Kamakazie pilots were most likely going to die whatever way you look at it so
WHY THE HELL DID THEY WEAR HELMETS?
Were there ears cold or something?
Dazed and Confused
Rockchick
Remember that she’s new, guys. Go easy on her. Well, not too easy; she has to learn. But don’t kill her.
Change Your Password, Please and don’t use HTML, as it has been disabled
BANZAI!
-David
This promises to be an interesting thread to watch. Buckle up rockchick, you are gonna go for an interesting ride.
You say neato, check your libido, and roll to the church in your new tuxedo.
Years of testing at Tokyo’s Institute for Aeronautical Research reveled that unconscious pilots are less likely to find their targets than are unconscious ones.
Boy did I blow that! Should read:
Years of testing at Tokyo’s Institute for Aeronautical Research reveled that unconscious pilots are less likely to find their targets than are conscious ones
It is, however, profitable for anyone with a question to at least have the courtesy to see whether the master has already answered:
Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
Tom~
Thank u Tomndebb
Bye the way the ear thing was A JOKE
Dazed and Confused
Rockchick
Who know who did a column on this. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_193.html
What I was wondering was, if kamikaze pilots were going to die in the impact, why wear clothing at all? And why eat that traditional meal of fish, rice, and nuts before taking off? Would they really have time to digest it before death? And I bet some of them brushed their teeth before the mission, which is weird since their teeth wouldn’t have had time to decay significantly, and gingivitis wouldn’t have had time to develop.
Any similarity in the above text to an English word or phrase is purely coincidental.
This is generating an irresistible image of the pilot hitting the “Ejection Seat” button at the last second, and hurtling nekkid through the porthole into the Captain’s Mess, thumbing his nose at the U.S. officers, while the plane crashes down onto the flight deck.
Uke
And if the pilots are gonna die anyway, why waste a perfectly good plane? I think they should have just rigged a giant slingshot on their ships, loaded in a naked, hungry, dirty pilot and launched him towards the general vicinity of the US Navy.
That makes so much more sense than wasting planes.
Unfortunately a bare pilot doesn’t contain enough explosive power to penetrate the armored deck of a battleship, and only marginal damage of the wooden decks of WWII era carriers, even if he skips the Beano™ at his last meal.
Here’s a better question:
Did Kamakazis wear parachutes?
Actually, few Japanese aviators wore parachutes. (I’m not sure about bomber crews.) Pilots felt that sitting on the bulky, packed chute with its harness wrapped around the body impaired their ability to fly the plane. Since they adhered to a code of honor that was quite similar to “with your shield or on it,” it was not considered good form to bring along a method of escaping a defeat.
I do not have real numbers on the percentage of Japanese pilots who wore chutes, but it was low.
(The Japanese command shared the same attitudes, of course, and never invested in the efforts to rescue downed pilots that the U.S. did using Catalinas and submarines, even though (at least early on) their submarines were superior and they did have several good float planes and flying boats.)
Tom~
Well, how about strapping the naked, dirty, hungry, pilot to a great big bomb and hurling him from a slingshot?
Yes, I know, in that case, you won’t need the pilot, just the bomb. I think the food is ritual, just like the last meal of someone to be executed. As for clothing, it doth get cold up there and a shivering pilot is not going to be able to aim his plane at the ship very well.
I know this was a joke, but they did experiment with a plane especially designed for Kamikaze missions, called Ohka (“cherry blossom”). It was basically a rocket-powered missile with a pilot, launched from a bomber. Found some informaiton at http://www.ausaviation.com.au/Books_Pages/Permanent_Pages/ww2page.htm (it’s near the bottom of the page) and some good pictures at http://member.nifty.ne.jp/astroboy/japan/ohka.html . Interestingly enough, there wasn’t a single Japanese web page about this plane.
OK, somebody impress me. Tell me the time and place of the first Kamikaze.
DHR
Not too hard to find on the web. The first official Kamikaze mission is usually accepted to be on October 25, 1944 at Samos. Found a good document at http://www.tcr.org/kamikaze.html - looks like someone’s college essay, but well researched. I found that date and place mentioned elsewhere as well.
BWAAAAAPP! Thanks for playing, next contestant!
Here’s two hints: (1) “It” was a lot earlier than you might think, and (2) “it” has to do with the meaning of the word “kamikaze”.
You can’t answer a riddle with a search engine, mon frer.
DHR