Then he spoke to the pilots he led: “The carrier is your first priority. Attack it at all costs. Only after it is destroyed will you worry about any other ships. Banzai for the Emperor!”

Answering Banzai! s dinned in his earphones. The American ships swelled as he drew closer to them. Flame and smoke burst from the guns of the forward vessels. They’d spotted him, then. Black puffs of smoke dotted the sky ahead. They hadn’t quite found the range. But they would. They would.

“Enemy fighters ahead!” a Zero pilot yelled.

Shindo swore, but only mildly. Of course the American carrier would have a combat air patrol overhead. Zeros orbited the Japanese task force, too-just in case. “Our job is to keep those fighters off our dive bombers,” he radioed to his comrades. “We are expendable. They are not. Let’s go.” He didn’t shout Banzai! again. He was not a showy man.

The Zero’s engine roared as he brought it up to full combat power. He and his fellow fighter pilots left the D3N1s behind as if they were nailed to the sky. There were the Wildcats, boring in on them. He’d already seen the American Navy fliers had courage and to spare.

What they didn’t have was enough in the way of airplanes under them. The Zeros slashed into the enemy planes. One Wildcat after another tumbled toward the Pacific. A Zero fell, too, and then another. The Japanese fighters were lighter and faster and more maneuverable than the Americans, but the Wildcats could take more punishment and keep flying.

There-Shindo turned quicker and harder than any Wildcat could hope to do. His thumb came down on the firing button. The twin 20mm cannon in his wings roared. A tracer round scored a line of what Japanese pilots called ice candy across the sky. Shells blew holes in the Wildcat just behind the cockpit. No plane could survive punishment like that. Spinning wildly, flames pouring from it, the American fighter went down.