Legendary WW2 Battle Between an American and Japanese Ace | Dogfight Over Guadalcanal | Timeline

[Music] to top guns are locked in combat over a steamy tropical island you had to get him really close back in those days like a knife fighter so you had to have the target fill the windscreen and then press the trigger in a desperate dogfight each pilot tries to lock the other into his gun sights but then when they have the perfect shot they don't go in for the kill an act of chivalry a loss of nerve or a mechanical malfunction the wreckage reveals the truth behind the dogfight over Guadalcanal [Music] in the skies above Guadalcanal two fighter pilots do in a legendary dogfight of the Second World War it was one of the epic air battles of all time eyeball to eyeball gun to gun aircraft to aircraft this is the High Noon of the Pacific War a showdown between each sides frontline fighter in a desperate dogfight each pilot tries to lock the other into his gun sights but then when they have the perfect shot they don't go in for the kill an act of chivalry a loss of nerve for a mechanical malfunction by the end of the battle each pilot and his plane will be riddled with bullets and yet they survive this remarkable story will lead investigators deep into the jungle of Guadalcanal where they make an amazing discovery and finally solve the mystery of the dogfight over Guadalcanal [Music] during 1942 to rival fighter planes fight for supremacy of the skies in the war over the Pacific the Japanese Imperial Navy zero and the US Navy's wildcat when the planes meet over the Pacific island of Guadalcanal on August 7th it becomes an extraordinary test of man and machine [Music] on that day two outstanding pilots are in the air Saburo Sakai and pub Sutherland each keeps a detailed journal of the precise anatomy of that first encounter it is one of the best documented dogfights of the Pacific War I could hear the steady stream of bullets singing in behind me the after part of my fuselage was like a sieve [Music] never have they seen an enemy plane move so quickly or so gracefully before every second his guns were moving closer to the belly of my fighter each pilot admires his opponent's tenacity courage and flying skills both men are at the top of their game both realize that they have to push their planes to the absolute limit to the end the outcome remains uncertain [Music] Saburo Sakai is 25 and already a proven aced with over 50 kills to his name his ancestors a samurai the pilot training scheme which Sakai joins in 1937 imbues him with that same feudalistic warrior philosophy the school produces only a handful of pilots but they are instilled with the belief that they will overcome greater enemy numbers because of their rigorous training training in the Imperial Armed Forces was extremely disciplined extremely difficult it's down-up brutal physical punishment was a fact of life in all of Japan's armed forces being punched in the face being hit in the buttocks with baseball bats but this was all part of the course sumo wrestling for example was meant to instill an aggressive spirit in them you were in the ring with your opponent and if you lost you have to stay there until you prevailed over somebody in Sakai year only 25 of the class of 70 noncommissioned officers survived the course he receives the silver watch offered each year by Emperor Hirohito for the outstanding student pilot [Applause] puck Sutherland comes from a very different background he is trained at the u.s. Naval Academy as an officer and gentleman he has always wanted to fly from aircraft carriers a fellow Naval Academy cadet and friend who remembers him well is David Richardson but was an excellent pilot bug of course means pugnacious and he had got a box at the Naval Academy very aggressive type very confident very cheerful individual a lot of fun to be with LexA Kai hug is determined to succeed his skill at avoiding punches easily translates to ducking and diving in the air and he becomes one of the best shots in his squadron but unlike Sakai he has no combat experience and he is desperate to engage an enemy he won't have long to wait [Music] on December 7th 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on that day Subaru Sakai is escorting a squadron of Japanese bombers on another mission to destroy US military bases in the Philippines when American fighters launch a counter-attack Sakai shoots down and claims his first American kill while Sakai is shooting down Americans in the Pacific pug Sutherland is 5,000 miles away on an aircraft carrier patrolling the Atlantic but with the declaration of war it is not long before the United States is scrambling to deploy troops in the Pacific to counteract the Japanese onslaught in June 1942 the Japanese start constructing a landing strip on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands Japan will soon pose a threat to the Allied shipping lanes between the United States and Australia so the American command decides to launch their first major counter-attack when reports of an almost completed airstrip on Guadalcanal reaches Atmore Nimitz he orders a three carrier task force to invade the island the amphibious landing by 19,000 Marines is supported by as powerful of Asian fleet as the United States has ever assembled on July 7th the carrier Saratoga departs Pearl Harbor with parg and his squadron aboard they are equipped with the Grumman Wildcat the US Navy's frontline fighter as they steamed across the Pacific Ocean the officers assembled for a pre battle squadron photo an event that gives them pause for thought how many will be there for the next portrait on July 20th the squadron loses three Wildcats and damages two more while attempting to land after a gunnery exercise the next day par Gunners fellow pilots are briefed on their role for the invasion [Music] stories of cannibalism on the solomon islands arrive they are told not to approach the natives if they have to bail out on August 7th 1942 eight months to the day since the attack on Pearl Harbor the invasion begins shortly after dawn u.s. battleships start shelling the islands of Guadalcanal and neighboring Tuilagi [Music] but the US invasion takes the isolated Japanese garrison by surprise they are completely overwhelmed they radio for help but the nearest Japanese base is 565 miles away in Rabaul the base commander Rear Admiral Yamada is faced with a daunting problem Waddell canal is far away at the absolute limit of the range of his fighters nevertheless the order Sakai and 17 of his fellow pilots to get ready to fly there we checked the distance from Rab out to Guadalcanal it means a round trip of more than 1100 miles without a Lawrence for combat or storms which would consume fuel in prodigious quantities as Sakai recorded in his journal it was to be the longest sortie he had ever been asked to fly it looks like a suicide mission but the favored Zira's lightweight design makes it amazingly fuel-efficient the US Navy had nothing like it [Music] the Wildcat was at a serious disadvantage to the zero without drop tanks that would fit under the wings the Wildcat had a typical combat radius of about 200 nautical miles now that was fairly representative of most fighters that were flying at the time but we knew almost nothing about the zero it could fly one way 500 to 550 nautical miles engage in a dogfight and returned the base all on one tank of gas and consequently when zeros were showing up so far from land bases the Americans drew the logical conclusion that the Japanese had more carriers than we thought they did [Music] in creating a fighter that operates in the vast Pacific Theater the designers of the zero have had to make some compromises on safety to find out what price Japanese pilots had to pay for the zeros long range former fighter pilot ralph wetterhahn meets Saburo Sakai's biographer henry cicada like you know a lot of GIS when they came upon crashed Japanese zeros they take their jungle knives and they would cut a panel out to bring home I mean these things were just like tin cans sides of tin cans I also understand that to save weight for this long-range mission they wound up stripping the aircraft down a very non essential item including the radios which for a fighter pilot or radio was pretty darn important to give warnings and to coordinate attacks the Japanese zero radio was very very inferior and so what they would do is they would just yank that out of the airplane and they would try to just get rid of anyway the figure was non-essential Ralph's keen to learn about the Japanese attitude towards protecting their pilots from Imperial Navy historian Sam to gaya it doesn't appear that the Japanese gave a lot of priority to armor plating and cockpit protection can see it's just thin metal on the zero that Sakai flew the model two one didn't have any armor plating or self-sealing fuel tanks the Japanese combat personnel especially were imbued with this philosophy of always being prepared to sacrifice one's life tended to make them think that protective features on aircraft we're not a very high priority I think the Japanese neglected that just like they're neglected having a good radio but eventually you find out that you're not going to sustain yourself in an attrition war which this turned out to be you're going to lose your experienced pilots the naval air base at Rabaul is home to a group of japan's most seasoned pilots when news of the invasion of Guadalcanal reaches Rabaul the commanding officer immediately orders 27 bombers to counter-attack although their mission will be to sink transport ships they do not pause to switch bombs for more lethal torpedoes Mitsubishi zero fighters will protect the bomber formation just before takeoff Sakai warns his two wingmen about the American pilots they are about to face for the first time he orders them to stay in formation above all never break away from me no matter what happens no matter what goes on around us stick as close to my plans you can remember that don't break away this is su Kai's last chance to speak to them directly once enroute hand signals will be the only way to communicate by 10 o'clock a force of 17 fighters and 27 bombers is on its way like the zero fighter the bombers have no fire protection for their fuel tanks their crews call them flying cigars because of their tendency to quickly catch a light when hit as the aerial Armada reaches cruising altitude the amphibious assault by US Marines on Guadalcanal has already begun in earnest below decks on the Saratoga pugs team receives news that a large Japanese forces approaching fellow pilot David Richardson remembers their reaction why are we afraid did we have a sense of fear no that that isn't a part you fly your airplane you focus on what you're doing at the time you really don't think about life and death what you think about is how do you fight your plane hog has only eight wild cats under his command to intercept the 27 Japanese bombers [Applause] it takes them 45 minutes to get on station over the transport ships still discouraging Marines and their equipment at the same time as pugs flight arrives the Japanese formation also gets their first glimpse of the amphibious landing even at a distance Sakai is amazed at the size of the operation there must have been 70 transports approaching the beaches and there are other ships too distant and numerous to count after flying for around four and a half hours the zeroes dropped their empty external fuel tanks Sakai scans the sky for American fighters pug also searches through the clouds looking for Japanese bombers his task is to shoot them down if possible without engaging the zero fighters escorting them at 1300 hours pug finally catches his first glimpse of the Japanese formation horizontal bombers three divisions nine twenty over [ __ ] headed for transports with guns which is in sight lamps on let's go get a boy hugg shoots down the lead bomber and scores the first American success of the air battle bug was an excellent shot he was among the very best in our squadron perhaps in the top four or five anything that found itself in front of a wildcat with its 650 caliber machine gun was in very deep trouble the recoil is powerful physically slows you down it's as if you were flying into a brick ball despite taking some hits pug destroys the bomber but he is now a marked man the zeros are on to him and he needs every trick in the book to fend them off although the Wildcat would win no beauty contests and lacks the rate of climb and acceleration of the sleek zero it can dive faster tactics was soon devised to exploit this advantage the United States naval aviators used boom and zoom tactics they would get the Wildcat as high above the zero or a Japanese formation as possible shove everything forward full throttle make a high-speed dive shoot pull out use the momentum from that time to zoom climb to the perch again and if they were in a position to reattach that's what they would do because the Bauman's was so close to their target Pug had no time to climb and attack them from above Sekai watches in dismay as every single bomb crashes harmlessly into the ocean it was obviously stupid to try and hit movie ships from four miles up I could not understand a failure to use torpedoes which had proved so effective in the past after the failure of their mission the Japanese bombers turn around for the long journey home disappointed that they have not had a single ship Sakai is desperate to shoot down an enemy aircraft as he searches for the chubby Grumman build Wildcats he spots an extraordinary dogfight several hundred feet below him it is park Sutherland neatly evading several zeros Sakai is amazed at the skill of the Wildcats pilot the deer odds should have been able to take the long run without any trouble but every time a zero caught the wildcat before it turns the enemy plane flipped away and came out the game on the tail of another zero I had never seen such flying before two of his assailants of Sakai his wingmen seeing how the Wildcat is exploiting their inexperience Sakai signals that he wants to join the fray he dives in and fires a burst of the long-range pug immediately retaliates by climbing towards the belly of Sakai zero the historic duel has begun Sakai tries to throw pod off but he matches the zero turn for turn we held to this spiral tremendous G pressures pushing us down in our seat a great film seemed to be clad in my eyes as the jungle of Guadalcanal rushes towards his fighter pug pulls out of the spiral and climbs into a loop this is a mistake a zero easily out turns a wildcat in such a maneuver I went right after him and came out on his tail I pumped 202 runs into the grameen cockpit watching the bullets chewing up the thin metal skin and shattering the glass I couldn't believe what I saw the Wildcat continued flying almost as if nothing had happened a terror that have taken that many bullets would have been a ball of fire by now the Wildcats manufacturer grumman designed a cockpit that can handle a lot of punishment Sutherland was pretty well protected from any Stern aspect because this plate goes from almost the top of the canopy clear to the bottom of the the cockpit floor I was deeply grateful to the manufacturers of the armor plate where I could hear the steady stream of bullets zinging into it behind me that's what pug Sutherland was hearing sort of the the rattle on the roof of these small caliber rifle boats such small bullets have little impact on the heavily armored Wildcat the forward part of the windscreen has a three inch thick segments of laminated glass it's called armored glass and that will stop a seven-point-seven fired from almost any distance well because of the durability of his airplane because of the armor plate around his cockpit and because of the self sealing gas tanks that prevented catastrophic fires in flight Sutherland was able to survive against three or four zeros but the zero has a much more lethal weapon a cannon mounted on each wing sakai and some of the more proficient zero pilots like to use the 7.7 s as ranging and once they were hitting with those then they'd haul out this Hummer which is a 20 millimeter shell in order to fill his gunsight for a cannon burst Sakai accelerates closer to the Wildcat but he is in for a surprise pug is about to put the brakes on I slammed the throttle forward just as an enemy fighter lost speed in the moment I was ten yards ahead of the Wildcat trying to slow down pug has laid his trap well the zero is now in his gun sights Sakai braces himself for the inevitable end I hand to my shoulders and prepared for the onslaught of his guns yet nothing happens no bullets came the wildcats guns remained silent the entire situation was unbelievable mysteriously in that brief vital moment pug sutherland does not go in for the kill was his plane damaged were his guns jammed or does pug just failed to pull the trigger for some reason Sakai could not believe his luck he immediately takes evasive action to avoid the Wildcats line of fire he drew up alongside pugs playing looking across at the American pilot he sees he is wounded blood stained his right shoulder I saw the dark patch moving downwards over his chest now his sick eyes turned to hold fire for a moment Sakai hesitates to deliver the coup de Grasse I honestly didn't know whether or not I should try and to finish him off such felt too stupid of course wounded or not he was the enemy now one of the things that I find interesting about this particular dogfight is that Sakai shows a little mercy well the Japanese zero pilots they're trained very harshly and their attitude was kill or be killed Sakai he knew very well that the American pilots were very tough and that if he had allowed them to escape that they could be up the very next day to kill his comrades so I don't believe that he would have shown any mercy at all not everyone who met Sakai came away with the same impression he was a genuine gentleman but he saw a fellow aviator who was obviously wounded and at that moment Saburo Sakai decided the humanity outweighed duty and he decided to let Sutherland live Sekai will claim in his memoirs that he deliberately avoided aiming his guns at the pilot but when pug jokes the wild cat into a climb Sakai knows the plane must be destroyed that was it I aimed carefully at the ng a zero put up first just under the left wing Road I drove over the right side as park bails out his gun is ripped from its holster he manages to open his parachute less than four hundred feet above the jungle canopy as he falls to earth he sees his plane explode sixty-four years later questions still remain about the events leading up to Sookie's final gun burst did he really spare pugs life on purpose and why hadn't POG fired when he had the chance to search for answers ralph wetterhahn is heading to Guadalcanal to examine the recently found wreckage of pugs plane pieces of the Wildcat is scattered deep in the jungle but Ralph believes that his experience is an Air Force crash investigator may help him discover clues about what really happened that fateful day I think the important thing for me working my way through the story is to get inside the minds of both men by confirming certain aspects of the story of which there are many different versions we can find out how they really thought and how they really acted and what really transpired in those moments over Guadalcanal and on the land Ralph assured reports that a local man ed longji has found wreckage that could be pods plane hello I'm trying to find success thanks a bunch I appreciate it enjoy the water the man with Adeline is Justin Taylor justin has devoted his life to tracking down world war ii aircraft wrecks in the pacific two years before it along led justin to a wreck site two hours from the village Justin took some pictures of numbers on the plane to confirm its identity that's up Carol so this is taken from the actual record huh that's correct you can see here it's a light blue colored paint of a US Navy aircraft from world war ii the stenciled navy and below that the airplanes bureau number in this case five one nine two have you traced the tail number back to find out the history of it yes without a doubt this Bureau number makes it an airplane flown by a pilot named James Sutherland to locate the wreck site Ralph Adeline and Justin must go on an arduous trek through the same jungle terrain that pug Sutherland and George when he parachuted out of his plane one of the interesting things about this epic encounter is it didn't just end that the completion of the dogfight in fact for selling his trouble for just beginning a one-hour climb brings them to the top of the ridge that overlooks the valley into which bugs plane crashed an almost picture him leaping over the side tree following a distance and then poof the parachute opens and next thing you know he's in the trees he begins by doing the right thing he knows he's got to get away from the parachute landing area because that's where any search effort is gonna begin they will focus on that and try to track him down but he's operating on adrenaline at that point so all of his wounds he's either ignoring them or not feeling them then he gets him covered and he takes an assessment of how bad off he is and he's in pretty bad shape especially the bullet that's gone through his foot he spots some Japanese in a tower that are actually searching for Americans but he sees them first and decides to avoid the high ground and the easy movement areas and get back into the dense jungle pug is now in a dangerous situation as he crosses enemy-held territory he lost his handgun when he bailed out so he has no way of defending himself if he stumbles into a century once he descends into the jungle his problems compound somewhat first of all I'm in I'm just standing here in the sweat is pouring off me he's trying to move away from the danger area so he's he's profusely sweating he's got adrenaline coursing through him he's got a deal with snakes and insects and vines that have thorns on him like barbed wire and the disorientation that occurs with a 200-foot canopy above him where he can't tell East from West because he can't has no idea where the Sun is so all these things are hitting him bang bang bang one after another but it's making the right decision he's going the way that's going to keep him from being observed and he's keeping his wits about it for Ralph the Scramble from the ridge to the bottom of the ravine is exhausting he is relieved when adalynn eventually guides him to a section of the stream that runs along the valley bottom this is where the remains of the wildcat are scattered finally ralph reaches the first piece of wreckage Pratt & Whitney sure first thing I notice is the condition of the prop here you can see there's been battle damage and there's clear evidence of the damage to penetrations right here the top one looks to be about 7.7 millimeter that holds some of the rear forward you can see the extrusion coming out on the side here so this this engine's seen action in sakai account of the dogfight he claims to have aimed at the Wildcats engine so Ralph wants to check it for signs of damage you can see this cylinder has has fallen away and the other two missing if they had been blown off you would see some decimation of the cylinder well here and I can't see and I don't feel any sugars of metal coming through there but again they may have rusted off does that come around to the back bank of the cylinders this one for sure we can determine there's been a problem Ralph is looking at what remains of the circular bank of cylinders from the Wildcats radial engine he discovers that one of the back has been hit by what he believes was probably a large caliber shell that gives a lot of credibility to what Sakai claims when he says he fired at the engine and we have clear evidence that something very powerful has hit this rear cylinder and knocked it all to hell and gone everything I've seen here is consistent with the club Sutherland story and a sabore Sakai story and so that's that's impressive there's a piece of history right here in front of but the big mystery of why pug didn't fire his guns when he had Sakai in his sights can't be sold by looking at a rusty engine to answer this question Ralph will need to track down the Wildcats machine guns these are located in the wing that was last seen further up the ravine unfortunately a large mudslide has recently come through this gully it is obvious that much of the remaining wreckage has been swept away or buried eventually the team finds a small piece of wing hopefully we find a whole lot more the wing up here I mean we've got a little bit here the wingtip it's pretty evident it's got the navigation right here you can see the bulb and part of the filaments to expose there my during my first visit Edelen and I we found the u.s. star the wing and you can see from all this severe erosion that Mother Nature has carried those items further down but as Ralph and Justin discuss abandoning the search Edlin the man who first found the wreckage has spotted a crucial new piece of evidence he has found a 50 caliber round from the Wildcats wing mounted machine gun behold it shows Battle Damage I mean this this round has been hit with something and so that that explains what happened to at least one of his guns we know pug had at least one live bullet left so it's really significant find and it makes this whole trip well worthwhile one little bitty round that we found Ralph is keen to search for more wreckage but cyclone Jim is forecast to hit the island that day and Edlin warns that there is only an hour of light left to complete the steep ascent ahead of them uh-hum wit i mean we've come down that Ridge into the ravine and then claw our way up to the top here but none of us have any bullet holes and it's none of us are bleeding none of us are in shock from having bailed out of an airplane it's just getting shot to pieces and the only thing that I can think about right now is what an amazing feat pug fatherland accomplished getting out of this stuff this is awesome after several hours pug finally makes it through the jungle and reaches the coast exhausted from his trek he collapses under a log he is completely dehydrated from the experience when he wakes up he is desperate for a drink some teenage boys from a nearby village spot pug and offer to look after him one of them Bruno Nana still lives in the same village Ralph is keen to meet do you remember that morning August 7 1942 here on Guadalcanal yes and what did you say American need a plane big plane with small plane fighter and Bishop boom-boom and war all day all night despite the risk of Japanese reprisals Bruno was determined to help the wounded animal patria Noah laka booka so emitted well he was quite friendly and he was in a lot of pain from his bullet wounds he needed help and he wanted me to take him to longer point there wasn't enough time to organize the trip so we took him to our village and fed him I cleaned his wounds and stayed with him through the night at about 4 o'clock I woke him and took him to the beach when we arrived my friend had got a canoe ready after paddling for some time he saw some soldiers on the beach we hope they were American as he told us to paddle to the shore the Marines asked us how can we thank you for rescuing our friend we said we don't want anything but they insisted on giving us food and cigarettes unknown to Bruno and his friend Japanese soldiers witnessed the whole exchange as we paddled back to our village more soldiers waved at us but this time they were Japanese they forced us to come ashore then they destroyed our canoes as a punishment they are tied to a tree for four days without food and water we were really thirsty but instead of water one of the soldiers gave us urine to drink before dawn on the fourth night my friend worked his ropes loose he freed me and we escaped back to our village around Bruno's village today there are still plenty of reminders of the battle for Guadalcanal among many pieces of wreckage is an intact wing of a wildcat Ralph is curious to check out the mechanism that fed 50 caliber bullets to the machine gun ever since Adeline found that round at the crash site I've been trying to piece together the possibilities that Sutherland encountered in terms of how his guns were functioning during the rest of that dogfight now here we have a wing of a wildcat and here's where the 50 caliber machine gun would be mounted right underneath where my hand is would be the ammunition drum that would feed 50 caliber ammunition as I'm showing you here through a very narrow shoe that's over a roller and through this area and the tolerances as you can see a fairly tight it's hard for me to get these rounds to move smoothly what this tells me is that this system had very tight tolerances any abuse is going to give you problems with jamming and Sutherland had plenty of abuse in his journal pub describes battle damage received during his first attack my fuselage had been hit probably by the Bombers tail gunner my windshield was shattered from a glancing shot Edelen has been back two pugs crash site to look for more evidence his eagle eyes have spotted another important find no doubt what that is right that's a 45 automatic you know pistols and that's the type of weapon that Southern woman had and it's the type of weapon that and most of the mechanism that got hung up as he was trying to bail out over the sides of the aircraft that's right so this is an amazing find it's hard to prove conclusively that this is pugs gun but the fact that it was found right at the crash site is enough to convince Ralph I'm holding the weapon that [ __ ] all alone had in 1942 7th of August the opening day of the air battles of the Guadalcanal is an incredible piece of history here amazing amazing Edelen has recovered more ammunition from the Wildcats guns now we've got two more rounds and that's pretty conclusive evidence that he had significant amounts of ammo still left in that aircraft on his last night on the island ralph carries out a closer examination of the damaged 50 caliber round found at the wreck site I think we've come to some conclusions that clear up a lot of the mystery one of which is why didn't shoot down Saburo Sakai when Sakai wound up flushing out in front of him for that brief period just before Sakai finally moved back and shot down Sheldon Ralph is convinced that this 50 caliber round from pugs plane exploded in the ammunition belt feeding the machine gun the very end the neck has flared somewhat that would not have occurred due to impact damage from the crash that can only occur if this round is fired outside of a chamber of the 50 caliber machine gun so what caused this round to detonate prematurely pug attacked a Betty bomber and during that attack he came under fire two weapons on that Betty bomber 7.7 millimeter round and a twenty millimeter round we know that some of those rounds hit his aircraft because pug reported that his windscreen was damaged that could only be done by the 7.7 millimeter round a twenty millimeter round would have done a lot more damage than simply cracked if we take a seven point seven round and then place it in position on the 50 caliber round we will see that it fits nicely into this groove that cracked open the belt I mean this this is an amazing discovery this this really is the rosetta stone of the pug shuttle shoot-down well thinks that when pugs plane was hit by seven point seven millimeter bullets from the Bombers gonna one penetrated his wing and caused a round in the machine gun belt to explode which jammed the gun Sekai was lucky his life was probably spared by the damage to the Wildcats machine gun having survived this narrow escape Sakai could have turned around and headed home with the Bombers but he doesn't want to this battle is far from over for him he searches the skies for more Wildcats far in the distance he saw eight dots and thinking there are fighters he just pulled away from his wingman and he just opened full throttle and he went after him and when he was about about 300 yards he realized oh you know these are dive bombers and they have tail Gunners pointed at him so it was too late to turn back and he opened up with everything he had right through the formation that's when he got hit one of the tail Gunners he actually was so close that he saw Sakai's face he saw Sakai go back in his seat like that and it was like a flash on a movie screen boom and he was gone I blinked several times what was wrong everything was so red why the panicky thought gripped me I might be blind then I shifted my feet to the rudder bar only my right foot moved and the zero skidded as a bar went down my whole left side seemed to be paralyzed bullet fragments from the Dauntless dive bombers have left Sakai seriously wounded [Music] Sam explains to Ralph how keeping the plane airborne would turn into the most the middle endurance test Sakai had ever faced he showed me his flight goggles and the flight helmet he was wearing at the time of this mission and the bullet actually entered his head just above his right eye and smashed the rim of his goggles and it actually exited in the back of his head it's quite apparent if you actually take the helmet in your hand they're leather helmet and see where the the entry and the exit was so it went through his skull it went clean through his brain and it's a miracle that he wasn't instantly killed the fact that it smashed the windscreen as it came through slowed the bullet down just enough that it didn't kill him instantly the entire left side of his body is paralyzed he can't move his left arm he can't move his left leg to stop himself lapsing into unconsciousness Sakai gave himself jolts of pain by irritating his wounds he is so convinced he will die he decides to end it all in a kamikaze blaze of glory there was a period of time when he flew back and forth trying to look for enemy ships to crash into and so he would fly this way and then turn around and he would kind of zigzag a little bit if I must die at least I could go out that's a samurai my dad's would to take the enemy with me as [ __ ] I needed an enemy ship but then finally he told me that he saw a vision of his mother saying son wake up wake up you know get a hold of yourself point your zero in this direction so he said he pointed his zero in this one certain direction and just prayed that he would make it home I don't think it's it's easy to appreciate that at the feet of airmanship that that took place with this guy with no navigation instruments no radio other than a compass and I'm gonna bullet through his head it's just an astounding achievement it's one of the epic flights in aviation history [Music] after an agonizing five-hour flight in a Sakai blind in one eye paralyzed on one side and barely conscious finally brings his plane down at the base in Rabaul it was one of the epic fare values of all time and one man comes out a victor but it doesn't end there the epic nature of this battle continues for both of them later on in life they both had to look back upon it as the greatest adventure of their life even those the Guru Sakai and pug Sutherland suffered serious injuries on that first day's dogfight over Guadalcanal they both recovered and went on to fly more combat missions with only one eye Sakai made further kills by the end of the war he had become the Imperial Japanese Navy's highest scoring a credited with destroying 64 Allied planes hugg also recovered and became an ace he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross he returned to the Naval Academy and taught new pilots to fly then in 1949 James pug Sutherland was killed in an accident while taking off from a carrier after stepping from his zero for the last time Sekai vowed never to kill another living creature again not even a mosquito after the war the Allies banned Japanese pilots from flying he became a practicing Buddhist later he actively sought reconciliation with the Americans he once fought even meeting Harold Jones the rear gunner who shot him in the head his memoirs of these wartime flying adventures were turned into a popular movie in Japan he died in the year 2000 aged 84 [Music] amazingly pug and Sakai survived their first day of dog fighting over Guadalcanal but August 7th 1942 was a day of reckoning for both sides one of Japan's top guns was sidelined from the campaign and five of the eight wild cats under parks command were lost however during the next three months the fortunes of war favored the wild cats 42 Japanese zeroes are destroyed at a cost of 41 us wild cats although zero pilots held the early advantage wild cat pilots soon learned to make the most of this sturdy fighter the capture of the Guadalcanal airstrip on August 7 1942 proved to be the turning point in the war against Japan and park Sutherland and sabor osek eyes exploits on that day remain a soaring example of the courage and skill of the true fighter ace

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 980,369

Rating: 4.7625937 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, world war 2, world war ii, battle of guadalcanal, ww2 history, history shows, pacific war, world war, history channel, dogfight, ww2 aces

Id: C6Np89HtJ2Q

Length: 49min 44sec (2984 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020