12 Nov 2022 Garand Picture of the Day - Tarawa

[CINDERS]

He did not start out as a pilot he was in the Navy as a gunner on the Haruna before applying for the Naval air force he qualified top of the lot and was presented with a watch by Hirohito himself quite the honor.
When he was wounded in the head in a dog fight he was very lucky to survive it temporarily paralysed his left side blurred his vision severely affected his control of the aircraft but the cold entering the hole in the canopy help revive him to a degree to which he leaned his mixture right down and managed to fly his damaged Zero in a four-hour, 47-minute flight over 560 nmi (1,040 km; 640 mi) back to his base on Rabaul.

Something not readily known about Saburo;

Early in 1942, Sakai was transferred to Tarakan Island in Borneo and fought in the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese high command instructed fighter patrols to down all enemy aircraft encountered, whether they were armed or not. On a patrol with his Zero over Java, just after shooting down an enemy aircraft, Sakai encountered a civilian Dutch Douglas DC-3 flying at low altitude over dense jungle. Sakai initially assumed it was transporting important people and signaled to its pilot to follow him; the pilot did not obey. Sakai descended and approached the DC-3. He then saw a blonde woman and a young child through a window, along with other passengers. The woman reminded him of Mrs. Martin, an American who occasionally had taught him as a child in middle school and had been kind to him. He ignored his orders and flew ahead of the pilot, signaling him to go ahead. The pilot and passengers saluted him. Sakai did not mention the encounter in the aerial combat report.

Yes he was a very good pilot