Kamikaze: Brave or Insane

[Cybermat47]

Personally, I feel that they were brave men, but still used by their government.

[Red October1984]

There's not an option for "Completely Stupid and Out Of Their Minds"

They are wasting a perfectly good fighting man and a perfectly good plane when a bomb or a rocket could be sent in their place.

I think Kamikaze Attacks are only to be used as a complete, last ditch, nothing-else-is-possible, last resort type of thing.

You could call them brave if you wanted to...but I think it comes down to the Asian "Honor" thing. Boys liked the idea of being a hero for their country and I don't blame them. I just think the way they did it was not good at all.

Same with the "Banzai Charges".....It's not a whole lot different. Just Kamikaze Soldiers. I think it shouldn't be a common combat practice. It's just a big waste.

[Cybermat47]

^^^

That's a very good point you make

[d@rk51d3]

And yet, put the same poll for the ANZAC's at Gallipoli, or even the stand of the brave souls at the Alamo and perhaps get a completely different veiwpoint.

Brave or insane?
Just gullible.

[captgeo]

I agree with Red October in most ways, but Russians used to ram bombers with fighter's, T34 tanks were used the same way against Tigers,Panthers, and the list goes on.......it was used as a great terror tool against the Americans, they expended great resources to combat these tactic's....

so I voted the 3rd choice,

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by d@rk51d3

And yet, put the same poll for the ANZAC's at Gallipoli, or even the stand of the brave souls at the Alamo and perhaps get a completely different veiwpoint.

I was going to post a statement along those lines last evening, but chickened out. You are a better man than I, and you are absolutely right in this matter.

[Bilge_Rat]

As I understand it, most Kamikazes were not even volunteers. They were assigned to Kamikaze units and felt they had no choice but to obey.

It was an extreme example, but there were many services where the crews knew their chances of survival was slim to none, like U-Boats in 43-45, heavy bomber crews over Europe, any front line infantry unit, etc.

[Marcello]

Originally Posted by Red October1984

There's not an option for "Completely Stupid and Out Of Their Minds"

They are wasting a perfectly good fighting man and a perfectly good plane when a bomb or a rocket could be sent in their place.

By late war a D3A or an early Zero flown by poorly trained pilots were not going to accomplish much but getting torn to pieces anyway. By crashing themselves into the target hit probabilities were substantially incresed, as the aiming problem was somewhat simplified.
While some better planes models were available industrial resources to turn them out in numbers were stretched to the limit. Fuel to operate them or train pilots properly was essentially unavailable.
As for being volounteers, many were. But to make up numbers quite a lot were volounteered too...

We were summoned to listen to a special speech from the commanding officer. He explained to us that the army was to set up its own tokkotai, and that it was starting to train pilots for the purpose at Hokota Air Base, on the Pacific coast [of Japan]. Pilots from our base, he said, were being invited to volunteer for the tokko squadrons. Then he went into one of the hangars, and we were called in one by one to see him. He gave us each two pieces of paper, and we were asked to write our name on one of them to indicate our feelings about joining the tokkotai. One piece of paper said 'eager.' The other one said 'very eager.' 'In that case,' I said to the commander, 'I hope that you will not mind if I only write myself down as being "eager."'



Lieutenant Mutsuo Saito

Note also that while the japanese were big on suicide planes attacks even the germans were sliding in that direction, while the Sonderkommando Elbe was not 100% kamikaze action it was the next best thing.