Allied kamikazees?

the odds for allied airmen surviving their time serving on bombing missions over Europe were kind of grisly, with something like a 25 percent chance of surviving your service in that capacity.

apparently, allied bombings over Europe seemed to kill maybe three or four people for every airman lost in that service.

In a way, I kind of wonder how "guided" crashes weren't more commonplace.
 
Japanese culture made suicide attacks easier to justify, but in the end, it was desperation that put the plans in motion. I recall reading a book on WWII IJAAF aces. It talked about one man who was trying to shoot down a British bomber over Burma. His machine guns jammed, which apparently he communicated to his flight mates through wing movements. He then rammed the bomber, killing both himself and it. His flight mates got a superior to apply for a medal for the late pilot, but it was turned down. The High Command did not want to encourage such tactics early in the war, since it wasted a good pilot and airframe.

When Germany and Japan finally used suicide pilots, they did so because it had become all too clear that the war was already lost. The only way I could see the US using such tactics is if many people thought the survival of the nation was at risk. I can only see it being done if Japan has some huge invasion fleet just off the west coast, and there are no army or navy units to stop them. Such a scenario is ASB.
 
Limiting it to the Pacific Theater, no. If we take all of WWII it is possible for the USSR to use this as a desperation tactic in the darker part of 1941. After they start winning they're no more likely to use this than the other Allies, as all the Allied armies appreciated the ultimately self-destructive nature of this tactic. And in all cases all had the ability to eschew it.
 
I could see an Italian air force ordering this on Allied naval ships once they realized how out classed their planes are. Whether they would choose to follow those orders though might be a different story.
 
Who needs kamikazes? Order following men are just as good.
RAF Bomber Command:
Muster of 125000
Losses
55573 - 44.4% KIA
8403 - 6.72+% WIA
9838 - 7.87+% POW (safe at last)
Total casualties just over 59% of available force
"they were as superstitious as medieval peasants"
It is very hard to avoid a feeling of utter disgust for the whole enterprise. Minister Speer spoke to the effect of Bomber Commands efforts in opening a second front and diversion of resources to defending populace and clearing the debris. I suppose it was the only way to take the fight to Germany. As regards to diversion of resources to defend Germany take note of this rather sick joke/statistic - bombing offensive cost Germany 30% of it's artillery output and 20% of it's output of heavy shells (they're bound to run out of ammo soon!)
The U-Boat arm exceeded this with roughly 75% KIA.
The USAF managed to do better on the whole with 25thou KIA, 26thou POW out of 350thou but attrition rates of over 10% per raid were not uncommon and the Ploesti raid in 43 for example was a very high cost op.
Operation Chariot the St Nazaire raid had a dreadful cost:
622 went out and 228 came back. One of the saddest things I ever heard was during the documentary screened on TV where commandos to be involved in the high risk operation were given the opportunity to back out, but none of them did!
Primosole bridge in Sicily featured a very high bodycount in a very small area - it cost a chunk of the 8th battalion of the Durham Light Infantry and 60% of defending German paratroopers their lives along with a company's worth of British paratroopers. The scene according to survivors was akin to a WW1 battle.
On the whole regarding suicide or not operations and actions it might be worth visiting the relevant websites and seeing exactly what a VC or a CMH was awarded for. The men who were awarded these were unlikely to be around to parade them.
 
Going back to the Doolittle raid, why didn't they just pull back and try again a few days later? Figure the message the fishing boat got off, after a few days the alert would die down. Try again from a different direction.
docfl
 
For western nations it would be an uneconomic as well as an ethically dubious action. Pilots were more valuable alive and in the sea where they could be rescued and fight another day. Japan only adopted the system when the quality of thier pilots and the availability of fuel made it the onloy way to strike back. It is hard to imagine Britain in that situation but still fighting on let alone the USA!

Russia is a more interesting possibility but the lack of big flashy targets obviously much more valuable than a plane and a trained pilot make it unlikely.

(As stated above a battleship on tracks might be worth attacking but even then I would think the Russians would prefer to use the plane to spot for artillary)
 
Kamikaze attacks increased when Japan lost a lot of its skilled pilots and needed a way to make the rookies more useful than they were as I recall, America has no shortage of time, funding, or skilled officers with which to make more skilled American pilots.

Combine that with the whole idea that nobody in their right mind is going to order American pilots to deliberately kill themselves in suicide bombing runs (parachute out before crashing a fully-loaded bomber into a Japanese vessel... maybe, but not a widespread tactic) if they expect to keep their job, and you see why this won't much happen.
 
For western nations it would be an uneconomic as well as an ethically dubious action.

Do you consider Germany do be a "Western" nation? There seems to be evidence that they did employ suicide planes, albeit on a very limited basis.
Wikipedia said:
The Leonidas Squadron, formally known as 5th Staffel of Kampfgeschwader 200 was a unit which was originally formed to fly the Fieseler Fi 103R (Reichenberg), a manned version of the V-1 flying bomb that was never used in combat because Werner Baumbach, the commander of KG 200, and his superiors considered it an unnecessary waste of life and resources, and preferred to use the Mistel bomb instead. However, from 17 April until 20 April 1945 (during the Battle of Berlin) thirty-five pilots of the Leonidas Squadron flew suicide sorties against Soviet bridges over the river Oder with little noticeable effect.

Pilots were more valuable alive and in the sea where they could be rescued and fight another day. Japan only adopted the system when the quality of thier pilots and the availability of fuel made it the onloy way to strike back. It is hard to imagine Britain in that situation but still fighting on let alone the USA!
I think this is the key. The use of suicide tactics isn't the product of German or Japanese culture, it is the result of a *very* desperate situation. I don't think there is any non-ASB way to have US kamikazes, not because the US culture would prevent it (although it would make it much less likely), but because the US is not going to be in a position whether the survival of the nation itself is in doubt. The USSR would be a good candidate, if the early war goes much worse. As a totalitarian state, they would find it easier to mount these kinds of attacks anyway.
 
The use of suicide tactics isn't the product of German or Japanese culture, it is the result of a *very* desperate situation.

Desperate situation see lots of unusual acts you don't normally see. However, you go too far when you claim the kamikaze attacks had nothing to do with Japanese culture.

You have 35 pilots in one specific battle that lasted 3 days only weeks before the war ending for Germany compared to thousands of kamikaze pilots used in a ongoing operations for almost a year and which would have continued had the atomic bomb not worked and the Allied invaded. The tradition of death before surrender and suicide preferable to dishonor is deeply embedded in Japanese history and culture (at that time), especially in the modified glorified bushido culture in the Japanese military at the time. Indeed, the kamikaze was very similar to the earlier banzai charges of the infantry when they were in similar unwinnable situations. In which case, we would need to increase the number of people from thousands to probably tens of thousands.

Even in the article about the Leonidas squadron it is mentioned that the origin had cultural connotations to Germanic myth glorified by Nazi propaganda in the kind of Wagnerian goetterdammerung usually associated with Hitler's last days. So there is a cultural element even there.

One might want to compare such desperate acts to other impossible stands like the Texas at the Alamo, but there is an important distinction. When confronted with that they could no longer resist, the Alamo defenders did surrender only to be massacred. They did not choose to die before surrender. Likewise, if you go to the Spartans at Themopylae, the Spartans did not intend to die hopelessly. They picked a defensive spot where their few numbers were not a disadvantage and only lost because the Persians found a secret way around it. The Spartans could have held out otherwise and won. Even though the Spartans stayed behind and died, it was not because they preferred death to retreat, but because they needed to do a rearguard action so that the other Greek contingents could escape. In these cases, no glorious romantic attachments to death were the cause of such stands where the purpose of the kamikaze was to commit suicide.
 
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