This is my skin of the A6M2 of Lt Yukio Seki of the 201st Naval Fighter Group, based in the Phillippines. On 25th October 1944 Seki led a group of five A6M2s in the first successful Kamikaze attack, sinking the light carrier USS St Lo. The photo of Seki's flight taking off on this mission shows a very worn looking aircraft with extensive paint chipping.
Lt Seki was an outspoken critic of Kamikaze tactics, in an interview with a war correspondent he stated: "Japan's future is bleak if it is forced to kill one of its best pilots. I am not going on this mission for the Emperor or for the Empire... I am going because I was ordered to!" and "If they would let me, I could drop a 500 kilogram bomb on the flight deck of a carrier without going in for body-crashing and still make my way back." While on route to his death he was heard to transmit: "It is better to die, rather than to live as a coward."
According to the ace Nishizawa, who was flying escort, and also US personnel's descriptions of the action, it seems Seki's plane struck the carrier USS St Lo, but his plane bounced off into the sea and his bomb failed to explode. It was a second plane of his flight that did the damage that eventually sank the carrier.
