USS Franklin After Kamikaze Attack
Photo Source: US Navy

The war against the United States and its allies by Japan had shifted and by 1944 the Japanese had suffered several huge defeats. they were running out of time. What we didn't know then, but we know now, but is seldom spoken about, is the fact that Japan was building a secret air force of jet fighters and bombers. They needed time to complete this fleet of planes, that they were pinning all their hopes on to, destroy an allied invasion and turn the tide of war, once again, in Japan's favor. How could they gain time to do this? They didn't want to give away the fact that they had futuristic weapons in the works because it might spur us on to either trying to develop defenses against them or coming up with the same types of weapons ourselves. By now the Japanese knew that our industrial might was gigantic. The Japanese were very loyal to their emperor and homeland and would readily sacrifice themselves for either. The military powers that be, at the time, decided that they would use the most dangerous weapon of all, a human being.

Kamikaze On Approach To US Ship
Photo Source: US Navy

Kamikaze means divine wind. If one were to trace the origin of this phrase, they would find that several Mongol invasions of Japan failed when powerful winds destroyed the Mongol fleets over and over. This was taken to be a sign from the gods that no one could ever take over Japan. The Kamikaze pilots were named after this wind. According to the Wikipedia encyclopedia, the Kamikaze units were called tokubetsu kōgeki tai, which means special unit. But what brought about this strange change in strategy? Actually many credit the Battle of Midway in June 1942 as the turning point. This was where the Japanese lost four carriers, but others credit the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 where we held the Japanese to a standoff. There is no doubt that after Midway, the Japanese were never a carrier power again. Things just kept getting worse for the Japanese until it was decided that suicide pilots were the way to go.

It wasn't just planes that had suicide pilots. Other devices had them also. Torpedoes had pilots seats installed in them. The pilot would get into the torpedo and be welded inside. It was a certain death sentence, although it did make for an accurate torpedo. Can you see us asking people to get inside Torpedoes? I just don't think that you would have too many volunteers. The German Buzz Bomb, a sort of plane with a ram jet engine also was now being tested with a pilot inside. I saw an interesting question about Kamikaze pilots and that was, why did they wear helmets? I never really thought about this before, but I think the answer was because it was part of the their uniform. Well anyway, the plane that the suicide pilot was going to fly was packed with explosives and the whole idea was to crash it into an enemy ship. To this day, the military is not exactly sure of the success rate of the Kamikaze pilots, but it was pretty high. It is suspected that about one in four planes hit a ship. This doesn't mean that they sunk a ship. The rate for sinking a ship was much, much lower. Japanese figures stated that over 3,900 Kamikaze pilots had been lost from all services and that they had sunk 81 ships and damaged 195. The US statistics are somewhat different. They state that there were over 2,800 Kamikaze attacks which sunk 34 Navy Ships and damaged 368 ships. Most historians believe the US figure of sunken ships is woefully low and that at least 70 US ships were sunk.

There were both Japanese Navy Kamikaze planes and Japanese Army Kamikaze planes, Kamikaze submarines, Kamikaze Torpedoes, Kamikaze motor boats, Japanese Kamikaze swimmers who attached explosives to a ship and Kamikaze solders who would strap explosives to their bodies and blow up tanks. One can't help but think that terrorists today seem to have the same methods, except their targets are civilians, in most cases. I am not calling the Japanese military terrorists since this was wartime and military targets. Beside all this, civilians were now being armed against invasion. On some of the islands that had Japanese civilians on them, the women had been armed with spears, while the boys were taught how to use grenades and spears. Presumable the men would be armed with rifles. The civilians on the homeland were being armed this way also. Five hundred midget submarines were being built and they could either carry two Torpedoes or a 1,000 pound war head on the bow for ramming. There was even a piloted bomb named Baka. Hey I need a volunteer to pilot this bomb, yeah sure!

When the Kamikazes attacked they did so in waves up to 350 planes, making it very hard to stop them all, but causing great airplane loses. The first attack, ironically, was not on an American ship, but on an Australian one, the HMAS Australia and took place on October 21, 1944. The bomb carried by the Japanese plane failed to go off, so even though 30 members of the crew were killed by the crash, the ship was saved from sinking. The attack had been carried out by a single pilot who was not a member of the special unit. The first attack by the special unit was on the USS St. Lo, an escort carrier which was sunk. By the end of the next day, 5 ships were sunk, 23 received heavy damage and 12 received light damage. All this was accomplished by 55 Kamikaze planes and their escorts. This was before the US and its allies developed methods for fighting off this type of attack. One such method was to fire a high caliber gun at the water ahead of the low flying, attacking plane. This would swamp the plane and knock it out of the air. Another method was to get more fighter planes into the air. Usually the Kamikaze pilots were not trained very well and our fighters could shoot them down rather easily.

Ship Damaged By Kamikaze Attack
Photo Source: US Marine Corps

By some accounts the Japanese still had over 10,000 planes at the end of the war and many thousands were of the advanced jet and rocket type. They also had over 300 five man submarines and assorted other weapons and a large army spread out in many places including China. From the Japanese point of view, the Kamikaze pilots were heroes of the highest order, sacrificing their lives for their homeland. If the Kamikazes could have delayed the end of the war, there is a good chance that the Japanese wonder weapons, that would have been ready in a couple of years, could have thwarted any invasion. President Truman, knowing about some of this, decided that the atomic bomb was the only way to save American lives. Even he didn't know of the extent of the hidden weapons at the time.