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The story of the Japanese Airplane Driver
By Jim Fratianni

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On a sunny day in May this Japanese decided to go for a ride in his flying machine. He was flying along doing nothing when he spotted this beautiful aircraft carrier being shielded by the Swayback Maru. Ha so me got a nice carrier today. He decided that his plan would be to fly down and use the beat up old cruiser as a shield so he could turn across her bow and torpedo the carrier. Nice plan but he must have been sitting on his brains to think he could get away with such a stupid plan.

Now on that day I was outside the transmitter room---a witness to this stupid plan (don't know what I was doing there, but I was). The stupid Japanese did not know that we had a Hollywood camera man aboard. This movie would appear in many later Japanese war films.

The pilot, with his leather helmet and goggles, the typical smile in anticipation of the kill. When I waved he should have waved back because it would have been his last. He was so close that I could have reached out and touched him.

Well of course the ending of the story was that the poor stoop ran into a wall of lead from the Swayback Maru and died in his stupid attempt. But his movies lived on because Hollywood reused all of their clips.

This really happened but I don't remember what battle it was in. I am sure some gunner would remember.


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