Purpose-built kamikaze planes, as opposed to converted fighters
and dive-bombers, were also being constructed. Ensign Mitsuo Ohta
had suggested that piloted glider bombs, carried within range of
targets by a mother plane, should be developed. The First Naval Air
Technical Bureau (Kugisho), in Yokosuka, refined Ohta's idea.
Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka rocket planes, launched from bombers, were first
deployed in kamikaze attacks from March 1945. U.S. personnel gave
them the derisive nickname "Baka Bombs" (baka is Japanese for
"idiot" or "stupid"). A specially-designed propeller plane, the
Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi, was a simple, easily-built aircraft,
intended to use up existing stocks of engines, in a wooden
airframe. The landing gear was non-retractable: it was jettisoned
shortly after take-off for a suicide mission and then re-used on
other planes. During 1945, the Japanese military began stockpiling
hundreds of Tsurugi, other propeller planes, Ohkas, and suicide
boats, for use against Allied forces expected to invade Japan. Few
were ever used. The "Ta"-Go was Army's another purpose-built
special attack plane. It was of wooden construction with a 100hp
engine to carry a 100kg bomb. The first machine was assembled by
students and comleted on June 25, 1945.
The original kamikaze was a typhoon that destroyed a Mongol
invasion fleet in 1281. The term was revived in reference to
Japanese suicide pilots who crashed planes loaded with ordnance
into enemy warships starting in 1944 in the skies around the
Philippines. A strictly military reason for deploying kamikaze was
that the tactic could make use of trainer aircraft and outmoded
“Zeros,” “Kates,” and “Vals.” That spoke to the overall
inefficiency of the Japanese aircraft industry and its dramatic
decay and decline in warplane production during 1944. While
militarily ineffective, kamikaze addressed Japanese national
morale, which was badly in decline by late 1944 but rallied to some
degree around the sacrifice and symbolism of the young kamikaze. On
the other hand, it is important to note that not all kamikaze were
volunteers: attack squadrons were escorted by fighters ready to
shoot down those who faltered, while any pilot who returned to base
was imprisoned. Even among those who were volunteers, social shame
and peer pressure on young men heavily conditioned their choice.
Moreover, many officers in the Army and Navy air forces regarded
the exercise as morally vulgar and militarily wasteful. The Navy
founded its suicide wing, the “Special Attack Corps,” in 1944. The
Army followed suit, founding its “Banda unit”—or the “Ten Thousand
Pilots”—in October 1944. Kamikaze and Banda tactics formed part of
a larger pathology of death that saturated Japan in the closing
months of the war, conducing to many other types of suicide
attacks, slaughtering of prisoners of war, and a pervasive fatalism
and resignation about looming individual death and national defeat,
all mixed with rising popular dissatisfaction with Japan’s war
leaders and growing elite unease over possible rebellion.
The first kamikaze attack may have been made on October 21,
1944, against an Australian cruiser. Attacks against U.S. warships
four days later during the fight at Leyte Gulf were certainly
official kamikaze, and scored the first ship kill: a U.S. escort
carrier. By the end of the war, 1,388 Japanese Army pilots died in
suicide attacks. Thousands more naval aviators died, 4,000 or more.
Few kamikaze pilots were military professionals. Most of the
original group of 1,000 “tokkotai” (“special attackers”) were
college students in their early 20s, drawn directly from officer
candidate programs of Japan’s elite universities. Later groups were
mostly lower-class boys, often as young as 16 or 17 years old,
enlisted directly out of high school air cadet programs. Tactics
were simple: a high, unrecoverably steep dive that targeted the
enemy amidships; or a low-level, water-skimming approach that came
in beneath defending anti-aircraft guns, then popped up at the last
second to ram the ship while carrying a 500 lb bomb. Kamikaze
attacks were often part of larger air assaults that included
conventional bombing runs by pilots and air crew who fully
expected, or hoped, to return to base.
The greatest kamikaze effort was made against the invasion fleet
off Okinawa from April to June, 1945. Kamikaze attacks sank 38
warships, though none larger than a destroyer; they damaged nearly
200 more, while killing 4,907 U.S. sailors. The Japanese plan was
to allow an initial landing, then isolate and destroy it by driving
away the supporting fleet. A naval task force centered on the giant
battleship IJN Yamato sailed south with only enough fuel to reach
and attack the invasion fleet. Some dispute that its mission may be
fairly characterized as a suicide run as the apparent intention was
to beach “Yamato” and fight it out with its massive deck guns.
Before that could happen the task force was met by several hundred
U.S. naval aircraft and the “Yamato” and its escorts were sunk with
great loss of life. About 25 percent of all enemy ships struck by
kamikaze were sunk. Kamikaze hit 402 enemy warships in all, putting
375 out of action for some period of time, including 12 carriers of
various type. That still left thousands of enemy warships and
transports hovering around Japan’s home islands, readying to
support invasion. After the surrender, Allied inspectors found over
5,000 aircraft ready for kamikaze service.
Allied countermeasures against kamikaze were highly effective.
They included deploying decoy ships to steer inexperienced pilots
away from major capital warships, increased anti-aircraft guns on
all ships, and provision of an especially heavy Combat Air Patrol
(CAP) by dozens of carriers. The CAP was maintained over the fleet
at Okinawa to shoot down suicide attacks at safe distances. It also
should be remembered that the vast majority of unskilled kamikaze
pilots who tried to hit enemy ships instead missed and splashed, or
were shot down during the attempt. The danger from kamikaze at
Okinawa diverted a number of B-29 raids intended to pound Japan’s
cities to instead bomb kamikaze and Banda airfields, although given
the enemy’s overwhelming superiority in the air that temporary
shift of the strategic bomber force hardly mattered to the outcome.
Some 10,000 obsolete old trainers, along with a few new aircraft,
were held in reserve for use as kamikazes pending invasions of the
home islands that never took place. They were captured and
destroyed after the occupation of Japan.
