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.

Weapons that Changed the World

     Weapons are made in many shapes and sizes. In World War 2 the age of wooden ships and cannons firing iron balls changed. There was a birth of many new weapons:
-The tank
-The airplane
(There are more but I'll only talk to you about these for now)
     In this time I would like to show you how these weapons changed the war and the world.

                                               

     The tank above is called the M4 Sherman. This tank was our tank and is numbered with the top 10 tanks of WW2. This tank is a good  tank but it has some things that were critical during the war and were not good. The first thing was: It started on fire easily. When you are riding out to battle in this 67,000 LB. weapon you wanted it to be very reliable . When you have shells flying right at you, you wouldn't want your tank starting on fire when a shell hits your magazine. Most tanks would explode if a shell hit their magazine but they also had thick armor to shield it from the explosion, which brings me to my second point: the Sherman didn't have thick armor. When you are riding out to battle you don't want your armor to get pierced from strafing aircraft. The thing this tank did have was good fire power. If I had a choice, I would not ride in a Sherman. My choice would be the T-34 which I'll talk about next.   

The T-34 is wonderful tank because it didn't have anything the Sherman had except the exceptional gun power. It had slanted sides so that on-coming shells would bounce off. It had thick armor but not the so thick that it would slow it down this tank had a speed of 31 MPH yet it was the equal of the German Tiger 1, one of the best tanks of the war.  

     This big tank was a monster and struck fear in everyone besides for the T-34. This had 6- inch armor in the front and half that much in the back. It had amazing gun power and also the slanted sides. Some Sherman commanders refused to fight this tank because it was like committing suicide. One tactic they had was to sneak to the back of the tank and shoot there, where the armor is thinner, but sometime that didn't even work.

They made many different tanks for different purposes. Some were used as mine diggers,others were used for: flamethrowers, basic cannons, ramp carriers and some just carried machine guns. Now days, we have one tank for many different purpose. You can see how today's tanks are different even in the feats they can do. 

     Planes played a bigger part in the war then tanks. They were used to almost level Germany and Italy. Airplanes like these two (above) were used to strafe Germany and Italy with tons of bombs.The B-17 (plane on the left) was Britain's plane. It was very effective plane but could only drop 17,000-20,000 LB. of bombs to the B-24 Liberator's 20,000-25,000 LB. of bombs. The problem with the Liberator is that it crashed very easily. I personally would like to fly in the B-17.

   So you see the difference from a WW1 plane (down below) to the well armored WW2 plane but still they had their problems and weren't that reliable.