patororu reblogged
“PT boat… Oh, yeah. I got a niece and nephew that love harassing them. No wonder she ain’t too fond of us, bein’ pushed around by all sorts’a ships and planes.” Most of what he knew about the type was biased; it was information from the A6M2-N, and of course they laughed endlessly about how weak they appeared. “From the sound of things, I thought they didn’t even have weapons.”
“Tons of times,” he answered.
Having gone through three different major remodels, there were plenty of chances for him to experience death. For him, it was only until the very last airframe was completely destroyed that he could die completely, and while he was fortunate in the sense of having an indefinite lifespan, it came with a heavy price of all the pain that came with the destruction of an airframe.
“I hadta learn that, too. The whole it’s-been-over-so-don’t-hold-grudges thing, I mean. Can’t really blame her for being pissed off, ‘cause I was pissed off for decades, but it’s all good now. Zero is still pretty bitter, though…”
And he wasn’t the only one. Of all the aircraft Hayato knew, though, he was certainly the biggest grudge-holder of them all.
“Well, for all her talk, she does her job decently enough... I guess.” Granted, their ‘job’ right now was mostly antisubmarine warfare, which played to the small, fast PT-109′s strengths. Nashi hadn’t actually seen her comrade in a ship-to-ship engagement yet.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I guess you’d kind of expect our most-produced aircraft to also be the most shot-down...” With shipgirls, it was pretty much one-and-done. You sank once, and that was it. For people like Hayato, it had to be a lot worse. “I’m mostly over it, since I got a second chance and some new toys after the war. I know it’s pretty rare for that to happen, though. I’m surprised so many people have gotten over it...”
