My favorite tale would be that of Sakio Komtasu, a pilot on the Japanese aircraft carrier Taihou. Taihou was a new type of Japanese carrier, with an armored flight deck making her more resistant to bombs. However, she suffered from a relatively inexperienced crew and several design flaws.

Anyways, the USS Albacore, a submarine, spotted Taihou and fired a spread of torpedoes at her. Sakio Komatsu saw the torpedoes as he was taking off and dove his plane into the path of one of the torpedoes, thus preventing it from hitting the carrier. Definitely not the sort of thing most people would do.

The funny thing is, only one of Albacore's torpedo spread hit Taihou. But the problem was that the hit had ruptured some of her aviation fuel tanks. And aviation fuel is very flammable.

Someone onboard the ship had the bright idea of allowing the fuel to diffuse over the ship, apparently thinking that spreading a flammable substance over the entire ship was a lot safer than concentrating it in one area.

Needless to say, with that much surface area, it was only a matter of time before a stray spark set the whole damn ship on fire, rendering poor Sakio Komatsu's sacrifice utterly meaningless.

That was pretty much your typical day in the IJN. Brave men dying for no reason.