Could the Japanese* have done better starting with kamikaze attacks?

They had that.

For some reason I “heard” that with the voice of Martha Stewart.

It’s an interesting idea. It would have to be compared with how effective “normal” attacks were and their attrition rates.

For example, let’s say on average it took 20 dive bombers to sink an aircraft carrier and on average 2 bombers were lost per mission (which seems reasonable but I could be way off). If kamikaze attacks had a 80% chance of success per plane then 2 kamikazes with 18 supporting fighters might have better results with the same number of pilots lost (or even better, if the bombers have two crew members). If we assumed that kamikaze pilots were recruited from lower-quality pilots then the net outcome would be even better (sacrificing two poor pilots instead of average pilots).

I’m beginning to think that the Japanese starting this tactic in 1935 would have changed the entire US strategy. We wouldn’t have been easily caught of guard in Hawaii, and we would have concentrated far more on long range aerial bombing of Japanese land targets. Our fleet would have been mostly carriers and support ships to maintain heavy air defense against incoming. Submarines are the only sea craft we’d want anywhere near Japanese ships because Kamikazes have at least double the range of fighter craft. We might have ended up going after Japan with a heavier ground war in China and Korea to attack them from ground bases instead of the sea.

In the early part of the war, Japan didn’t have a whole lot of trouble sinking ships just fine, thank you very much, using normal methods. Kamikazes might have been able to do more damage than conventional means sometimes but over all I think the difference would have been small. Flying a plane with a bomb or torpedo to a target and then returning the plane and pilot to home is a great method, IF the pilot is skilled enough to do damage while over the target. The plane and pilot don’t add much to the damage. Once the pilots could no longer damage targets using normal methods, whether because of low skill or better allied defense, Kamikazes found a place.

Over all though, a nation that starts with the idea that it will have to resort to suicide attacks to even hope to win might want to reconsider whether to start a war.

Doesn’t seem to have been a lot of reconsideration lately.

The USN adapted to kamikazes by replacing much of the 20mm AA positions with 40mm ones. These had a much better chance of sufficiently damaging an incoming plane that it would not be able to continue to target. Some classes of carriers had turrets with 5-inch AA guns. In the begining of the war, many of the crew hated them because they were so loud and fired right over the heads of some of the lighter gun pits. But once the kamikazes started, the opinion reversed because a near hit from a 5-incher would utterly destroy a kamikaze, giving little chance of a mortally wounded pilot taking the plane into the target.

^This.

You’re way off, both on conventional and kamikaze numbers. Your kamikaze figure is much further off than the one for dive bombers though, success rates were nowhere near 80%. While a number of fleet carriers were badly damaged by kamikazes, none were sunk. The largest ships sunk by kamikazes were escort carriers. Destroyers as a ship type suffered the largest number of losses to kamikazes, largely due to their use as radar pickets during the Okinawa campaign to provide early warning of incoming kamikaze attacks. Again from wiki:

The number of ships lost to kamikazes is slightly disputed with figures of 34, 57 and 47 given. The website here gives the 47 figure with explanation for the difference of 10 from the 57 figure. None of the ships sunk were particuarly large vessels; the number includes ships as small as PT-boats, LCS(L) and LSM(R).

Exactly so. Turns out that, even if you get within range before your launch-plane is shot down, piloting a 600mph missile onto target isn’t as easy as you think, given that you get one go at getting it right. It could make a nasty mess of what it hit, but its hit ratio wasn’t high.

As I said in my earlier post, the Japanese didn’t start the war with the idea of mainly fighting the Americans. In the mid 30s, they thought that their enemies would be China and perhaps the USSR. Suicide bombers make little sense against land targets.

Did any who actually went on a suicide mission survive? If so, how?

It’s pretty easy. Don’t attack. It did happen sometimes.

I remember watching a documentary which said that if they did not sight a worthwhile target, they were supposed to return.

Don’t forget the impact of the radar proximity fuse

In his case, the war ended before he finished his training.

Yep in fact I’ve seen one with a Kamikaze pilot who flew back - I think he had mechanical problems.

I guess, for a start it would have ruled out any chance of a 3rd strike on Pearl harbor.

That aside, I’m not sure it would have made much difference. The USA were producing a zillion carriers, so they would have just given them armoured decks. Kamikazes were far less successful against hardened targets. As has been mentioned, there would have been different tactics by the US Navy with the combat air patrol- I assume they would have virtually saturated the horizon with their superior fighters and the obsolete aircraft used as kamikazes would have been pretty easy prey.

I agree with Dissonance and Stranger above.

However, I think we need to get some perspective as well. The focus seems to be on attacks on the fleet as it was doing the island hopping business. The war involved far more than that, including many Japanese bombing attacks on non naval targets. (I understand Darwin was hit 247 times).

So, if you are advocating kamikaze attacks against all the targets in the land area that Japan conquered, you would quickly run out of planes and pilots.

Wiki gives and account of someone who wasn’t very good at finding targets.

For people interested in the US response to the attacks, this report is of value.

From within the report:

An interesting read, it reinforces the point that combatants will develop tactics to counter their enemy’s tactics.

Personally, I think that Japan was screwed from the moment it decided to attack America. There are a few things it could have done to slightly delay the inevitable, but especially with the mindset predominant by the field generals of the IJA, there wasn’t much they could have done differently.

In fact even when the Kamakazis began in earnest, the two most successful attacks against ships, against the carrier Franklin and the heavy cruiser Indianapolis were by aircraft and submarine, respectively.

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.