1,650 lb Cessna 152.  Never mind a Baron.

     

    

   

     

Our airplane bounces in anti-aircraft fire, and clouds of smoke from the AA guns zip past our cockpit windshield.  You can see the explosions early in our documentary of the flight.

  

Captain Carlo is remarkably cool despite the enemy fire, holding heading and altitude.  The copilot leads the checklist as we drop down through rain, looking for the promised homing beacon… .

  

  

Manila Approach clears us for the VOR approach, and Carlo finesses his first ever instrument approach to a landing, rain streaming across the windshield.

  

I laugh out loud as Carlo touches down.

  

  

  

     

Neither of us could have flown the Baron solo to a perfect outcome.  Still, Carlo and I did fly the Baron for 3 hours, with Meynard coaching us through checklists and IFR techniques. 

I got to fly night instrument approaches using procedures I had last flown many months before in a Cessna 172 single, and which I had flown multi-engine only in Meynard’s Frasca 132 simulator.

Carlo gained an appreciation of the challenges and joy of flying at night solely by reference to instruments, under positive control by ATC, in a high-performance retractable twin.

Most of all, we had incredible fun!

  

  

Could we have flown and landed solo if Meynard took a nap?

Ha!  Can the Pope pray?? 

  

  

I remember getting home very late that night, after we debriefed the flight at Airworks.  Carlo and I were both floating on air, despite our exhaustion.

Home past midnight, we slept very soundly that night.

It was 24 hours to Christmas.  But we’d already had a piece of it tonight.

  

 

Posted from Bangkok, March 26, 2009

Excellent web resources used in this post:

The Doolittle Raid Remembered

Naval Historical Center 

Wikipedia

  

   

The movie, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, starring Van Johnson, Spencer Tracy and Robert Mitchum, is on DVD. 

No blue screens or computer graphics here.  All the flying scenes, including the hair-raising short field takeoffs, were shot on location.  1944.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

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