How effective were Kamikaze attacks during ww2?
- Thread starter Don Grey
- Start date
They were a good demoralizer against the Americans and good for propaganda for Japanese civilians. But for every successful kamikaze attack that managed to hit a US vessel and cause casualties, there were probably five or ten more that had been shot down before ever reaching their intended targets.
At the very least, I'll concede they were more effective than the Yamato, whose copious amounts of steel could've gone to several hundred kamikaze warplanes rather than just being sent to the bottom of the sea by US dive bombers.
At the very least, I'll concede they were more effective than the Yamato, whose copious amounts of steel could've gone to several hundred kamikaze warplanes rather than just being sent to the bottom of the sea by US dive bombers.
sharlin
Banned
I agree with Colour, great anti-morale weapon, its so hard to fathom that people were willing to kill themselves to try and kill you.
But as an effective weapon, i'd say they were varied with results, some hits did bugger all, others did horrific damage and killed hundreds of men. When it worked it worked horribly well, but other times it was just a sacrifice of men and machines for little or no gain.
But as an effective weapon, i'd say they were varied with results, some hits did bugger all, others did horrific damage and killed hundreds of men. When it worked it worked horribly well, but other times it was just a sacrifice of men and machines for little or no gain.
Snake Featherston
Banned
As propaganda and psychology, ineffective and effective. Ineffective in that it only further strengthens the already-unpleasant racist element of US WWII propaganda in this war, in psychology very effective as the WWII USA had no ability to fathom suicide bombing as a war tactic. From a military analysis? A waste of time.
The Sandman
Banned
Depends on how many non-kamikaze sorties the average pilot was expected to survive, I would think.
If that number is less than one, then kamikazes actually do make sense; if the pilot isn't expected to make it home from his first combat flight anyway, then why not build the mission profile around that assumption?
If that number is less than one, then kamikazes actually do make sense; if the pilot isn't expected to make it home from his first combat flight anyway, then why not build the mission profile around that assumption?
Yeah, considering how abysmally Japanese pilots often faired in the battles of 1944/1945, I wouldn't say kamikazes were such a bad idea from a strategic point of view.
Kamikazes scared the hell out of the sailors facing them. My FIL served on an AA gun crew aboard a light cruiser in the Pacific, spent his 21st birthday fighting off kamikaze attacks near the Home Islands. He said they worried about kamikazes far more than any other threat the Japanese could throw at them. The estimates of damaged/sunk ships and dead/wounded men due to kamikazes if an invasion was attempted were enormous.
Geon
Donor
Halsey
Admiral "Bull" Halsey stated after the war that the Kamikazees were the one Japanese weapon/tactic that truly terrified him. That says something about their psychological impact.
In the Ketsu-Go operation to defend the home islands the Japanese had thousands of Kamikazees ready to go, not just planes, but their "baka" bombs which would be launched from ground ramps, motorboats specially designed and packed with explosives, kaiten human torpedoes, and frogmen specially trained to hide under water with mines attached to bamboo sticks who would hide under water and wait for the landing craft to pass over them then blow themselves and the landing craft up.
This is one reason I am so glad we dropped the A-Bomb. Many here will disagree with me I am sure, but had we not done this, it occurs to me that just the initial landings would have been horrendous in the loss of life.
Geon
Admiral "Bull" Halsey stated after the war that the Kamikazees were the one Japanese weapon/tactic that truly terrified him. That says something about their psychological impact.
In the Ketsu-Go operation to defend the home islands the Japanese had thousands of Kamikazees ready to go, not just planes, but their "baka" bombs which would be launched from ground ramps, motorboats specially designed and packed with explosives, kaiten human torpedoes, and frogmen specially trained to hide under water with mines attached to bamboo sticks who would hide under water and wait for the landing craft to pass over them then blow themselves and the landing craft up.
This is one reason I am so glad we dropped the A-Bomb. Many here will disagree with me I am sure, but had we not done this, it occurs to me that just the initial landings would have been horrendous in the loss of life.
Geon
Geon hit it on the head. Kamikazes were _far_ more effective than conventional attacks by this point of the war. And the kamikaze attacks planned against Coronet and Olympic would have sent the casualty rate sky-high. Dropping the bombs and ending the war saved thousands of lives on both sides...
Depends on how you gauge effective. From late 1944 onward they were the only effective weapon the Japanese deployed, which makes them very effective. On the other hand they had about a 2% success rate, which is pretty lousy.
Kamikaze's caused more USN casualties than any other weapon.
Technically the Kamikaze aircraft, alongside their Kamikaze elements at sea (Kaiten and explosive boats) were basically in the same cathegory as guided weapons, like missiles and modern guided and homing torpedoes. The basical difference is their human ellement, which replaced the instrumental machinery in this matter.
Japan was not the only power to use such weapons, as in WW2 Italy already used explosive boats in 1940, although here the pilot was to eject at the latest moment, in order to survive himself. Germany too created some human guided weapons, but as far as is known, did not deploy these in combat. In the modern world the suicide bomb terrorist is basically the successor ot this idea as well.
Japan was not the only power to use such weapons, as in WW2 Italy already used explosive boats in 1940, although here the pilot was to eject at the latest moment, in order to survive himself. Germany too created some human guided weapons, but as far as is known, did not deploy these in combat. In the modern world the suicide bomb terrorist is basically the successor ot this idea as well.
Don Grey
Banned
Well the genocide says 14% but i dont have enough knowladge on the subject to claim otherwise hence the thread.
I saw a documentary a while back that suggested that the pilots who flew the kamikaze missions were considered expendable for reasons having to do with post war Japanese politics than any strategic purpose. That most of them were university students and were thus considered undesirable by Japans strategic thinkers. The idea was to kill them off just as much as to do damage to the US fleet.
I'd say that they weren't as effective as they could've been. It seems to me that the kamikazes mostly flew conventional aircraft, but didn't they also have designs for rocket planes explicitly built to target target ships? If they had built more of these and perfected them to some extent they may have had on their hands a reliable anti-ship missile. I can only imagine that it'd be a bitch to shoot down.
The original hit rate for suiciders was 1 in 6 (Leyte and Lingayen Gulf). At Okinawa, it went to 1 in 10 for a number of reasons-more effective interceptions, improved AAA on ships, and lack of pilot skills-by this time Japan's trained airmen were reserved for fighter combat and ordinary attack missions-Kamikaze raids did include conventional bombers on many occasions, and so on. The expected hit rate at Kyushu was estimated to be 1 in 12: still, that's a lot of damage. Okinawa saw 34 ships sunk and 288 damaged-a number beyond repair, with 5,000 sailors killed and 5,000 wounded: 10% of the USN's personnel casualties in the entire war. OLYMPIC-the attack on Kyushu, would've had higher casualties and numbers of sinkings-no question about it.
Kamikaze rauds were only truly successfull if the target area was saturates with Kamikazes. That is why, if the landings against mainland Japan ever tool place, that the Kamikazes would have a fair chance to cause lots if casualties. They would be able to launch from land bases and would only have to fly small dustances to their targets.
The USN kamikaze interception methods were simply too good in the OTL battles and the odds against the Japanesr. Early warning by radar, intercepts and very good AAA played a ceucual role in breaking up the kamikazes.
The USN kamikaze interception methods were simply too good in the OTL battles and the odds against the Japanesr. Early warning by radar, intercepts and very good AAA played a ceucual role in breaking up the kamikazes.
I think you'll recognise that every nation has used kamikazes.
If your side does it it's heroic self-sacrifice, if the enemy well....inhuman fanaticism.
There's a famous image of the IJN Mogami with a US aircraft draped across a turret...the plane was hit so the pilot thought..."What the hell".
I know that's different to specifically recruited suicide squadrons, but many of the early daylight RAF raids with Blenheims and Wellingtons against Baltic naval targets were basically suicide, and the crews knew that. We'll not mention the Fairey Battles trying to drop the Meuse bridges in May 1940, or the swordfish crews trying to strike the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the Channel dash.
How about the Devastator torpodo bombers at Midway?
Even in modern times, the crews of the RAF V-Bomber force knew that they were on one-way missions...the French Force de Frappe Mirage nuclear bombers were not even theoretically capable of returning to friendly countries post-strike.
I think they were all heroes, Japanese and Allied alike
If your side does it it's heroic self-sacrifice, if the enemy well....inhuman fanaticism.
There's a famous image of the IJN Mogami with a US aircraft draped across a turret...the plane was hit so the pilot thought..."What the hell".
I know that's different to specifically recruited suicide squadrons, but many of the early daylight RAF raids with Blenheims and Wellingtons against Baltic naval targets were basically suicide, and the crews knew that. We'll not mention the Fairey Battles trying to drop the Meuse bridges in May 1940, or the swordfish crews trying to strike the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the Channel dash.
How about the Devastator torpodo bombers at Midway?
Even in modern times, the crews of the RAF V-Bomber force knew that they were on one-way missions...the French Force de Frappe Mirage nuclear bombers were not even theoretically capable of returning to friendly countries post-strike.
I think they were all heroes, Japanese and Allied alike
sharlin
Banned
The difference between the Fairy battle pilots or Stukas attacking without escorts over england or anything like that but the Kamikaze was that they wanted to do their job and return home, they wanted to survive, despite nigh impossible odds, they still wanted to get home.
The Kamikaze pilots didn't want to get home, they went out expecting to die, not because of technical or technological differences, but because they were going to kill themselves.
There's a difference between bravery and suicide and thats what threw the US sailors so much.
The Kamikaze pilots didn't want to get home, they went out expecting to die, not because of technical or technological differences, but because they were going to kill themselves.
There's a difference between bravery and suicide and thats what threw the US sailors so much.
This link is a first person account of a USN Automatic Weapons Officer on the USS Idaho.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/DamnNeck/index.html
He talks about dealing with Kamikazes.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/DamnNeck/index.html
He talks about dealing with Kamikazes.