After the
fall of Saipan in July, 1944, Admiral Takijiro
Onishi, commander of 1st Air Fleet in the Philippines, created
the Special Attack Groups of suicide dive-bombing
pilots known as kamikazes. Young men were inspired to volunteer as
they wished to die for their country. Pilots were trained in just
over a week to fly their modified Mitsubishi
A6M fighters.
The first
kamikaze attack on enemy warships first took place in the struggle
for the Philippines in 1944. Kamikaze
pilots aimed at the central elevator on carriers and the base of the
bridge on large warships. As they had to fly at low altitudes they
were very vulnerable to anti-aircraft guns.
During
April 1945 kamikaze pilots under Admiral Soema
Toyoda launched 1,400 suicide missions as part of Operation
Ten-Go. It is estimated that these suicide pilots sunk 26 ships
during this campaign. More than 2,000 kamikaze missions were also
flown against the US fleet at Okinawa
(April-July 1945). By this time the US Navy
had learnt how to deal with kamikaze attacks and few ships were hit.
Kamikaze
pilots continued to be active until the dropping of the atom
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Admiral Takijiro Onishi, commander of
the Special Attack Group, committed
suicide when he heard that Emperor Hirohito
had surrendered.
(1)
Manchester Guardian (19th April,
1945)
The Japanese Air Force is showing signs of real
weakness after the loss of 2,280 planes in the last month
to Allied carrier-based aircraft. Old training planes, with 16-year-old
pilots, were among the suicide aircraft which made recent futile attacks
on the Allied Fleets.
It is significant that
not a single fighter rose to intercept 150 Super Fortresses which
swept over airfields today in the fourth assault on the Japanese homeland
in five days.
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