Oda Nobunaga
Aug 21, 2003, 04:13 PM
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.
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.