Well, a very quick article sparked by some assessment I fell upon that more or less "praised" the japanesse for the kamikaze and suggestiong that it should be Japan's UU in civilization III (or one of them).

Debunking the Kamikaze myth, second version.

On october, 25, 1944, off Leyte, the USS St. Lo had the disagreeable surprise of seeing a japanesse plane crashing on its deck. Though they did not know it at the time, this was the first of the kamikaze attack - the divine wind.

The Kami-Kaze, as is often known, draw their roots deep in Japanesse history. In the thirteenth century, the mongol, having completed their conquest of Asia, turned their eyes to the island of Japan. Twice, they sent great fleets - and twice the storm came down upon their fleet. Obviously, the gods must have risen to defend Japan with their wind - hence the name divine wind, Kamikaze (a as in ah, i as in military, e as the ay in hay) from kami, a "divine" spirit and kaze, wind)

In the later years of the second world war, when it became obvious the US Navy would soon submerge the Japanese home islands, some officers there came up with a desperate defensive plans : human missiles, plans loaded with explosives and sent to ram the american vessels. Some missiles were even specifically designed for this : the Ohka flying bombs. However, despite their explosive capacity being very potent, they were never much given a chance against a truly valuable enemy warship.

To any extent, the mechanical divine wind did rise. But, where the impact of these attacks really as great as some would believe in the western world? They certainly did damage, but where the kamikaze attack as devastatingly damaging as some would like to think?

Here are some facts to muse about.

Sinkings

According to the records available from the Naval War College (with some additional information from other sources), the total number of warships (including transports) lost by kamikaze attacks is 26 (other sources have higher number ; it may be that the data of the NWC online is slightly faulty and/or records certain kamikaze attacks under broader categories). Now, this may sounds impressive - until one consider how many ships the same navy record as lost during the second world war (from war damage solely) : 350. Kamikaze accounted for a mere 7% of ship lost to war damage. In addition to these losses, the US navy lost, over the course of World War II, 45 ships to accidents and storms : mother nature and simple blind luck did more damage to the navy than all the kamikaze Japan could throw at it - and certainly at less cost.

Of course, one must note that of the US's four years of war, the Kamikaze were only effective during about one, and during that time they accounted for a fair amount of vessels. But the point of the above is simply to demonstrate that 26 vessels (or even 34), while it may seems like an enormous amount of ships lost, is dwarfed by the actual amounts of vessels lost in the Second World War, which is simply staggering.

In addition to not accounting for much (relatively) in terms of number of ships, the kamikaze also failed to sink valuable warships. Oh, they took out a few escort carriers - but escort carriers, in and out of themselves, are not very valuable ships, simple conversions of merchant hulls to carry a handful (20-odd usually) of planes. The more precious light carriers (50-60 planes) and fleet carriers (80+ planes) lost none of their number to the desperate "divine winds".

The breakdown of ships listed as sunk by Kamikaze by the naval war college is as follow :

Escort Carriers : 3
Destroyers : 14
Fast Transports (converted destroyers) : 3
Landing Ship, Medium : 1
Landing Ship, Tanks : 1
High-Speed Minesweepers : 3
Minesweepers : 1

As you can see, out of 26 ship destroyed as a result of kamikaze attack, only a mere 3 were above destroyer size. Even the combined displacement of the three carrier sunk is pathetically unimpressive : 32 946 tns. To establish a bottom line comparison, 33 000 tons is more or less *about* half the displacement of a single Yamato-class battleship (63 000 tns).

Carriers : 32 946 tns
Destroyers : +/- 29 500 tns.
Fast Transports : 3 570 tns.
LSM : 900 tns.
LST : 2 100 tns.
High-Speed Minesweepers : 5 100 tns
Minesweeper : 1 100 tns.

Total displacement sunk by the Kamikaze throughout the second world war according to the naval war college : 75 216 tns.

To establish a simple comparison, the "opening shots" of the naval wars (atlantic and pacific) saw 421 000 tons of allied merchantmen in four months (Atlantic) and 89 154 tons worth of warship sunk durign the sole Pearl Harbor attack

That said, as many have pointed out to me after the first version of this article went up, there are more ways to win a war (or slow down an enemy) than sinking the enemy's ship.

Damages

After all, one can remove a warship from the war without sinking it. You just have to damage it enough to return it home. And indeed, the Kamikaze did force a few of the larger vessels home for repair.

The images we've all seen of American carriers left wounded with gaping holes are famous. More than a few such carrier were sorely wounded, leaving many with the impression that the Kamikaze were a terribly devastating weapon of great power.

But, as it happens, that is not quite the case. The Kamikaze's success against American carriers owe more to a pair of fact that are less than often mentioned than to any particular potency of the weapon type :

1-The flight decks of American carriers were unarmored, which in certain cases made quite a difference : warship with heavier armor were able to glance off blows that would put quite a dent in the American carriers. HOWEVER, one must note that the American design had at least one advantage over the heavily armord design, namely that while they could easily be put out of commission by kamikaze, once out of commission they were also fairly easy to put back in commission, whereas british carriers with stronger flight deck armor took structural damage as a result of the blows that would eventually warp their structure slowly and eventually render them useless in far quicker terms than it would render ships like the American Essex useless.

2-A direct correlation to this is that airplanes, their fuel and their bombs were not protected by armor, making any blow that much more devastating in appearance (and at times in effect).

Another correlation to observe with damage is that fairly constantly far more horrendous damage was achieved on ship by conventional mean than by Kamikaze attack.

For example, let us consider the USS Franklin, badly damaged during the early kamikaze campaign by such an attack.

After being so damaged, it was able to sail back to the West Coast by itself to receive repair. It was repaired in the space of about two months, and went back to war.

On March 19, the luckless Franklin was struck again. A single non-kamikaze plane dropped two bomb on it. The two bombs (armor-piercing ones) tore right through the ship, ravaging it and leaving it dead in the water within fifty miles of the Japanesse coast, listing, and with seven hundred dead (twice the losses of life from the most devastating kamikaze attack on a carrier, that on the Bunker Hill on May 11 the same year). As a result, Franklin had to be towed back until she could affect sufficient repair to make Pearl Harbor on her own. From there, she had to return to New York for repair, and everything above the hangar deck had to be replaced, with the exception of the hangar and some small portion of the forward flight deck.

And again, this is an example of the damage two bombs accomplished.

Certainly, kamikaze were able to affect some damage to capital ship. But was that damage anything impressive? One has his doubt when one look at the simple comparison of how easily battleships shrugged off blows from the kamikaze compared to how badly they had been damaged at previous occasions (the USS Maryland, West Virginia, California, Pennsylvania and Nevada all took blows from kamikaze and resumed operation shortly after – whereas the same five battleship had been extensively damaged by regular air attack during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of course, they were essentially sitting duck at Pearl Harbor, but the demonstration here is that, in both the case of the Franklin and the five battleships, the damage of a kamikaze attack simply does not compare to that of more conventional weaponry.

That said, Japan did not have much other choices by that time of the war. They were still able to use more conventional weapon, but simply put, they lacked the sufficiently trained pilot. And it is, in fact, far easier to train a pilot to fly his plane in an enemy ship than it would be to train the same pilot to launch an effective dive-bombing attack. In addition, it is far harder for enemy fighters to intercept such a plane. Kamikaze attack, though not extremely damaging, were simply far easier to successfully make.

However, the scope of this article is not to debate wheter or not Japan would have done better to use a different strategy in the last, desperate days of the war. It was to set the facts straight regarding the actual scope and effect of the kamikaze campaign, which many seems to believe a fitting representation of Japan's military operations.

Kamikaze were a desperate, last-ditch line of defense that was used because Japan did not have the ressources (oil, etc) to actually train pilot sufficently as to hope for them to deliver damage to the enemy fleet and return. It was not a very effective strategy in terms of damage inflicted in relation to the cost (2550 kamikaze attacks were made, according to the strategic bomber air command, successfully ensuring the destruction of about 30 relatively small vessels, and putting out of commission for sizeable period of time 10 major ones – light and fleet carriers and battleships).

Thus, Kamikaze are more akin to a desperate decision of arming peasant with bamboo spear in a desperate last ditch defense against rifles-armed invaders (in fact, the Japanese high command did plan the bamboo spears, too – but fortunately the nukes and end of war arrived before they could implement that particular horror) than to any strategy representative of Japanese combat throughout the war.

Below : USS Ommaney Bay burning after a Kamikaze attack.

Sources

Jane's War at sea 1897-1997 (Book)

Naval War College US Navy Ship 20th Century historical database. (http://www.nwc.navy.mil/usnhdb/)

Naval Technical Board, "Battleships Carriers and all other warships" (http://www.warships1.com/index_tech/)

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships Online (http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/)

Note : some sources have somewhat different lists of ships lost to kamikaze attack, including additional "kamikaze attack losses" listed. However, due to some serious contradictions, I elected to use only the NWC source in case of conflicts.

Attached : CVE USS Bismarck Sea exploding after a Kamikaze hit.

...45 ships to accidents and storms : mother nature and simple blind luck...
storms, also known as "divine winds"

Yes, indeed. That little gem didn't escape me.

The fact that the divine wind actually did try to play their part (IIRC, the USN lost 9 ships, including 4 destroyers, to storms in 41-45 (Some of those immediately after the war, though).

The vast majority of the 45 listed above were lost to accidents though - running aground, a few LSTs in a munition explosion at Pearl, etc.

The image kamikazis have is because they are frightening. These Japanese pilots climbed into their machines intent on dying. Unlike a conventional pilot they didn't have to line up their target and go to the trouble of aiming. They just crashed the plane into the enemy. Therefore you'd think they'd be a lot harder to stop. I spose it was kind of like facing the SS in Europe, apart from being well trained and equipt they were also fanatics and like the Japs didn't give a f***.
I read somewhere that they also used to crash themselves into enemy bombers over Japan. Is that true? and what kind of results did they get?
The term "jap" is not merely short form, it has a history of being used to demean and insult. Please do not uses it or the vulgaur term shortly after it at CFC. Lefty

I don't know about the second question. As for the first, I'd honestly have been more frightened at Midway in 42, sailing Japanesse Subs-infested water in 42-43 or even worse yet, staffing a destroyer set on a guard duty off Guadalcanal in late 42.

Originally posted by rilnator
the Japs didn't give a f***.

thats japanese--lets be nice:)

I also read in the book "Japans War" that the whole thing where the pilots were all volunteers was a myth, too. It was actually a scheme cooked up by naval command.

Originally posted by rilnator
The image kamikazis have is because they are frightening. These Japanese pilots climbed into their machines intent on dying. Unlike a conventional pilot they didn't have to line up their target and go to the trouble of aiming. They just crashed the plane into the enemy. Therefore you'd think they'd be a lot harder to stop. I spose it was kind of like facing the SS in Europe, apart from being well trained and equipt they were also fanatics and like the Japs didn't give a f***.
I read somewhere that they also used to crash themselves into enemy bombers over Japan. Is that true? and what kind of results did they get?

I'm pretty certain an RAF pilot used his plane to ram a German bomber during WW2...let me see!


AH! From the "BBC - WW2 People's War"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A1103842

A small engraved stone set in the churchyard wall at Windrush commemorates a trainee RAF pilot, from nearby RAF Little Rissington, who sacrificed his life by ramming his unarmed trainer into a German bomber.

soviet planes rammed german fighters all the time:)

Originally posted by Oda Nobunaga
In addition to not accounting for much in terms of number of ships, the kamikaze also failed to account for valuable warships. Oh, they took out a few escort carriers - but escort carriers, in and out of themselves, are not very valuable ships, simple conversions of merchant hulls to carry a handful (20-odd usually) of planes. The more precious light carriers (50-60 planes) and fleet carriers (80+ planes) lost none of their number to the desperate "divine winds".

The breakdown of ships listed as struck by Kamikaze by the naval war college is as follow :

Escort Carriers : 3
Destroyers : 14
Fast Transports (converted destroyers) : 3
Landing Ship, Medium : 1
Landing Ship, Tanks : 1
High-Speed Minesweepers : 3
Minesweepers : 1

As you can see, out of 26 ship destroyed as a result of kamikaze attack, only a mere 3 were above destroyer size.

Sinking a ship isn't the only way to destroy it... Perhaps you should consider the USS Franklin, CV-13.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/kamikaze.jpg

The Franklin was hit right in the middle of the flight deck, and had to return stateside for repairs...

True.

However, to consider ship damaged sufficiently to return to a large base (Pearl or the States pretty much) for repair would be far too arduous a task, requiring one to comb one by one the history of the american ships which served in the second World War (since, for effective comparison, one would have to consider all ships put out of comission in this or that way). Thus my analysis focused solely on ship sunk.

After all, the kamikaze weren't the only ones to send carriers home for extensive repair ; off the top of my head the IJ air force did it to Yorktown at the Coral Sea ; submarines did it twice to the lone Saratoga in 42, etc.

And then, of course, there is the "slight" fact that if one consider ships in need of extremely extensive repair, the IJN air force nets an extra six battleship to its scoreboard at Pearl Harbor...

What also has to be taken into account is the number of Kamikazes started. You can't make comparisons simply by destruction of enemy ships.
Though your basic point is what I came to as well after reading and watching about it.
One of the basic problems was that the pilots were very badly trained and often missed their targets and crashed into the sea because of that. Also many crashed long before seeing an enemy ship.

The Kamikazes, like the V2, couldn't change a war that was long lost, but that doesn't render both of them completely inefficient in general.

Originally posted by Oda Nobunaga
True.

However, to consider ship damaged sufficiently to return to a large base (Pearl or the States pretty much) for repair would be far too arduous a task, requiring one to comb one by one the history of the american ships which served in the second World War (since, for effective comparison, one would have to consider all ships put out of comission in this or that way). Thus my analysis focused solely on ship sunk.

After all, the kamikaze weren't the only ones to send carriers home for extensive repair ; off the top of my head the IJ air force did it to Yorktown at the Coral Sea ; submarines did it twice to the lone Saratoga in 42, etc.

And then, of course, there is the "slight" fact that if one consider ships in need of extremely extensive repair, the IJN air force nets an extra six battleship to its scoreboard at Pearl Harbor...

Yes, but the Franklin was severely damaged by a Kamikaze plane. In an analysis of the Kamikaze attacks, you can't just state that the "heavies" weren't affected -- this case disproves that point.

I never stated that. Apparently you misread my post, but to avoid this in the future I have corrected two passages that could be mistaken.

"Failed to account for valuable..." changed to "Failed to sink valuable"...

and the typo "ships recorded as STRUCK" to "Ships recorded as sunk"

I knew full well about the Franklin ahead of writing this, and I wrote my article in the specific scope of adressing ships that were *sunk* (as demonstrated by my constantly refering to sinking) because hunting down the records for ships that were damaged (and how) for comparison purpose is beyond what I have the time to do.

I never once stated that the heavies weren't affected ; you drew that inference where there was none. I stated that they were not sunk.

Actually, I drew that inference from the statement "Failed to account for valuable..." I appreciate the change. ;) However, I still think that your entire argument is flawed. It seems to me that you are saying that the Kamikaze planes weren't that effective. I must respectfully disagree. While they didn't alter the outcome of the war (like someone above said, they were a last ditch burst of frustration, like the V2 rockets), they did have a significant impact on the battles in which they were used. As I mentioned above, taking a fleet carrier out of action can be viewed as a significant event. Also, the presence/threat of kamikaze attacks force American commanders to change their tactics. Many more planes had to be devoted to CAP (combat air patrol) to increase the likelihood of intercepting the suicide attackers. This in turn meant that their were fewer planes available for tactical support, making ground fighting in such battles as Okinawa more difficult for the American marines.

Perhaps I have misinterpreted your article, and you indeed merely wished to point out that the actual number of ships sunk by kamikaze attacks is not, in fact that large. However, this is not the "myth" surrounding kamikaze attacks in the west. The knowledge/myth dealing w/ the kamikaze(s?) is that they:
A.) Crashed into Allied (mostly American) ships, big and small
B.) Were strategically useless and just prolonged the campaign, causing more unnecessary deaths when the situation was already hopeless. The dismantlement of Germany should have clued in Japanese leaders that a negotiated peace wasn't an option...

Both of these statements are true, even if the actual number of ships sunk was relatively small.

I disagree that they prolonged the campaign for any significant amount of time. The planes that were assigned to CAP duty were essentifally the F6F (and F4U), not the planes that would be most effective at bombardment (SBD, etc). In addition, Kamikaze meant needing an airstrip to take out from (since from Leyte onward Japan's carrier strength was essentially 0), so once the attacking US forces found the airstrip (always a primary target) the balance of power reversed on the island, and in nearly all cases that happened rather quickly.

And even taking down one or two big carriers could not impact the war effort to any extent. IIRC, the States had 20+ Essex-Class operating in the Pacific, plus some stray Independance CVL and of course the old Enterprise and Saratoga - losing one carrier out of that, even two on a temporary basis, wouldn't have impacted the war effort in any way.

That said, a difference should be made between ineffective, "too little, too late", and "imbecile commandment". The Kamikaze were the former. Even with two years more to wage a Kamikaze campaign, with the rate they were going at they wouldn't have damaged the US of A's ability to wage war much.

Comparatively, the V-class weapons were very effective weapons, but they were both too little, too late (V-2s), and suffered from Hitler's attempt at commanding every strategic move of the reich.

Kamikaze did not suffer from poor command : they were for the most part trying to get at the right targets.

Kamikaze might have been too little, too late, but there is no evidence to suggest that had the war lasted longer, the kamikaze would have been able to do anything very significant still. At the earlier battles where they could have gotten through to inflict damage to the americans, they would have been just as well served doing so with conventional weapons - as demonstrated by the losses of the Lexington, Yorktown and Hornet in the successive carrier battles of the early war.

On the other hand, during their operational time of close to a year, the Kamikaze failed to accomplish the goals that were set before them : namely, maim the US navy and slow their strategy down. And that, despite being given many months to do so (october 44 to august 45.

One major problem the Japanese had towards the end of WW2 was the loss of trained pilots. At the beginning of the War, Japan probably had the best trained pilots (and other aircrew) of any of the major powers. However, by the end of the war they had lost the majority of their pilots and, for various reasons, had problems training new pilots. They really had no choice but to go with kamikazis.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by YNCS
One major problem the Japanese had towards the end of WW2 was the loss of trained pilots. At the beginning of the War, Japan probably had the best trained pilots (and other aircrew) of any of the major powers. However, by the end of the war they had lost the majority of their pilots and, for various reasons, had problems training new pilots. They really had no choice but to go with kamikazis. [/QUOTE

remember reading somewhere that the average u.s. pilot had 600 hrs training in 1945 and the japanese like 60--no wonder they were getting shot down like flies

That they had no choice is not really the question. I agree on that score.

My point is that a desperate, last ditch effort that had little bearing on the war effort and that cost very little to the enemies.

And as such, it should not be seen as representative of Japan in World War II or Japan at large, as many people unfortunately tend to do (as can be seen in the C3C forum - just look at the Alternate UUs thread where people twice - in about 5-6 suggestions post - suggested the kamikaze as a japanesse unique unit for the main game). Just like if a nation runs out of ammo after fighting a damn solid war (which Japan did, considering the opposition) and end the war with soldiers fighting with pitchforks, their pitchfork-armed soldiers should not be taken to represent either their war effort in that war or the nation in general.

Yet, there are - many - people out there who see the kamikaze as the epitom of Japanesse fighting in World War II. Which it never was.

"Duty is heavier than a mountain while death is lighter than a feather."
~Japanese proverb

True Kamikazes had very little effect in general on the outcome of the war, but they did alow the Japs to use untrained civilians quickly teach them to fly and send them against us in operation ten-go when Japan had lost all of their trained pilots. This is also very significant to history because it marks the first time ever that humans would give their lives away for their country in massive numbers.

Oda, I agree wholeheartedly with Wild Wolverine on this one, and couldn't help but scratch my head at your reasoning here.

First, if excluding damage to ships made your analysis too difficult to pull off, then you shouldn't have started in the first place. Kamikazes were not by their nature ship-killing weapons, like, say, a torpedo. The damage to ships was far out of proportion to ships sunk. Tactically, they did make several adjustments after Okinawa; the doctrine in the event of OLYMPIC or CORONET being launched would have seen concentrations of aircraft focus almost exclusively on transports and even beaches, seeking to slaughter vulnerable troops and avoid the well-defended BBs, CVs and picket AA destroyers which so many previous attackers had fixated upon and failed to destroy.

Secondly, Kamikaze attacks had an incredibly corrosive impact on morale, which is particularly important at the end of the war, given US impatience with Japanese intransigence. Several USN sources describe the effect on morale as crisis-like, comparable (as WW noted above, I believe) to the impact of buzz-bombs on the supposedly near-victorious British population.

Third, your conclusions based on the presented statistics are flawed, insofar as measuring Kamikaze effectiveness against the sinkings throughout the does not measure their relative effect properly. If they truly did account for 7% of ships lost to enemy action in the - what, twelve months? Fourteen? Eight? - that they were used in numbers, that is a spectacular result, given the high volume of shipping the USN lost in the period Dec. 1941-June 1943 to more conventional means.

That said, I agree that having them as a UU is both in poor taste and unrepresentative of Japan as a whole.

Here's a "partial" list of destroyers sunk/dmgd at Okinawa; note that the damaged are as numerous (http://www.billykrsigsbee502.com/partial.html)


And here's a more detailed list of attacks: note how often CVs are hit - Mitscher even has to change flagships (http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/LUTZ/okin.html)

...and on that link, note the bit at the bottom:

From Oct. 25, 1944 to Jan. 25, 1945 Japanese Kamikazes were able to sink 2 Escort Carriers, 3 Destroyers. They were also able to damage 23 Carriers, 5 Battleships, 9 Cruisers, 23 Destroyers and 27 other ships. There had also been 738 killed and another 1,300 wounded from the result of these attacks.

23 carriers - despite their thick AA! 5 BB's!

That would be enough to scare the bejesus out of me. :(

A "nice" page with specific hits to CVs, CVL/Fleet and CVEs in the RN/USN (http://www.warships1.com/index_tech/tech-042.htm)

Again, note that several of these carriers were put out of action for weeks or months at a time, with fearsome casualties. Not a real morale booster...

Yes, American carriers took rather heavy damage. Two notes should be made here :

1-In MANY Cases, ships that were still able to perform operations were pulled back to repair damage - something the allies simply could afford at that point. One carrier more or less doesn't matter much when you have 20+ carriers operational.

2-American carrier were rather poorly armored on the flight deck side. This means it was relatively easy to heap damage on the flight deck.

Now, on to American carriers damage (according to your link). Let's be honest, pulling a carrier out of operation for less than two weeks is nothing. Damaging a carrier so that it's able to continue operation but is pulled back simply because the other side can afford to isn't brilliant either.

Thus, here is the list of "hits" that removed CVLs or CVs from action in a significant fashion (and not just because the US could chose to pull the carrier back despite it being still operational) :

USS Saratoga (once)
USS Enterprise (once)
USS Intrepid (twice)
USS Franklin (once)
USS Ticonderoga (once)
USS Randolph (once)
USS Bunker Hill (once)

USS Belleau Wood (once) (CVL)

So, their hunting bag for "big ship put out of action" tops at :

8CV
1CVL

IN addition, they scored 1 BB, the USS New Mexico (which had to be repaired, not Stateside nor even at Pearl, but merely at Leyte).

Where the US Navy had available in early 45 :

25CV (British ones not withstanding)
9CVL
22BBs

Even had all the seriously damaged carriers been damaged at once (and they weren't, of course), America would still have been able to maintain an easy 10-15 fleet carriers in operation in the pacific, plus an extra 4-5 from the Royal Navy, plus a good 6-7 CVLs, making for anywhere from 20 to nearly 40 carriers still operational - and again, that's crediting the kamikaze with taking out all the carriers they took out at once. Which, of course, didn't happen.

Finally, note that the most devastating japanesse attack on a carrier even in teh closing months of the war was *not* a kamikaze attack : it was a bombing run by a single bomber that dropped two bomb, leving the USS Franklin dead in the water.

Not to say that people should not have been worried about kamikaze attack. But simply put, kamikaze attack weren't all that impressively efficient considering the cost involved (2550-odd attack, 475 connected on US ships, sinking a total of 30-odd ships, and no big ones (no, CVEs do not count as "big" ships with their 10 000 tons or so displacement - that's smaller than quite a lot of heavy cruisers), and inflicting SERIOUS damage to about 10 large ships (ships being damaged repeatedly counted as often as they were actually damaged).

Considering a total of 2550 planes, that's not too good on a purely strategic level.

To any extent, I have extensively altered my original post to reflect the information you presented me about damage, in addition to other information I researched personally (namely on the battleships, carriers deck damage et al).

For the record, almost every single carrier used in WW2 had wooden decks, or wooden decks covered by an inch of steel (not really enough to "strengthen" it against bomb attacks).

I'm not sure that I wouldn't call a near 20% success rate not "all that impressively efficient" when you factor in that most of these "pilots" had very little training, and the cost per kamikaze was pretty low.

Originally posted by wildWolverine
For the record, almost every single carrier used in WW2 had wooden decks, or wooden decks covered by an inch of steel (not really enough to "strengthen" it against bomb attacks).


not to argue with you w.w, but i've always read that the british carriers had armored flight decks?

That could be indeed possible. I mostly study the pacific theatre when I'm in a naval mood... The only Brit. carrier I know anything about is the Ark Royal, and I thought it was wood as well, but I could easily be wrong. Weren't most British carriers converted cruisers?

Originally posted by wildWolverine
The only Brit. carrier I know anything about is the Ark Royal, and I thought it was wood as well, but I could easily be wrong. Weren't most British carriers converted cruisers?

desided to look it up, the illustrious class ( 4 ships ) had 3 inch steel belt across the flight deck and 4.5 inch belt around the flight hanger. they took beatings from german and italian planes in the med. but survived

Thanks for the info -- good to know. However, due to the distinct lack of British carriers in the Pacific, I think my point pertaining to the Kamikaze remains valid...

Originally posted by wildWolverine
Thanks for the info -- good to know. However, due to the distinct lack of British carriers in the Pacific, I think my point pertaining to the Kamikaze remains valid...

actually there was a british task force with the u.s fleet in 1945, interesting to compare their loses and damage to the u.s. navy's:)

Has been done, see some of the links above. They survived the Kamikaze attacks with considerably less damage.

R.II

One factor to note is that while they took considerably less damage that would render them unoperational immediately, but the way they were built caused them to be far more worn off quickly.

Comparatively, UK carriers were a lot harder to take out of operations, while US ones were far easier to take out. But on the other hand, UK carriers due to their structure eventually became unrepairable far swifter than US ones from the shock damage and warping of the metal structure. Thus, many of the UK carriers were found to not be worth the cost of putting back up to full capacity in the late 40s whereas the Essex went on serving for a while. On the other hand, for the duration of the war, the British, with fewer carriers, could ill afford to lose more than one or two at a time, so being able to keep them operational for a longer time was a definite plus. And it did work out at Okinawa.

Thus the paradox is, American carriers took such dreadful damage from kamikaze because they could afford to. With 25 fleet carriers out and about, the US had the means to afford pulling them off for two-three months of repair. And, with the way they were built, once repaired there would be little to no remaining structural damage to the rest of the ship. Even the USS Franklin, once rebuilt (from the double-bomb hit, not the kamikaze one) was kept in reserve for possible conversion or reactivation for a while - it was back in top shape.

Kamikaze might have been too little, too late, but there is no evidence to suggest that had the war lasted longer, the kamikaze would have been able to do anything very significant still. At the earlier battles where they could have gotten through to inflict damage to the americans, they would have been just as well served doing so with conventional weapons - as demonstrated by the losses of the Lexington, Yorktown and Hornet in the successive carrier battles of the early war.

On the other hand, during their operational time of close to a year, the Kamikaze failed to accomplish the goals that were set before them : namely, maim the US navy and slow their strategy down. And that, despite being given many months to do so (october 44 to august 45.

A few comments on this. The Lexington was hit during the Battle of the Coral Sea by both bombs and torpedoes, it is true, but the main factor in the loss was the explosion and resultant fire caused by leaking gasoline vapor for the damage suffered. The improvements in US Navy damage control and firefighting (by the middle of the war, the US was far and away the leader in damage control and firefighting) that resulted from that loss, along with that of the Wasp, probably would have resulted in the Lexington surviving if hit in 1944 or 1945. Yorktown was sunk by a Japanese submarine's torpedoes following the Battle of Midway, and if the sub had not happened to be in the right spot at the right time, the Yorktown would have been successfully salvaged and returned to combat. The Hornet was abandoned while afloat by the US Navy following unsuccessful attempts to take her in tow, and then sink her because of the approach of Japanese naval surface forces. Again, without the nearness of the Japanese surface fleet, the Hornet would have had a good chance of surviving.

As for the influence of the Kamikaze, the US Navy was in a crash program mode to come up with some answers to the attack. I did a study for another game company of WW2 air attack accuracy of the US and the Japanese. The study was based on a considerable amount of research at the US National Archives, using US Navy Operations Evaluation reports, and combat narratives. At the start of the war, the Japanese and US dive bombing accuracy was comparable, at about 40% hit rate. That declined through 1942 as the prewar pilots were lost. By 1944, the US hit rate for Helldivers was 8%, Dauntless was 25%, and the Japanese hit rate was also 8%. However, prior to attack, the Japanese were experiencing losses on the order of 90%, between fighter interception and anti-aircraft fire. The average hit expectancy of a Japanese conventional air strike was therefore less than 1 hit per 100 attacking aircraft with bombs. Torpedo plane accuracy did not significantly decline, the problem there was surviving long enough to drop. By 1945, that was pretty much impossible. The kamikaze hit rate was 30%, and with saturation attacks, more planes were getting through. If the Japanese had continued conventional attacks, without resorting to kamikaze tactics, damage to the US Navy during the Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns would have been minimal.

Interesting old thread you've disinterred here!

I've always thought that the main effect the kamikazes had was on morale - not so much because of the fear of the attacks as such (bad enough), but because of what it suggested about the Japanese will to fight.

Think about it: would you have wanted to land on an island peopled by fanatics willing to throw their lives away to kill you?
This on top of having experienced such fanatical resistance retaking the Pacific islands.

Interesting old thread you've disinterred here!

I've always thought that the main effect the kamikazes had was on morale - not so much because of the fear of the attacks as such (bad enough), but because of what it suggested about the Japanese will to fight.

Think about it: would you have wanted to land on an island peopled by fanatics willing to throw their lives away to kill you?
This on top of having experienced such fanatical resistance retaking the Pacific islands.

The major effect was on morale, and the thought of what might happen if we had actually invaded Japan. I have never met a WW2 Pacific War vet who had any qualms whatsoever about dropping the nukes on Japan. Based on some of the research that I have done in the National Archives, neither do I.

Wow, old thread here.

Just to point out a few things:

1-This thread was largely written in answer to people who suggested that, in the Civ 3 Conquests "War in the Pacific" scenario, Kamikaze should be exclusive to Japan and Nukes exclusive to America.

2-Nice statistics, timerover. It seems to be in line with what I later concluded on kamikaze (I don't know if I ever discussed it in the thread) - that they weren'T an entirely stupid idea, but that they were indeed a desperation tactic from a nation that had nothing more to hope for from conventional attacks. (As opposed to a specific "reasonable" tactics Japan came up with)

3-Definitely, the moral effect is what I should have spent more time on in the original article.

I would suppose the main damage the kamikaze had on the US Navy was psychological.

I think your post just doesn't put across your final thoughts very well. It focuses solely on the deficiencies of kamikazes and gives very little mention to the advantages and why it was more practical.

The kamikazes failed to affect US naval strength, as what losses they caused could easily be covered by other assets.

An effective attack run by bombers would be more effective than a kamikaze strike.

An effective bombing run was more difficult to pull off and required a much more skilled pilot or a lot of luck.

Kamikazes were just plain cheap compared to other ways of getting to a ship.

The Japanese simply had no other option by the time they were implemented. Not time or resources to train pilots, no submarines or surface fleets capable of doing the job.

I can't say the actual morale effect, I know it is portrayed in the media as pretty bad, but I refrain from judging that without hard numbers or personal accounts.

Also, imagine the damage that could have been caused by the change in tactics mentioned previously, large numbers hitting loaded transports heading to beaches and infantry crowded on their beachhead. That could have been devastating.

I would also challenge your point that putting F4Us on CAP didn't affect ground support. My knowledge says that they were regularly used as ground support and quite effective in that role, maybe not at hitting hard points, but general support, which at the least would divert dive bombers to strike the harder targets. It is possible that this change occurred later and I am mainly thinking of the Korean War, though.
I don't know anything about F6F's in ground attack roles.
This isn't really important but just a small thing.

I'm pretty certain an RAF pilot used his plane to ram a German bomber during WW2...let me see!

It was a tactic used by all sides, if they really wanted to take out a target they would throw themselves at it. Not to say it was common. Crash your plane into the enemy plane, tank, ship, building, whatever, especially if you have taken damage and don't expect to return home even if you try. Of course, the more desperate you are the more likely you are to do this.
The Germans had at least two programs intending to crash their planes into the enemy. One was hopeful of pilot survival, the other (I believe) was intended as suicidal. neither was deemed effective enough to account for their cost and continue.
Along with this were suicide torpedoes and such used.
All that said no program was used on near the scale, or effect, of the kamikaze attacks or were as publicized in Western media at the time. These make the kamikaze program a completely different thing, and unique at the time.

There's a lot here about the psychological effect of the kamikaze on the Americans. What about their effect on the Japanese?

It is important to remember that the kamikaze pilots were not, for the most part, fanatical suicidical maniacs who wanted to die rather than surrender. They were, for the most part, very young men - often students and teenagers - who were indoctrinated and pressured into doing what was perceived as their personal duty to the emperor and to their families. Their training basically consisted of being bullied until they completely cracked. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney has studied the diaries of these pilots and written about them (see her Kamikaze diaries: reflections of Japanese student soldiers. .) and they are heart-rending stuff. Most of these pilots didn't want to die at all but felt they had no choice. Many of them rationalised it as a matter of giving their lives so that others - above all their families - could live. A lot of them were intellectuals, who flew into battle quoting Novalis and Kant. Some of them were Christians, who took Bibles with them on their last flights. And some of them were pacifists, who felt that their sacrifice might help to end war altogether.

They were pressured not only by the military but by their families to go through with their flights. When the war ended, those kamikaze pilots who were still training and had not yet undertaken their final mission were ostracised, including by their families, because it was felt that they should have killed themselves anyway. Such is the nutty Japanese obsession with suicide.

Here's an account of the night before the kamikaze flights, given years later by a man who worked at the base as an attendant:

At the hall where their farewell parties were held, the young student officers drank cold sake the night before their flight. Some gulped the sake in one swallow; others kept gulping down [a large amount]. The whole place turned to mayhem. Some broke hanging light bulbs with their swords. some lifted chairs to break the windows and tore white tablecloths. A mixture of military songs and curses filled the air. While some shouted in rage, others cried aloud. It was their last night of life. They thought of their parents, their faces and images, lovers' faces and their smiles, a sad farewell to their fiancees - all went through their minds like a running-horse lantern. Although they were supposedly ready to sacrifice their precious youth the next morning for imperial Japan and for the emperor, they were torn beyond what words can express - some putting their heads on the table, some writing their wills, some folding their hands in meditation, some leaving the hall, and some dancing in a frenzy while breaking flower vases. They all took off wearing the rising sun headband the next morning. But this scene of utter desperation has hardly been reported. I observed it with my own eyes, as I took care of their daily life, which consisted of incredibly strenuous training, coupled with cruel and torturous corporal punishment as a daily routine.

Thank you for your insightful quote, Plotinus. Some of the pilots, especially the earlier ones, were not trained that way, but as you said, many of them were. One sidelight to the Japanese refusal to surrender and infatuation with suicide was that when we did take a Japanese prisoner, he normally sang like a bird. We picked up a Japanese torpedoman from one of the ships sunk in the Solomon Islands area, and he gave us a lot of information on the 24 inch Long Lance torpedo. We also picked up a Japanese PRIVATE on Peleliu, with a degree in microbiology who had worked with the biological weapons unit in Manchuria, who for some bizarre reason was drafted by the Japanese Army and sent to Peleliu of all places. He was an absolute treasure trove of data on the Japanese biological weapons program.

Thank you for your insightful quote, Plotinus. Some of the pilots, especially the earlier ones, were not trained that way, but as you said, many of them were. One sidelight to the Japanese refusal to surrender and infatuation with suicide was that when we did take a Japanese prisoner, he normally sang like a bird. We picked up a Japanese torpedoman from one of the ships sunk in the Solomon Islands area, and he gave us a lot of information on the 24 inch Long Lance torpedo. We also picked up a Japanese PRIVATE on Peleliu, with a degree in microbiology who had worked with the biological weapons unit in Manchuria, who for some bizarre reason was drafted by the Japanese Army and sent to Peleliu of all places. He was an absolute treasure trove of data on the Japanese biological weapons program.

I guess, by their lights, once having surrendered/been captured, they had lost all honor anyway and it no longer mattered what they did...

One thing I did not see many references to was the efficiency of American anti-aircraft guns. The proximity fuse was one of the greatest innovations in air defense, reducing the required number of rounds to destroy a plane from ~2400 or higher (depending on the type of gun) to ~400 (a six-fold improvement). By the time kamikaze attacks started, all American ships were using anti-aircraft rounds with proximity fuses, and many of those were usually 40 mm BOFORS, which were top-rate anti-aircraft guns.

Another important factor is the size of the attacking squadron of kamikazes--unless over 100 planes were committed to the attack, there was no guarantee the kamikazes could hit even one American ship. Towards the end of the war in '45, raids of 20-25 planes were launched. Not a single plane could hit a big ship (they could only take out lone destroyers on picket duty).

A minor point, to be sure, but the IJN sent out roughly 2,500 kamikaze attacks. The Air Force also sent out over 1,000 pilots (I forget the exact figures offhand) on kamikaze attacks as well, making the total number of planes sacrificed for the same number of ship kills even bleaker.

"Bonzai" charges have a similar reputation. They happened of course here and there however everyone seems to think it was standard practice by the Japanese military blindly charge machine guns.

"Bonzai" charges have a similar reputation. They happened of course here and there however everyone seems to think it was standard practice by the Japanese military blindly charge machine guns.

That's 'Banzai' - a Bonsai is a miniature tree.

I don't know about 'everyone', but I regard Banzai charges as a desperation measure of last resort for the Japanese, not standard practice. They did those only when there was no more hope of winning by conventional means - I think more as a means of mass suicide to avoid surrender than with real hope of winning .. though I believe a few of those charges were actually successful. Most, however, resulted in lots of dead Japanese soldiers to little effect.

.. though I believe a few of those charges were actually successful. Most, however, resulted in lots of dead Japanese soldiers to little effect.

Which ones were successes? I can't think of a single charge that was successful in the sense of winning the battle. Wiki mentioned Attu Island, where the banzai charge broke through the first American line and the rear units engaged the Japanese. However, the Americans still took back the island and all but 28 Japanese were killed.

Picture, for a moment, a banzai charge of soldiers holding bonsai trees. :)

now first of all , nice to see that there is a history section and it surely matches the site in being superb.

used some of the arguments without naming the site or posters as my reputation over there is even more suspect than the one here as might be deduced from the fact that ı was banned again .

anyhow just to cut it short

the first groups to engage in the operation were military personnel who appearently took it without any qualms , in the accepted image of the Kamikazes . Going to industrial scale increases the diversity and Japanese military personnel have been accused of sending people to die to keep themselves alive . "These war professionals strove endlessly to preserve from special attacks the members of their own group who were best trained to fight .They threw into the maw of battle the non - members of their clique - the civilian non-professionals fresh from collages and universities . " The reference is to the established practice to refuse adequately trained pilots who were needed for interception and indeed as escorts who tried to protect the suiciders and report back on their success if any ; the top Japanese ace Nishizawa was among such pilots .The counting of such flights in total Kamikaze missions (along with those planes returned without finding a target ) actually give interesting results : the total IJN effort launched 2314 planes , 1086 returned giving a loss rate of 53% . RAF's heavies lost 47.5 % of their crews killed or missing in action ; it has been estimated before D-Day the rate might have been up to 65 % . The U-Boot arm lost 70 % , true , but they lost the war ...

on the effectiveness of the attacks ı have to say ı disagree though without any mentionable counter argument . The Kamikaze might have been hitting but they were wasting fighter planes that might have protected bombers and of course they were also wasting the pilots .In a most perfect example Enterprise was hit by an obviously crack pilot in a Zero and as far as ı remember the bomb ended up in a depot where toilet papers were kept , failing to go off . Reading from some pdf files this has to have happened on april 11 , 1945 .

her sister ship Hornet was a tough one too . Due to misdirection of its CAP was heavily attacked , hit by 2 torpedoes , 3 bombs and 2 planes crashing with forward engine room flooded . A second attack resulted in two bomb and a torpedo hit flooding the aft engine room .Then 2 American destroyers fired 400 rounds of 5 inch and nine torpedoes to scuttle her .The Japanese had to sink the ship later in the night with 4 torpedoes to save USN further disgrace. If ships have really souls , this one really clung to life ...


what Japan needed by 1945 was surrender and while it might be quite true to remind me of the unconditional surrender line of the Allies , ı will respond the Japanese ended the war with what they wanted , keeping the Emperor in place so that the transition period could be handled . And that is after being nuked twice , Tokyo suffering "the largest casualties in a day" of all history , losing the fleet , and the army in Manchuria trampled by Russian armour . Kamikaze fervour made it impossible for the 1944 attempts to surrender ; killing in effect far more than the pilots and sailors sent to die with Hachimakis. Remembering the August '45 putsch it would have been certain death for the Japanese goverment to accede to peace . Hara -Kiri might have been a Japanese way but there are quite nastier ways to die .

played the Japanese WW2 scenario , won it without flying one . ı am a Monarch level player all along .

the Kamikaze is actually very anti-Japanese , but this hardly the fault of Firaxis ...

best wishes

Which ones were successes? I can't think of a single charge that was successful in the sense of winning the battle. Wiki mentioned Attu Island, where the banzai charge broke through the first American line and the rear units engaged the Japanese. However, the Americans still took back the island and all but 28 Japanese were killed.

Picture, for a moment, a banzai charge of soldiers holding bonsai trees. :)

You're right, of course, no Banzai charge was successful in the sense of winning the battle - I meant short term, as in overrunning an American position. As I said, the Banzai charges were desperation measures and/or suicide charges.

Another example for a short term success was the Banzai charge on Saipan, where the last 3000 able-bodied Japanese charged and overran the first lines. It seems even their wounded charged with them, bandages and all. Must have been a terrifying sight for the GIs !

The reference is to the established practice to refuse adequately trained pilots who were needed for interception and indeed as escorts who tried to protect the suiciders and report back on their success if any ; the top Japanese ace Nishizawa was among such pilots .The counting of such flights in total Kamikaze missions (along with those planes returned without finding a target ) actually give interesting results : the total IJN effort launched 2314 planes , 1086 returned giving a loss rate of 53% . RAF's heavies lost 47.5 % of their crews killed or missing in action ; it has been estimated before D-Day the rate might have been up to 65 % . The U-Boot arm lost 70 % , true , but they lost the war ...

I think either your total number of planes launched is too low or your number returned is too high; I recall reports where flights of 25-50 planes (kamikazes and escorts) were launched and not a single plane returned. 53% loss rate seems way too low, especially when success was also defined as losing planes.

ı have this book by two Japanese officers who organised the attacks , including the very first one . The numbers are only IJN numbers exluding the Japanese Army , American losses are checked with both USN records and IJN claims ( 475 hits repeated ) . Now there might been losses of records and falsification , but the book is a product of a time when the Communist threat made it a necessity to re-humanize the Japanese . ı believe the authors were honest although they are still trying to cover up the escape of Admiral Ugaki , who supposedly dived on to Allied ships on the 16th of August . Might be Russians , ı don't know .

A large number of kamikaze planes tended to turn back due to "engine failure" or for lack of good targets. Also, these planes would have flown far fewer missions than RAF bombers- surely only a handful at most for each plane, while RAF planes would have been in the air pretty much every day (I'm guessing).

This is why their losses may have been comparable to RAF losses, not because mass-suicide as a tactic is as safe as conventional bombing for pilots. Had the allies attacked Kyushu and the Japanese fully committed their kamkaze planes, Kamikaze losses would have been nearly total.

indeed the wikipedia article on Kamikazes talks of one Japanese suicide pilot turning back 9 times ; in the end he was shot . ı would avoid claiming the safety of suicide attacks , it is just a trick of statistics but it sure made an impression on me when ı first read it in the 90s.

now ı add the text ı had prepared

ı got this from Wikipedia and being shortsighted ( ı have been wearing glasses for 30 years nows ) have a strange feeling about the picture .It is in the Kamikaze article and before ı take it to an other forum for a heated debate on the suicide attacks please tell me that the wing marking is a white ringed Hinomaru ( or what the American fighter pilots used to call the meatballs ) instead of a cockade .

the debate is by the way about the German Kamikaze thingies . Now you may heard of that they were developing say manned V-1s or V-2s "guided" by crew who were supposed to leave the aircraft in the last minute . Many German members in such forums are arguing this was not the case and they are justifiable in the case of the Reichenberg device which was more of an aerodynamic test vehicle . This contrasts strongly with claims more usually originating from UFO sites . ı am a strong believer in the non existance of the saucers yet quite convinced that the it is politically motivated on the part of German authorities to cover up their plans in the late WW2 . Germans forum members of today are probably more interested in avoiding another bunch of epithets getting stuck on them while on a political / govermental level it would be hard to "demonize" misguided people originating from East and South of the Mediterranean . About the more recent efforts , Japanese could not make it work and the German warming up attempt sort of fizzled on its first run ; considering the reputations of these nations in military valour it should be pertinent to think some more today's Anti-Americans .

this post contributes to the thread of debunking the Kamikaze myth by showing - at least sort of - the Japanese were not alone .

it is not in the wikipedia and funnily all the links ı tried in the above mentioned Kamikaze article led nowhere but the German programme undoubtedly existed with 2000 pilots signing in . ı am of the type who goes into the "You talkin' to me ?" mode when the radio is passing comments about the dangers of using the web and a certain goverment's programme to teach the youth ; ı had to stop early as ı was shaving at the time and my chuckling could result in a few cuts on my face . The point is ı am not doing anything big when claiming the German ' Winds . ı have long been a subject of derision ; making an illusory subject stick will not really satisfy me but as we all know Occident beats Orient hands down when it comes to analysing pros and cons of a situation . Have already seen in Galactica , wonder how long would it take for Pentagon to come up with asymmetric warfare when it actually faces someone that will stand his ground ? Logic instead of a death wish , determination instead of bargaining , power instead of chest banging . It might be a culture shock . ı hear they are telling anybody who cares that they will go nuclear at the slightest reverse .


discussion of history makes one ready for shocks or it might blind one to obvious risks . Good old wikipedia had lots of articles about Romanian victories against the Ottomans at the time they were deploying to Afghanistan . Please don't take this as something against our neighbours through the Black Sea , but the recent surge in some dusty Asian country is definitive proof that the Sipahi has not been spotted there yet since it would have been already over if that was the case . As it is , the wikipedia has its strong moments like those such as

"I cannot predict the outcome of the air battles but you will be making a mistake if you should regard Special Attack operations as normal methods. The right way is to attack the enemy with skill and return to the base with good results. A plane should be utilized over and over again. That’s the way to fight a war. The current thinking is skewed. Otherwise you cannot expect to improve air power. There will be no progress if flyers continue to die."—Lieutenant Commander Iwatani, Taiyo (Ocean) magazine, March 1945

in contrast to its less informed ones , say , repeating Saburo Sakai's words "critisizing" the Emperor , the man the ace stayed in the war -after the ceasefire- for .

or rather the cease fire order .

ı would have loved one more person that wasn't also sure about his eyesight to say something as ı know multiple posts are frowned upon . As it is ı have this one more thing to say on the subject . My efforts have been so far described as intellectual dishonesty through another medium which made me somewhat proud as it took me 15years to get the drift in the last sentence of this particular post . ı had intented to post these arguments at another forum , alas they banned me for the duration .

don't know the exact numbers but ı think it will be safe to say that readers of "this " forum - where ı am bete noir at the moment -are at least 99% rational .Considering the far higher membership on this forum , the ratio is of course even higher here but ı have to defend the first one as it is a specialized aviation site .

So when somebody comes up with a picture of 2 torpedoes hung under the pathetically short ranged Luftwaffe interceptor the sweet flying death trap aka Me-163 , there won't be much comment about the futility of the project ; everybody knows it was a waste of time for Germans .


ı specialize in irrationality .


but can't say ı am anything but a layman . ı have seen bomb racks under every kind of combat aircraft , am fully conversant with the fact that fighter bombing came of age in the Second World War and even can understand that putting pylons call for local strengthening in the airframe , aerodynamic testing to identify and correct any problems , operational trials to find out optimum tactics and many other things that are yet to be deduced by me but ı am still utterly confused by the accounts of Adolf Hitler's profound rage in May '44 when he heard that there were no '262 bombers yet . Ordering fighterbomber ability in every new delivery from that time on he has long been accused of squandering the last chance of Germany to build up an interceptor force capable of winning the air war . More recent views oppose this - one ı will name below suggesting the fighters were delayed by only 3 weeks at most - and as ı was saying ı have been long mystified . Afterall when Luftwaffe started using the Sturmvogels in ground attack missions eventually they achieved practically nothing as the Allied air defences forced them to fly fast and sort of high where the lack of a suitable sight meant the bombs would be delivered inaccurately , even by the far looser WW2 standarts .

the logic is understandable . Allies will cover their landing troops furiously . Speed is essential . Speed in penetration allows bomb delivery and survival to come back later , to repeat the performance . Classics in the Luftwaffe service can't do it but the new jet can . Causing delays on the part of the invasion forces will allow concentration of Panzer divisions to smash the Allies . At times you can even sense the amazement of some authors of such statements that the little Corporal had a reasonable view on the subject ! Dr. Alfred Price in the June 1995 issue of Air International offers a good examination of the matter ; unsurprising considering the reputations of both the author and the magazine . No doubt basing his account on personal memories and meeting minutes , Dr. Price goes onto explain how Erhard Milch , the Luftwaffe officer responsible for aircraft production asked for it by declaring that not only there were no bombers yet but to make them extensive design changes were needed . The part that confuses me... Since in about August Me-262s were bombing Allies in Normandy in shallow dive attacks where the planes pulled out above 4000 meters . ı had long forgotten that ; research always pays dividends when you need to support your harebrained theory . In regards to effectiveness of such raids a USN pilot has had once opinionated that those pilots such as USAAF crews releasing at 3 to 5 000 feet would undoubtedly be grounded by their commanders if they were in the USN as the Navy bombers could go as low as 1 000 feet , but again the opposition must be taken into account ; in Korea , WW2 veterans of the Pasific would consider the North Korean flak as heavy , while those of ETO would not . German flak has had quite a reputation . Considering the altitude limit placed on the 262 Luftwaffe appears to have some real impression about the Allied capabilities.


what is so special about the bombers ? What is the extensive design requirement ? The Japanese Nakajima Kikka was a Me-262 based attack aircraft , though smaller in size . ı have heard nothing against its suitability for its mission , which by the way was suicide attack . Unless some German genius had not imagined putting some shaped charge bomb in that peculiar front fuselage making it compulsory to return to the original tail dragger form or more sensibly requiring integral wing tanks to replace the would be lost 900 lt front fuel tank , ı can't see why Luftwaffe could not have Me-262s that could intercept bombers on one mission and after having bomb pylons fitted on the airfield , attack ground targets on the next .

for all he has been rightly accused of , Adolf Hitler had personal experience of war , of life in the frontline ; surprisingly in the light of anectodes of later somewhat different escapades , he even didn't show interest in the local boys . All troops of all nations that served in the trenches of WW1 have respected the artillery greatly and the Allied landings in the Mediterrenean in 1943 showed that naval artillery was a force to be reckoned with , starting with devastating the Hermann Goering Panzer Parachute division on Sicily , saving the day in General Omar Bradley's words . It appears the Germans lost 50 % of their tanks . Or in Salerno where military histories are unanimous that ships were terribly effective . The 1943 battles also saw Germans using guided weapons on a large scale where the dense Allied air defences made the campaign less effective than it might have been . Italian battleship Roma was sunk in what was practically exercise conditions , yet the performance could not be repeated against ,say , Warspite , the RN battleship that had an instrumental role in sinking 10 German ships in a Norwegian Fjord some years ago , halving the Kriegsmarine destroyer force in a day . In those days it was not a book that asserted naval firepower was dangerous , it was not yet history . Let me quote Brute Force by John Ellis :

"Perhaps the most convincing testimony of all was provided by Hitler himself who , on 29 June [of 1944] , in response to numerous references to the Allies' devastating naval firepower , issued a directive in which ' the Führer made it clear that he regarded the destruction of the enemy's battleships as of outstanding importance. ' Not surprisingly , he neglected to specify just how it was to be done ." Actually we might just have an inkling to what happened to that particular variant of the wunderwaffen , but just don't take my word on that . ı will call Milch's concentration on the fighters as a sudden outbreak of sanity without reservations , in case ı ever write something . The exact words that ı am paraphrasing here were "some kind of sanity and reason, which is said sometimes even to afflict Germans ?"

but all was not lost yet and on the Fourth of July the 12.SS Panzer Division , the Hitlerjugend defended the Carpiquet Airfield with "150 infantry , two or three tanks and a borrowed 88mm gun" against "10 battalions of infantry , a tank regiment plus other specialised armour, and support from 428 guns on the ground and several ships at sea." The singularly ill named Operation Windsor has its own Wikipedia page.

"The attack failed."

ı don't know if ı mentioned this before but the young troopers of the HitlerJugend had a propensity to blow themselves up under Canadian tanks .

it is a custom of mine to make a reality check at some of my posts , rereading what ı have written and ı have to admit that what ı say is always a mix up of ridiculous with unbelieveable . ı am not much of a writer , can't attach various ideas to each other .

just an example , don't you think the torpedo carrying Me-163 ı mentioned at the top would be described as superfulous by any teacher of composition writing ? What is the relevance of that idea here ? So the Germans designed a torpedo carrier out of a plane with a maximum range of only 50 miles since it had a rocket engine that allowed to outclimb anything in the world - unlike the Me-262 that needed specially assigned fighter squadrons to defend its airfields as it was so vulnerable to prowling Allied fighters during take off and landing- but its fuel exploded like a bomb at the slightest provocation ? Or it would be dead meat at the torpedo dropping altitude if it had already used its fuel , which would undoubtedly be the case . Though it was fast at nearly 1000 km/h , matching the Yokosuka Okha , the idiot bomb of the Japanese . ı wonder how many of Bakas were shot down by AA fire from Allied ships .

or the Wikipedia mentioning that "in August 1944, it was announced by the Domei news agency that a flight instructor named Takeo Tagata was training pilots in Taiwan for suicide missions." Who would believe the Japanese would divulge a new way of fighting through newspapers ?

and ı would hate to give the impression that ı talk positively about Adolf Hitler ; he was not a total idiot but one has to be careful about these things . He knew Normandy would be the place since November 1943 , yet he allowed himself to be deceived about that it was to be a mere diversion and Allies would land at Pas de Calais to trap the Wehrmacht in France . That the Germans concentrated against the British in Normandy battles is not merely because it was quicker to assemble in front of Montgomery and safer to avoid the extra Allied air attacks that would have to be suffered while crossing the battlezone to engage in the American sector . If the second landing by the Patton's army could not be contained , the panzers would be needed to be rapidly moved into a new battle . Anyhow it was obvious the Allies could not get out of the bocage country that easily or Montgomery Africanus would rush things ; an official American history once described an operation in Tunis by the words ' The Eight Army procedeed to the crucial battle with the majestic deliberation of a pachyderm .' Rommel's desire to attack quickly was due to his personal experience of Alam Halfa or El Alamein , the Allies had to be crushed before they got good defensive positions , but unlike Hitler he was counting on Me-262 Jagers ...

just another post on debunking the Kamikaze myth.

PS. the last sentence:

ı wasn't such an odd person when ı was young .Anyhow ı had an Airfix model of an '262 and you should remember this was a time when the triangular ALCM was in service , this guy said "Doesn't it look like a cruise missile ?"

Wat? ..

I must join my colleague with a wat?

good , at least two people have read it. Banana Lee and Masada thanks for the effort and patience .

ı had an Airfix model of an '262

These kits came with glue included.

I read them, but made very little sense of them and chose not to respond.

A wat chain would still have been awesome nonetheless.

unfortunately writing skills is one of the many things ı lack . At a forum where ı was not only banned but deleted as well , we had a discussion of flying saucers - they don't exist , even in Groom Lake - and what ı posted what of course a poorly constructed jam of various ideas . So one of the posters advised that ı should be tagged as , if ı remember correctly Ed L. Word , a play on Mr.Wood of Plan B From Outer Space . Can't blame anyone of disregarding me ... Still ı get the what all the time.

anyhow for today's mumbo-jumbo:


am to try to avoid the impression of giving a lecture of history .How ı don't know but let me try it once . The idea might be dubious in any case ...

june 1944 , Japanese Navy is totally defeated in the Great Turkey Shoot of Marianas , the losses are so griveous that carriers are out of action until March '45 at the earliest . Allies have landed in Normandy , the summer offensive by the Russians is expected daily , it can be foreseen that Germany will be crushed which means the American forces in combat with the Japanese can easily double in 1945. One overrriding aspect of Japanese strategy in WW2 has been denying bases to B-29 class aircraft to keep Japan proper out of bomber range , even before the Superfortress itself existed . While a large offensive in China succeeds , there is no way that Marianas can be taken back . IJN agrees to peace .

now the Japanese Army and Navy give the resemblence of two countries in a close alliance , just like the US and UK . They are fighting common enemies but that just glosses over the fundemental differences between them , the in-fighting continues . Name the army that has an aircraft carrier and ocean going submarines . US Army has had only transport ships ... One of the Japanese commands had torpedo carrying amphibious tanks but ı forgot which. The reason is most probably lies the agreements between various clans united in toppling the Tokugawas , they carved their fiefdoms in the new state organization . So as October 1944 approaches , despite the June report prepared by their own General staff that said " It is time for us to end the war. " , Army leadership still desires a compromise peace that will allow them to keep some the gains of the war which the Allies will not accept . The special attack option has already been put forward to convince the Americans to consent . As USN is aware of the German preparations it is an hint that the Japanese can take the same route too . That is why the development of Okha starts in August 1944 . It is far more mobile than the operational German type , though resembles the Me 328 somewhat . Not surprising , the concept of suicide attacks on the industrial scale is an import to Japan anyhow ...

the battle of Leyte comes and goes . Army leadership now totally agrees to peace of the unconditional variety . But the thorn is now the Army of Kwantung . They have long tried to be a third force in Japan and they have their opening .

june 1945 , Russians are definitely massing for an attack in Asia . Japanese armour has not improved much since Khalkin Gol , their 100 ton tank project has gone nowhere , while the Russians have more "Animal Killers" , the ISU/ SU class assault tanks used in combination with the T-34/JS series that they need and all of them used by crews that have defeated the Wehrmacht . In 1945 Russians are the best Blitzkrieg force . Kwantung Army sees the light , Jukov is coming for them. That is about the period the Japanese Prime Minister offers some sort of a proposal to Western powers by using a Japanese idiom ; the Turkish translation sounds far different to the given English version that seems to suggest that Japanese were so offended by the unconditional peace terms that they refused to even talk about it . The use of the two atomic bombs have been always justified by the total Japanese intrasigience ; the reader might have read it somewhere that 28 million Japanese men were in the militia force in 1945 and the training included bow and arrows with bamboo spears . The antitank systems were to include small children with explosive backpacks as the Soviets had tried dogs in combat and they tended to cause friendly fire incidents . See , nukes in August 1945 are an eternal shame on part of the US of America ; the historians have often grumbled about the late intervention of Hirohito but he had already spoken in July . And the as the good offices of the Soviets could not be trusted ( Americans will definitely believe the Japanese proposal for peace given by their ambrassador in Moscow was not forwarded to the West ) there was a second set . How , when , where , why ı won't rightly know .

ı don't even know what drives me to challenge the history !

kamikazes were used to get a peace deal , one of compromise or later one of the "unconditional" type . And the troops of the Kwantung Army paid for their commanders political savvy dearly as their destruction went on unabated for a while even after the 15th of August .

That's enough of that please. Posts deleted.

Well that´s good enough for me! Japan was ready to offer unconditional surrender before August ´45 completely based on secret negotiations of which exists no known documents, witnesses or evidence what so ever. It´s the truth!

my confidence in me surprises even me .

and the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan link doesn't really really imply Japan was ready and it quite effectively kills off any suggestion that there was a will to quit ; it was simply a ploy to get better conditions . No , something r16 says is not the truth but it might well be . And it wouldn't be that good if true , wouldn't it ?

as it is the note 79 of that wikipedia article quite clearly mentions the August 15 atomic mission , which of course leads us to think about what happened to the August 12 one ?