# Could the Japanese\* have done better starting with kamikaze attacks? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 14, 2012, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653 "2012-09-14T01:36:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![prongo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/43a26b/32.png) [@prongo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/prongo)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2012, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/41 "2012-09-17T01:52:26Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Just speculating here, but I suspect that kamikaze pilots would also have been more difficult to recruit earlier in the war. Even considering Japanese cultural attitudes towards death, honor, etc., I would think that early in the war it would have been a lot more difficult to convince young men that it was necessary for them to take on suicide missions. I’ll add to this point about the difficulty of recruitment. My uncle was a Zero pilot during the war. I regret being too young to really ask about it before he passed away, but I do recall a bit about what he told Dad and I on our last visit to Japan. I got the impression that he was a fairly typical fighter pilot in that they were eager to fly and fight; not die in a questionable blaze of glory. He did say specifically that from what he saw, the only “eager” Kamikaze pilots were young, inexperienced rookies who were inundated with propaganda and filled with stories of duty and glorious deaths. The older vets thought it was a load of BS. He was asked to volunteer for Kamikaze duty and he said that his first thought was, “Are you crazy?? Why would I want to kill myself?” He then suggested to his commanding officer that he could better serve Japan by training all these new pilots instead. He was granted the transfer and served the rest of the war as an instructor in relative safety and survived to tell of it. He was quite a character really. Absolutely convinced he was invincible and drove his car like it was a fighter plane. Scariest car rides I ever had :eek: ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2012, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/42 "2012-09-17T03:48:34Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > They sunk three escort carriers, which is not insignificant. Escort carriers were the idea target, with all of the aircraft fuel and bombs on board made the subsequent fire too hot to contain. What he meant were capital ships of the line, the kind whose survival could easily decide the outcome of a battle. Escort carriers are secondary ships. If you kamikaze a modern battleship, you’ll probably kill a lot of sailors and officers and eventually neutralize its AA batteries. Then comes the ‘easy’ part: sink it with torpedoes. The Yamato and Musashi required at least 10 torpedoes each to bring them down, and only after dive bombers knocked their AA guns out. If you try to hit a fleet carrier, you’ll be up against its air cover (and those pilots are the best in the navy.) Its escorting ships will throw up a wall of flak against you. Fleet carriers are so well-protected you need at least to be at par in carrier power to touch them. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2012, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/43 "2012-09-17T08:02:01Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > What he meant were capital ships of the line, the kind whose survival could easily decide the outcome of a battle. Escort carriers are secondary ships. Exactly; not a single fleet carrier, light carrier, battleship, heavy or light cruiser that was hit by kamikaze attack was sunk. At a cost of 4,000 aircraft and pilots kamikazes only sank 47 ships, a large part of them vessels as small as PT-boats, ocean tugs, submarine chasers, Landing Craft Support (Large) and Landing Ship Medium. The loss of three escort carriers was certainly painful, but the significance should be weighted against the fact that the USN commissioned 122 escort carriers during the war. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2012, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/44 "2012-09-17T08:21:51Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > What he meant were capital ships of the line, the kind whose survival could easily decide the outcome of a battle. Escort carriers are secondary ships. > > If you kamikaze a modern battleship, you’ll probably kill a lot of sailors and officers and eventually neutralize its AA batteries. Then comes the ‘easy’ part: sink it with torpedoes. The Yamato and Musashi required at least 10 torpedoes each to bring them down, and only after dive bombers knocked their AA guns out. > > If you try to hit a fleet carrier, you’ll be up against its air cover (and those pilots are the best in the navy.) Its escorting ships will throw up a wall of flak against you. Fleet carriers are so well-protected you need at least to be at par in carrier power to touch them. It’s not really a fair comparison, as no battleships or fleet carriers were sunk by land based planes that late in the war. If you were going to use the tokkoutai effectively, it would be to take out the smaller ships. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2012, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/45 "2012-09-17T18:47:38Z")
The light carrier [Princeton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Princeton_(CVL-23)) was sunk by a bomb dropped by a D4Y Judy divebomber on October 24, 1944 the day before the escort carrier [St. Lo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_St._Lo_(CVE-63)) became the first escort carrier to fall victim to a kamikaze attack. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/46 "2012-09-18T00:49:31Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > The light carrier [Princeton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Princeton_(CVL-23)) was sunk by a bomb dropped by a D4Y Judy divebomber on October 24, 1944 the day before the escort carrier [St. Lo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_St._Lo_(CVE-63)) became the first escort carrier to fall victim to a kamikaze attack. OK, I stand corrected. That Judy got a lucky shot. However, I think that this shows the importance of pilot training, something which the tokkoutai program was unable to address. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/47 "2012-09-18T00:53:47Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > It’s not really a fair comparison, as no battleships or fleet carriers were sunk by land based planes that late in the war. If you were going to use the tokkoutai effectively, it would be to take out the smaller ships. That’s what makes it so self-defeating: small, unprotected, lightly armed ships can be attacked by light bombers without fighter escort. Why sacrifice the plane and pilot? ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/48 "2012-09-18T01:49:56Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > That’s what makes it so self-defeating: small, unprotected, lightly armed ships can be attacked by light bombers without fighter escort. Why sacrifice the plane and pilot? Initially, kamikaze attacks _were_ more effective than other attackers, and required a change in AA tactics. It’s been conclusively shown here that the answer to the OP is that the Japanese\* would have done considerably worse to start off with only suicide planes, but this does not mean that there would never be any case where it wasn’t. It may be possible that a cheaper plane could be flown with a less experienced pilot (however, I don’t know if that was ever carefully studied by the Japanese). The problem is also that they were running out of material and trained pilots. It was an act of desperation. ---
**Author:** ![D18](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@D18](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D18)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/49 "2012-09-18T12:03:34Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > \*Thanks to this board for letting me know that “Japs” is apparently offensive. It certainly ain’t here, and it’s what I would have used if I started this in another forum I’m not being snarky with this question; I’m genuinely curious. Where do you live that using the word “Jap” isn’t offensive? ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/50 "2012-09-18T12:20:13Z")
I live in the UK and Jap isn’t considered offensive here, although American influence may be changing that. But when all is said and done it’s simply an abbreviation, in my opinion the offense would only lie in how it is used. ---
**Author:** ![Simple\_Linctus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Simple\_Linctus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simple_Linctus)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2012, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653/51 "2012-09-18T14:03:43Z")
> [@D18](#): > > I’m not being snarky with this question; I’m genuinely curious. Where do you live that using the word “Jap” isn’t offensive? UK [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-japanese-have-done-better-starting-with-kamikaze-attacks/634653.md?page=2)