Fotografía Aeronáutica.
hace 8 años
Y este es el relato del propio piloto del FG1D:
"I began to notice that my left wing was disintegrating. I heard no shots, I heard no gunfire. But became visually aware that my left wing was coming apart. So I realized that i had been hit, so I broke off my left turn and rolled out and pitched over and commenced to dive. I remember being quite frightened. My adrenaline was undoubtedly very high but my mental capacities were good. I just felt that I've been hit, OK, he won, I lost, now let's go home!"
Frazer was briefly followed by a Shiden-Kai which kept shooting, but eventually in clouds disengaged. Frazer left the dogfight and landed safely in his damaged machine.
But not everyone was so lucky that day as 343rd Kokutai returned to its home missing four pilots (Lt Keijiro Hayashi, CPOs Sueo Ishizue and Takashi Yanagisawa and PO 1/c Susumu Tsuchiya) while VMF-113 lost 2 pilots and 2 machines with three other damaged.
Unit's post action report was following:
"The enemy planes and pilots engaged were by no means of the type usually encountered. Their planes were good and the pilots skilled and aggressive. A very good formation was flown and maintained. Deception was used by sending in one division as decoy. The planes waiting above were grouped in four-plane divisions, sections roughly abreast, and divisions stacked. They attacked by divisions in the following manner: The whole division executed a chandelle to the left, thus starting a diving approach on opposite course with altitude advantage. The division then split into two sections, one going to each side of the target planes and executed high side runs simultaneously, completing the run by tailing in and joining."