50 AH January 2016
Commander (later Admiral) John S. “Jimmy”
Thach, the kamikaze was “a weapon, for all prac-
tical purposes, far ahead of its time. It was actually
a guided missile before we had any such thing as
guided missiles. It was guided by a human brain,
human eyes and hands, and even better than a
guided missile, it could look, digest the informa-
tion and change course, thus avoiding damage,
and get to the target.”
For once America had come up against a
weapon it couldn’t roll off assembly lines. As
Thach put it: “Every time one country gets some-
thing, another soon has it. One country gets radar,
another soon has it. One gets a new type of engine
or plane, then another gets it. But the Japs have
got the kamikaze boys, and nobody else is going
to get that, because nobody else is built that way.”
Suicide tactics struck Westerners, who initially
believed every Japanese pilot had turned kamikaze,
as inhuman. Sonarman 1st Class Jack Gebhardt
of the destroyer Pringle, sunk in a kamikaze attack,
described it as “horrifying to try and comprehend
someone intentionally diving through a hail of
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killing themselves in a blinding explosion.”
Yet judging by their surviving letters and dia-
ries, kamikaze pilots were less fanatic than prag-
matic. They knew their odds of survival were
already slim. Vice Admiral Charles R. “Cat”
*ZW_V\PMVIaW]VOWٻKMZ[MZ^QVOIJWIZL\PMÆI\\WXEssex, noted the average fast-carrier task
force could bring to bear “over 1,600 guns to use
in its defense....6,000 bullets per second or just
under 200 tons of steel every minute....Even those
Japs who were not suicidially inclined grew to con-
sider an anti-carrier mission as almost automatic
enrollment in the Kamikaze Corps.” For kami-
kaze pilots, death went from probable to certain,
but also from anonymous to glorious. Onishi him-
self captured their mindset with a haiku: In blossom
today, then scattered; / 4QNMQ[[WTQSMILMTQKI\MÆW_MZ/
0W_KIVWVMM`XMK\\PMNZIOZIVKM\WTI[\NWZM^MZ?
He demanded, and got, every available airplane
sent to the Philippines. There was no shortage of
pilots, only experienced ones. Volunteers were
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IJW^M)UMZQKIVÅOP\MZ[KTQUJQVO\WQV\MZKMX\WZ
a low approach under radar before a pop-up and
dive; the former was more damaging, but the lat-
ter more often successful. They targeted a ship’s
bridge or the steering gear in the stern. Against
carriers, which even an exploding plane might not
sink, they aimed for the elevators, to cripple air
operations. Later they were taught to actually dive
under the waterline, using hydrostatic shock like
a depth charge.
By the end of November, the carriers Franklin,
Belleau Wood, Lexington, Hancock, 1V\ZMXQL, Cabot
and Essex had all been damaged. At the end of
December, the Liberty ship John Burke, loaded
with ammunition and hit by an Aichi D3A2
“Val” dive-bomber, utterly vanished in an explo-
sion approximately 60 percent as powerful as the
Hiroshima bomb; an Army supply ship convoying
behind it sank as well—two for one. On January
4, 1945, a twin-engine Yokosuka P1Y1 “Frances”
released a pair of bombs just before smashing into
the escort carrier Ommaney Bay, which was so
badly damaged by the triple hit that the Ameri-
KIV[ÅVQ[PMLQ\Wٺ\PMU[MT^M[?Q\PXTIVM[
the Japanese struck 137 ships, sank 22 and killed
more than 2,500 Americans.
Though impressed with the results, Emperor
Hiro hito inquired, “Was it necessary to go to this
extreme?”
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Majesty of this concern,” Onishi told his pilots.
“The evidence is quite conclusive that special
attacks are our only chance.” But with the Battle
of Leyte Gulf lost, so were the Philippines. Willing
to die, but not under American bombs, the kami-
kazes withdrew to save themselves for the next big
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the destroyer Maddox (later of fame in the Gulf of
Tonkin Incident) in two. The carrier Ticonderoga,
hit twice, was escorted from the battle zone by two
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out of action by just two aircraft, as surely as if they
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kazes scored a carrier trifecta, damaging Lungarelentless
Lieutenant Yoshinori
Yamaguchi points
his burning D4Y3 at
Essex’s flight deck on
November 25, 1944.
He killed 15 crewmen
and wounded 44
aboard the carrier.