Citation

Correll JT. Air Force Mag. 2015; 98(8): 56-61.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, United States Air Force Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

As Japan entered the final year of World War II in the fall of 1944, its once-fearsome air forces were severely diminished, especially the carriers and aircraft of the imperial Japanese navy. The A6M Zero fighter had lost its quality edge to the US Navy's FGF Hellcat and F4U Corsair and the Army Air Force's P-38 Lightning. Experience and training levels fell as Japan's best pilots were killed in action. The chosen solution and a standard tactic for the last 10 months of the war, was suicide attacks in which land-based Japanese aircraft crash-dived into American ships. The attacks and the airmen who flew them are known to history as kamikaze, named after the 'Divine Wind' typhoons that dispersed the Mongolian invasion fleet of Kublai Khan in the 13th century. The kamikaze sank a total of 33 ships, none of them full-sized carriers or battleships, and damaged 286. The first kamikaze unit was formed October 20, 1944, by Vice Adm. Takijiro Onishi, commander of the First Air Fleet, which owned all of the land-based fighters in the Philippines. Twenty-six ordinary A6M Zero fighters were assigned to the special attack unit, half of them to the crash-dive mission and half as escorts for the suicide planes. The Zeros found the St. LO ship which was the target, climbed to 5,000 feet, and dived into the attack. Several of them were shot down, but the last one crashed into St. Lo, broke through the flight deck, and exploded its bomb. St. Lo sank 20 minutes later.

Language: en

Keywords

Ships; Philippines; Suicide attacks; Military operations; Aircraft accidents; Air force; World war II; Air fleet; Aircraft crash; Fighter aircraft; Flight decks; Mongolians; Training aircraft; Warships