Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

WAR AGAINST JAPAN
TABLE 8-1
Japanese Aircraft Losses during Frontline Operations
Dec 1941-Apr 1942 1,100 Central Pacific 3,000
Dutch East Indies 1,200 Southeast Asia
Midway / Aleutians 300 (after May 1942) 2.200
China/Manchuria 2,000 2d Philippines
Solomons/Bismarcks/ Campaign 9,000
New Guinea 10,000 homeland defense 4,200
Total 40.000
man baka guided missiles, kamikazes attacked ships, rammed B-29s in
midair individually, and crash-landed on enemy airfields. American analysts
have called the kamikazes “the single most effective air weapon
developed by the Japanese,” and have assessed the decision to ascribe
so much emphasis to special-attack tactics as “a coldly logical military
For suicide missions, the Japanese Army deemed that at least 70 flying
hours were necessary for pilots. Yet, in practice, some of the Army’s
kamikaze pilots had less than 10 hours of experience aloft. The Japanese
Navy felt that 30 to 50 hours were sufficient if training planes were used for
the attacks. Dive bombing was the tactic nearest to orthodox instruction.
During the winter of 1944-45 and the spring of 1945, all regular training was
halted in favor of suicide-pilot preparation. Expendable, low-powered
trainers proved maneuverable, cheap to build, and fairly easy to fly.
Because the training planes carried bomb loads of merely 50 to 250 kilograms,
however, they were often loaded with extra gasoline to enhance
flammability, and hand grenades were sometimes heaped around the pilot
in the cockpit. The Japanese failed to heed the advice of technicians who
recommended that a more powerful explosive weapon was needed to sink
large
In the second Philippines campaign in 1944-45, the Japanese launched
650 suicide missions against ships, with a 26.8 percent effective rate of hits
or damaging near misses (2.9 percent sinkings). As the fighting progressed,
the scale of the suicide effort increased steadily. But the kamikaze campaign
was still experimental, and the Divine Wind losses amounted only to
approximately 16 percent of the total of IJAAF and IJNAF aircraft losses
in combat.7x
After American forces invaded Okinawa on April 1, 1945, it became
apparent that the Japanese would counter by trying to saturate the skies
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