“This film offers an unprecedented, inside view into the attacks,” says Jared Lipworth, executive producer of Secrets of the Dead. “It not only reveals how the victims and terrorists acted during the massacre, it highlights how consumer technologies and social media gave the victims a chance to survive, while also putting them directly into the line-of-fire of the terrorists who were hunting them down.”

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Timed for broadcast on the first anniversary of the attacks, THIRTEEN’s Secrets of the Dead: Mumbai Massacre brings viewers first-hand survivor accounts, closed-circuit footage of the chaos from within the hotels and actual words spoken by both victims and terrorists. The film premieres nationally Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). Actor Liev Schreiber (Taking Woodstock and X-Men Origins: Wolverine) narrates. Secrets of the Dead is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG – one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers.

Told completely from the perspective of the victims, Mumbai Massacre places viewers inside the maelstrom, where they become witnesses to the critical events and decisions that meant the difference between life and death. Incredible stories include: a Muslim architect and his wife who were forced to watch as two different groups of hostages were executed at their feet; a tourist whose husband died in her arms as they were shot trying to escape; an American cameraman whose mother in Texas texted him a map of the hotel; and a married couple who split up during the chaos to increase the likelihood that at least one of them would survive to take care of their children. The film also reveals the remarkable heroism and dedication of the hotel’s staff, documenting a restaurant manager who returned to the hotel to take care of his guests, and cooks who gave up their own lives to keep the terrorists away from their hidden visitors.

THIRTEEN’s Secrets of the Dead: Mumbai Massacre was produced by Electric Pictures and Furnace for THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG, Screen Australia, ScreenWest Inc., Channel 4 (UK), The History Channel UK and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Victoria Pitt is writer/director, Andrew Ogilvie is executive producer for Electric Pictures and Phil Craig is executive producer for Furnace. At THIRTEEN, Jared Lipworth is executive producer. William R. Grant is executive-in-charge.

Judith Heimann, author/historian

Judith M. Heimann is the author of The Airmen and the Headhunters (Harcourt, 2007; 2d ed., pbk, 2009). Born in New York City, she comes from a family of writers. Judith was educated at Hunter College High School and Radcliffe College, Harvard University. She married her Harvard classmate, John P. Heimann. They began their life together in Indonesia, where John was a diplomat. In 1972, Judith also joined the State Department, usually serving in the same country as her husband. In 1997 Judith wrote The Most Offending Soul Alive: Tom Harrisson and His Remarkable Life (U. of Hawaii Press, 1999). It took her 200 interviews on four continents to piece together this extraordinary tale of a great English eccentric whom she had first known as her neighbour in Borneo. The book became the basis for an Icon Films TV documentary “The Barefoot Anthropologist”, presented by Sir David Attenborough for BBC4. Judith has spent seven years living in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines including two years in Borneo where she learned to speak Malay/ Indonesian. She traveled to three continents and interviewed many of the surviving Dayaks and all the surviving U.S. Airmen in her research for The Airmen and the Headhunters. Judith divides her time between Washington, DC, and Brussels, Belgium. She is currently at work on a new book, about Indonesia during the time she lived there.

Dan Illerich, US veteran/sole-surviving Airmen

Dan Illerich lives in Friendswood, Texas with his wife Mary. He is the last surviving Airmen in The Airmen and the Headhunters story. He provides the only first hand testimony of the American Airmen’s’ experiences with the Dayak tribes in Borneo. Of the ten men in the B-24 bomber crew shot down by the Japanese in November 1944, seven survived the parachute from the plane. Dan tells their story. Corporal Dan Ilerich was the crew’s radio operator. He was 19 years old when he landed in Borneo. Dan and his fellow airmen lived with the Dayak tribes’ people for several months before being rescued by Allied Special Forces. Dan Illerich was the last American airmen to leave Borneo. He stayed for as long as possible to assist the Z-Special forces with radio operations. Dan arrived back in America on 1st September 1945. He left the air force and enlisted in the reserve corps as a radio operative gunner. He attended University of Nevada and gained a BSC in Mechanical Engineering in 1950. He was a 2nd lieutenant in the Senior Reserve Officers Training Corps until 1954 when he transferred to the Californian Air National Guard and became a captain. In 1960 Dan was recalled for active service as an engineering officer in the US air force. He retired as a Lieutenant Cornel in 1973. Dan was never a pilot for the air force, he was an aircrew member. He stopped flying for the air force the day his crew were shot down in Borneo. However, after he retired Dan obtained his FAA certifications, and became a certificated flight instructor. Dan Illerich spent 22 years working as a flight instructor. He retired in 1994.

Jack Tredrea, former Australian commando

Jack Tredrea (real name Jonathan Tredrea) lives in Clapham, South Australia. Jack is one of the few surviving members of Z-Special unit, the group of Special Forces that assisted the downed American airmen and helped with their rescue. Jack was a member of Semut 1 (Semut means Ant in Malay) a group of undercover allied operatives lead by the eccentric English Major Tom Harrisson. Jack joined the army in November 1938 and learned Malay during training prior to the Semut missions in Borneo. Jack Tredrea was involved in allied secret operations against the Japanese in Borneo in 1945. He spent over seven months in the jungle, training and fighting with a party of thirty Iban guerrilla warriors. Jack gathered intelligence from all over the Kelabit Highlands and Kayan Territory, this information which was radioed back to the Northern Territories in Australia. Jack left Borneo after the end of the war and arrived in Australia in mid November 1945. He was discarded in April 1946 and returned to South Australia to take up his former employment as tailor. He retired at age 65. He has a daughter, 4 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren.

Bob Long, former Australian commando

Bob Long lives in Bayswater, West Australia with his wife Margery. He was born in Hounslow in the UK and emigrated to Australia with his parents at 6 months old. Bob Long first joined the army in 1941 he signed up to the signal platoon of the 28th infantry battalion. Were commenced his life as a signalman. He was later released to the First Australian Armoured division in Perth. When the threat of a Japanese invasion of Australia had diminished the armoured division was disbanded, and Bob was sent for retraining in Victoria, it was here that he was interviewed by an American major and accepted to Z-special unit. Bob Long was selected for Semut, and after parachute training at Richmond air force base in New South Wales he joined the advanced Semut party that parachuted into Borneo. He was part of the second group that parachuted into Borneo on 12th April 1945. Bob spent 7 months in Borneo as a radio operative. He was originally part of Semut 2 and later joined Semut 1 lead by eccentric English major Tom Harrisson. Towards the end of the operations Bob worked very closely with downed American airmen Dan Illerich, who assisted the Radio operations of Semut 1. Bob Long wrote a book Z Special Unit Secret War. Operation Semut 1 published in 1989 on his experiences and that of another twenty Semut operatives in Borneo.After the war ended Bob Long returned Australian and was home in October 1945. He remained in the military as a warrant officer, second in charge of the signal office at Swan Barracks, in Perth until he was discharged in March 1946. Bob retired in the mid 80’s. He has 7 children.

Lord Cranbrook

Lord Gathorne Cranbrook MA PhD DSc(Hon) JBS PNBS is the Chairman for the International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature, The Natural History Museum (London). He lives in Great Glemham in the UK. Lord Cranbrook first came to Sarawak in 1956, to take up an informal post as Technical Assistant to the Curator of the Sarawak Museum, Tom Harrisson. He has followed many lines of study on the natural biodiversity of Borneo and South-east Asia. Two of his special interests are cave swiftlets; and mammals, of the present and the past. He was external supervisor (to Dr Lim Chan Koon) in research at Bukit Sarang, leading to successful management of on the wild populations of black-nest swiftlets. His work on the living mammals was summarized in his authoritative “Annotated Checklist of the Mammals of Borneo” (1965, reprinted 1977). He has also spent 50 years studying the fossil fauna of the region, including mammals recovered in cave archaeological sites excavated in Sarawak and Sabah. This work provided insights on evolutionary trends among mammals in Borneo, including morphological change, ecological adaptations, range movements and prehistoric extinctions.

Production Biographies

Jared Lipworth, series executive producer

As director of science programs, Jared Lipworth is responsible for commissioning and executive producing all science programs produced by THIRTEEN’s Science, Natural History and Features department. Current projects in production or development include Secrets of the Dead IX, Ground War, Curious II, and The Human Spark, which is currently a finalist at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival for Presenter-Led programming. Recently completed projects include Curious, Warplane, Secrets of the Dead VII-VIII (with one program, Doping for Gold, up for a 2009 Emmy) and The Mysterious Human Heart, which won the 2008 Emmy for Science, Technology, and Nature programming.

Prior to becoming executive producer and then director of science programs, Lipworth was the series producer for the department’s technology series, Innovation. He also served as series producer for the Emmy-nominated Secrets of the Dead III and coordinating producer for many of the department’s projects, including Warrior Challenge, Secrets of the Pharaohs, the Emmy Award-winning Frontier House and The Secret Life of the Brain, Warship, Taxi Dreams, Echoes From the White House and Savage Planet. In 2003, Lipworth was nominated for a writing Emmy for Secrets of the Dead: Mystery of the Black Death. Additional credits at THIRTEEN include post-production producer for The American President and 1900 House and production assistant for Savage Seas, On The Trail of Mark Twain, The Great Balloon Race and Stories of Lupus.

Before arriving at THIRTEEN, Lipworth produced, directed and edited In the Footsteps of the Black Rhino for the BBC’s Animal Zone. He received his master’s degree in broadcast journalism from New York University, where he won the award for academic excellence, and he received his bachelor’s degree in business management from Cornell University.

Harry Marshall, executive producer

Harry Marshall was born and spent his childhood in India. After graduating from Oxford University with an MA in English he joined The South Bank Show at LWT, moving on to Border Television in programme development before joining Channel Four as Assistant Commissioning Editor of Youth Programmes. After leaving Channel Four Harry formed an independent production company, John Peel Productions in the Lake District in 1987. In 1990, Harry moved to Bristol and founded Icon Films in 1990 with his partner Laura Marshall. Harry acts as Executive Producer across all Icon commissions and directs the development team. Icon Films is currently working on over 22 hours of network production for the BBC, National Geographic, WNET, Discovery/Animal Planet and C4. Harry Marshall is the editorial liaison between productions and the broadcasters and shares responsibility with Icon’s Managing Director for client relationships. Much of his time is spent identifying new talent, both on-screen and production staff. Icon Films have for the past two years worked with the University of Bristol History Department with their MA course, for the Public History option, on the development and production of history programming. As an award winning writer, Harry is also invited to write for non-Icon documentaries as well as publications such as The Smithsonian magazine, Broadcast and Realscreen. Harry is also a regular participant on industry panels particularly in the area of script writing.

Mark Radice, director/producer

Mark Radice has been directing and producing documentaries and drama-documentaries since 2003. He wrote and directed Umbrella Assassin for PBS’ Secrets of the Dead (Thirteen/WNET New York) and Channel Five and was nominated for an Emmy (Outstanding Historical Programming). Other credits include: Horizon: Why Can’t We Predict Earthquakes and Britain from Above for the BBC; Human Body: Pushing the Limits for the Discovery Channel (nominated for a Primetime Emmy); and Great Escape for PBS (WGBH Boston) and Channel Five, which was nominated for a Grierson Award.

Andrew Quigley, editor

Andrew Quigley has worked extensively as an editor and director for BBC and Channel Four in the UK together with International broadcasters and theatrical producers. He was BAFTA nominated in 1998 for the 90 min documentary The Heart and Soul of Eric Morecambe and won the 2006 Special Jury Award at B.I.F.F. for the Feature Documentary Diameter of the Bomb. His directing work includes a three part series for BBC Allies at War, the TV Movie The Duel and A World in Arms for Channel Four. His recent film editing work includes the feature length TV drama Saddam’s Tribe – Bound by Blood and number of documentary films for the BBC Imagine Arts strand. He continues his film editing work in documentaries and has recently completed directing and editing an exclusive concert by film composer Alex Heffes at Tate Modern.

Chris Vile, camera

Chris Vile has a degree in Fine Art from Merton College, Oxford. He moved from painting, through photography to shooting documentaries and drama for TV. He’s a painter that went digital. Chris won the 2006 Emmy Award Winner for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Lighting & Scenic Design’ for The Crusades, the Crescent & the Cross.

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“Not only is this a spectacular long-lost story of heroism, perseverance, and ingenuity, it also reveals a remarkable shift in perception for the downed airmen,” says Jared Lipworth, executive producer of Secrets of the Dead. “They went from fearing the ‘savage’ Dayaks to admiring them as compassionate and skilled saviors, and that’s a lesson we can still learn from today.”

Mainly told by Dan Illerich, the last surviving airman; the original Dayaks who protected the Americans; and the Australian commandoes who helped get them out, the story transports viewers deep into the heart of Borneo at the height of the Second World War revealing fantastic tales of survival, bravery and ingenuity. The Dayaks, who hated the Japanese for occupying their country and killing their beloved missionaries, hid the Americans deep in the jungle. When the Japanese soldiers approached from the coast, the tribesmen used blowpipes and the banned practice of headhunting to stop their advances. They even set up an ambush using naked women as bait, and once the killing was over, invited the Americans to a rare headhunting feast.

The clash of cultures didn’t stop there. Months after the airmen went down, they were found by British Major Tom Harrisson and his group of Australian commandoes, who had been tasked with setting up a guerilla army to attack the Japanese from the interior. Harrisson enlisted the Dayaks to fight, encouraged headhunting and the use of blowpipes against the Japanese, and concocted a daring plan to build a runway out of bamboo so that planes (and their very brave pilots) could land in the jungle and take the Americans home—which they eventually did.

THIRTEEN’s Secrets of the Dead: The Airmen and the Headhunters is an Icon Films production for THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG, Channel 4 and National Geographic Channels International. Mark Radice is producer/director, and Harry Marshall and Laura Marshall are executive producers. At THIRTEEN, Jared Lipworth is executive producer. William R. Grant is executive-in-charge.

What was your reaction when you first heard about the discovery of James Southerland’s Wildcat, which was shot down by Saburo Sakai?

I was astonished and excited, knowing the potential significance. For a change, we had empirical evidence of what happened in one of the classic dogfights. It’s almost as if von Richthofen’s [a.k.a. The Red Baron] Fokker Triplane had been found in the 1950s.

Please describe a day in the life of a World War II fighter pilot. How did a U.S. fighter pilot differ from a Japanese fighter pilot? How was their training different? How were their fighting styles different?

The daily lives of Southerland and Sakai were much different; the Americans were living a fairly easy life aboard their carrier while Sakai and his comrades were based at Rabaul with few amenities, mediocre food and threat of disease. At the time of the Guadalcanal operation, both sides were well-trained with the Japanese having the advantage of significant combat experience. I don’t think that any of the Wildcat pilots on August 7 had ever been in a dogfight. Fighting styles were totally different. Americans stressed teamwork and mutual support to offset their technical deficiencies against the Zero. The Japanese were basically individualists steeped in the World War I traditions.

What kind of person or personality does it take to become an ace fighter like Southerland or Sakai? Are there specific character traits involved?

Regardless of the paint on the airframe, all successful fighter pilots are brothers beneath the flight suit. Their primary trait is aggressiveness, coupled with extreme self confidence. “Egotist” is not too harsh a term. However, of the couple hundred aces I’ve known, only a few carry their egos on their shoulders — right beside the chip — on the ground. The large majority are quiet and friendly, some are even shy, but they change personalities when they strap into the machine. In that respect, most fighter aces are professional schizophrenics. Many — not all — are accomplished versus competent aviators but the large majority are good to excellent marksmen. The survivors also share a keen sense of risk assessment. Those who get greedy usually don’t last very long. Among Americans, Frank Luke in World War I is the classic example. A movie screaming to be made.

Did Sakai’s reluctance to shoot and kill Southerland when he had the opportunity have something to do with his samurai background and values?

Probably yes, though he didn’t say so in that many words. Also, it may have been the first time that he saw an opponent up close, almost face to face. It’s important to recall that while Imperial Japan’s military behavior could be atrocious, it also incorporated a code of conduct and ethics that was rooted in the the samurai tradition, which contained an element of chivalry.

Are there any unwritten rules of engagement regarding dogfights?

In combat there is one rule: Win. A late friend of mine, a World War I ace, was fond of saying, “If you find yourself in a fair fight, it means you ‘fouled’ up.” He didn’t say “fouled.” Today we have rules of engagement governing military behavior and ethics in almost every conceivable situation. There was nothing similar for aviation in World War II other than international rules about bombing cities. Each pilot was largely on his own; some would gladly kill a defeated opponent hanging in a parachute or running on the ground. Others would wave or salute. Luck of the draw.

Is aerial combat as practiced by Southerland and Sakai really a lost art?

It’s not so much a lost art as a changed game. Pilots still train for dogfights, but with the advent of the air-to-air missile, modern combat bears little resemblance to that of Sakai and Southerland. With much higher speeds and far greater engagement distances, today’s fighter pilots just don’t see the enemy as before. Also, recall that air combat is extremely rare; the United States Air Force and the United States Navy have only shot down about 55 enemy aircraft since 1973, with no aces. It is unlikely there will be any more American aces, certainly not in such numbers as were in Korea.

Do you have any additional thoughts or perspectives on the Guadalcanal campaign you’d like to share?

Guadalcanal remains a subject of fascination for at least two reasons. It was the critical campaign of the Pacific War. Midway set the stage, making possible an American offensive, but Japan sustained vastly more losses in the six months between August ‘42 and February ‘43. Nearly a generation of Japanese aviators was chewed up there, largely irreplaceable in kind. American losses were replaced not only in kind but in greater quantity. Same applies to equipment; ships, aircraft, weapons.

Guadalcanal, and by extension the Solomons campaign, had something for everybody — land, sea and air combat on a larger scale than had ever occurred previously in any war. Later campaigns such as the Marianas and Philippines also had all three but the odds were lopsided in America’s favor and the results never in doubt. Not so for Guadalcanal, where a U.S. loss would have affected the progress if not the outcome of the war. Additionally, the Cactus [Allied code name for Guadalcanal] campaign required a symbiotic relationship between rifleman, airman and sailor. In the later campaigns, land and naval operations were largely independent once the troops were ashore. I never knew Pug Southerland but did talk with Sakai two or three times — a complete gentleman. The same applies to the Cactus Air Force vets I was proud to call friends — Joe Foss, Marion Carl, Bob Galer, and many more.

First off, you had a long career as a fighter-pilot, then a crash investigator, then you went back to school at USC and became a writer and historian. How did all of this happen?

Colonel Ralph Wetterhahn: I was a fighter pilot for most of my 29 years in the military. I flew F-4 Phantoms, A-7 Corsairs, and the F-15 with the Air Force and Navy. During that period, from 1963 to 1992, I wound up being the chief of safety for the Pacific Air Force, with headquarters in Hawaii. They sent me to Norton Air Force Base, for the accident investigation course that they run there, which is where I learned the techniques for analyzing wreckage, those sorts of things. Also, pilots read every accident report no matter what type of aircraft is involved — it’s sort of mandatory reading for everyone. You read literally thousands of these reports, and you just pick up a lot. That’s the background that I bring to the table when we go out on these expeditions.

Guadalcanal has been researched extensively, and the dogfight between Saburo Sakai and James Southerland has already been very well documented. What do you feel that you’re able to discover in these things that have been so well investigated already?

Often what you find in a lot of historical writing done by people who may not have great expertise in the areas they’re writing about, you get some things that may not make a whole lot of sense. And that’s what I found when I read some accounts of this dogfight. As an aviator who’s done a ton of dogfights, many of the descriptions of what the Wildcat was able to do just made absolutely no sense to me. It’s a heavy, cumbersome aircraft and there are all of these descriptions of it flying better than a Zero?

And since Southerland wrote about his experience, and Saburo Sakai was interviewed about his experience, there’s the issue. What we wanted to do was try to validate, or rule out whatever claims had been made. And of course anytime you find a historic aircraft, that’s of interest in and of itself.

Colonel Ralph Wetterhahn, crash site investigator, and Justin Taylan, creator of the Pacific Wreck Database, survey the island of Guadalcanal.

Did your technical background bring new light to the story?

You know, when you’re doing accident investigations, you have laboratory equipment, all kinds of gear you can use to validate things. When you do what we’re trying to do, you’re limited pretty much to the eyeball — but it’s astounding how much you can see. You have to know what you’re looking for, and you have to have some background in what happens to metal, and an understanding of ammunition and how it operates. I would never claim that my conclusions are 100%, concrete, accurate — but they’re damn close! If I see the metal pattern of impact on a propeller, I can tell you a lot about what that engine was doing, and I would stake my reputation on it.

So what does James Southerland have to say in his memoir of the dogfight about why he was unable to fire on Sakai? That’s something that you uncover in the film, but his feelings in the moment aren’t clear.

He tried to fire, and got nothing … he had clearing handles [used to clear jammed guns] in the cockpit; he activated those, and still got nothing. His thoughts were “maybe I’m out of ammo,” because he’d been doing a lot of shooting. In any case, he indicated in his writing that there was a problem with the guns, and he didn’t know what it was — so we wanted to clear that up.

And if you’re interested in understanding whether or not Sakai’s account is accurate, it seems that you need to have some idea of what Sakai was thinking. How do you go about reconstructing his frame of mind?

Colonel Ralph Wetterhahn examines a .50 caliber shell from the guns of Southerland’s Wildcat recovered near the crash site.

That, I think, is one of the things we helped resolve. Sakai says at one point in the account, he pulled up alongside and looked at the wounded Southerland, decided he was no longer going to try to kill the man; he would only try to disable the aircraft. And he claimed that he fired with his 20 mm at the engine.

Well, we’d got the engine, so we could look and see if there’s any evidence of his claim that he hit the engine. And there certainly was … now you can’t say with 100% accuracy, but it lends credence to his claim. And since he chose to describe it in that manner, and the evidence clearly indicates that it happened in that manner, I have to give him credit for his comments. Now sometimes, after the fact, guys can say just about anything about what they were thinking — but this is a little different. Here you’ve pulled up alongside a guy, it becomes a little personal — I’d think you’d recall that.

Here’s something else of interest: Sakai says also that he thought he saw Southerland waving to him. And that’s certainly possible, but if you look at Southerland’s account he says that his only thought was that he had to get out of that airplane. Now in that aircraft if you undo your lap belt, you have two straps that come over your shoulder. You’re going to have to grab each one and flip it back over your shoulder, and when you do that it’s going to look like you’re waving. Now you can’t say for sure whether or not Southerland did wave, but you can certainly say that Sakai would have seen Southerland move his hands in a waving motion.

These kinds of things lend credence to these accounts, since they’re all consistent. Those little things add up to what you can conclude is the most probable account of that dogfight.

Do you feel there’s something that can be revealed by this dogfight — a personal conflict — that reveals something to you about the larger conflict?

Well I think in this conflict you can begin to see the reasons why one side prevailed over the other. The Zero was designed to be an offensive weapon — there’s no armor for the pilot, there’s no bulletproof windscreen, it’s light, fast, and highly maneuverable. The idea is I’m going to shoot you down so I don’t need any of these things, since you won’t be around to bring guns to bear against me. The American Wildcat builds a heavy airplane, but powerful, with a radial engine that can take a beating.

What happened was when our guys got hit the armor saved their lives — they were able to bail out, and talk about the experience and tell other guys about what to do and what not to do, and they were able to get back into another airplane and fly again. The Japanese pilot was unable to do that, and it cost Saburo Sakai his eye. If he’d had a bulletproof windscreen that shell that went through his skull would never have got there.

What happens is that the Japanese lose their experienced pilots … because they were unwilling to admit that they could be beaten and you might need a way out so you could fly again. You could see in the plane that the Japanese needed a quick, decisive victory — not a long, drawn-out battle of attrition. So those airplanes can tell you about the psychology of the conduct of war on both sides.

Are there a lot of people out hunting for wrecks from the Second World War? Is there a lot of interest in these old aircraft?

There’s a Betty bomber that was found in Guadalcanal recently; there was another one found a couple of years ago, with remains onboard, and some Japanese families came out to recover them. There are a lot of wrecks out there, of course in the Solomons … it goes on and on. In all of those areas, and you can go right on up into the Northern Kirils, there are wrecks everywhere. But they’re hard to get to, and it would be very expensive to bring in the gear to get them out.

What do you think drives the continuing interest in these stories of World War II?

I think almost everyone in the United States, in much of Europe, has a relative who was involved in World War II in one way or another, so they’ve heard all these stories of this period and they feel a bit of an attachment to it. Justin Taylan [who led the film crew to the wreckage of Southerland's plane], his grandfather fought in the Pacific. I had uncles who fought in the U.S. Navy over here, and I had relatives in Germany who fought in the Wehrmacht. So I personally feel a need to look into these things … it’s just a fascinating period.

While a dogfight can’t be reduced entirely to the distinctions between two machines, it’s necessary to look closely at the aircraft flown by Saburo Sakai and Pug Southerland to understand exactly what may have happened that August day in 1942.

Sakai’s plane, the Mitsubishi A6M2, better known as the “Zero,” was a lightweight, nimble plane with an operating range so long — some 500 to 550 nautical miles — that U.S. Navy analysts consistently overestimated the size of the Imperial Navy’s carrier fleet because they couldn’t find any other way to explain Zero sightings so far from known Japanese land bases. The planes light weight was, at least in part, a result of Japanese manufacturers’ inability to produce powerful engines early in the war. But this limitation forced the Japanese to think very carefully about the design of the plane, and led to some unique and advantageous characteristics.

The plane’s lightweight airframe and skin, made of high-tech duralumin alloy (aluminum alloyed with copper, manganese, and magnesium), gave the Zero its truly remarkable fuel efficiency, operating range, and agility. And the Zero’s armaments were impressive: two 7.7 mm machine guns, along with two 20 mm cannons. Together, the four guns were a deadly combination that gave the pilots multiple options when they engaged.

But the Zero’s engineers — charged with producing the lightest, fastest, most deadly airborne killing machine they could — skimped on some vital gear at the expense of the pilots. The Zero was very lightly armored, and did not have bulletproof glass or the self-sealing fuel tanks that were becoming common on European and U.S. aircraft by WW II.

In addition, the only navigation equipment the planes carried was a compass, and the Zeros were provided with very basic radios, which performed so poorly that many Zero pilots simply discarded them. Two-way radios of the time could weigh as much as 40 pounds — a real burden in a lightweight aircraft; Zero pilots were often forced to communicate with each other by hand signals.

The range and speed of Sakai’s Zero (and a good bit of luck) allowed him to get the best of Pug Southerland in their spectacular dogfight, but had Pug’s guns been working, he would likely have been able to shoot down the flimsy Zero. And shortly after Sakai shot down Pug, the limitations of his airplane were put clearly on display with devastating consequences when he was shot by a tail gunner from an American bomber. The tail gunner’s .30 caliber bullet pierced the Zero’s windshield and went through Sakai’s eye and brain before exiting on the other side of his skull. If his Zero had been equipped with bulletproof glass, Sakai would likely have escaped unharmed.

Wounded and only semi-conscious, Sakai had little chance of surviving. But his skill — and the extreme range of the lightweight Zero — allowed him to fly all the way back to Rabaul with the little fuel he had remaining. Had he been flying any other contemporary fighter, he almost certainly would have perished. To this day, his flight is considered one of the most amazing feats in aviation history, and if not for his trusty Zero, none would ever have heard his account of the famous dogfight.

This Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat is much like the one flown by James “Pug” Southerland on August 7, 1942 when he engaged Saburo Sakai’s Japanese “Zero” fighter plane in aerial combat over the jungles of Guadalcanal.

The Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat piloted by Pug Southerland was a very different aircraft. Aviation historian Barrett Tillman calls it a “broadsword” in comparison to the “rapier”-like Zero. While the heavier Wildcat couldn’t match the Zero’s turning capabilities, climbing speed or range, it made up for its deficiencies with raw power (a 1,200-horsepower engine), superior diving speed, and an amazing ability to withstand punishment.

While the Zero’s designers at Mitsubishi and Nakajima had concentrated on building a purely offensive weapon with little consideration for the pilot’s safety, the heavily armored Wildcat was designed to protect the pilot at all costs. It had a bulletproof windscreen and thick steel reinforcing plates behind the pilot — the armor that had so surprised Saburo Sakai when his blazing machine guns had such little effect on Southerland’s Wildcat during their battle.

The Wildcat was also equipped with a homing device that allowed pilots to find their way back to their carriers or bases in foul weather. And, it had self-sealing fuel tanks, which could take a direct hit without exploding. The tanks were lined with layers of vulcanized rubber that expanded to fill bullet holes. Without the special tanks, Japanese fighters and bombers had a propensity to burst into flames when their tanks were hit, leading Allied anti-aircraft crews to jokingly call the bombers “flying cigars.”

On the offensive end, the Wildcat also had a larger complement of machine guns than its Japanese counterpart — six wing-mounted .50 caliber units. The Wildcat had no heavy artillery like the Zero’s 20 mm cannon, but its six machine guns could be lethally effective, and the pilot did not have to switch between multiple guns that had different rates of fire and ranges.

Southerland’s flying skill and inherent knowledge of his plane’s capabilities allowed him to survive against the quicker Zero. He even managed to gain the advantage, but when he had the chance to shoot down Sakai, his guns remained silent. Southerland, who died in a training accident in 1949, never found out what happened to his guns.

Now, the wreckage of his plane, found deep in a jungle ravine on Guadalcanal in 1998, may reveal why he was unable to finish off the Zero. And it may also answer another lingering question about the events of the dogfight — whether or not Sakai really chose to let Pug live when he shot down his plane. According to his memoir, Sakai aimed for Pug’s engine instead of the cockpit when he came in with his cannons, because he was so impressed by Pug’s flying skills. Some of his other wartime experiences — including his sparing of a transport plane full of civilians over Java and his postwar pacifism — do bear out his claim, but there had been no physical evidence to back up his memoir.

Colonel Ralph Wetterhahn, crash site investigator, and Justin Taylan, creator of the Pacific Wreck Database, examine the moss-covered engine of the American Wildcat fighter.

Ralph Wetterhahn’s study of the wreckage — meant to find physical evidence that proves or discounts the pilots’ memories — largely bears out the story as both men remembered it. Examining the Wildcat’s engine, Wetterhahn found clear indications that the rear cylinder had been hit by a large-caliber shell — something very much like the 20 mm shell fired by the Zero’s cannons. The find corroborates what both men said after the battle: Southerland that he had been hit below his left wing root and Sakai that he had aimed for Pug’s engine.

But the mystery of Pug’s silent guns still remains, and unfortunately, the wings of Southerland’s plane had not been well preserved. Only bits and pieces had been found, but amazingly, Edilon Gii, the local man who had first discovered the wreckage, managed to locate several .50 caliber shells from Southerland’s guns. Even after all this time, the shells have a story to tell.

Wettterhahn found that one of the shells displays damage consistent with detonation outside the machine gun’s firing chamber. It has a groove that seems to be the size of a 7.7 mm round — the rounds used by Japanese machine guns — and Wetterhahn suggests that it had exploded in the ammunition belt after being hit by enemy fire. Such an explosion would have jammed the gun and prevented it from firing at Sakai.

The damaged rounds also support Southerland’s report about his encounter with a Japanese Betty bomber prior to his dogfight with Sakai. Pug shot down the bomber, but took fire from the tail gunner. According to Wetterhahn, it’s possible that this exchange may well have left him without working weapons when he engaged the Zeros.

Even after 60 years in the jungle, the wreckage has other stories to tell. As Southerland bailed out of his doomed Wildcat, his sidearm, a .45 automatic, got caught in the cockpit, leaving him weaponless behind enemy lines. Near the plane’s engine, Gii found a rusted pistol. It is impossible to tell for sure whether or not the rusted .45 was in fact Southerland’s weapon, but its make and location at the crash site make it a likely match.

This rusted .45 caliber pistol was found at the site of the wreckage of Sutherland’s Wildcat.

While the story of the dogfight between Sakai in his Zero and Southerland in his Wildcat is an account of a very specific battle between two men, its details are in many ways a microcosm of the much bigger picture of the war in the Pacific. From the planes themselves we can explore not just the engineering techniques of the two nations, but their very different philosophies about how they treated their military personnel, and how they approached war itself.

The Zero — like the Japanese war effort — was conceived under the battle ethic of the Samurai; that is, in terms of powerful and relentless offense. Little thought was given to what a pilot might do if the battle went against him, and as the war went on and Allied pilots learned how to fight against the faster Zeros, the lightly-armored plane became a liability. Not buying into the philosophy of living to fight another day, Japan lost most of its experienced pilots because the Imperial Air Force was ill-equipped to fight a war of attrition in the skies.

On the other hand, The Wildcat — built with an eye toward withstanding punishment before dishing it out — could be looked at as the product of a strategy that began, like the U.S. war in the Pacific, as a defensive effort. Furthermore, unlike Japanese fighter tactics, which were grounded in the one-on-one battle traditions of the Samurai, U.S. tactics were team-based, and depended on the preservation of experienced pilots and cooperation in the air. In fact, Sakai actually made the observation that the American pilots seemed to work in the tradition of American football.

The Zero may have been the more elegant aircraft, but the strategy and tactics embodied by the Wildcat would go on to win the Pacific War. Saburo Sakai’s battle with James “Pug” Southerland ended with a different result, but by pushing themselves and their machines to the limits, they wrote themselves into the history books with one of the most famous dogfights of all time.

On August 7, 1942, the opening day of the Guadalcanal campaign, American forces began shelling Guadalcanal and neighboring Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. It was the beginning of a U.S. push to capture the Japanese-controlled islands in the Pacific. Success was critical because the Japanese were rushing to complete a landing strip that would be a major threat to Allied shipping lanes between Australia and America.

Soon after the attack began, 27 Japanese bombers and an escort of 17 Zero fighters took off from Rabaul — Japan’s major stronghold and strategic base in the South Pacific. Their mission was to bomb the ships that were supporting the American attack. Among the fighter pilots was Japanese air ace Saburo Sakai.

As the Japanese squadron approached Guadalcanal, a group of eight American Wildcats took off from the U.S.S. Saratoga. Led by James “Pug” Southerland, they were aiming to shoot down the Japanese bombers before they could target the American ships.

At 1300 hours, the squadrons met. The Americans engaged the Japanese planes, and Southerland shot down the lead bomber — the first American air victory at Guadalcanal. The remaining Japanese bombers were forced to drop their payloads from almost four miles up, and not a single bomb found its target.

But as the Wildcats engaged the Japanese bombers, Southerland found himself in a fierce dogfight with a number of Zeros flown by young pilots. With his skill and instinct, he managed to out-fly the less experienced Japanese pilots even though he was outnumbered. Saburo Sakai, the Japanese ace, watched from above for a while, then finally dropped in to join the fray. One of the most dramatic and well-documented one-on-one dogfights in history had begun…

James “Pug” Southerland, commanding a team of eight Grumman Wildcats fighters, took off from the deck of the U.S.S. Saratoga on August 7, 1942 to intercept and shoot down approaching Japanese “Zero” fighters led by Saburo Sakai.

Although they were flying very different planes, the two men were evenly matched. Each pilot knew the specific capabilities and liabilities of his own machine, and tried to sway the battle to his own advantage. The Zero was faster and more maneuverable, but the Wildcat had better armor, and could dive faster than the lighter Zero. Southerland quickly found that he couldn’t out-maneuver an expert Zero pilot like Sakai, but he was able to push the Wildcat to its performance limits and hold off Sakai’s furious assault. Sakai, meanwhile, was amazed at how much punishment that Wildcat could absorb. He peppered Pug’s plane with machine gun fire, but the bullets had no effect.

Turn for turn, climb for climb and dive for dive, the two pilots matched each other’s every move. Finally, with Sakai approaching from the rear, Southerland managed to “slam on the brakes” — cutting the throttle just as Sakai accelerated in pursuit. The Zero overshot, and Southerland prepared to fire. Sakai braced for the deadly impact of the Wildcat’s bullets into his flimsy fuselage… but the bullets never came.

Not waiting around to find out why, the surprised Sakai pulled up alongside the Wildcat. He noticed that Pug was injured, fell in behind him, and after a moment of indecision, opened fire with his big 20 mm cannons. In his memoirs, Sakai wrote that he decided not to kill the pilot, but rather, to aim for the Wildcat’s engine to give Pug a chance to bail out.

Southerland did just that, pitching himself out of the cockpit as the Wildcat went down. He parachuted into the jungle, deep in the heart of enemy territory. Bleeding and exhausted, he struggled through the brush, finally finding some local boys who were willing to risk their own lives to help him escape. With their assistance, he managed to elude the Japanese ground forces and meet up with his American Navy rescuers.

This photo shows an American Grumman Wildcat flying next to a Japanese “Zero” fighter.

Sakai, meanwhile, watched Pug’s plane crash into the jungle, then headed off to find other American planes to attack. He soon found some, but was gravely wounded by an American tail gunner whose bullet went through the Zero’s windshield and into his head. Barely conscious, Sakai somehow managed to make the harrowing, five-hour flight back to his base in Rabaul, keeping himself lucid along the way by irritating his own wounds.

The Guadalcanal campaign, which began August 7, 1942 and didn’t end until February 9, 1943, was the first major Allied offensive against Japanese forces in the Pacific. Prior to that point, the U.S had been reacting to Japanese aggressiveness, and the battles tended to be short, stop-and-start affairs created by the offense-minded Japanese. But the battles of the Coral Sea proved that the U.S. and its Allies could not just defend themselves, they could go on the offensive and successfully take the fight to the Japanese.

At the battle of Midway in June of 1942, the Allied victory put a stop to Japan’s expansion, and Guadalcanal finally turned the conflict on its head. Short battles turned into a sustained war of attrition in which the Japanese single-minded attention to offense became a fatal liability. The U.S. forces in Guadalcanal had significant losses — almost 1,600 were killed — but the Japanese army and navy suffered staggering casualties: almost 15,000 men killed in battle and another 9,000 lost to disease. Adding to the losses, American troops took around 1,000 Japanese prisoners. Japan also lost 24 ships and more than 600 aircraft over the course of the campaign. This massive loss of men and resources put the Japanese forces on the defensive in the Pacific for the remainder of the war, and laid the stage for their ultimate defeat.

Although it was just one tiny skirmish in a much greater war, the dogfight between Pug Southerland and Saburo Sakai illustrated many of the strategic and technological factors that eventually determined the outcome of the war. But important questions about that encounter have remained unanswered until now. Why had Southerland failed to fire when he gained a brief advantage over Sakai? And had Sakai, an ace who finished the war with 64 kills to his credit, really aimed at Southerland’s engine to give him a chance to bail out? An expedition to the wreck site of Southerland’s plane, and a forensic investigation into the details of the famous air battle answer these questions and more in “Dogfight Over Guadalcanal.”

Now, on the heels of this important discovery, Secrets of the Dead: Dogfight Over Guadalcanal examines and recreates every dramatic moment of the showdown between 30-year-old Southerland in his Wildcat, and Saburo Sakai, 25, in his Mitsubishi Zero.

Watch the full episode online here on the Secrets of the Dead Web site.

THIRTEEN’s Secrets of the Dead: Michelangelo Revealed premieres nationally, Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). The film deconstructs the puzzling discrepancies between the sculptures Michelangelo created and the way he described them, revealing an intricate effort to carve his own beliefs into stone, while protecting himself from the wrath of a powerful Cardinal who viewed him as a heretic. Actor Liev Schreiber (CSI, upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine) narrates.