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syscom3 said:Well they were effective enough that the USN was very concerned about them.
During the planned invasions, the havoc they would have incurred on the lightly protected transports and amphib vessels would have been enormous.
timshatz said:It's been a long time since I read deeply into Operation Downfall and what it entails. But I would be amazed if there was not some type of deception plan to "falsestart" the defenses (specifically the Kamikazes) before the actual invasion. Something along the lines of a feint or fake invasion (along the lines of the fake paratroopers dropped on D-Day and the advancing dummy radar targets at Calais) to confuse the Japanese. A kamikaze is probably the ultimate in "fire and forget" weapons. And, give the training of the pilots, experience level and general confusion, once they were up, they were probably pretty much gone (at least by late 45).
Communications would've been horrible. And even in places where communications have been good, rumors and false reports would've gotten everyone going (something like the false alarms the British had in late sumer 1940 with the Church bells being the signal for the invasion). Given the gaps in contact with higher ups, any report would be difficult to counter. And the Allies may not've done just one feint, but many. The idea being to confuse and disorient as well as lull. Any of the those affects would be acceptable.
But even with feints, the invasion would've been a bloody affair. Just too many machines and weapons, operated with too much skill and too much dedication on all sides to have anything else happen. If the invasions previous to Downfall would've been "Mini-Stalingrads" as one historian once said, the actual Invasion of Kyushu would've been WORSE than Stalingrad.
Simba said:Kamikaze effective? Sure, it sank ships when conventional attacks couldn't because it was so difficult to deter a pilot who was totally focused on hitting his target. An aircraft that got through the defences was going to damage anything it hit to some extent.
But more effective still would have been the development of a naval air force that could secure air superiority sufficient to enable aircraft with stand-off missiles to range close enough to hit their targets and return safely to re-arm and repeat the process.
Whatever their effectiveness, those Special Attack pilots were brave boys.
<S>
Simba.
syscom3 said:The Japanese didnt have the technology to develope stand off missles.
And since the USN had dominating air superiority over the Japanese and shot them down by the hundreds, does that mean we employed disproportional force?
syscom3 said:The Japanese had figured out what the likely invasion beaches were going to be and planned a defense in depth strategy like they had for Okinawa and Iwo Jima.
Many people forget that Japan is a mountainous country and attacking forces would have to get funneled up valleys and ravines with the attendant risks.
syscom3 said:The Japanese strategy was to make the invasion as costly as possible.
Maybe even bloody enough to force a stalemate.
If there was a problem with the planning and logistics of the invasion, it was its shear size. You simply cannot play around with feints and stunts and hope that things will go according to plan.
syscom3 said:In the book "Downfall", the IJA knew that their mobility was going to be limited during the daytime, so whatever forces were in place, where essentially going to stay there.
Plus they werent going to commit the kamikazi's and suicide boats untill the invasion was under way.
And they never remark on Typhoon Louise. These things were discounted or swept aside and given less impact than they should since the A-bombs ended things differently. The silence helps perpetuate the myth of Allied invincibility
Twitch said:The invasion of Kyushu would have been nothing remotely like D-Day Europe and its 5 measly landing beaches. Operation Olympic had 35 beaches! Kyushu is 17,135 square miles and was honeycombed with underground, interconnected fortifications that made previous islands complexes look like child's play. They had underground aircraft hangars, kamikaze boats in coastal caves and nearly 1 million fighting men at the ready.
The dogged Iwo Jima campaign took place on the island of less than eight square miles in area for five weeks and cost 7,000 American and 22,000 Japanese lives. Okinawa is just 611 square miles and cost 12,000 American and 200,000+ Japanese dead (includes 100,000 civilians) during the 11-week fight. How long would it have taken to vanquish a million fighting men in an area 17,000 miles square?