Deviation Actions
Description
First up, this is the Mitsubishi A6M Zero flown by the top Japanese ace of World War II, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa. Hiroyoshi Nishizawa was born as the fifth son of a sake brewery manager on 27 January 1920, with no particular inclination towards the military life. After graduation from high school, he found a job in a textile factory, but as Japan geared up for war with China, Nishizawa decided to join the Imperial Japanese Naval Reserve in June 1936. He graduated in the top twenty of his class from the grueling training program as a Petty Officer 1st Class, an enlisted fighter pilot, and served in a number of air wings before being transferred to the newly captured base at Lae on New Guinea, to join the Tainian Air Group, which was on the forefront of the struggle to take New Guinea from the Allies.
Nishizawa, who was considered tall for a Japanese man of his time, seemed taller due to being skinny: he suffered badly in the tropics from malaria and beri-beri. Because he was so sickly, he often remained in bed rather than socialize with other pilots, which gained him a reputation for aloofness and as a loner—a problem in Japanese society which demands conformity with the larger whole. However, some of his squadronmates reached out to the quiet Nishizawa, and found him to be painfully shy, a trait he shared with the great German World War I ace Manfred von Richthofen. When among close friends—which included fellow aces Saburo Sakai and Toshio Ota—Nishizawa came out of his shell and became known as a bit of a practical joker. Inspired by listening to a record of Saint-Saens’ classical piece Danse Macabre, Nishizawa convinced Ota and Sakai to fly directly over the main Allied base of Port Morseby and conduct an impromptu aerobatic airshow. When their commanding officer learned of it—from the Allies, who dropped a message “inviting” the three Zero pilots to try it again—all three men were chewed out.
However, the reprimand was a minor one, because all three men were rapidly becoming Japan’s leading aces, and acquired the nickname of “Cleanup Trio” from their squadronmates. Nishizawa had scored his first confirmed kill, an American P-39 Airacobra, on 11 April 1942, and had reached ten kills by mid-May. By August, Nishizawa had reached twenty victories, including a B-17 that he had shot down trying a new tactic: a head-on attack. The Tainian Group was committed to opposing the American landings on Guadalcanal, a six-month ordeal for both sides that left the Allies victorious. Of the Tainian Group, only ten of its original forty fliers were left alive to return to Japan in November 1942; Ota had been killed and Sakai greviously wounded. Nishizawa, exhausted and suffering still from malaria, was taken off operations and made an instructor. With around 40 victories, he was Japan’s leading ace, and had been given the nickname “Devil of Rabaul” by friend and foe alike.
Though Nishizawa had been commissioned as an officer and had personally received a dress katana sword from Vice Admiral Jinichi Kusaka, he hated being an instructor and continually looked for ways to return to the front. Nishizawa finally got his wish and returned to combat in the Southwest Pacific in May 1943, where he added yet more kills to raise his total to nearly 60. Once more, he was taken off operations and returned to Japan as an instructor; once more, he clamored to get back into combat. After a few reprimands that briefly exiled him to the Kurile Islands north of the Japanese home islands, he was sent to the Philippines. The luster of combat had worn off, however: Nishizawa told his friend Saburo Sakai that he had noted the growing competence of Allied pilots and their superior equipment—namely the F4U Corsair, which he had dueled over Rabaul in 1943—and lamented his own trainees as being poor stuff compared to the Tainian Group. Nonetheless, Nishizawa continued to fly and fight, now facing F6F Hellcats of the US Navy, attacking the Japanese in the Philippines.
Nishizawa’s score had exceeded 80 by October 1944, when he flew his last mission: escort for the first kamikaze suicide mission during the last hours of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Exhausted and demoralized, Nishizawa volunteered for kamikaze duty, but was refused due to his status. Instead, he was ordered to fly north to Clark Field on Luzon and ferry down replacements for the Zeroes lost the day before. On 26 October 1944, the Ki-49 Donryu he was riding in was intercepted and shot down by Hellcats from USS Wasp. Hiroyoshi Nishizawa was killed instantly. He was honored in a mention in dispatches by the commanding officer of the IJN Combined Fleet, Admiral Soemu Toyoda, promoted posthoumously to lieutenant (junior grade), and given the title Bukai-in Kohan Giko Kyoshi, “honored Buddhist person.” Nishizawa had been 24 years old at the time of his death.
Hiroyoshi Nishizawa’s victory credit remains a point of contention. At his death, Japanese newspapers reported that he had shot down 150 enemy aircraft, but this is certainly an exaggeration. Japanese recordkeeping in the last years of the war was notoriously shoddy, and even in the first part of the war, victories were usually awarded to the group rather than an individual. Through squadron diaries, after-action reports, and the recollections of Saburo Sakai, who survived the war, historians have somewhat agreed on 87 as being the likely number of Nishizawa’s kills, though they may have been higher (one source reports a number of 109) or lower (another source cites 54). Other Japanese pilots scored nearly as much; Imperial Japanese Army Air Force ace Tetsuo Iwamoto is sometimes credited with 94 kills, while Sakai himself was given 64. Nishizawa, however, is usually credited as being the top Japanese ace of World War II.
This is an A6M3 Type 22, which introduced a smaller wing than the earlier A6M2 and a supercharger for the Sakae engine. This particular aircraft, UI-105, was flown by Nishizawa during his time in the Southwest Pacific. As a naval fighter, it was painted in overall light IJN Gray, but as the Tainan Group was based on land, it was crudely hand-painted with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force Green to help camouflage it with the jungles of New Guinea. It retained gray undersurfaces and black cowl common to IJN aircraft, and carries an underfuselage external fuel tank to further extend its phenomenal range. The final fate of this aircraft is unknown.
