In mid-May 1942, when the United States was still gathering her strength for a full-scale war, a powerful Japanese naval force set out to capture Midway Island, 1,135 miles northwest of Honolulu. The enemy fleet included four of the six aircraft carriers that had devastated Pearl Harbor, nine battleships, and an occupation force of 5,000 men. While Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s Midway Strike Force moved eastward across the Central Pacific, a much smaller enemy flotilla, the carriers Ryujo and Junyo, six cruisers, a dozen destroyers, and miscellaneous support vessels, carried out a diversionary action in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. The Aleutian strike had three objectives: to lure the U. S. Pacific Fleet north, opening the way for Yamamoto’s main force to capture Midway, to destroy the American installations at Dutch Harbor, and to cover enemy landings on Attu and Kiska.
The Aleutians, a chain of volcanic islands extending more than a thousand miles off the tip of the Alaskan Peninsula, are cursed with the most horrible weather imaginable. An area of rain and fog, storm-shattered cliffs, racing rip tides, monstrous seas, and blinding blizzards, the Aleutian Islands are a navigator’s nightmare. Following a high-speed night approach, the two carriers under Rear Admiral K. Kakuta reached the launch position 165 miles south of Dutch Harbor shortly before 3 a.m., Wednesday, 3 June. A slight fog dimmed the Arctic morning twilight as the carriers turned into the wind and commenced launching their planes.
Kakuta mounted two attacks at Dutch Harbor, one beginning at 8:07, the other at about nine o’clock. The first raid was made by nine single-engine bombers and a covering force of three fighters, all from the Ryujo, since the Junyo's planes, beset by navigational difficulties, had turned back about halfway to the target. Aircraft from both carriers participated in the second attack. When the enemy planes withdrew, the base at Dutch Harbor—the tank farm, radio station, barracks, and several Catalina flying boats moored in the bay—had suffered considerable damage, and there were 25 casualties.
One of the escorts, a Mitsubishi A6M2 Model 21 Zero, launched from the Ryujo, was piloted by Flight Petty Officer Tadayoshi Koga. Though unaware of it, Petty Officer Koga would that day present to the United States one of the greatest prizes of the Pacific War—his late model Zero fighter plane.
During the attack at Dutch Harbor, two bullets punctured the fuel line of Koga’s plane, and the young pilot radioed his flight commander that he would try to land on the small island that had been designated the emergency landing area for disabled aircraft. When Koga neared Akutan Island minutes later, he lowered the widespread landing gear and made his final approach. Unfortunately, it is often impossible to differentiate between solid ground and the grassy marshes found in the Aleutians; the pilot’s attempt to land wheels-down cost him his life. The wheels sank into the soft marshland, the plane flipped over on its back, and the shock of the impact instantly broke Koga’s neck. It is probable that the carrier force, anxious to withdraw, made no attempt to locate the missing pilot.
Five weeks later, long after the great Japanese defeat at the Battle of Midway, a U. S. naval scouting party visiting Akutan came upon Koga’s Zero in its inverted position on the marsh. The dead pilot, held firmly in place by his seat belt, was suspended in a head-down position. When the men removed Koga’s body for burial, they discovered that he had been tightly taped from his waist to the shoulders. This was attributed either to a previous back injury or as a precaution against high-speed maneuvers.
Although the impact of the somersault had broken the pilot’s neck, the marsh cushioned the crash, leaving the nearly-new fighter plane virtually undamaged, and the party realized they had made a great find. Prior to the war, Colonel Claire Chennault, commander of the volunteer Flying Tigers in China, had written the U. S. Army Air Corps that the Japanese had developed a fast, highly maneuverable fighter plane, but his letter had apparently been buried in a filing cabinet and forgotten. Despite Chennault’s warning and the fact that the United States had been at war more than six months, our aerial experts were still very much in the dark about the much-vaunted Zero aircraft that had downed American planes all over the Southwest Pacific.
The Zero fighter plane—the first ever captured intact—was disassembled, crated, and removed to the Naval Air Station at San Diego’s North Island. Following careful reassembly and a meticulous examination by. America’s aviation experts, a Navy pilot conducted a series of flight tests to learn the aircraft’s characteristics and, even more important, to determine its inherent weaknesses. Thus, the information gained from Petty Officer Koga’s plane found on Akutan Island in the Aleutians gave our pilots a much better chance of survival when they came up against the Zero. It also brought the Allies closer to final victory.