I recently read an interesting book on Japanese Kamikaze pilots (called ‘Kamikaze’, funnily enough) the name of the author escapes me though for the moment.
There was a small chapter in the book which I found extraordinary. It seems that towards the end of the WWII in the Pacific, the Japanese were so desperate to repel a US invasion that they actually developed piloted suicide torpedoes. These “Kamikaze Torpedoes” were launched by submarine in the conventional manner, the idea being that the pilot would steer the torpedo onto its target and hence increase the likelyhood of a kill. Apparently, the reality was that most “pilots” could not control their craft and ended up missing their targets before plunging into the depths once the machine ran out of fuel. Not so nice.
Do we have any WWII historians out there with more info on these nutty contraptions and their fruitcake pilots?
I saw one on display at a WWII museum in Tokyo. Obviously, the torpedo (it looked like a really small submarine) didn’t explode. The plaque on it said “Gift of the United States Navy.”
Strange though it may seem to us now, the torpedoes you speak of did exist. I’m not sure about launching from a torpedo tube, though. They were larger than a normal torpedo (to accommodate the “driver”) and I doubt they would have fit in a regular torpedo tube. But because they didn’t require guidance information from the launcher, they could be slipped over the side of a surface ship, or even towed out on a fishing boat. They were actually quite effective, since it was difficult to “spoof” them with decoys, but they came about as a last-ditch effort to defend the motherland, and didn’t have a terribly long or glorious lifespan, in part because the atomic bomb meant that Japan was not attacked by the invading force that these devices were meant to repel. There were also piloted bombs and exploding boats based on the same principles. Check here for more, and for some references with further information.
A fair number of them were used, but they weren’t fired from torpedo tubes, they were carried as deck mounts. IIRC most of the I boat captains preferred to use standard torpedos instead of the Kaitans as they believed they were more likely to get a hit. Morrison discusses them in his history of the U.S. Navy in WWII.
Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass has one of these units on display. I’m not sure if their web site has a picture of it or not, since its not playing nice today. http://www.battleshipcove.com is the site, at any rate. It doesn’t look like the kaitan was launched from a submarine, though, it looks more like a surface boat to me.
“I saw one on display at a WWII museum in Tokyo. Obviously, the torpedo (it looked like a really small submarine) didn’t explode. The plaque on it said ‘Gift of the United States Navy.’”
I don’t know if it’s the same one, but immediately* before the Pearl Harbor attack, the Navy captured a two-man sub outside the entrance to Pearl. The sub was supposed to enter the harbor and sink a battleship by ramming it and exploding. It was definitely intended to be a suicide mission.
One of the crewmen survived and was captured. IIRC, he and the sub toured the country as part of war bond drives, and he actually became a bit of a celebrity. Still, it’s gotta suck to get captured on the FIRST DAY of a war and be a prisoner for the full duration! IIRC again, he’s alive, or at least he was just a few years ago because he was interviewed for some history program on television.
*Immediately as in a few minutes, not several hours or days. That SHOULD be obvious, but considering all the damned conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbor (FDR knowing about it beforehand and intentionally suppressing the knowledge so the US could get into the war) it has to be said.
This reminds me of a story I read, I think by Asimov. It’s set far in the future where man has become so dependent on calculators and computers for math that solving mathematical problems without them is a lost art. One man figures out how to do some basic arithmetic without calculators, and from there expands his abilities until he is able to do algebra and other more complex functions. He demonstrates this ability to the authorities, who at first think it’s some kind of trick or hoax, then think he is some kind of superhuman fluke, and eventually see how he can teach this to other people. The implications are staggering, and they immediately see an application - Earth is at war with another planet, and the war mostly consists of sending thousands of computer-controlled missiles at the other side, which intercepts them with computer-controlled missiles. The one who can send the most missiles has the advantage, but both sides are limited by the time and expense involved in making the computers. They realize that it would be far cheaper to train people to perform the calculations and put them in the missiles, they have lots of excess population and even if they were inferior to the computer controlled missiles, they could put a LOT more in the air.
The guy who reinvents math kills himself to keep this from happening.
No, the Japanese mini-subs had external torpedoes. There is some new military research that indicates that one of the mini-subs got into Pearl Harbor and actually hit the Arizona with one of its torpedoes. They did some computer enhancement of some of the Japanese aerial photos and it shows the wake and a periscope. Very interesting. Wish I could remember where I read about this, it only was announced in the last few months.
But anyway, there are lots of variations of the “kamikaze torpedo.” I think the British were the first to use this idea, but in theirs, you were supposed to ride the torpedo until you were close enough to aim successfully, then hop off and swim back to base. There are other approaches, I recall seeing one boat, it looked like a jet-ski with torpedoes strapped on the sides, you released them and rode the machine back to base. But these weapons were mostly abandoned because nobody had the nerve to get close enough before releasing the torpedoes. You have to be willing to die to get close enough.
The Japanese overall had a variety of kamikaze tactics. I’ve seen photos of a kamikaze guided missile, but the most horrific was the kamikaze tank mine. You strapped a land mine to the end of a 10 foot bamboo pole, then ran up and jammed it into the side of the tank, destroying the tank and yourself in the process.
My interest has been rekindled. I’ll check my book again tonight - I’m sure it said the Kaitans were fired from modified torpedo tubes.
The book contains some pictures and sketches of Kaitans and prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Japanese are the worlds greatest lateral thinkers… Interpret that whichever way you like
As far as I know, the drivers had scuba suits, drove it close to the enemy ship, and jumped off, to swim back to the ship. That was the Italian version IIRC.
There is another story, by Shinichi Hoshi (Japanese author) about the future people fighting aliens and re-discovering kamikaze tactics. Everyone volunteers, the attack is conducted, they win the war. Then begins the long process of finding the pieces of their fallen comerades down to the last gear and processor chip, and re-assembling them…
Thanks for the link. As I recall from the book, the Kaitan pilots did rack up a few hits but these represented only a small percentage of the total fired.
This link (wait for it to load) shows the losses of British “human torpedoes” (named Chariots) in World War II. They were based on an Italian Navy design (Maiale) which was successfully used to sink HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant in Alexandria in 1941. Twenty feet long, with a crew of two and powered by an electric motor, they would approach the target in its harbour, then the crew would detach the warhead (containing 590lbs of explosives) and get the hell out of the area.
Altogether 28 were lost in action. They still managed to damage an Italian light cruiser and transport in Palermo (1943), when five were launched from watertight containers mounted on two submarines. In 1944 another raid sank one Japanese transport and damaged another off Phuket, Thailand.
There were also around 100 Welman Craft built, one-man midget submarines with detachable charges, although none of these scored any notable successes.
Regarding disturbing kamikaze attacks, nothing beats the tactics the Red Army turned to against the Germans in World War II. Dogs were trained to find food under vehicles, and once the association was made they were sent out against Panzer divisions with anti-tank mines strapped to their backs. The ideas was that as they tried to run under the tanks the hull would make contact with a handle detonator and the mine would explode under the tanks’ thin underside armour. Most were shot before they reached a vehicle, but apparently it left Panzer troops very unnerved and in no doubt as to the extent that the Red Army was prepared to go to kill them (cite: Anthony Beevor, Stalingrad, pp35-36).
I have come across stories of Russian tank-killer dogs, too. I don’t have a cite on this (all my history books are in storage), but I did come across one story about these dogs and one major problem the Soviets encountered: The dogs were trained to find food under Soviet armored vehicles and occasionally went looking under a T-34 instead of a Tiger or Panzer after being released. I seem to remember an implication that the Russians killed as many of these poor canines as the Germans did.
You’d think they’d have taken the time to train the dogs to differentiate between a Panzer and other russian or german vehicles. Surely the Russian Army must have had access to a Panzer or two.
Yeah, you’re right. Kaitens weren’t fired from modified torpedo tubes at all, they were deck-mounted. The ‘mother’ subs were modified to provide access tubes to the Kaitens. This allowed the Kaiten pilots to crawl into their machines and launch them while the ‘mother’ sub was still submerged.
Which book were you looking at? I have seen a picture of an I-Boat with two deck mounted kaiten(s) but am unable to locate it at the moment. This site http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-fornv/japan/japtp-ss/kaiten.htm has pictures of the kaiten, but they are all on land. By the way 2 hits for >110 launches indicates that they weren’t particularly useful.
The Kaiten is as described, a piloted torpedo. Any one of the teeming millions who has ever swam in the ocean will realize that the concept is most charitably described as silly, as visibility in most ocean water (for humans, at least) is quite limited. It would appear that the Kaitens were quite successful in offering many opportunities to die for the emperor, but not nearly so successful in actually causing damage to Allied shipping.
There is another name for the mini-subs used by Japan not so successfully throughout the war, but I forget what all it is. I believe there used to be one on display at the then-US Naval base in Subic Bay in the Phillipines. Once, some US Coast Guard guys painted the USCG orange racing stripe on its hull. Another time someone used a crane to steal it and place in a swimming pool on base. To prevent this from happening again, it was filled with concrete ----a hell of a thing to do to a historic relic.
Recently, some have theorized that one of the mini-subs used at Pearl Harbor in the December 7 attack actually got into the harbor and fired a torpedo into one of the battleships there. As this mini-sub was never accounted for, it may well be that it is still in the harbor somewhere. It could have become stuck or been sunk by any number of things, such as an off-target Japanese aircraft bomb.
At about this time (the latter part of WW2) in Japan, they used a term which is usualy translated as “Shattering of the Jewel”. I don’t know the Japanese word for this —can someone assist? It alluded to the intentional destruction of Japan by its government to preserve Japanese honor and so forth, kind of like Hitler’s “Gotterdammerung”.
