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301 Chapter 21 Endings for Some It was never more clear how alone an aircrew was than when they were in trouble. Men flying a stricken plane had only their aircraft and all the skill and resourcefulness they could muster, but sometimes the plane was too broken for any heroic effort to save it. At the moment the aircraft could no longer fly, and its crew could no longer function as pilot, navigator, engineer, radio man, gunner or bombardier, the crew became individual men with their own thoughts, reactions, and emotions. Bailing out was the last resort, but even bailing out was sometimes hopeless. Injured men might be unable to get out, or violent forces acting on the tumbling, spiraling, falling wreckage of a plane might make it impossible for a man to take any action at all, and his survivors would shudder to imagine his feelings and fears as the plane went down. If the stricken plane was in formation with other aircraft, the contrast was gut-wrenching. Men aboard a struggling aircraft were in a completely different world, alone. Japanese losses of aircraft and experienced pilots were good fortune for American bomber crews. Hundreds lost at Midway and during the Marianas Turkey Shoot, with attrition through 1944 and into 1945, made enemy skies more survivable for Americans. But with their 302 Finish Forty and Home home islands under attack and their battles becoming more desperate, Japanese defenders committed themselves to a fight to the death. On Iwo Jima, Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi created a list of six vows and distributed them to his men, and they repeated them every morning:1 1. We shall defend this place with all our strength to the end. 2.  We shall fling ourselves against enemy tanks clutching explosives to destroy them. 3. We shall slaughter the enemy, dashing in among them to kill them. 4. Every one of our shots shall be on target and kill the enemy. 5. We shall not die until we have killed ten of the enemy. 6.  We shall continue to harass the enemy with guerilla tactics even if only one of us remains alive. Surely it occurred to Iwo Jima’s anti-aircraft gunners and Zero pilots operating from Iwo Jima’s airfields that B-24 Liberators usually carried ten men. Zero pilots able to get airborne from Iwo Jima to intercept American bombers knew there was a good chance their airfields would be too badly cratered by those bombers for them to land again, and they understood the implications of their recent losses quite well. They did not expect to survive the war, and in the sky over Iwo Jima, some of them employed a devastating new tactic. On a daylight raid in mid-January, nine B-24s near Iwo Jima broke from the safety of their formation because ice had begun forming on the wings. Lt. Herman Bierwirth at the controls of Catherine dropped down to 13,000 feet, followed by another B-24, Tarfu, on his wing.2 As the two planes left Iwo Jima, Zero fighters attacked. The first Japanese fighter made a pass from 4:00 but broke off at about 300 yards. He made two more halfhearted passes then turned toward Iwo Jima. A second fighter made three passes from 3:00, then Endings for Some 303 another from 2:00. The plane broke toward 5:00 at about 300 yards away and then circled as if to get in position for another pass. White smoke streamed from the Zero’s cowling. At 500 yards ahead of the two B-24s, the Zero dropped its left wing and turned toward the bombers. It streaked in from 2:00, guns firing. Gunners on both B-24s fired into the Zero and Bierwirth nosed down hard, banking left, and his wing man followed. Waist and top turret gunners risked warping their gun barrels, they were pouring so many rounds into the attacking Zero. They had never seen one so close, so aggressive. Tracers zipped past and into the Zero as Liberator gunners turned to track the plane, by now so near that the gunners could see the radial engine cylinder heads within their circular cowling, the stripes on the Zero’s propeller blades spinning a red circle and the Japanese pilot’s face behind his cockpit glass. The Zero’s guns blinked fast at the Liberators but the fighter pilot’s weapon of choice was the mass and velocity of his entire plane...

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