Above the Pacific by Colin Heaton

Author:Colin Heaton [Heaton, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

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I mentioned Joe Conger, a great guy and childhood friend. He was a very aggressive pilot, and a good one, and a great story involves October 25, 1942, when eight Zekes hit Henderson Field, and Joe was one of the four Wildcats in the air engaging them. He was involved with some shit-hot pilots, and that fight lasted at least five minutes. That is an eternity in fighter combat. I was with the others watching from the ground when he pulled up into a Zero and used his propeller to cut through the fuselage right behind the cockpit, destroying both fighters. Both pilots bailed out at around fifteen hundred feet. They had good parachutes and both landed in the water offshore.

The sailors took a boat to go get the Jap pilot, but he pointed to Joe about fifty yards away, so they went to get Conger first. They reeled him in and then went for the Jap. They pulled him in, but then he pulled his pistol, aimed it at Joe, and pulled the trigger. It misfired. Then he cleared it and tried to shoot himself in the head and again—click, a misfire. Joe had had enough of that shit and he clocked the Jap with a gas can, knocking him out. That was our first enemy prisoner.

The best part of this story was that the Jap pilot, Shiro Ishikawa, later met Conger at a reunion back in 1990. They actually became friends. I know people wonder how that can happen, but it does. We all know Saburō Sakai. He was the top-scoring Japanese ace to survive the war, and we all love that guy. He always believed in fighting honorably, and he really got into some trouble back home by demanding that the Japanese government start acknowledging the war crimes they had never admitted to. Hell, they even claimed that no crimes were ever committed.

Sakai openly challenged that position, demanding that Japan follow Germany’s example of admitting that crimes against humanity occurred, and we all admired him for it. Ironically, Sakai says I am the best friend he has in the United States, and I take that as a very high honor. He is a very good man. It was a tragedy that our nations had to fight each other, and he agrees with me.

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