Even to the pilots who had fought against overwhelming odds, the request was not received without a certain shock. The precarious position of the Japanese fleet and air groups in the Philippines was, however, well understood by every man. They fully knew how slight were the chances of staving off the anticipated American assaults. All the pilots unanimously agreed to the admiral’s request. Onishi designated the Zero groups which would engage in the suicide operations as the Kamikaze Tokubetsu Kogekitai (Kamikaze Special Attack Squad), after the Kamikaze (Divine Typhoon) which Japanese history records as having twice wrecked Kublai Khan’s powerful Mongolian invasion force attacking Kyushu in the thirteenth century.
While Onishi prepared his suicide squads, the Philippines resounded with the thunder of new battles. Kurita, Shima, and Ozawa rushed to the islands to attack the vulnerable American transports which even then poured men, tanks, guns, and supplies ashore on Leyte. On the twenty-fourth the great showdown began. American carrier planes sighted the long-sought battleship fleet of Vice-Admiral Kurita steaming at full speed for the waters east of Leyte Island. The enemy dive bombers, torpedo bombers, and fighters screamed in to attack in unending waves. Every ship put up a withering antiaircraft barrage, but even this shower of steel and fire did little to divert the attacking planes. Helldivers hurled their bombs at great speed into the battleships, and the lumbering Avengers, protected by Hellcat fighters all the way, slid their torpedoes into the water and sent them true to their mark. Before long the giant Musashi was a shattered hulk which, according to Captain Kenkichi Kato, the ship’s executive officer, had received at least thirty bombs and twenty-six torpedoes. Her crew attempted to beach her on Sibuyan Island, but the battleship capsized and sank, taking more than twelve hundred men with her. Heavy bombs smashed into the deck of the Yamato; despite the surface damage, the ship’s fighting power was unimpaired. The heavy cruiser Myoko staggered with a torpedo hit in her side and was put out of action. The battleships Haruna and Kongo were damaged, as were several other ships.
This was exactly what Onishi had forecast; without air superiority, even the two greatest warships ever built were helpless before the enemy carrier dive and torpedo bombers. By this time Onishi’s Zero pilots were beginning to regard the suicide attacks which they were planning as the only possible course to take. Conventional attack would produce nothing but a higher total for the American fighters and antiaircraft guns; nothing could be done against the granite-like defenses of the carrier task forces. On October 12 and 23, two Kamikaze Zeros with 550-pound bombs left their air bases on their first missions, but failed to find enemy carriers and returned.
Battered by the carrier plane attacks, Kurita withdrew his fleet from San Bernardino Strait, where he lay at the mercy of the enemy planes. In seven hours the Americans made more than two hundred and fifty sorties against his ships. Kurita felt that if he were to continue to attempt to force his way through the strait, he would merely offer the enemy planes an unexcelled opportunity to wipe out the remainder of his fleet. Later the same day, Kurita came about in the Sibuyan Sea and withdrew to the west; he would attempt to force a decisive last battle with the enemy ships on the twenty-fifth. Kurita did not retreat for long; the tough little admiral, stung by his defeat, soon turned and headed back toward San Bernardino Strait. As the darkness of the night faded, Kurita’s group of four battleships and other warships, groping their way through the strait without benefit of air search, blundered into an American group of six escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts. The light enemy force should not have had the slightest chance of survival, but they fought with amazing courage. Against Kurita’s heavy guns, they lost the Gambier Bay; when Kurita withdrew, the Hoel, Johnston, and Samuel B. Roberts were either sunk or on the way down, and the Fanshaw Bay, Kalinin Bay, Dennis, and Heermann had suffered crippling damage.
The battle—involving all three Japanese fleet units—was at its climax. On the morning of October 25, the Kamikaze Zeros led by Lieutenant Yukio Seki left on their first missions. One Zero plunged into the carrier Santee, exploding just forward of the deck elevator. Two others dove at the Sangamon and the Petrof Bay; our reports stated the ships were hit, but we learned later that defending antiaircraft fire caused the diving fighters to hit the water close by the ships. (A few minutes later, although Onishi was not aware of it at the time, one of our submarines put a torpedo into the damaged Santee.) The fourth Zero crashed into the carrier Suwannee, exploding in the ship’s hangar and causing heavy casualties, and severe damage. Before noon six other Zeros went into their final dives. The Zero plunging into the carrier St. Lo sent its bomb through the flight deck, which set off violent explosions. Another Zero crashed into the Kitkun Bay. Three Zeros attacked the Kalinin Bay; two of them exploded on the flight deck.
Less than thirty minutes later the St. Lo broke in two and sank. The escorting Zero fighters confirmed these hits. Onishi felt he was fully justified in the Kamikaze attacks, as illustrated in the case of the carrier St. Lo; this ship had escaped the eighteen-inch guns of the Yamato, and, like other American carriers, its planes had fought off our weak air attacks. A single Kamikaze destroyed the vessel.
This second battle of the Philippines demonstrated clearly that future attacks against the American warships, notably the carriers, would have to be performed by the Kamikaze planes, if Japan was to have even the slimmest opportunity for salvaging an effective defense of her homeland. Our Navy had suffered disastrously in the farflung sea-air battle, and we had lost the battleships Musashi, Yamashiro, and Fuso; the large carrier Zuikaku; the light carriers Chitose, Chiyoda, and Zuiho; the six heavy cruisers Atago, Maya, Chokai, Suzuya, Chikuma, and Mogami; the four light carriers Abukuma, Kinu, Tama, and Noshiro; and the eleven destroyers Wakaba, Yamagumo, Michishio, Shiranuhi, Uranami, Akitsuki, Asagumo, Hatsutsuki, Nowake, Hayashimo, and Fujinami.
In contrast, the American ships sunk were the light carrier Princeton, the escort carriers Gambier Bay and St. Lo, the destroyers Johnston and Hoel, and the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts.
Encouraged by the potentials of the Kamikaze attacks, Onishi hastily recruited his new suicide forces and modified the airplanes to be used. As his new units became available, they were thrown into the mounting battle against American warships and transports. As anticipated, we achieved results far beyond those possible through the orthodox method of attack. Not only the Zeros were used for the Kamikaze dives; as there arrived in the Philippines Val and Judy dive bombers and Frances twin-engined bombers, these were added to the roster of the suicide attack groups. Stimulated by Onishi’s success in the Kamikaze operations, Army air force units in the Philippines studied our planes and methods of operation. Soon the Navy groups were joined by the Army pilots and air crews in the increasing suicide bombings. Despite the high ratio of strikes against the American fleet forces, we could not prevent the enemy from invading the various islands. The initial carrier strikes against our airfields had accomplished their purpose; we did not have enough airplanes in the Philippines, even when employed for Kamikaze attacks, to thwart the American operations.
One of our most successful Kamikaze attacks occurred on November 25, 1944. Twenty-seven fighters and bombers were converging on an enemy carrier task force; a group of six Zeros and two Judys led by Lieutenant Kimiyoshi Takatake, on their way to join the other planes for the attack, sighted another carrier fleet. Escorted by six Zero fighters, the Kamikaze planes raced in to attack the enemy ships. The large aircraft carrier Essex was only lightly damaged, but our planes caused heavy damage to two sister carriers, as well as the small carrier Independence. Two of the six escorting fighters were shot down; the returning four provided confirmation of the attacks.
On January 25, 1945, our planes made the last Kamikaze attack in the Philippines. American troops fought savagely for, and won, a beachhead on Lingayen Bay in Luzon Island; during the landing operation we mounted the final Kamikaze assault with every available airplane.
Even this last maximum effort, while increasing the list of damaged and sunk enemy ships, could not prevent the Americans from effecting their invasion operations where and when they chose.
The table immediately below lists the types and number of planes used for the Kamikaze attacks:
As these figures indicate, the Zeros were used most often for Kamikaze attacks in the Philippines area; of the aggregate aircraft which left their bases, 74 per cent were Zeros; 79 per cent of all planes actually executing the suicide dives were Zeros. We maintained, separate of the Kamikaze groups, a minimum number of fighters which both guided and escorted the suicide planes to their targets and, of course, confirmed the results of these attacks. We employed an aggregate of 249 planes for this purpose, of which 238 were Zeros.
In January, 1945, after the bulk of the First Air Fleet transferred from the Philippines to Formosa, four Kamikaze attacks were made; two each on January 15 and 21.
Between October 25, 1944, when the Kamikaze pilots made their first successful attack, and January 25, 1945, we estimated that our suicide pilots inflicted from light to severe damage to at least fifty American vessels of all types. These included six large aircraft carriers, four of which were identified as the Intrepid, Franklin, Essex, and Lexington; the two small aircraft carriers Belleau Wood and Independence; and the escort carrier St. Lo. It was impossible at the time, of course, to determine specifically the names of those carriers our planes had struck, such as the Santee, Suwannee, etc., until corroboration could be received through American reports. Confirmation by our escorting Zero fighters was at best a questionable affair, because of the speed of the attacks, the fierce fighter and antiaircraft defenses, and the short period of time over the target area.
On January 21, 1945, the Formosa air base reported that one of its Kamikaze planes had scored a direct strike on the large American aircraft carrier Ticonderoga, setting the vessel afire, and that later another suicide plane dove into the burning ship, the explosion of the impact spreading the flames and causing heavy damage.
Although the first Kamikaze attacks occurred with the Zero fighter plane in October of 1944, the Navy had considered this “last chance” means of assault several months prior to the first suicide bombing. In the several months preceding the actual inception of Kamikaze attacks, the Navy studied various proposals for such raids from several sources within the organization. The first recommendation, in fact, for employing the Oka (Cherry Blossom) suicide plane was obtained from an Ensign Mitsuo Ota. In late 1943 and early 1944 Ota participated in the desperate battles waged by our land-and carrier-based air groups against the Americans, notably the hard-hitting, fast-moving enemy task forces. Later, caught in the overwhelming defeats in the Mariana and Caroline islands, defeats again inflicted by enemy carriers, Ota had an excellent opportunity to study at close hand the deficiencies of our attack methods. Clearly the only means of salvaging a war in which the enemy ravaged our most powerful bases with relative impunity was to destroy his weakest link—his carriers.
Ota proposed to his superiors that, since conventional level, dive, and torpedo bombing accomplished little against the American task forces other than an alarming loss of our planes, we achieve the accuracy required to destroy enemy warships through piloted bombs. The young ensign’s proposal met little opposition, and was pushed through official channels for high-level consideration. Those officers consulted on the new plan had little choice but to concur with the decision for suicide bombing; in a Navy which would not sanction defeat, and whose planes rarely could break through the defending screens of Hellcat fighters, suicide bombing provided the sole means of inflicting heavy damage upon, or sinking, the enemy capital ships.
In August of 1944 the Naval Air Research and Development Center instituted an emergency development program of special piloted glide bombs, which bore the first character of Ota, and which henceforth came to be known as the Marudai project. From late October to November we held accelerated flight tests of the new glide bombs. Tokyo established a new air corps charged with the mission of operating the Marudai weapons, and by the close of November pilot training was well on its way. Captain Motoharu Okamura, one of Japan’s most famous senior fighter pilots, became the corps commander; Okamura selected as his first fliers experienced fighter and dive-bomber pilots. Actually these pilots were selected prior to the first Kamikaze attacks in the Philippines. The selection was unnecessary, beyond the critical choices made by Okamura; volunteers poured in by the thousands for the new operation, despite the “special nature” of their future missions.
The new unit was designated Jinrai Butai (Corps of Divine Thunder). Even as they trained in their new, small piloted bombs, Japan received the news of the first Kamikaze attacks with Zero fighters in the Philippine theater. Frankly, the Jinrai Butai pilots were disappointed in that they had not led the first of the Kamikaze bombings.
Where the suicide-bombing Zero planes were limited by the 550-pound bombs they carried with respect to the damage they could inflict upon the enemy vessels, the Marudai glide bombs would carry a 2,640-pound warhead, powerful enough to sink even a large warship with one suicide plane. The first service glide bomb was designated the Oka Model II. The first production Oka (Cherry Blossom) bombs were to be assigned first to the Philippines, then Formosa, and last to Okinawa.
The Americans never realized that they had struck a telling blow against our initial operations with the glide bombs. In late November of 1944 the giant 68,000-ton aircraft carrier Shinano left Yokosuka on its maiden voyage. Aboard the converted Yamato-type battleship were fifty of the new Oka bombs. On November 29 the Shinano went to the bottom off Shio Point, south of Osaka, several hours after the enemy submarine Archerfish had put six torpedoes into the world’s greatest carrier. All fifty glide bombs were lost with the ship. Later in the war we shipped a number of Oka bombs to Formosa and Okinawa. During the savage fight for Iwo Jima island in February of 1945, we made several combat experiments with the Oka bombs, but failed to find an opportunity then in which we could determine the new weapons’ effect.
On March 21, 1945, the Okas were first used in actual combat. American carriers had stormed off Japan’s western shore, sending fighters and bombers out to attack our factories and cities with machine guns, cannon, rockets, and bombs. The task forces literally dared the Navy to do its worst. On the eighteenth, with the enemy fleets beginning their withdrawals, Vice-Admiral Matome Ugaki, Commander in Chief of the land-based Fifth Air Fleet and commander of all Navy airforce units in the Kyushu area, ordered Captain Okamura to attack the American carriers with his Oka bombs.
Lieutenant Commander Goro Nonaka led sixteen Type 1 Betty bombers, each carrying an Oka Model II, and two regularly armed Betty bombers from the Kanoya air base on Kyushu in search of the enemy carrier fleet. Thirty Zero fighters escorted the bomber formation; originally fifty-five fighters had been scheduled for the escort mission, but the preceding day’s battles resulted in the loss or damage of many fighters. Okamura’s staff felt that the thirty Zeros could not provide sufficient protection to allow the bombers to break through the defending Hellcats, but Admiral Ugaki ordered the attack to be pressed despite any opposition. Lieutenant Commander Nonaka led his planes over the open sea with little hope for his own personal survival. Three hundred miles southeast of Kyushu and only fifty nautical miles from the enemy carriers, it appeared as if he would actually have the opportunity to strike a hard blow at the fleet. Suddenly at least fifty Hellcat fighters screamed down to attack; the thirty defending Zeros fought a furious but futile battle. Shortly afterward every one of the eighteen bombers plunged into the ocean, as well as fifteen Zeros. The Hellcat “screen” still was too tough to break through.
The only other occasions during which Oka glide bombs were used against the Americans took place during the defense of Okinawa. A total of seventy-four Oka bombs left their bases; fifty-six Okas either were released from their mother planes, or were shot down wh
ile still attached to the carrying plane. Of this number we received confirmation of an Oka hit on April 16, and pilots reported many other successful suicide dives into enemy ships. However, in many cases our observation planes failed to elude the pursuing Hellcat fighters, and confirmation was at least quite questionable. Not until the war’s end did we receive definite reports that the majority of the Okas had in fact caused appreciable damage to the American warships and that, as was to be expected, the appearance of the piloted suicide bombs had a telling effect upon enemy morale.
The Americans had their own identification for the Oka bombs, giving the suicide planes the code name of Baka (stupid). Our officers regretted that they did not have the opportunity to employ the Okas on the scale originally planned; they felt that several hundred of these suicide gliders with their powerful warheads could have raised havoc with the American fleets.
During the last year of the war the Navy pressed development of Oka variations for suicide attacks. These included the jet engine propelled Oka Model 22; the turbojet-propelled Oka Model 33 and 43; the turbojetengined Kikka (Mandarine Orange Blossom); the pulse-jet Baika (Plum Blossom); and the Shinryu (Divine Dragon) glider, which utilized solid rockets for takeoff. Developing their own model from Navy types, the Army launched a program to build the all-steel Tsurugi (Sword), in which any type of reciprocating engine could be mounted; the Navy version of this plane was the Toka (Wisteria Blossom). However, even as the first test flights of the Kikka, Shinryu, and the Tsurugi began, the war ended.
Even as the Navy and the Army labored to perfect and to place in production the small, speedy, piloted bombs, the scene of Kamikaze operations with existing fighters and bombers shifted from the Philippines to the waters near Japan. In the defense of Iwo Jima Island in February of 1945 our pilots made several suicide attacks against the enemy carriers, with one strike confirmed.
Zero Page 32
