Pacifica Military History Free Sample Chapters.pmd

94 Pacifica Military History
rake me on the recovery. I decided to push forward on the stick and fly
inverted for a couple of seconds. The Zero pilot was so intent on pulling
inside me that I think the move surprised him. He lost sight of me and
continued his pullout. After delaying my pullout a couple more seconds,
I found him just about in my sights on the recovery. I was slightly out of
range at first and had to add throttle to close before firing. I don’t think
he saw me until I opened fire, and by then it was too late. He soon began
to burn and crashed into the sea.
It had been an exciting couple of minutes and resulted in four
victories—the Betty and three Zeros. There were several engagements
going on, so I decided to climb above the closest one, dive to get some
speed advantage, and see if I could help pull an enemy aircraft off of
someone’s tail.
As I was climbing to get in the fray, I must admit that all my attention
was directed above me and not to my rear. All of a sudden, I saw 7.7mm
bullets and 20mm cannon shells ripping off pieces of my wing covering
and some tracer fire going past me. My first reaction was to look to the
rear and peek out from around my armor-plated setback. I just started to
peek when a 7.7mm bullet came over my left shoulder, hit me in the
temple above my left eye, and went through and out the front right side
of my canopy. It felt like someone had hit me alongside the head with a
two-by-four board. I was temporarily stunned and dazed, and I don’t
remember how long it took me to realize that I had been hit. My first
thought then was to get the hell out of there.
We had been instructed that one of the best evasive maneuvers was
to dive to terminal velocity—I think the Red Line maximum speed
allowed was around 400 to 425 knots—and make a sharp turn to the
right. This I did, and evidently it worked, because the Zero pilot did not
elect to stay with me, for which I was most thankful.
As I pulled out from the high-speed dive, I noticed that blood was
spurting and landing on my left hand, which was positioned on the
throttle. I immediately placed my left hand on the artery leading to my
wound and applied pressure. This seemed to stop most of the bleeding,
but some blood was still running down my arm and onto my leg.
A friendly submarine was positioned a few miles off the coast to
rescue aviators who had been hit. I think the sub was off the northeast