Akira Yamamoto

Akira Yamamoto (山本 旭) (1913 – 24 November 1944) was an officer and ace fighter pilot in the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. He flew an A6M2 Zero fighter from the aircraft carrier Kaga during the attack on Pearl Harbor, where he claimed to have destroyed a civilian sight-seeing aircraft that had inadvertently entered the path of the Japanese strike wave. During the Battle of Midway, Yamamoto was on Kaga when it was damaged and subsequently landed his fighter on Hiryū. He participated in Hiryū's successful retaliatory strike on the USS Yorktown, claiming to have destroyed four enemy fighter aircraft. Yamamoto was credited with destroying a total of 13 enemy aircraft throughout his career.More