Col. Kato was real, the commander of one of the most admired squadrons in the Japanese Army Air Force. The Hayabusa was the model of their fighter, different from the Navy’s more famous Zero that was mostly carrier based. Esssentially, the movie follows the squadron from Kato’s arrival to take command through the arrival of their new planes, to their sorties in the 1941-42 campaigns against Singapore and in Malayia and Burma, until Kato’s own death in late ’42.
