Oct. 25, 1944: First kamikaze attack of the war begins
Sixty-three years ago, on this day in 1944, during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, the Japanese deploy kamikaze ("divine wind") suicide attacks against Allied warships for the first time. It will prove costly--to both sides.
This decision to employ suicide attacks against Adm. Bull Halsey's US fleet at Leyte, an island in the Philippine archepeligo, was based on the failure of conventional naval and aerial engagements to stop the American offensive.
The first kamikaze force was in fact composed of 24 volunteer pilots from Japan's 201st Navy Air Group. The targets were U.S. escort carriers*; one, USS St. Lo, was struck by a Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" fighter and sunk in less than an hour, killing 100 Americans. More than 5,000 kamikaze pilots died in the three week battle off the island resulting in the sinking of 34 American ships."I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash-dive attacks with our planes.... There will be more than enough volunteers for this chance to save our country." -- Capt. Motoharu Okamura, Imperial Japanese Navy
USS St. Lo in its final hour after suffering a kamikaze attack
For their kamikaze raids, the Japanese employed both conventional aircraft and specially designed planes, called Ohka ("cherry blossom") by the Japanese, but Baka ("fool") by the Americans, who saw them as acts of desperation.
Baka/Ohka. The nose was packed with TNT and the contraption was powered by a crude rocket engine which was fired-up after being released from its mother bomber. No landing gear required because it was a one-way affair.
The Baka was a rocket-powered aircraft that was carried toward its target attached to the belly of a bomber and released a few miles from the target vessel. In a sense, it was among the world's first air launched cruise missiles.
Incidentally, the Nazi's had developed similar technology, but their system involved flying an explosives-packed glide bomb to its target by radio control from the "mother" aircraft, thus avoiding loss of a pilot.
Henschel Hs 293 Air-to-Ship, Wireless Guided, Gliding Bomb carried by a Dornier 217
All told, more than 1,321 Japanese aircraft crash-dived their planes into Allied warships during the war in desperate efforts to reverse the growing Allied advantage in the Pacific.
Aftermath of a kamikaze attack aboard a Royal Navy carrier
US nurses surveying what was left of a kamikazi aboard their US hospital ship. Kamakazi's didin't mind attacking ships emblazoned with big honking red crosses indicating they were hospital ships and thus not legal targets under the Geneva Convention.
US hospital ship. Painted a dazzling white, with a broad green stripe all the way around and ginormous red crosses. They could not be attacked under the Convention.
While approximately 3,000 Americans and Brits died because of these attacks, the damage done did not prevent the Allied capture of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
Near miss. The only defense was to try to blast the thing to smithereens with AAA before it could make impact. Alternatively, if the cockpit could be shot-up and the pilot killed, that would work too.
* "escort carriers" were smaller, less capable aircraft carriers than the big fleet carriers around which battle groups were organized. They were called "escort" carriers because they were designed to "escort" flotilla's and/or convoys of merchantmen to provide a degree of aerial surveillance and support against submarine and air attack.
Typical escort carrier
Originally Posted by SoonerStormchaser
