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Bullockracing said:In terms of bang for the buck, and considering the resources the Japanese had at the time, I would say effective. If they tried to conduct conventional warfare using their aircraft, they would have been torn to shreds with little or, more likely, no effect.
evangilder said:Effective at creating fear, somewhat. But if only 14% of your attacking force makes it through to the intended targets, I wouldl not call that effective, just an aerial version of the Bansai attack. Yes, you can do some damage, but at tremendous cost.
timshatz said:Good posts all. Pretty much get to the point of the matter. The Kamikaze was the most effective method of damaging american ships to a military that was put of options (especially after the results in the Battle of the Phillipine Sea/Leyte Gulf which pretty much wiped out what remained of Japanese Airpower for IJN and most IJA units). However, slamming an airplane into a ship was not as effective as dropping a bomb as the bomb picks up inertia (and is streamlined to a greater extent) and penetrates deeper into the bowels of a ship to do damage. In short, the Kamikazes just weren't going fast enough to do lethal damage in a lot of cases. Against armor, they tended to bounce off (not so much the British carriers in this case as something like a Battleship).
syscom3 said:While the Kamikazi's "bombs" couldnt penetrate into the bowels of a cruiser or battleship, against smaller targets like destroyers and transports, it didnt matter.
Plus having a few hundred gallons of gasoline ignite and burn on the deck was just as devestating. On several carriers, the burning gasoline managed to ignite secondary fires and also cause destruction.
Hunter368 said:I do agree with you for the most part. The only part I will talk about is that the Japanese still did have a fair number of planes on mainland Japan for the final fight, if it ever came to it. I don't have that number right now but I have read about it several times and they still had thousands of planes (and pilots) ready for kamikaze attacks vs any invading force. If it ever came down to it, the final invasion would of been very bloody for both sides.
Twitch said:Interesting points of view form various perspectives. Great stuff guys!
Tomshatz- they had over 12,000 combat aircraft that we didn't even know existed built in caves and underground facilities. We thought there were less than 2,000. Another thing that evaded intel were 9,200 shinyo kamikaze speed boats and a few hundred kaiten minisubs.
As one fellow on a carrier mentioned to me "As big as a carrier is, when the Jap kamikazes were coming in it wasn't big enough to run to a safe spot."
But I agree, a huge loss of life with negligable results.
Bullockracing said:In concept, one pilot and plane taking out 1000 men and a ship is a pretty good return on your investment. Fortunately (or unfortunately for the Japanese) in practice that wasn't the case, due to mitigating factors...
His words were very true..."No ******* has ever won a war by dieing for his country; he won it by making that poor dumb ******* die for his..."