History is replete with turning points, spaces in time when a major discovery or event changes the course of events. The history of warfare is no exception. One of the major turning points, perhaps the turning point of the Pacific theater of World War 2, was the Battle of Midway, during which the Japanese Navy lost four fleet carriers. This changed the course of the Pacific war; before Midway, the Japanese went from victory to victory. After Midway, the shoe was on the other foot, and it remained that way until the battleship Missouri sailed into Tokyo to accept the formal surrender.
During the first year of the war, though, American pilots faced a major nemesis in the primary Japanese fighter, the Mitsubishi Zero. The Zero could outmaneuver, outclimb, and out-dogfight any American fighter of the time. Navy F4F Wildcats and Army P-40 Warhawk fighters had a lot of trouble with the fast, nimble Japanese fighter.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, American experts examined the wrecks of several Zeros shot down in the attack and discovered the Japanese fighter had no armor and no self-sealing fuel tanks, but none of the wrecks could be rebuilt and flown. That changed in the summer of 1942, with a Japanese Navy pilot, 19-year-old Flight Petty Officer First Class Tadayoshi Koga.
On June 4, 1942, Koga and two other pilots launched from the light carrier Ryūjō to attack American installations at Dutch Harbor, as part of the Japanese Aleutians campaign. They are thought to be the flight that encountered an American PBY patrol plane and fired on it, shooting it down and then strafing the survivors in the water. One of Koga's wingmen, Tsuguo Shikada, later claimed that they had never shot down a Catalina but that Koga's plane was instead ht by ground fire when they strafed three Catalinas anchored at Dutch Harbor. In any case, Koga's plane was hit by small-arms fire. An oil line was hit, and Koga's Zero started to lose oil pressure. He would have been looking for a place to set the plane down, and saw on the island of Akutat a large, grassy meadow that looked perfect.
Koga didn't know Alaska. What looked like a meadow was in fact a bog. When he tried to land, the Zero's gear stuck in the mud, and the plane flipped on its back, killing Koga instantly.
Read More: One of America's Greatest Heroes: Audie Murphy
Farewell, Fearless Hero: America's Last WW2 Navy Fighter Ace Passes at 103
That's where things would have stayed. Akutat was not inhabited and wasn't on any normal flight routes. But on July 10th, another American PBY flown by Lieutenant William "Bill" Thies was lost. The pilot, Lieutenant Thies, spied the Shumagin Islands, and then, with his fuel running short, set a course directly back to Dutch Harbor, which took them over Akutat. The PBY's crew chief, Machinist Mate Albert Knack, spotted the Zero in the marsh.
Within days, a team was assigned to walk in to the crash and extract whatever was useful. It turned out that the Zero, despite having flipped, was nearly undamaged. Petty Officer Koga's body was still in the cockpit; he was extracted and buried nearby. The recovery team extracted the Japanese fighter, which then went to Seattle, then to the Naval Air Station North Island, where it was restored to flying condition.
Lieutenant Commander Eddie Sanders was assigned to fly the restored Zero and flew it over 20 times. He discovered some key things about the vaunted Zero: Its maneuverability fell off markedly at high speed, especially its roll rate. The Zero also rolled more slowly to the right than to the left, perhaps due to torque from the radial engine. Also, the plane's carburetor would fail if the pilot nosed over into a sudden, steep dive. These prompted a sudden change in fighter tactics in the Pacific. One American F4U Corsair pilot, Marine Captain Kenneth Walsh, was among the first to put the new tactics to the test:
With [a] Zero on my tail I did a split S, and with its nose down and full throttle my Corsair picked up speed fast. I wanted at least 240 knots, preferably 260. Then, as prescribed, I rolled hard right. As I did this and continued my dive, tracers from the Zero zinged past my plane’s belly. From information that came from Koga’s Zero, I knew the Zero rolled more slowly to the right than to the left. If I hadn’t known which way to turn or roll, I’d have probably rolled to my left. If I had done that, the Zero would likely have turned with me, locked on, and had me. I used that maneuver a number of times to get away from Zeros.
The new tactics changed the air war. The final blow for the Zero came with the American introduction of the big, heavy F6F Hellcat fighter, a big, heavy machine, armored like a tank, with six Browning .50 caliber machine guns and the great Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine. The Hellcat was faster than the Zero, could outclimb and outdive it, and was even more maneuverable; and the finishing touches of the Hellcat may likely have been based on input from the Akutat Zero.
The Hellcat achieved a kill ratio of 13 to 1 against the Zero. With that final blow, the air dominance of the Zero was over. And all because of a Navy PBY pilot flying by dead reckoning got lost, and then his crew chief spotted a strange sight on an empty Alaskan island.
On such fortuitous events, history truly can change course on the proverbial dime.
In an interesting footnote, in 1988, American writer Jim Reardon led a party to Akutat to retrieve and repatriate Petty Officer Koga's body. They discovered that in 1947, the Japanese flyer's body had been moved and reburied on Adak Island. The Adak military cemetery was closed in 1953, with 236 bodies sent to Japan. While only 13 of those bodies were identified, with no Koga among them, he was likely among the 223 unidentified bodies. If that is true, then Petty Officer is now home, having been cremated and interred in the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery. That is appropriate; a warrior gone home.
