Saburo sakai's ZEROS

A6M5C Saburo Sakai. Yokosuka Kokutai Japan 1945.

A6M2 Zero 21 Saburo Sakai Tainan NAG Rabaul 1942

His score of 64 planes downed is based on his own reports, and in some of his accounts it was one or two lower. Two Japanese pilots had higher scores, also based on their own counts. (Lieut. Tetsu Iwamoto shot down more than 100 Allied planes.) The Japanese Navy policy was not to credit personal victories officially, but to subordinate the individual to the group.

On Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he flew with his group to attack an American air base in the Philippines. He shot down an American P-40, in what was said to be the Japan's first aerial kill there. On Jan. 25, he downed an American B-17, the first Allied bomber to fall in the Pacific.

Sakai remains the top surviving ace of the Pacific Airwar.