The national Japanese way of destroying tanks is to manually bring in an artillery shell and hit the armor with it. “Lack of weapons is not an excuse for defeat,” said Lieutenant General Mutaguchi.
On Saipan, the Japanese marched into the last battle, supporting the cripples, who had been raised for an honorable death in battle, under the arms. 300 bedriddens were stabbed beforehand.
25-year-old Hajime Fuji was one of the first to come running to enroll in the kamikaze, but unexpectedly received the stamp "Denied" due to the presence of his family. Returning home, he told his wife about his grief. The faithful took this as a guide to action and that same night stabbed herself and her one-year-old children, whispering at last: “Go. I am no longer a hindrance for you. " History is silent about what then happened to Hajime Fuji, but the Japanese command classified that case in order to avoid numerous relapses.
The Japanese pilots who were shot down and found themselves in the water threw grenades into the boats of American rescuers, there is a case when a Japanese soldier who woke up after an operation first of all killed a doctor who was bent over him.
Since the defeat of the Mongols in the 13th century, invaders have never set foot on the sacred land of Japan. And if this time defeat is inevitable, the Japanese nation will die along with its country, turning into a myth about a proud people who died undefeated.
The streets of Japanese cities were filled with glee - the slogans "Ichioku gyokusai" (100 million die together a glorious death) and "Ichioku Ichigan" (100 million, like one bullet) swayed everywhere in the wind. By October 1944, the Japanese government had prepared a detailed suicide plan for the entire nation called "Sho-Go". To be completely honest and fair, this delusional document signed by the Emperor should be displayed next to the memorial to the victims of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima.
- suggested the commander of the military district of Chubu.
- said the deputy optimistically. chief of the main naval headquarters, Admiral Onisi.
Despair wind
From a military point of view, the outcome of the war in the Pacific was a foregone conclusion in June 1942, when a Japanese squadron of 4 aircraft carriers was killed on the outskirts of Midway Atoll. Feeling the heady taste of victory, the Americans began to break down the Japanese defensive perimeter in the Pacific Islands with triple strength - the war, to the horror of the Japanese leadership, turned into a protracted conflict with a predictable end. Japan, due to lack of resources, was doomed to defeat.
From a common sense point of view, it is time to end the senseless carnage. But it was impossible to stop the launched mechanism of the war - 1943-1944 - the Americans methodically "grind" the Japanese units. They did not stand on ceremony with those who tried to resist - they drove a dozen battleships and aircraft carriers to the shore, and poured down on the heads of the unfortunate samurai many days of incessant leaden rain.
The gallant American marines who burst into the Kwajalein Atoll did not find a single whole tree on the island, and from the smoking craters, accidentally surviving Japanese soldiers looked sadly at them - deaf and mad from two weeks of artillery barrage. British expert Commodore Hopkins, who was aboard the battleship "North Caroline" during the bombing of Kwajalein, noted the amazing standards of living and nutrition of American sailors - under the roar of guns, sailors who were not on duty ate fruit, juices, soda and even ice cream with gusto.
The situation when you bleed out the last drops of blood and your opponent is quietly sipping lemonade usually happens when a junior high school student has a fight with a school boxing champion. To fight in such conditions by conventional methods becomes senseless.
One way flight
By the fall of 1944, the Imperial army and navy lost all ability to resist: almost all aircraft carriers and battleships fell to the bottom, the best sailors and pilots were killed, the enemy seized all important raw material bases, and disrupted Japanese communications. There was a threat of the capture of the Philippines, the loss of which turned into a catastrophe - Japan was left without oil fields!
In a hopeless attempt to hold the Philippines, Admiral Onishi decided to use his last weapon - the fanaticism of his subordinates and their willingness to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their country.
As a result, the Japanese were the first in the world to create a long-range guided anti-ship missile. Various flight algorithms, an attack at extremely low altitude or a sheer dive on a target, anti-aircraft maneuvers, interaction in a group flight, accurate target selection … the best control system is a living person. Real "narrow-eyed bombs"!
On October 21, 1944, the first kamikaze plane crashed into the superstructure of the cruiser Australia. The attack was not entirely successful - the bomb did not explode, however, 30 people of the team, including the commander, were killed. After 4 days, the Australian cruiser again rammed the suicide, after which the ship left the war zone. Returning after repairs, he again came under kamikaze attacks - in total until the end of the war, the flagship of the Australian fleet received six "narrow-eyed bombs", but was never sunk.
Suicidal ramming in desperate situations was practiced by the pilots of all belligerent parties without exception. According to incomplete data, Soviet pilots during the Great Patriotic War made about 500 air rams, everyone remembers the feat of Captain Gastello. According to numerous eyewitnesses, Hauptmann Steen tried to ram the cruiser Kirov on his burning Junkers during the raid on Kronstadt on September 23, 1941. There are documentary footage showing the damaged Aichi D3A bomber crashing into the superstructure of the Hornet aircraft carrier (Battle of Santa Cruz Island, 1942).
But only in Japan, at the end of the war, this process was organized on an industrial scale. Suicidal attacks have gone from spontaneous decisions of dying heroes to popular entertainment. The psychology of the "kamikaze" was originally a cult of death, which radically differed from the psychology of Soviet pilots, who, having shot all the ammunition and chopped off the tail of the "Junkers" with the propeller of their "hawk", still hoped to stay alive. A living example is a case from the combat career of the famous Soviet ace Amet-Khan Sultan, who with a sharp roll broke through the side of the Junkers, but got stuck with his wing in a burning German plane. Nevertheless, the hero managed to escape safely.
There was no shortage of suicide bombers in Japan - there were many more people willing than planes. How were the scumbags recruited? Ordinary impressionable students who read heroic books about the samurai code of honor "bushido". Some were motivated by a sense of superiority over their peers, a desire to excel and “become a hero”. It must be admitted that the short century of "kamikaze" was filled with quite earthly joys - future suicides enjoyed untold respect in society and were revered as living deities. They were fed free of charge in traverns and were driven by rickshaws free of charge on their humps.
With pitchforks for tanks
According to the Japanese researcher Naito Hatsaro, as a result of "special attacks", 3,913 kamikaze pilots were killed, which sunk a total of 34 ships, and another 288 ships were damaged. Among the sunk ships there is not a single battleship, cruiser or heavy aircraft carrier.
The effectiveness of the "corps of special attacks", from a military point of view, was at a level just below the plinth. The Japanese stupidly bombarded the enemy with the corpses of their guys, while, according to statistics, two-thirds of them were destroyed by fighter barriers and the fire of naval anti-aircraft weapons while still approaching the target. Some lost their course and disappeared without a trace in the vastness of the great ocean. As for the man-torpedoes "kaiten" and boats loaded with explosives, their effectiveness was even lower than that of aircraft.
The most courageous hero was weak as a worm before the power of modern technology. Kamikaze were unable to prevent the impending defeat of Japan, dying senselessly under fire from hundreds of radar-guided anti-aircraft guns. Given the number of American, British, Australian and New Zealand ships operating in the Pacific Ocean, it should be recognized that the damage from the kamikaze was comparable to a pin prick. For example, on October 25, 1944, a "narrow-eyed bomb" detonated the American escort aircraft carrier Saint-Lo, one of 130 escorts built in America during World War II. The US Navy suffered irreparable losses.
There were also much more serious cases: in May 1945, the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill was severely damaged. As a result
double kamikaze attack, his entire wing - 80 aircraft - burned down, and almost 400 crew members died in the fight against fires!
However, Bunker Hill was one of 14 Essex-class heavy aircraft carriers in the war zone. Another 5 ships of this type were undergoing exercises off the coast of the United States and another 5 were on the slipway. And to replace the aging "Essex" was already built twice the size of the super-aircraft carriers of the "Midway" type … Rare single successes of the Japanese daredevils could no longer correct the situation.
As Admiral Onishi predicted, the kamikaze attacks did have a great psychological impact on the enemy. The Americans unlearned to drink orange juice carefree during the hostilities, in some cases the crews had bouts of cowardice - the surviving sailors from the crew of the destroyer "Bush", twice attacked by the kamikaze, threw themselves overboard and swam in horror away from the ship, just not to get hit by another the blow of the insane suicide bombers. The nerves of the people broke down.
Although sometimes the psychological effect of Japanese suicide attacks turned out to be the opposite. During the battle at Fr. An Okinawa kamikaze broke through to the battleship Missouri and crashed on its armored belt, flooding anti-aircraft gun # 3 with burning fuel. The next day, a ceremony of burying the remains of the pilot with military honors took place on the ship - the battleship commander William Callaghan considered that this would be an excellent lesson in courage and patriotism for his crew.
The last kamikaze attacks took place on August 18, 1945 - at 14 o'clock on the way to Vladivostok, the Taganrog tanker was attacked by a single plane, but the anti-aircraft gunners famously dealt with the air target. Around the same time, in the area of Shumshu Island (Kuril Ridge), a Japanese kamikaze rammed the KT-152 minesweeper (the former Neptune seiner with a displacement of 62 tons), the minesweeper was killed along with a crew of 17 people.
But even in the scary story of the kamikaze, there were a couple of optimistic moments. The first took place on December 7, 1944 - on that day, 5 kamikazes in a row hit the small destroyer Makhon in a few minutes. The ship, of course, collapsed into pieces and sank immediately. But what is surprising - after 5 powerful explosions out of 209 people of the team, 200 survived!
The second story is connected with the "unlucky" kamikaze - non-commissioned officer Yamamura. Three times he tried to “become a hero”, but three times he “screwed up”, and, as a result, he happily survived until the end of the war. The first time his plane was shot down right after takeoff, Yamamura landed on the water and was picked up by fishermen. The second time, he simply did not find the target and returned with a sad look to the base. On the third time everything went like clockwork … until the very last moment, when the coupling mechanism jammed and its Oka jet projectile could not separate from the carrier.
Epilogue
As it became clear later, there were quite adequate and prudent people in the leadership of Japan who were not at all eager to do hara-kiri to everyone. Speaking of the "honorable death of 100 million Japanese", they only used the resource of fanatical manpower for as long as possible. As a result, in the battles in the Pacific, Japan lost 1.9 million of its devoted sons. Thanks to the bestial attitude towards human life, the irrecoverable losses of the Japanese military were 9 times higher than the American ones.
Already from August 16, 1945, the militant pressure of the samurai began to subside, everyone somehow gradually forgot about the planned "mass suicide" and, as a result, we can see the amazing country of Japan, which is already living in the 21st century.
The Japanese, to their credit, are very disciplined, talented and honest people. If in China dangerous criminals are shot, then in Japan the guilty themselves throw themselves on the rails in the subway - the thought of his oversight is so intolerable for a Japanese. It is a pity that such capable and devoted people ended up in the hands of scoundrels who, guided by their own calculations, sent them to certain death.
