Hey guys. I want sure where to post this, so I figured the "general" section was a safe bet.

This is a very interesting animation of the famous dogfight between Saburo Sakai and "Pug" Sutherland over Guadalcanal in 1942. It seems pretty accurate.

Thought you guys would enjoy it.

YouTube - Saburo Sakai vs Pug Sutherland

as i remember, pug was chasing three zeros underneath sakai's plane so he dove. sutherland gave up his attack on the three and faced sakai. sakai said this guy was even using his own favorite --attacking from underneath.

so sakai did the standard counter to a sneak belly attack: he tipped his wings and went into an upward spiral, expecting to come up behind his climbing opponent. pug countered by going into a similar spiral. so it went. sakai was suffering from the g-effects of the spiral maneuver and he was sure the other guy was too. pug's wildcat stalled but was able to bring it under control.

the above account tells you that both the zero and the wildcat were capable of maneuvers beyond the capability of even the most skilled pilots. pug's mistake was that, after recovering from the stall, he looped instead of going back to the upward spiral. sakai cut into his loop --a move he was sure the zero would win. it did. he came right behind pug just 50 meters away. he fired 200 machinegun rounds into the wildcat's cockpit.

say, pug in the photo is young-looking. sakai described him when he pulled alongside the wildcat as a fat, middle aged man.

Sakai wasnt aware at the time that Sutherlands machine guns had malfunctioned earlier in the fight.

On the up side of (I looked at the rest to) these "This time we win" set of CG masterpieces, it appears we'll have some pretty neat video games in the near future!

__________________

Morbius, Morbius! Something is approaching from the Southwest. It is now quite close.

Excellent little video. I happen to be reading Sakai's book at the moment so this was great to see. Thanks for posting!