This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
ZERO! By Masatake Okumiya and Jiro Harikoshi; with Martin Caidin. New York: Dutton, 1956. 375 pages, illustrated. $5.00.
Reviewed by Rear Admiral John S.
Thach, U. S. Navy
(During World War II Admiral Thach came in personal contact with a number of Zeros and other Japanese planes and developed the aerial maneuver known as the “Thach weave." He is currently the Senior Navy Member of the Defense Department’s Weapons System Evaluation Group.)
This book provides a rare opportunity for Americans who fought against the Japanese in World War II to see the war through the eyes of an erstwhile enemy.
It is not a book of sour grapes or excuses. Masatake Okumiya, drawing from notes made during the war, presents a genuine story of triumph and later adversity. I believe the military men who read this book will find that the author’s feelings about the enemy during combat are surprisingly similar to their own under the same circumstances. He so clearly shows how one can express admiration for the professional technique and superb skill of an enemy without the feeling or intention of disloyalty to one’s own country.
The Japanese understood very well the vital necessity for control of the air and the fact that only one type of aircraft—the fighter plane—could provide this capability. They understood it better then most Americans. Consequently, from the drafting board of Jiro Harikoshi emerged a fighter plane with better performance than any aircraft the United States or the British had produced at that time. So superior was the Zero that “American pilots in the Brewster Buffalo literally flew suicide missions against the Zero.” The first time a formation of the famous British Spitfire fighters, which performed so well against the Germans, met the Zero over Darwin, Australia, the Spitfires were all but annihilated without the loss of a single Japanese aircraft.
Many Americans find it hard to believe or to admit that another nation can design and produce equipment better than ours. Zero! will help us to recognize this fact rather than to continue to commit “the unforgivable error of underestimating a potential enemy.” Okumiya describes the development of the quality of Japanese air strength and the training of their pilots to exploit to the fullest the potential capabilities of their aircraft upon the eve of World War II. “As Japanese we find it difficult and more than a little embarrassing to discuss in retrospect our military successes in China immediately prior to the Pacific War.”
He relates how during the first six months of the war, the Japanese, spear-headed by the naval air squadrons, swept across and controlled more than one-sixth of the earth’s surface. The key to this overwhelming military movement was the carrier-based Zero
fighter coming out of the sea to sweep over the land gaining control of the air and eliminating all opposition. These forces were slowed and finally turned back only by a similar force—U. S. Navy sea-based air power.
It is interesting to learn of the feelings and attitudes of the Zero pilots when they first heard of Guadalcanal.
Where is Guadalcanal, Sir?
I don’t know.
Nobody knows! Then it cannot be an important place. . . . Just before we climbed into the Zeros we were given a special briefing by the second squadron leader. He was unusually serious. The American fighters over the Guadalcanal area are known to have come from aircraft carriers supporting the invasion. They are probably regular U. S. Navy fighters, not Army planes. . . . This is the first time we will be meeting American Navy fighters. Be careful and never lose sight of my plane.
U. S. Naval planes! Now my chance had come!
So far I had shot down fifty-six enemy planes, but I had never met any carrier planes . . . there were many unusually skilled pilots among our carrier personnel. The same situation probably prevailed among the American carrier pilots. . . . Well, I thought, Let’s see how well they can fight!
The story written by Masatake Okumiya deserves far better treatment than it received in the hands of the collaborator, Mr. Caidin and the publisher. The collaborator seems to be struggling throughout to get his own ideas into the book. However, it is fairly easy to recognize and enjoy the material from the original manuscript. The editing job is poor and could have been so much better. For example, “Hoiler air base” is mentioned twice in describing the attack of December 7', 1941. It certainly would not have required a great amount of effort and cost to discover that the only possible translation would be Wheeler Field where the U. S. Army air corps fighters were based for the defense of Pearl Harbor.
Despite these distractions the story Okumiya wanted to tell does come through, and I wonder, had our country been defeated and occupied, how many Americans could have written about the war so objectively.
GALLIPOLI. By Alan Moorehead. New York: Harpers, 1956. 384 pages, illustrations, index. $4.50.
Reviewed by Major Reginald Hargreaves
(A frequent contributor to the Proceedings, Major Hargreaves is a retired British Army officer who knows first hand of the Dardanelles Expedition, having fought and been wounded at Gallipoli in 1915.)
It is often more instructive to study the reasons for a military reverse than to examine the means that brought victory. There are more fruitful lessons to be learned from Vernon’s failure at Cartagena than from Dewey’s success at Manila; from Napoleon’s boulversement before the walls of Acre than from MacArthur’s victory at Inchon. In this category of instructive setbacks the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 will always hold high place on the score of the momentous political, strategic, and inter-Service issues involved.
As a politico-strategic conception the enterprise had a very great deal to commend it. To knock out the Turk at one blow would inevitably shorten the war, while exerting a powerful influence on waverers still perched precariously on the fence. To bolster up the ill-equipped Russian army would be to enable it to engage a large number of Austro- German troops with fair chances of success. But a towering, highly imaginative strategic conception demands the most far-sighted and meticulous planning; and where Gallipoli was concerned the design was never envisaged as a whole—save, perhaps, somewhat dimly by Admiral Fisher. Planning, therefore, proceeded piecemeal, jerking unhappily from one improvisation to another. Had real thought been given to the project it would have been recognized, right from the outset, to have been what it turned out to be—a “combined op.” But ignoring the fact that warships are virtually powerless against a strong, mobile field artillery, the Royal Navy, solus, doggedly set out to reduce the Dardanelles defences and “rush” the Narrows. After suffering repeated frustration, their final attempt to force the Straits entailed so serious a loss in capital ships that the task was given up as hopeless. And this, as it subsequently transpired, at the very moment when the Turkish gunners and their German coadjutors were down to the last few rounds of ammunition!
It was obviously necessary to think again; and excogitation eventually contrived to grasp the fact that the Sea of Marmora could only be penetrated by warships as the outcome of a military seizure of the Gallipoli peninsula. With such ample warning as had been given by the Navy, however, what had been an arid, barren waste had been transformed into a dense and strongly-manned defensive position; and the doctrine for a forced landing in the face of an enemy had progressed little beyond that practised by Abercromby at Aboukir in 1801.
In the event, the losses sustained in establishing a bridge-head—especially in officers —so reduced the British and Dominion forces engaged as to render it impossible for them to exploit the lodgment achieved. Two fresh brigades, waiting to “leapfrog” the exhausted and disorganized troops who had made the landing, and the dominating height of Achi Baba could have been gained and held—and the job would virtually have been over. But the nearest fresh troops were over six hundred miles away in Egypt; and since the Turks, working on interior lines, could reinforce far more speedily than the Allies, subsequent attacks by a belatedly strengthened assault only served to pile up casualties.
On the occasion of the initial landing the breakdown in the chain of command was almost complete. The G.O.C. and both Corps Commanders were all at sea—both literally and figuratively. Much the same lack of grip characterized the August attempt on the Turkish flank at Suvla; where the want of impetus and drive on the part of the local Corps Commander enabled the dynamic Mustapha Kemal Pasha to turn potential disaster for the Turk into a triumph that owed almost everything to his own speed, resourcefulness, and energy. With this last fumbling venture the writing was on the wall; although the miracle of the evacuation —for once, a masterpiece of careful planning! —was still several months away.
The whole somber but splendid story, political and military, has now been collated and graphically set forth by Mr. Moorehead, who exercises a sound judgment and cool objectivity which renders his bestowal of praise and blame entirely convincing. His description of the fighting and the day-today life on the peninsula is admirable, and it is difficult to believe that he did not share in the perils and privations he records. The lessons to be drawn from the venture are clearly stated but never labored; and both as a human story and as a piece of well- informed military commentary the work is in every way to be commended.
JANE’S FIGHTING SHIPS, 1956-57.
Edited by Raymond V. B. Blackman.
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,
Inc., 1956. 446 pages. $25.00.
Reviewed by Ellery H. Clark, Jr.
(Professor Clark is a member of the naval history staff of the Naval Academy’s Department of English, History, and Government, and for a number of years has prepared the annual review of the latest Jane’s.)
The current trends and progress of world navies, particularly those of the United States, Great Britain, and Russia, are well covered by the factual material, photographs, and editorial conclusions of this fifty-eighth addition. There are about 400 new illustrations, a majority depicting new or converted warships, including several excellent views of latest Soviet ships.
Mr. Blackman initially acknowledges present United States naval superiority in atomic energy and guided missiles, having outdistanced all other nations in these fields. Justifiably impressed with American speed in developing prototypes, he conservatively predicts in ten years a fleet comprising many atomic-powered vessels, including those of submarine and larger categories armed with missiles.
In contrast, Russia’s Navy, now second only to that of the United States, since World War II has devoted considerable design and construction emphasis to conventional ship types, having outbuilt all the rest of world yards in cruisers and destroyers. However, Soviet interest in atomic propulsion is reflected in their recent design of a huge icebreaker and reported currently operational experimental submarine. Their undersea fleet is in excess of 400 boats, and most
of these are stationed either in the Baltic or Far East. About eighty new submersibles will be added this year, of which about 20 will be “W” type fleet boats capable of 16 knots submerged. The large Sverdlov cruiser class probably now numbers 16 in commission and six building. New Tallinn destroyers are over 3,100 tons displacement and mount four 3.9-inch guns in twin turrets.
Britain has adopted still another shipbuilding policy. She has ordered no new large warships since the end of World War II and instead is focussing on two significant programs. Submarine countermeasures include continued construction of frigates and conversion of destroyers as well as production of minesweepers and patrol boats. Beginning this year the Royal Navy, seeking to lessen its dependence for logistics support upon shore bases, is modernizing its fleet train. Replacement of conventional antiaircraft guns on cruisers and fleet escorts has a high priority and the experimental guided weapon ship Girdle Ness, provided with one triple launcher positioned forward, is furnishing test data.
For the student of naval ship photographs there are many outstanding new additions. Some of these are the United States’ carrier Forrestal, missile cruisers Boston and Canberra, destroyers Forrest Sherman and John Paul Jones; Britain’s frigates Puma and Torquay, experimental submarine Explorer, and the Girdle Ness; Russia’s cruiser Ordzhonikidze, destroyer Smolryashchy, and a “W” class submarine.
Jane's Fighting Ships remains the leader in its field, ever abreast the changing maritime scene. This annual nautical milestone in the history of warship development continues to be a “must” on the reading list of professional seamen. For the broad picture as well as minute detail this rewarding volume provides the desired information.
SAMURAI--The Personal Story of Japan’s Greatest Living Fighter Pilot. By Saburo Sakai with Martin Caidin and Fred Saito. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1957. 375 pages. $4.95.
Reviewed by Rear Admirai. Fitzhugh Lee, usn
(Rear Admiral Lee has just completed two years as Commander Fleet Air Japan with headquarters at the
former Japanese Naval Air Station at Alsugi. He is at present Commander Carrier Division Five in the Pacific Fleet.)
Start this book early in the evening because you may find that you won’t put out the light until you have finished. It is the story of a Japanese non-commissioned naval aviation pilot during World War II and is crammed with interesting anecdotes and battle action from the author’s flight school days until the day at the end of the war when he shot down a B-29 over Tokyo. He did this as a last gesture of burning patriotism the night after the Emperor broadcast Japan’s intention to surrender.
The author, Saburo Sakai, was from an old Samurai family—the professional warrior clan of feudal Japan. He lived and fought by the old Bushido code, ready to die at any time for the fatherland. Any aviator, most naval officers, and a great many laymen will find his story an absorbing account of the air war in the Western Pacific as seen from the Japanese side.
Sakai became one of Japan’s leading aces. He was trained and qualified as a carrier pilot but fought all his war from fields ashore, partly I assume because of a lack of Japanese carrier decks after the battle of Midway. December 7, 1941 found him at Tainan in southern Taiwan. His accounts of the first attacks on Clark Field in the Philippines will be read with mixed emotions by Americans. Sakai shot down Colin Kelly. He gives Kelly full credit for gallant bravery but highlights the fact that the battleship Haruna wasn’t there. The ship Kelly thought he bombed and sank was a light cruiser of the Nagara class which never even knew it had been attacked. Sakai’s understandable attitude about this incident was perhaps influenced by the fact that the Japanese Navy never awarded any medals or decorations for valor during the entire war except posthumously, and then only after thorough verification and documentation.
Sakai fought on through the Philippines and into Java. He takes issue with Samuel Eliot Morison’s account of the naval battle off Java in February 1942, stating that a major factor contributing to the defeat of the Allied ships was their complete lack of air cover. This was due to the fact that three days previously, in a wild air melee over
Surabaya (in which Sakai participated), the Japanese were overwhelmingly victorious.
The greater part of Samurai deals with the campaigns around Lae, Port Moresby, Rabaul and the invasion of Guadalcanal. Flying in the famous Zero fighter Sakai in this period shot down many P-36’s, P-38’s, P-39’s and B-25’s. Those who remember the superiority of the Zero in the early days of the war and who were inclined to think perhaps the grass in the Japanese pastures was much the greener, will find that the Japanese versions of these air campaigns make interesting reading. The Zero had no armor, no self-sealing tanks. To save weight the Japanese ripped out the radios. To save weight and to give a Samurai fighter pilot the utmost freedom in handling his controls, the pilots refused to take along the parachutes provided. A Samurai was always ready to die. Most of the air actions were over Allied territory. To become a prisoner was unthinkable. Why have parachutes? The spartan living and incredible hardships endured by the Japanese in the light of Western standards are illuminating throughout the book.
At Guadalcanal Sakai was severely wounded and lost an eye. He was invalided home but continued to fly as instructor and test pilot. He was later restored to full flying status and spent many months on Iwo Jima. In his view the Americans could have had Iwo without a struggle eight months before the actual landings, but in the interim the Japanese built it into the fortress which cost so many American and Japanese lives.
This American version of Sakai’s book is written by Martin Caidin, an aviation writer, in a breezy and very readable style. Fred Saito, news editor of Radio Tokyo during the war, helped in research and translation. He has worked for the Associated Press in Japan since 1948.
Sakai himself operates a printing business in Japan today. The fate of the Japanese military man after the war is seldom appreciated even by the many American military men who have lived in Japan since the war. Writes Sakai:
“In the Imperial Japanese Navy I learned only one trade—how to man a fighter plane and how to kill enemies of my country. This I did for nearly five years, in China and across the Pacific. I knew no other life; I was a warrior of the air.
“Occupation rules forbade me even to sit at the controls of an airplane, no matter what its type. For the seven long years of the Allied occupation of 1945 to 1952,1 was banned from obtaining any public position. It was all quite simple; I had been a flier in combat. Period.
“The end of the Pacific War only opened a new, prolonged, and bitter struggle for me, a struggle far worse than any I had ever known in combat. There were new and deadlier enemies—poverty, hunger, sickness, and all manner of frustration. There was the everpresent barrier raised by the occupation authorities which prevented my gaining any public post. There was only one opportunity, and I snatched at it eagerly. Two years of the hardest manual labor, with primitive living quarters, with rags for clothes, and barely enough food.”
As soon as they could, many of the Japanese naval aviators turned to the new, independent Japanese Air Self Defense Force which got an earlier start and much more support from both Japanese and Americans than did the air arm of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (Navy). The present Chief of Staff of the Air Self Defense Force is General Senagi, formerly a Captain Naval Aviator. The second in command is General Minoru Genda, another former naval aviator who figured prominently in Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan and who was Sakai’s Wing Commander in the latter part of the war. Sakai says Genda is considered one of the most brilliant naval strategists Japan has ever produced. Another prominent character in Samurai is Ex-Naval Aviation Commander Tadashi Nakajima who today is a colonel in Japan’s new Air Force. He is credited by the authors with much assistance in writing this book.
Despite a late start, Japanese naval aviation is firmly established today and »s coming along slowly. There are many fine young men in it—men strongly imbued with the Bushido spirit of the Samurai, men like Sa- buro Sakai who will be ready to die for Japan if that should be necessary. We in the American Armed Forces can well be glad that they are now on our side.