The Zero raced through slanted columns of tropical light, prevented by high cirrus from leaving its shadow while skimming the slick New Guinea rain-forest roof. The Zero was dirty green with a black cowling and might have been hard to pick out except, “You could always see that red ball,” Richard Kirkland said—referring to the hinomaru or national emblem painted on Japanese Navy fighters. Catching one of them unawares happened almost never: the Zero pilot didn’t know Kirkland was behind him in a P-38 Lightning. It was a sure kill.
Just 20 years old, First Lieutenant Kirkland was at the controls of the aircraft that captured the imagination of every American youngster. Sleek, twin-boomed, twin-tailed and oh, so silvery (until warpaint arrived), the P-38 was the kit model every small boy built. Kirkland wasn’t old enough to vote in the United States or to purchase alcohol in California, but he was about to deliver 20mm and .50-caliber greetings to a formidable fighter that was itself a legend.
That’s when he slipped up.
“Most of us had to overcome a basic issue in air combat, which was firing too soon,” said Kirkland. The centerline-mounted guns of the P-38, Kirkland said, invited miscalculation. “My squadron mate Dick Bong said over and over again: ‘Run up their ass and push the trigger button.’ Bong instinctively knew how to do this. This time, I didn’t.
“I was at full throttle and began to fire. If I’d waited two seconds, I’d have gotten him. My rounds came across his canopy. He snapped over and went into a dive. I
