I read his bio years ago. The B-17 was major surprise to the Japanese. It's size, it defensive armament and the punishment it could take. Initially the Zero held the advantage in the early part of the war. But by the middle of 1943 with the introduction of the F6 Hellcat the Zero was done for. What was truly amazing is when Saki recounts how he came up behind that Grumman Avenger and was either unaware or had forgotten about the rear gunner underneath the plane and almost got his head blown off. He was seriously wounded but manged to fly, I think it was 100 miles(?) back to his base.
Yep.
Lost his eye in that fight.
They were extremely demoralized by the B-17 and the B-29.
The Japanese bombers were horrible.
The Japanese Navy had a real problem with calling off an attack just when they were ready to win big.
Pearl Harbor is an example, but an even bigger mistake was their pullback from the Indian Ocean.
They were deathly afraid of losing carriers, and then lost four of them at Midway.
I think another big problem for the Japanese was their lack of radar.
They lost a lot of planes on the ground because they never knew when we were coming.