Feb 6, 2022
Welcome to this episode of Lessons from the Cockpit Show!
In this episode, we discuss red underwear, one of the greatest victories and defeats in modern air warfare, and how a Commander's Conference kept this Navy Captain from being incinerated. Our hero in this episode is Imperial Japanese Navy Captain Mitsuo Fuchida.
Commander Mitsuo Fuchida was an expert tactician and planner, leading many Japanese Navy attacks throughout the Pacific. Flying as an observer in a Nakajima B5N2 Kate attack plane, Commander Fuchida directed the attack of Pearl Harbor. He was almost killed during the battle of Midway and Colonel Paul Tibbets's atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. A chance meeting on a Tokyo street corner leads to Captain Fuchida's conversion to Christianity, his mentor being a former enemy and part of the first US attack on the Japanese homeland, the Doolittle Raid.
A link to why Japan attacked the US:
Link to a good overview of the Pearl Harbor raid: https://youtu.be/f6cz9gtMTeI
Three-part documentary on the Japanese attack on Midway:
Part One: https://youtu.be/Bd8_vO5zrjo
Part Two: https://youtu.be/BXjydKPcX60
Part Three: https://youtu.be/WHO6xrSF7Sw
Commander Fuchida's detailed debriefing map of the Pearl Harbor attack: https://i.redd.it/yrrd3gujhm621.jpg
Mitsuo Fuchida's appearance on the Merv Griffin Show in September 1965, at the 35:40 mark:
https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/501213/s01-e01-episode-1
The Nakajima B5N2 Kate Commander Fuchida was flying in as an observer of the Pearl Harbor Raid can be found on Wall Pilot's website at:
https://wallpilot.com/product/imperial-japanese-navy-nakajima-b5n2-kate/
Listen and share this and past episodes of Lessons from the Cockpit show at www.markhasara.com
Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Lessons from the Cockpit show.