Saburo Sakai Flew Nearly 5 Hours Half-Blind to Land Back at Rabaul

Saburo Sakai flew nearly five hours half-blind to land back at Rabaul on 7 August 1942, after eight SBD Dauntless gunners hit his Zero and a .30-caliber bullet wounded him in the head. The flight covered 560 nautical miles and took four hours and forty-seven minutes. Sakai would never again see the world with two good eyes. This documentary follows the A6M2 Zero from the Imperial Navy's 1937 12-Shi specification to the first day of the Guadalcanal landings. It covers the Tainan Air Group, the move from Lae to Lakunai, the long mission to Tulagi, the twin .30-caliber guns of the SBD-3 Dauntless, the Zero's range and its missing armor, and what happened to the Tainan pilots in the weeks that followed, through the redesignation of the group as the 251st Air Group on 1 November 1942. The script is built from after-action reports, loss tables and squadron records. Where Sakai's memoir Samurai disagrees with the American record, the video says so. Subscribe for the definitive history of the United States in the Second World War - new documentaries every few days. #WW2 #WorldWarII #PacificWar #USNavy #WWIIHistory #A6MZero #Guadalcanal #TainanAirGroup #SaburoSakai #MilitaryHistory #USAInWW2