Axis Mega-weapon: WW2 Kamikaze

     One of the Axis mega-weapons, out of many, was the kamikaze. Kamikaze was a Japanese pilot group that would make suicide missions in the hope to sink enemy ships. The Japanese usually made their suicide missions in their zero, but several weapons were made for the kamikaze.

       Japan had captured the Philippines and then began fighting America. Because they had pulled America into the war, it began liberating the Philippines. What this meant for the Japanese is that they would soon loose trade with the Philippines. Japan didn't have a great air force so they decided to make the Kamikaze to crash into the ships in the fleet and would hopefully sink the ships. To make a bigger explosion, they attached a 500 LB. bomb to the fuselage. When the airplane hit, it would act as a bomb and double the explosion with the bomb on the bottom.   

      The Japanese were very ritualistic and traditional. It was a shame for the Japanese if they could not die for their country. It came from the Samurai time period. The Samurai would either die in battle or commit suicide if they came back alive. When the "inventor" of the kamikaze asked a soldier to act as a suicide pilot he didn't turn the offer down because he would be a disgrace if he did turn it down.









      Like I said before the kamikaze were suicide pilots but most of these pilots were teenagers.  The pilots would crash into destroyers and cruisers but especially aircraft carriers. The man who came up with the kamikazes was really a nut. He was destroying the air force further than it already was and destroying the soldiers. It would be like lining up a whole bunch of soldiers and shooting them and bombing some air bases.

    
     They were helping the enemy and sometimes not even sinking the ships that they hit. There still was not enough of an explosion so they came up with two other kamikaze tools: 1. The Ohka 2. The Kaiten torpedo these two tools seemed to be the answer to their questions, but still they were downsizing their military. In the following few paragraphs I will try to explain these to kamikaze weapons. 

     The Ohka was a giant missile made to be directed by a small pilot. There would be a 4-5 FT. warhead in the front, a driver would sit in the middle, and there would be a flammable fuel in the back. These missiles were usually dropped from a heavy bomber. It had a jet power system in the back which was operated as follows: fuel would be fed into three tubes in the back. When the air would come in the fuel would ignite and shoot out the back. This would shoot it at a speed of 250-300 MPH. In the first Ohka mission, the missile hit the ship square in the middle. This made the leader of the campaign very pleased so he sent more Ohkas out to see.

   
     The Kaiten was a forty-eight FT. long torpedo. That is about the height of a three story house. This had a similar design to the Ohka except it was a lot bigger. When the first Kaiten exploded the Japanese thought that they had sunk five ships because there was such a huge explosion. The thing about the Kaiten was that it never left a trail behind it so the Americans could not see it.
     The Kamikaze time period was a sad time and it gave the Japanese a great military disadvantage. We should always remember the people who died in this campaign.