Real kamikaze were not terrorists. Japanese pilots during the Second World War voluntarily gave their lives for their homeland.

October 19, 1944. Luzon Island, the main Japanese aviation base in the Philippines. The meeting of the commanders of the fighter units is held by Vice Admiral Onishi ...

Two days in the new position was enough for the vice admiral to understand that neither he nor the people subordinate to him would be able to perform the functions that were assigned to them. What Onishi took command of was pompously called the First Air Fleet - but in reality it was only three dozen battle-worn
Zero fighters and several Betty bombers. In order to prevent the American invasion of the Philippines, a huge Japanese fleet was concentrated here, which included two super battleships - Yamato and Musashi. Onisi's planes were supposed to cover this fleet from the air, but the enemy's multiple superiority in air power made this impossible.

Onishi told his subordinates what they understood even without him - the Japanese fleet was on the verge of disaster, best ships in a few days they will be launched to the bottom by torpedo bombers and dive bombers from American aircraft carriers. It is impossible to sink aircraft carriers with fighter planes, even if you arm them with bombs. Zeros don't have bomb sights, and their pilots don't have the skills to do so. However, there was one suicidal way out in the full sense of the word - fighters equipped with bombs would crash into enemy ships! Onisi's subordinates agreed with the vice admiral that they had no other way to end the American aircraft carriers. A few days later, the Divine Wind Special Attack Squadron, Kamikaze Tokubetsu Kogekitai, was formed.

Self-sacrifice as a tactic

Now the word "kamikaze" has become a household term, this is the name of any suicide bombers, and in a figurative sense - and just people who do not care about their own safety. But the real kamikaze were not terrorists, but soldiers - Japanese pilots of the Second World War, who voluntarily decided to give their lives for their homeland. Of course, in war, anyone risks their life, and some even deliberately sacrifice it. Often, commanders also give orders, the executors of which have no chance of staying alive. But kamikaze is the only example in mankind when suicide bombers were assigned to a special branch of the armed forces and were specially trained to fulfill their mission. When at the headquarters they developed tactics for them, and at the design bureaus they designed special equipment…

After Vice Admiral Onishi came up with the idea of ​​using kamikaze, self-sacrifice ceased to be an initiative of individual pilots and received the status of an official military doctrine. Meanwhile, Onishi just figured out how to more effectively use the tactics of combating American ships that Japanese pilots had already used de facto. By 1944, the state of aviation in the Land of the Rising Sun was deplorable. There were not enough planes, gasoline, but above all, qualified pilots. While schools in the United States were preparing hundreds and hundreds of new pilots, there was no effective reserve training system in Japan. If an American who succeeded in air battles was immediately recalled from the front and appointed as an instructor (therefore, by the way, American aces do not shine with a large number of downed aircraft), then the Japanese, as a rule, fought until his death. Therefore, after a couple of years, almost nothing was left of the personnel pilots who started the war. A vicious circle - inexperienced pilots acted less and less efficiently and died faster. The prophecy of Admiral Yamamoto, who had died by that time, came true: back in 1941, one of the organizers of the attack on Pearl Harbor warned that his country was not ready for a long war.

Under these conditions, the first examples appeared of how poorly trained Japanese pilots, who could not hit an American ship with a bomb, simply crashed into the enemy. A plane diving onto the deck is difficult to stop - even if anti-aircraft guns inflict a lot of damage on it, it will achieve its goal.

Admiral Onishi decided that such an "initiative" could be legalized officially. Moreover, the combat effectiveness of an aircraft crashing into the deck will be much higher if it is filled with explosives ...

The first massive kamikaze attacks took place in the Philippines on October 25, 1944. Several ships were damaged, and the escort aircraft carrier Saint Lo, which was hit by the only Zero, was sunk. The success of the first kamikaze led to the fact that Onishi's experience was widely disseminated.

The lightweight and durable design of the Zero made it possible to fill the aircraft with additional cargo - explosives.

Death is not an end in itself

Soon four air formations were formed - Asahi, Shikishima, Yamazakura and Yamato. Only volunteers were accepted there, because the death in an air sortie for pilots was an indispensable condition for the successful completion of a combat mission. And by the time Japan surrendered, almost half of the remaining naval pilots in the ranks had been transferred to kamikaze detachments.

It is well known that the word "kamikaze" means "Divine Wind" - a hurricane that destroyed the enemy fleet in the 13th century. It would seem, what does the Middle Ages have to do with it? However, unlike technology, everything was in order with the "ideological support" of the Japanese military. The "divine wind" was believed to have been sent then by the goddess Amaterasu, patroness of Japan's security. She sent it at a time when nothing could prevent the conquest of her country by the 300,000-strong Mongol-Chinese army of Khan Kublai. And now, when the war approached the very borders of the empire, the country was supposed to be saved by the “Divine Wind” - this time embodied not in a natural phenomenon, but in young guys who want to give their lives for the fatherland. The kamikaze was seen as the only force capable of stopping the American offensive literally on the outskirts of the Japanese islands.

Kamikaze formations might seem elite in terms of the outward attributes of their activities, but not in terms of their level of training. The combat pilot who got into the detachment did not need additional training. And kamikaze-novices were prepared even worse than ordinary pilots. They were not taught bombing or shooting, which made it possible to drastically reduce the preparation time. According to the army leadership of Japan, only mass training of kamikaze could stop the American offensive.

You can read a lot of strange information about kamikaze - for example, that they were not taught how to land. Meanwhile, it is completely clear that if the pilot is not taught to land, then the first and last for him will be by no means a combat, but the very first training flight! Contrary to popular belief, a rather rare occurrence on kamikaze aircraft was landing gear dropped after takeoff, which made it impossible to land. Most often, suicide pilots were provided with an ordinary worn-out Zero fighter, or even a dive bomber or bomber loaded with explosives - and no one was involved in altering the chassis. If the pilot did not find a worthy target during the departure, he had to return to the military base and wait for the next assignment from the leadership. Therefore, several kamikazes who made combat sorties have survived to this day ...

The first kamikaze raids produced the effect they were designed for - the crews of the American ships were very frightened. However, it quickly became clear that crashing into an enemy ship is not so easy - at least for a low-skilled pilot. And they certainly didn’t know how to dodge American kamikaze fighters. Therefore, when they saw the low combat effectiveness of the suicide bombers, the Americans calmed down somewhat, while the Japanese command, on the contrary, was puzzled. Meanwhile, such an aircraft had already been invented for the kamikaze, which, according to the plan of its creators, would be difficult to shoot down by fighters. Moreover, the author of the idea, Mitsuo Ota, “punched through” the project even before the first squads of suicide pilots were created (which again shows that the idea of ​​a kamikaze was in the air at that moment). What was built according to this project at Yokosuka was more likely not an airplane, but a one-of-a-kind man-controlled bomb ...

At the beginning of the war, "Zero" terrified American fighter pilots, and then became a formidable kamikaze

Cruise missile with pilot

The tiny MXY-7 "Oka" (Japanese for "Cherry Blossom") resembled a German glide bomb invented at the end of the war. However, it was a completely original development. The planning bomb was controlled by radio from the carrier aircraft, and the jet engines installed on it made it possible for the bomb to maneuver and keep up with the aircraft that launched it. The Oka was controlled by the kamikaze sitting in it, and jet boosters served to accelerate the bomb plane to a speed of almost 1000 km / h on the way to the target. It was believed that at this speed, the Oki would be invulnerable to both anti-aircraft fire and fighters.

It is characteristic that during this period, research was conducted at the headquarters on the use of kamikaze tactics in other areas. For example, human-controlled torpedoes were created, as well as submarine mini-boats, which first had to launch a torpedo into an enemy ship, and then crash into it themselves. The suicide pilots were planned to be used for ram attacks by the American Flying Fortresses and Liberators, which bombed Japanese cities. Later, there were also ... land kamikazes, pushing a cart with explosives in front of them. With such weapons in the Kwantung Army, they tried to cope with Soviet tanks in 1945.

But, of course, the main goal of the kamikaze was the American aircraft carriers. A guided cruise missile carrying a ton of explosives was supposed to, if not sink an aircraft carrier, then at least severely damage it
and put it out of action for a long time. The Oka was suspended under the Betty twin-engine bomber, which was supposed to get as close as possible to the American squadron. At a distance of no more than 30 km, the kamikaze transferred from the bomber to the Oka, the guided bomb separated from the carrier and began to slowly plan in the right direction. Three solid rocket boosters worked for only ten seconds, so they had to be turned on in close proximity to the target.

Kamikaze differed from other Japanese pilots in silk overalls and white headbands with the image of the rising sun.

The very first combat use of bombing aircraft was a real massacre. But the victims were by no means the crews of American ships, but Japanese pilots. The need to fly pretty close to the target
made carrier bombers very vulnerable - they entered the zone of action of carrier-based fighters of aircraft carriers and immediately got lost. And the perfect radars that the Americans had at that time made it possible to detect an approaching enemy formation, whether it was a kamikaze group, bomb carriers, conventional bombers or torpedo bombers. In addition, as it turned out, the cruise missile accelerated under the action of accelerators did not maneuver well and did not aim very accurately at the target.

Thus, kamikaze could not save Japan from defeat in the war - and nevertheless, volunteers who wanted to enroll in the air unit special purpose, was sufficient until the moment of surrender. Moreover, it was not only about exalted youths who did not sniff gunpowder, but also about pilots who had time to make war. Firstly, the Japanese naval pilot somehow got used to the idea of ​​his own death. In the American naval aviation, an effective system was debugged to search for downed pilots at sea using seaplanes and submarines(this is how they saved, in particular, the onboard gunner of the Avenger torpedo bomber George W. Bush, the future US president). And the downed Japanese pilot most often drowned in the sea along with his plane ...

Secondly, the Shintoism that dominated Japan gave rise to a special attitude towards death. This religious and philosophical system gave the suicide pilots the hope, after completing the task, to join the host of numerous deities. Thirdly, the further, the more inevitable the defeat of Japan seemed, and Japanese military traditions did not recognize surrender.

Of course, any fanaticism is terrible. And yet, kamikaze pilots were participants in the war and acted against the enemy army. This is their fundamental difference from modern suicide bombers, who are called by this word without any reason.

And those who led the Japanese kamikaze were not cynics who cold-bloodedly dispose of other people's lives, not wanting to sacrifice their own. Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi, after the surrender of Japan, chose a way out for himself, the name of which does not need to be translated from Japanese - hara-kiri.

The popularized and highly distorted image of the Japanese kamikaze, formed in the minds of Europeans, has little to do with who they really were. We imagine kamikaze as a fanatical and desperate warrior, with a red bandage around his head, a man with an angry look behind the controls of an old plane, rushing towards the target, shouting "banzai!". Japanese warriors since the time of the samurai considered death literally as part of life.

They got used to the fact of death and were not afraid of its approach.

Educated and experienced pilots flatly refused to go to the kamikaze squads, referring to the fact that they simply had to stay alive in order to train new fighters who were destined to become suicide bombers.

Thus, the more young people who sacrificed themselves, the younger were the recruits who took their places. Many were practically teenagers, not even 17 years old, who had a chance to prove their loyalty to the empire and prove themselves as “real men”.

Kamikaze recruited from poorly educated young guys, the second or third boys in families. This selection was due to the fact that the first (i.e. eldest) boy in the family usually became the heir to the fortune and therefore did not fall into the military sample.

Kamikaze pilots received a form to fill out and took five oath points:

• The soldier is obliged to fulfill his obligations.
• A soldier is obliged to observe the rules of decency in his life.
• The soldier is obliged to highly revere the heroism of the military forces.
• A soldier must be a highly moral person.
• A soldier must live a simple life.

But kamikaze were not only air suicide bombers, they also acted under water.

The idea of ​​creating suicide torpedoes was born in the minds of the Japanese military command after a brutal defeat in the battle of Midway Atoll. While Europe was unfolding known to the world drama, a completely different war was going on in the Pacific Ocean. In 1942, the Japanese Imperial Navy decided to attack Hawaii from the tiny Midway Atoll, the extreme western group of the Hawaiian archipelago. The atoll was home to a US airbase, which the Japanese army decided to launch its large-scale offensive from, destroying it.

But the Japanese miscalculated. The Battle of Midway was one of the main failures and the most dramatic episode in that part. the globe. During the attack, the imperial fleet lost four large aircraft carriers and many other ships, but accurate data on Japanese casualties have not been preserved. However, the Japanese never really considered their soldiers, but even without that, the loss greatly demoralized the military spirit of the fleet.

This defeat marked the beginning of a series of Japanese failures at sea, and the military command had to invent alternative ways of waging war. Real patriots should have appeared, brainwashed, with a gleam in their eyes and not afraid of death. So there was a special experimental unit of underwater kamikaze. These suicide bombers were not much different from aircraft pilots, their task was identical - sacrificing themselves to destroy the enemy.

Underwater kamikazes used kaiten torpedoes to carry out their mission under water, which means “the will of heaven” in translation. In fact, the kaiten was a symbiosis of a torpedo and a small submarine. He worked on pure oxygen and was able to reach speeds of up to 40 knots, thanks to which he could hit almost any ship of that time. A torpedo from the inside is an engine, a powerful charge and a very compact place for a suicide pilot. At the same time, it was so narrow that even by the standards of small Japanese, there was a catastrophic lack of space. On the other hand, what difference does it make when death is inevitable.

Midway operation

Tower of the main caliber of the battleship MUTSU (Mutsu)

1 Japanese kaiten at Camp Dealy, 1945 3. Kaitens in drydock, Kure, October 19, 1945. 4, 5. A submarine sunk by American aircraft during the Okinawa campaign.

Directly in front of the face of the kamikaze is a periscope, next to it is the speed switch, which essentially regulates the oxygen supply to the engine. At the top of the torpedo there was another lever responsible for the direction of movement. The dashboard was crammed with all sorts of devices - fuel and oxygen consumption, pressure gauge, clock, depth gauge and so on. At the pilot's feet there is a valve for letting seawater into the ballast tank to stabilize the weight of the torpedo. It was not so easy to control a torpedo, besides, the training of pilots left much to be desired - schools appeared spontaneously, but just as spontaneously they were destroyed by American bombers. Initially, kaiten were used to attack enemy ships moored in bays. A carrier submarine with kaitens fixed outside (from four to six pieces) detected enemy ships, built a trajectory (literally turned around relative to the location of the target), and the submarine captain gave the last order to the suicide bombers. Through a narrow pipe, the suicide bombers penetrated into the cabin of the kaiten, battened down the hatches and received orders by radio from the captain of the submarine. The kamikaze pilots were completely blind, they did not see where they were going, because it was possible to use the periscope for no more than three seconds, since this led to the risk of detecting a torpedo by the enemy.

At first, kaitens terrified the American fleet, but then imperfect equipment began to malfunction. Many suicide bombers did not swim to the target and suffocated from lack of oxygen, after which the torpedo simply sank. A little later, the Japanese improved the torpedo by equipping it with a timer, leaving no chance for either the kamikaze or the enemy. But at the very beginning, kaiten claimed humanity. The torpedo was provided with an ejection system, but it did not work in the most efficient way, or rather, did not work at all.

At high speed, no kamikaze could safely eject, so this was abandoned in later designs. Very frequent raids by submarines with kaitens led to the fact that the devices rusted and failed, since the body of the torpedo was made of steel no more than six millimeters thick. And if the torpedo sank too deep to the bottom, then the pressure simply flattened the thin body, and the kamikaze died without due heroism.

It was possible to use kaitens more or less successfully only at the very beginning. Thus, following the results of naval battles, the official propaganda of Japan announced that 32 American ships were sunk, including aircraft carriers, battleships, cargo ships and destroyers. But these figures are considered too exaggerated. By the end of the war, the American Navy had significantly increased its combat power, and it was increasingly difficult for kaiten pilots to hit targets. Large combat units in the bays were reliably guarded, and it was very difficult to approach them imperceptibly even at a depth of six meters, the kaitens also had no opportunity to attack the ships scattered in the open sea - they simply could not withstand long swims.

The defeat at Midway pushed the Japanese to desperate steps in blind revenge on the American fleet. Kaiten torpedoes were a crisis solution, which imperial army I had high hopes, but they didn't come true. Kaitens had to solve the most important task - to destroy enemy ships, and no matter what the cost, however, the farther, the less effective their use in hostilities was seen. A ridiculous attempt to irrationally use the human resource led to the complete failure of the project. War is over

Japanese boat Type A of Second Lieutenant Sakamaki at low tide on a reef off the coast of Oahu, December 1941

Japanese dwarf boats Type C on the American-captured island of Kiska, Aleutian Islands, September 1943

Japanese landing ship Type 101 (S.B. No. 101 Type) in the harbor of Kure after the surrender of Japan. 1945

Aircraft-damaged Yamazuki Mari transport and Type C dwarf submarine abandoned on the shores of Guadalcanal

Midget boat Koryu Type D at the shipyard Yokosuka Naval Base, September 1945

In 1961, the Americans raised the boat (Type A), which sank in December 1941 in the Pearl Harbor canal. The hatches of the boat are open from the inside, a number of publications report that the mechanic of the boat Sasaki Naoharu escaped and was captured

Suicide bombers or kamikazes, despite the fact that they turned out to be ineffective in the war that Japan lost, nevertheless, became one of the greatest striking symbols of the Second World War. What they felt, how they were going to their death, is the most incomprehensible thing for us today. Soviet propaganda also could not explain the massive Japanese Matrosovs.

On December 7, 1941, Japan suddenly, without declaring war, dealt a crushing blow to the US Navy base in the Hawaiian Islands - Pearl Harbor. The aircraft carrier formation of the ships of the imperial fleet, having complete radio silence, approached the island of Oahu from the north and attacked the base and airfields of the island with two waves of aircraft.
The daring and unexpected attack on Pearl Harbor was aimed at destroying the enemy's naval forces in the shortest possible time and ensuring freedom of action in the zone southern seas. In addition, with a sudden throw, the Japanese hoped to break the will of the Americans to fight. The operation was conceived, proposed, in in general terms developed and approved by the commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet. Yamamoto Isoroku.

The plans of the Japanese military built grandiose. At the heart of the war was the principle of lightning speed. The war, as the Japanese leadership believed, could only be won as a result of fleeting hostilities. Any delay is fraught with disaster. America's economic power would take its toll, and the Japanese knew it. The main goal of the first stage of the war - the destruction of the US Pacific Fleet - was accomplished.

In addition to aircraft, tiny submarines participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although it was theoretically planned to return these boats to the base, it was clear that the crews were going to certain death. Indeed, eight of the nine officers died during the attack and added to the picture of the gods in the Yasukuni Shrine. The ninth got a bummer. Lieutenant Sakamaki's boat got stuck on the coastal rocks, and he became the first captured officer in this war. Sakamaki couldn't make himself hara-kiri, because. was badly wounded. But that was no excuse for him. A stain of shame lay on the fleet. I, the poor lieutenant, not only flew by with enrollment in the god-kami of Yasukuni Shrine, but was also called a person with a "small heart" and "small belly." Japanese propaganda went so far as to call him "a man without a stomach at all."

The suicide bombers of the Japanese fleet were divided into several categories. These included the so-called "suijo tokkotai" (kamikaze surface forces) and "suite tokkotai" (kamikaze submarine forces). The surface forces were equipped with high-speed boats filled with explosives. The symbolic designation of one of the types of such boats is "Xingye" (ocean shaking). Hence the name of the groups of katerniks - suicides - "xingye tokkotai". "Xingye" were made of wood, equipped with a six-cylinder engine of 67 hp, which allowed speeds up to 18 knots. The range of such boats was about 250 km. They were equipped with either a 120 kg bomb, or a 300 kg depth charge, or a rocket. Kamikaze boat attacks were in most cases effective and the Americans were very afraid of them.

Underwater means of combating ships are the infamous "human torpedoes" - ("mingen-gerai"), baby submarines, and human mines ("fukuryu") and suicide paratrooper teams ("giretsu kutebutai"). The fleet had its own paratrooper units. Even the parachutes for them were developed separately and were very different from the army ones, although they were intended for the same purpose - landing on land.

Torpedoes driven by suicide bombers were called "Kaiten". Their other name is "Kongotai" (Kongo groups, in honor of Mount Kongo, where the hero of the Japanese Middle Ages Masashi Kusonoke lived). Human torpedoes, in addition, were also called "kukusuytai", from "kukusui" - a chrysanthemum on the water. "Two main modifications of human-controlled torpedoes were developed. One soldier was placed in the torpedo. a large number of explosive. The movement of the "Kaiten" at a speed of 28.5 miles per hour and aiming them at the target by a person made it extremely difficult to fight these weapons. Massive attacks "Kaiten", as well as other suicide bombers, caused a strong nervous tension of the American personnel.

The Japanese called the tiny submarines "Kuryu" - a dragon and "Kairyu" - a sea dragon. Small magnetic submarines were designated by the term "Shinkai". The range of their action did not usually exceed 1000 miles. They had a speed of 16 knots and were usually controlled by two suicide bombers. Midget submarines were intended for torpedo attacks inside the harbor of the enemy or for ramming.

A great danger to the American fleet was also represented by the "fukuryu" units - the dragons of the underwater grotto (another translation of the hieroglyph - dragons of happiness) "human mines" that is, divers with mines. Secretly, under water, they made their way to the bottoms of enemy ships and blew them up with a portable mine.

Their activities are known mainly from the book by V. Bru "Underwater saboteurs" (publishing house foreign literature, Moscow, 1957). Along with valuable data on the actions of Japanese saboteurs, this book also contains quite significant "blunders". For example, he describes an oxygen apparatus designed for Fukuryu teams that allowed an underwater saboteur to dive to a depth of 60 meters and move there at a speed of 2 km / h. No matter how well a diver is trained, if his apparatus runs on oxygen, then at a depth of more than 10 meters, oxygen poisoning awaits him. Apparatuses with a closed breathing circuit, operating on mixtures of oxygen and nitrogen, allowing diving to such a depth, appeared much later.

It was widely believed in the American Navy that Japanese listening posts were located at the entrances to the harbor at a depth of 60 meters, making sure that enemy submarines and guided torpedoes could not enter the harbor. Firstly, technically, this was not feasible at that time, because it was necessary to keep the crews in them in a saturated dive mode, supplying air to them from the shore, and ensure regeneration as in a submarine. What for? From the point of view of military affairs, shelter at such a depth is a meaningless thing. The submarine also has sonars and microphones. Than to fence this whole garden with underwater shelters, it is easier to keep a submarine on duty there. But shelters in merchant ships flooded at a shallow depth, or even sticking up with a keel, are a very real thing. For the concentration of fukuryu fighters, this is quite acceptable, given that they do not care to die. From their mine, from a Japanese shell that fell into the water next to the ship they were attacking, or from an American grenade thrown into the water by a vigilant soldier who noticed something suspicious in the water.

The Japanese Navy has long had well-trained and equipped divers. Their equipment was advanced for those times, even before the war they used flippers. Suffice it to recall the Japanese raid mask, which was used back in the twenties to search for the "Black Prince". It seemed to our divers the height of technical perfection. True, for sabotage cases, it is completely unsuitable. Mention of it as a technical novelty, indicative of the development of diving in Japan, which went its own way, different from Europe. In February 1942, light divers of the Japanese fleet cleared minefields near Hong Kong and Singapore, opening the way for their amphibious assault forces. But they were few. And Japan could not equip the huge masses of newly recruited divers with good equipment and weapons. The bet was again made on mass heroism. This is how one of the participants describes the suicide attack on our destroyer Japanese war 1945:
“Our destroyer was standing on the roadstead of one of the Korean ports, covering the landing of the marines. The Japanese were almost driven out of the city, we saw through binoculars how the Korean population met our flowers. But in some places there were still battles. The observer on duty noticed that some strange object was moving from the shore in our direction. Soon, through binoculars, one could see that it was the head of a swimmer, next to which a bubble inflated with air dangled, now appearing on the surface, now hiding in the waves. One of the sailors pointed a rifle at him and looked at the commander, waiting for further orders. Do not shoot! - the political officer intervened, - maybe this is a Korean with some kind of report or just to establish contact. The sailor lowered his rifle. Nobody wanted to kill a brother in the class who was sailing to extend a hand of friendship. Soon the swimmer was already almost next to the board, we saw that he was young, almost a boy, completely naked, despite cold water, on his head he has a white bandage with some hieroglyphs. Through clear water it was visible that a small box and a long bamboo pole were tied to the inflated bladder.

The swimmer looked at us, we looked at him. And suddenly he stuck a knife out of nowhere in the bubble and, shouting "Banzai!", disappeared under the water. If not for this stupid cry, it is not known how it would all have ended. Sergeant Major Voronov, who was standing next to me, pulled out a pin from a lemon, which he had prepared in advance and threw a grenade into the water. There was an explosion and the saboteur floated to the surface like a stunned fish. Since then, we have increased our vigilance. Later, talking to tankers who were also attacked by suicide bombers, I learned that the Japanese jumped out of the trenches with mines on bamboo poles and fell under machine-gun bursts, having managed to shout "Banzai!" If they tried to put their mine unnoticed, the losses from them could be much greater. But the impression was that it was more important for them to die beautifully than to destroy the tank.

There was no shortage of volunteers for the suicide squads. In letters to relatives and friends, young people who faced imminent death enthusiastically announced their intention to give their lives for Japan, for the Emperor.

So the twenty-year-old midshipman Teruo Yamaguchi wrote to his parents: "Do not cry for me. Although my body will turn to dust, my spirit will return to my native land, and I will always stay with you, my friends and neighbors. I pray for your happiness." Another driver of the Kaiten, twenty-two-year-old midshipman Ichiro Hayashi, consoled his mother in a letter: “Dear mother, please do not miss me. What a blessing to die in battle! I was lucky to get the opportunity to die for Japan ... Goodbye dear. Ask Heaven to take me in. I will be very sad if Heaven turns away from me. Pray for me, mother!"

The atomic bomb is, of course, a crime. But when landing on the islands of the mother country, the Japanese command was preparing to meet the American landings with an army of suicide bombers. More than 250 ultra-small submarines, more than 500 Kaiten torpedoes, 1,000 Sinye exploding boats, 6,000 Fukuryu divers and 10,000 kamikaze pilots. The American command decided to kill several tens or hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians rather than lose the lives of their soldiers. And, in the end, the Japanese were the first to start. Who is right and who is wrong is for God to decide. But it is already possible to pay tribute to the courage of people who, by the will of fate, were our opponents in this war.

Part 2

The greatest interest for historians of military affairs is now caused not by the great battles of large armies, but by single actions, where a person discovers his superiority over the machine and destroys it with his fearlessness, self-control, and strength of mind.

The fulfillment of special missions for mining ships and committing other sabotage is obviously associated with a mortal risk. Combat swimmer, passed careful preparation and training, inspired by a sense of patriotism, with unbending willpower and fearlessness, consciously takes risks to complete the task. This is typical for the special forces of any army in the world. But even against the background of these iron people, the Japanese stand out especially. After all, a saboteur of any army takes a mortal risk, and a Japanese goes to his death.
This phenomenon is rooted in ancient history Japan and underlies the religion of Shinto, which in the "Land of the Rising Sun" strangely coexists with Buddhism.
The first mention of the use of suicide bombers dates back to the 13th century. In 1260, the grandson of Genghis Khan Kublai Khan ascended the Mongolian throne. After the victory over China, a new Mongol dynasty of emperors of China, the Yuan, was founded. The Mongols landed troops on Sumatra and Java, attacked Vietnam and Burma. By that time, the whole of Central Asia was already under the heel of the Mongols, Far East, part of Western Asia, the Caucasus, of Eastern Europe, including Rus'. However, there was a country that refused to submit to the mighty Empire, which enslaved dozens of states. It was Japan. In 1266, an ambassador was sent to Japan with a demand to submit to the Great Khan.

The Shikken (ruler) of Japan, Hojo Tokemuni, unconditionally rejected the demands of the Mongols. War became inevitable. The terrible danger of the Mongol invasion loomed over Japan, which received in Japanese history the name "GENKO". In November 1274, an armada of the Mongol fleet, consisting of 900 ships, with 40 thousand Mongol, Korean and Chinese soldiers, left the Korean port of HAPPO towards the Japanese islands. This army quickly killed the small squads of samurai on the islands of Tsushima and Iki. The Mongols fought, using masses of cavalry and tactics that allowed them to conquer the vast expanses of Europe and Asia.

The Japanese did not use large formations in battles. A samurai is primarily a loner warrior. Japanese great importance gave external forms of warfare. The main thing is that everything should be beautiful and according to the rules. First, they fired a whistling arrow "Kaburai" towards the enemy, challenging them to a duel. The best warriors stepped forward and demanded single combat. Then a hundred knights rode out and fought with the same number of the enemy. And only after that the army went into battle. In this case, this tactic failed. Military honor for the Mongols and their satellites did not exist. In a group, they surrounded singles and killed in the back, used poisoned arrows, which was not acceptable for samurai (for samurai, not ninja). The Japanese were losing the war without even causing much damage to the enemy. Next up is Kyushu. The Japanese clearly did not have enough strength to repel aggression. At the town of Hakata, the Mongols entered into a fierce battle with a small, but brave and well-trained detachment of samurai. Stubborn resistance, sun setting; the decision of the commander forced the Mongols to retreat to the ships to regroup forces.

In the evening, a storm began, turning into a typhoon. The Mongolian fleet was swept across the water surface, destroying more than 200 ships. The remnants of the armada, in complete disarray, were forced to return to Korea. Thus ended the first invasion.

The Japanese were already distinguished by their ability to learn and not to make old mistakes. Realizing that Khubilai would not calm down, they prepared more carefully for the next invasion. Defensive structures were built on Kyushu and Honshu, and samurai squads were concentrated in the places of the proposed landing. The tactics of the Mongols were studied and adopted, their own miscalculations and shortcomings were taken into account and analyzed.

In the spring of 1281, 4,500 ships with 150,000 soldiers on board under the command of the Mongol commander Alakhan left the Korean port of Happo. Never before and subsequently in the history of all peoples has there been a larger fleet than the Mongol one of 1281, either in the number of ships or in the number of troops. Huge ships armed with catapults carried a huge number of people and horses in their holds.

The Japanese built a huge number of small rowing boats with good speed and maneuverability. These ships were waiting in the wings in Hakata Bay. The morale of the Japanese was very high. Even the Japanese pirates left their craft and joined the imperial fleet.

The aggressor fleet was approaching Hakata Bay, destroying everything in its path. Finally, the Mongol armada entered Hakata Bay. And a battle broke out on land and at sea, where the Mongols were attacked by rowboats. The advantage here was on the side of the Japanese. The boats, despite the hail of cannonballs and arrows, approached the clumsy masses of the Chinese ships, the samurai climbed on board the ships with lightning speed and destroyed the crews. The Japanese fought, despising death, and this helped in the struggle. The Mongols turned out to be morally unprepared for the self-sacrifice that the Japanese soldiers made. Samurai won in battle in a limited space, their individual swordsmanship was better placed than that of the Mongols, who were accustomed to fighting in masses, if possible at a distance, shooting the enemy with poisoned arrows.

History has brought us many episodes of this battle. Kusano Jiro stands out among the heroes of the sea battle. A hail of arrows and cannonballs hit the boat he commanded, one of which tore off his arm. Having stopped the blood with a tourniquet, he continued to direct the battle. According to sources, the wounded samurai, overcoming pain, led the boarding team, personally killed 21 people in battle and set the enemy ship on fire.

Another Japanese commander, Miti Iri, wrote a prayer before the battle asking the kami gods to punish the enemy. Then he burned the paper with the text, and swallowed the ashes. Miti Ari equipped two row boats with the best warriors who swore to die in this battle. Hiding their swords under the folds of their clothes, the Japanese approached the flagship of the Mongols. They thought that the unarmed Japanese were approaching in order to negotiate or surrender. This allowed me to get closer. The samurai flew up to his deck. In a bloody battle, most died, but the rest managed to kill the commander of the Mongol fleet and set fire to the hulk of the ship.

Faced with such resistance on land and at sea (much is known about the land battle, but it is beyond the scope of the article), the Mongol fleet left Hakata Bay to regroup and meet with the second part of the armada approaching Japan. It was decided to go around the island of Kyushu and land on the other side.

After the meeting of the fleets, a huge force of the Mongols and their allies attacked the island of Takashima, preparing a new invasion of Kyushu. Over Japan again hung death threat.
In all Shinto shrines, prayers were conducted without ceasing.

On August 6, 1281, a dark streak appeared in a clear, cloudless sky, which eclipsed the sun in a matter of minutes. And a deadly typhoon broke out. When the wind died down three days later, hardly a quarter of the original composition remained of the Mongol fleet - about 4 thousand warships and more than 100 thousand people died in the abyss.

The demoralized remnants of the crippled ships returned to Kolre. So ingloriously ended for the soldiers of Khubilai's campaign against Japan. Since that time, the idea has taken root in the minds of the Japanese that their country is under the special protection of national gods and no one can defeat it.

The idea of ​​the divine origin of the country, belief in a miracle, the help of the Shinto gods, primarily Amaterasu and Hachiman, significantly influenced the formation of the national ideology. The heroes of the battles with the Mongols, who became gods in the minds of the Japanese, became examples for young people. A Beautiful death in battle for thousands of years was sung in this country. Michi Ahri and his samurai became the gods of the Japanese suicide bombers and torpedo drivers.

Lightning speed is the basis of Japanese military doctrine. The Pacific War knows many examples when the Japanese first acted and then thought. Or they did not think at all, but only acted. The main thing is to be lightning fast and beautiful.

The desire for self-sacrifice, which made the Japanese fierce and fanatical warriors, at the same time led to irreparable losses in trained and well-trained pilots, submariners, which the Empire so needed. Enough has been said about Japanese views on the conduct of war. These views, perhaps, were good for the samurai of the Middle Ages and the legendary 47 ronin, who, as the saying goes. ancient legend, made themselves hara-kiri after the death of the master, but they do not fit at all by 1941. American Admiral S.E. Morison, in his book The Rising Sun in the Pacific, assesses the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor as strategically stupid. He gives a very revealing example of the interrogation of a captured Japanese admiral, one of those who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Former Japanese admiral: "Why do you think our attack on Pearl Harbor was strategic stupidity?"
Investigator: "Were it not for this attack, the United States might not have declared war on Japan, and even if war had been declared, efforts to contain the Japanese offensive to the south due to our employment in Europe in the war with Hitler would not have been so decisive. A sure way to call America to war was an attack on American soil.
Former Japanese admiral: "However, we considered it necessary to put your fleet out of action so that, in order to exclude the possibility of offensive actions by the Americans, we could launch an offensive to the south.
Investigator: For how long, according to your calculations, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American fleet would not be able to take offensive actions?
Former Japanese admiral: According to our assumptions within 18 months.
Investigator: In fact, when did the first operations of the American fleet begin?
Former Japanese admiral: Fast carriers began air strikes against the Gilbert Islands and the Marshall Islands in late January and early February 1942, less than 60 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Investigator: Tell me, did you know the location of the fuel tanks in Pearl Harbor?
Former Japanese admiral: Of course. The location of the tanks was well known to us.
Investigator: And how many bombs were dropped on these tanks?
Former Japanese admiral: None, the main objects of attack were your large warships.
Investigator: Did it ever occur to your operations officers who planned the attack that the destruction of the fuel depots on Oahu would mean putting out of action the entire fleet that was in the Hawaiian Islands until the fuel was delivered from the continent ? Then your boats would be able to prevent the delivery of fuel, thereby preventing the possibility of an American offensive for many months?
The Japanese admiral was shocked. The idea of ​​destroying fuel supplies was new to him. The most expedient ways and means of neutralizing the American fleet did not occur to the Japanese even in hindsight. So they fought, making up for the lack of strategic thinking with the heroism of the personnel. Japanese boats were huge and difficult to manage. They had poor noise masking and an unreliable control system. Lack of living quarters, unsanitary conditions, strong vibration of the hull. It's amazing how Japanese submarines could swim at all. And not only to swim, but also to sink large warships.

Almost all the successes of the Japanese were associated with the cult of self-sacrifice in the war, brought to the point of absurdity. According to the Bushido samurai code, dying in battle is the highest happiness. But the decision to die or not is made by the warrior himself. In the early 1930s, during the war in China, the first suicide bombers appeared, in the 20th century who knowingly went to their deaths.
During the Shanghai operation, three soldiers - sappers, having tied a hatimaki bandage around their heads, drinking a cup of sake and swearing to die (like the ancient samurai during the Mongol invasion) blew up the Chinese fortification with one large mine. The dead soldiers were proclaimed divine and declared a model of "yamatodamasiya" "Japanese spirit". In Japan, they became known as "Bakudansanyushi" (three brave warriors with a bomb). It is much easier to send soldiers to certain death than to call in artillery. In addition, you can raise a fuss about this issue and intimidate America and the Soviet Union, which support China. In 1934, an announcement was published in Japanese newspapers about the recruitment of volunteer suicide bombers, drivers of guided torpedoes.

Actions like these were needed to keep the US from sending a fleet to help Beijing. More than 5,000 applications were received for 400 places. But then it didn’t come to use, and there were no torpedoes. The Japanese returned to the idea of ​​suicide - torpedo drivers in 1942, losing the battle of Midway, although the idea of ​​​​attacking a torpedo fired by a submarine, but controlled by a person (a volunteer) in it, took shape by the time of the first attack on Pearl Harbor. Mochitsura Hashimoto, the commander of the submarine (I 58) - the carrier of guided torpedoes, describes in detail the history of the creation of the Kaiten torpedoes in his memoirs.

“Several such torpedoes were made for the first series of tests,” Hashimoto writes, “they were tested near the Kure naval base on the island, which was known under the code name“ Base - 2 ”. stage when it seemed that they could be put into production and then used in a combat situation.However, the design of torpedoes excluded the possibility of saving the person who controlled it, that is, he was doomed to certain death, which was objected to by the naval command. a device that allows, by simply pressing a button, to throw the driver into the sea at a distance of about 45 meters from the target.

Around February 1944, a prototype human torpedo was delivered to the headquarters of the Navy, and soon the torpedoes were put into production. With a passionate hope for success, they began to manufacture them in the experimental torpedo shop of the shipyard in Kura. There were high hopes for this weapon. Now, it seemed, it was possible to take revenge on the enemy for the heavy losses suffered by Japan. By this time the island of Saipan had passed into the hands of the Americans, and we had suffered heavy losses.

The new weapon was named "Nytens", which meant "The Way to Paradise". In the book of Taras, the name of this torpedo is translated as "Shaking Heaven", in other sources there are translations "Turn to the sky" and "Restoration of forces after their decline." Apparently this hieroglyph has many interpretations.

While the manufacture of torpedoes was underway, a base was organized in Tokuyama Bay, where personnel were trained.
Alas! On the very first day of testing in Tokuyama Bay, one of the volunteers and champions of this weapon drowned. The torpedo he was in was buried in the mud and could not be raised. This boded ill for the future."

The omen did not deceive. Only in the process of training, as a result of the imperfection of technology, 15 people died. From the idea of ​​a catapult, which gave a chance for salvation, had to be abandoned. The Japanese command was not up to saving the lives of torpedo drivers. Japan lost one battle after another. It was urgent to launch a miracle weapon. The first Kaiten samples were launched on the surface. The boat surfaced, launched torpedoes and went deep. Drivers landed in the area of ​​operations of the American fleet, they themselves were looking for a target. Since it was dangerous to risk a boat in an area where aircraft and ships could detect it, drivers were dropped off at night near the harbors where the Americans were based and often torpedoes simply disappeared without finding a target, went to the bottom due to technical problems, stuck in anti-submarine networks. The driver's exit to cut the network was not provided.

Later they began to convert boats to launch torpedoes from a submerged position. The drivers got into the torpedoes in advance and waited for the boat to find the target. Air was supplied through a hose, communication was carried out by telephone. Finally, at the very end of the war, boats appeared from which it was possible to go into the torpedo directly from the compartment through the lower torpedo hatch. The effectiveness of the torpedo immediately increased. Hashimoto describes a case where his boat lay on the ground, and an American destroyer bombarded her with depth charges. He decided to attack the destroyer with human torpedoes. The suicide bomber said goodbye to everyone and got into the Kaiten. The sailor battened down the rear hatch behind him, after a few minutes the sound of a torpedo engine was heard, the exclamation "Banzai!" Then the connection was cut off. Then there was an explosion. When the boat surfaced, only debris floated on the surface.

The descriptions of the behavior of torpedo drivers before going on a mission are interesting. “During the long periods of being under water, there was nothing to do in the boat. Both officers from the torpedo drivers, apart from preparing their torpedoes and training observation in the periscope, had no other duties, so they played chess. One of them was present during the attack of human torpedoes in near the Ulithi Islands, but he himself failed to attack due to a malfunction of the torpedo.He was a very good chess player...

The enemy seemed to have surrounded us. I ordered the drivers of torpedoes No. 2 and No. 3 to immediately take their places. It was cloudy, but there were some bright stars in the sky. In the dark, we did not see the faces of the drivers when they both came to the bridge to report. They were silent for a while, then one of them asked: Commander, where is the constellation "Southern Cross?" His question took me by surprise. I scanned the sky, but did not notice this constellation. A nearby navigator noticed that the constellations were not yet visible, but that it would soon appear in the southeast. The drivers, saying simply that they were going to take their places, resolutely shook hands with us and left the bridge.

I still remember the self-control of these two young people. The sailor, whose job was to close the bottom cover of the torpedo, did his job and raised his hands, showing that everything was ready. At 2 hours 30 minutes, the order followed: "prepare for the release of human torpedoes!" The rudders of the torpedoes were set in accordance with the position of the rudders of the submarine. Prior to the release of human torpedoes, communication with them was maintained by telephone, at the time of separation of the torpedoes from the submarine, the telephone wires leading to them could be tied up.
Ten minutes later, everything was ready for the launch of the torpedoes, scheduled for 3.00 according to the plan, on the basis that at 4 hours 30 minutes it would begin to get light.

The driver of torpedo No. 1 reported: "Ready!" The last clamp was released, the torpedo engine started up and the driver rushed to his goal. The last connection with him was cut off at the moment when the torpedo separated from the boat and rushed towards the enemy ships that were in the harbor of the island of Guam! At the very last moment before the release, the driver exclaimed: "Long live the Emperor!"
The release of torpedo No. 2 was carried out in exactly the same way. Despite his youth, her driver remained calm to the end and left the boat without saying a word.
Too much water got into the engine of torpedo No. 3, and its release was postponed to the last stage. When torpedo No. 4 was fired, it also sounded: "Long live the Emperor!" Finally, torpedo number 3 was fired. Due to a phone malfunction, we weren't able to hear her driver's last words.
At that moment, there was a huge explosion. We surfaced and, fearing persecution, began to retreat to the open sea ...
... We tried to see what was happening in Apra Bay, but at that moment a plane appeared and we had to leave."

Meanwhile, the war was getting more and more fierce. In addition to human torpedoes, baby boats and manmines from fukuryu teams, the Japanese naval command began to use units of "giretsu kutebutai" - teams of suicide paratroopers. In February 1945, the Japanese dropped a paratrooper, consisting of the military personnel of this team, on one of the army airfields. The paratroopers, tied with packages of explosives, destroyed seven "flying fortresses" along with themselves and burned 60 thousand gallons (1 gallon - 4.5 liters) of gasoline. 112 suicide soldiers died in this battle. Information about the effectiveness of suicide attacks is very contradictory. Japanese propaganda agreed to the fact that each kamikaze, as a rule, destroyed a large warship. When suicide bombers ceased to be a military secret, they began to write a lot about them, extolling the results of their actions to the skies, calling new crowds of young people into the ranks of suicides. The Americans, on the contrary, did not acknowledge their losses and reported understated figures, misleading the Japanese command about the degree of effectiveness of their sabotage forces and means. According to Japanese propaganda, kamikaze, fikuryu, kaiten and other suicide squads destroyed many times more ships than the Americans had in the Pacific Fleet. According to American data, the Japanese lost a whole lot of carrier boats and achieved practically no results. By the way, I read a book by an Englishman about Japanese aces pilots (not kamikaze). He treats with irony their reports of victories over Soviet and American aircraft. For example, in the battles at Halkin Gol, one Japanese ace, according to his reports, destroyed such a number of aircraft that the Russians did not have in that area at all. A Japanese newspaper wrote that he killed one Soviet pilot with a samurai sword, sitting next to a wrecked Soviet plane. Samurai is taken at his word (as a gentleman). So, if no one reproaches the Japanese for lack of courage, then they have a hard time with truthfulness. Therefore, the degree of effectiveness of the use of suicide bombers is still not known (and probably will not be known) (I do not touch on aviation).

By the end of the war, the rights and benefits of suicide bombers and their families were regulated. Goodbye to the gods, the future god of soldiers will get the opportunity to live to their heart's content. Every restaurant owner considered it an honor to host a suicide bomber without taking any money from him. Universal honor and admiration, love of the people, family benefits. All close relatives of the future kami (god) were surrounded by honor.

The exit to the mission was furnished according to the rules invented for kamikaze. The headband "hachimaki" with sayings, inscriptions or the image of the sun - the coat of arms of the Empire, like the medieval samurai, symbolized a state in which a person was ready to move from everyday life to sacredness and tying it was, as it were, a prerequisite for inspiring a warrior and gaining courage. Before boarding a plane or a torpedo, the suicide bombers said to each other a ritual farewell phrase: "See you at the Yasukuni Temple."
It was necessary to go to the target with open eyes, not closing them until the very last moment. Death was supposed to be perceived without any emotions, calmly and quietly, with a smile, according to the medieval traditions of the feudal host. Such an attitude towards one's own death was considered the ideal of a warrior.

The use of suicide bombers, according to Japanese propaganda, was supposed to show the superiority of the spirit of the Japanese over the Americans. General Kawabe Torashiro noted that the Japanese until the end of the war believed in the possibility of fighting the Americans on an equal footing - "Spirit against machines."

What is the difference between the European and Japanese understanding of death. As one Japanese officer, an unconscious prisoner, explained to the Americans: while Europeans and Americans think that life is beautiful, the Japanese think how good it is to die. Americans, British or Germans, having been captured, will not regard this as a catastrophe, they will try to escape from it in order to continue the fight. The Japanese will consider captivity a cowardly act, because. for a warrior - a samurai, true courage - to know the time of his death. Death is victory.

As a rule, everyone going on a mission left dying poems praising death for the Emperor and the Motherland. Some former suicide bombers who did not have time to die in battle still regret it.

It was not possible to replace the typhoon that saved Japan in the 13th century with people. Hundreds of midget submarines and thousands of guided torpedoes remained in the hangars without waiting for the crews. And thank God (both ours and Japan's). Japan lost the war. Someone will call suicide bombers fanatics and scumbags. Someone will admire the courage of people going to their deaths for their homeland in a desperate attempt to save the situation, fighting with the spirit against the machines. Let everyone make a conclusion for himself.

(c) V. Afonchenko

I will add on my own that there are a huge variety of opinions on the fact described above, both in Japan itself and around the world. I will not undertake to judge the correctness or agree on the correctness of any of them. I just think that people died, it's scary. Although someone will say this, what do you care about those people who died in some kind of war, in any war, not only in this one? After all, every day so many of them die and die from causes completely unrelated to the war.

But in my opinion, it is worth thinking about the fact that forgetting about something that happened, we deliberately provoke a repetition of this in the future.

The button is stuck, and the propeller hangs,
Like a broken wing.
Carlson gets on a plane without landing gear,
The sun is bloody and bright.
There is no return, like a bird without legs, -
It's an unwritten law
If there is a samurai blade in the cockpit,
Like validol under the tongue ...
Oleg Medvedev, Carlsons

They wrote farewell letters, and the next day, after drinking a ritual cup of sake and bowing in the direction of the Tokyo Imperial Palace, they got into their wooden cars and flew to the sea. The girls saw them off like heroes. They broke through bad weather and enemy fighters, through direct fire ship guns, so that, if you're lucky, hit the deck and turn into a fireball. The one that is depicted on the flag of their country.

ORIGINS OF SELF-SACRIFICE

There are cases of heroic death in the name of the Motherland and victory in any war. Usually such actions are the result of a momentary impulse: when suddenly there is no other way out but to save other people at the cost of your life or take as many enemies as possible with you. Then the pilot in the burning plane rushes to the ram, and the fighter rushes to the embrasure of the bunker in order to protect his comrades from bullets with his body. However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a soldier, going to war, still hopes to stay alive.

Victims Japanese kamikaze were planned. Military operations assumed in advance that these people would die; weapons of "special purpose" were developed without taking into account the preservation of human life - the pilot was a consumable.

It should be immediately noted that most kamikaze were not fanatics. Ordinary young Japanese, quite sober-minded and cheerful - they showed neither depression, nor detachment, nor panic, despite the fact that they knew about the impending death. Records of kamikazes who returned from unsuccessful sorties have been preserved (occasionally there were cases when the pilot did not find a target or was forced to return due to problems in the plane in order to fly again the next day): these were sound arguments of people who know their job well and are ready to do it. Among the notes you can find discussions about technical flaws, psychological aspects and practical methods of ram attacks.

So why were these guys willingly going to die? Why did Japan turn to a suicide strategy at all?

There are several reasons, and the first is the Japanese mentality, which is so unlike the European mindset we are used to. A lot is mixed here: Shintoism, Buddhism, and the medieval samurai code "Bushido", and the cult of the Emperor, and the belief in the chosenness of the Japanese nation, fostered over centuries of isolation and backed up by military successes. It is important that the very attitude of the Japanese towards death is completely different from that adopted in the European Christian tradition: they are not afraid of death as such and do not consider suicide a sinful act, on the contrary, sometimes preferring death to life (we can immediately recall the cleansing rite of seppuku). One of the reasons for the selflessness that gave rise to kamikaze can be called the commonality of the Japanese people: a person was first of all considered a member of his family, and only then - an independent person; accordingly, the dishonorable act committed by him lay a stain on all his relatives. families fallen heroes became very respected and surrounded by honors. Today, a similar psychology can be found among representatives of Muslim communities (although the prerequisites for such a worldview among Muslims are completely different).

Kamikaze believed that after death they become "kami" - the guardian spirits of Japan. Tablets with their names were placed in the Yasukuni Shrine, and still the Japanese come to bow to the heroes.

Japan turned to the systematic use of suicide bombers only in Last year war. Before that, there were spontaneous cases of self-sacrifice, no more frequent than on the part of British, American or Soviet pilots; the same few operations that involved the death of soldiers were approved by the command only when the performers had at least a minimal chance of salvation.

The bottom line is that Japan was not ready for a protracted war, and in 1944 the absolute advantage of the Americans in resources, military equipment and specialists was already obvious. From the distant seas, the war moved closer and closer to the Japanese islands, on which the foot of the invader had never set foot before. To return good luck, some miraculous new opportunity. Something that opponents could not repeat.

And such an opportunity was found.

KAMIKAZE TACTICS

Vice Admiral Onishi Takijiro is considered the father of the kamikaze. In October 1944, he arrived in Manila to take over as commander of the First Air Force. To say that he got the fleet shabby is to say nothing. Many aircraft died in battle, the rest were in a mediocre technical condition, there were almost no experienced pilots left, and the green youths arriving from Japan who had completed accelerated flight training courses were only capable of dying ingloriously and senselessly under the fire of American aces.

Onishi made a completely rational decision: if you die, then with glory and benefit. He had previously sent people to certain death, since he was one of the most faithful and consistent supporters of the "Japanese spirit" - that is, readiness for unconditional self-sacrifice - in the entire fleet.

Gathering the officers, Vice Admiral Onishi invited them next plan: if you equip fighters with bombs and send them into a ram attack on American aircraft carriers, forbidding them to get involved in air battles, you will surely be able to destroy or damage a significant number of ships. Trading a few planes for an aircraft carrier is the best you could wish for. As for human losses, it was assumed that only volunteers would go into "special attacks".

Initially, there really was no shortage of volunteers. The first kamikaze operations against the American fleet in Leyte Gulf were successful, though not as successful as the Vice Admiral had hoped. And yet one aircraft carrier ("Saint Lo") managed to be sunk, six ships were seriously damaged - and this at the cost of only 17 aircraft. Onisi reported on the success in General base, and in Tokyo suddenly believed that the new tactics could turn the tide of the war. Vice Admiral Onishi himself said in an interview with one of the newspapers: “If an enemy aircraft carrier is detected, then we can destroy it with a suicidal attack. If the B-29 bomber is detected, we will hit it with ram attacks. By choosing to use suicide attacks, we are confident that we will win the war. Numerical superiority will disappear with the use of suicidal operations.

The go-ahead was given to the widest use of suicides, and several training groups were immediately formed.

As a rule, young men aged 17–24 went to study on kamikaze. After completing short courses, they were barely able to fly an aircraft: it is significant that when flying from Japan to the place of operation (to the Philippines, later to Formosa and Okinawa), more than half of the group was often lost. There were very few experienced pilots left by the end of the war, and they were worth their weight in gold. They were strictly forbidden to participate in ram attacks, their task was different: to escort and protect groups of suicidal newcomers, otherwise the latter, not trained in air combat, became easy prey for the American Hellcats and Corsairs.

Ship radars easily detected approaching aircraft, interceptors immediately rose to meet them; carrier-based aviation ensured the safety of the carrier ship within a radius of up to 100 kilometers. Therefore, when attacking ships, kamikazes used one of two tactics: they either dived from 6000–7000 meters (enemy fighters needed time to gain such a height, and by the time they overtook the Japanese, he had already managed to accelerate at the peak, becoming difficult to defeat falling bomb), or went extremely low, above the very surface of the water, where they were not seen by radar, and at the last moment they sharply gained altitude and fell to the deck. The second tactic required considerable skill from the pilot and was used less frequently. There was another point: a number of aircraft (albeit a smaller part), designed specifically for kamikaze tasks, consisted of 90% of wood and simply could not be "read" by detection systems.

PRO FIGHTER ZERO

At the beginning of the war, the Japanese could look down on their opponents: they were armed with an aircraft that, until 1943, surpassed all analogues in maneuverability and flight range - the A6M Zero carrier-based fighter. From 1940 to 1945, Mitsubishi factories produced 11,000 A6M units. It was the most massive Japanese aircraft both in terms of the number of vehicles produced and in terms of use in battles - not a single naval battle involving aviation could have done without Zero. In the last year of the war, Zero became the most successful and, again, the most massive kamikaze aircraft. The thing is that after 1943, the A6M model was outdated. Japan had neither the time nor the resources to develop a worthy replacement, so until the end of the war they continued to mass-produce the A6M in various modifications. In particular, the A6M7 modification was designed specifically for kamikaze attacks.

KAMIKAZE TECHNIQUE

The main "workhorse" of Japanese naval aviation was the A6M Zero fighter. By 1944, Japan had a huge fleet of decommissioned and unusable Zeros. Naturally, this model was used for suicide attacks in the first months. The predecessor of Zero, the A5M carrier-based fighter, was discontinued in 1942, especially in recent months war, when the lack of equipment began to affect. To increase the destructive power of the attack, a bomb weighing from 60 to 250 kg was attached under the fuselage of the aircraft.

All kamikaze planes were equipped with bombs. Bombers, heavier than fighters, were also used for suicide attacks, albeit in smaller numbers. Naval bombers D3A, D4Y Suisei, B5N, P1Y Ginga, B6N Tenzan and army Ki-43 Hayabusa and Ki-45 Toryu could carry an explosive charge weighing 600–800 kg. Occasionally, G4M, Ki-67 Hiryu and Ki-49 Donryu heavy bombers with a crew reduced to 2-3 people were used for "special purposes" - these monsters, after some refinement, could lift a three-ton charge.

At the very end of the war, everything that could fly was already used for suicidal attacks: training aircraft, obsolete models, and even handicraft flying structures.

Interestingly, vehicles designed specifically for kamikaze began to be developed even before the first successes of Vice Admiral Onishi - from the summer of 1944. The task was set: to come up with an aircraft capable of carrying a large load of explosives and equipped with a simple control system accessible to any graduate of the courses. And such a plane was made quite quickly. It was named Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka, which means Cherry Blossom.

In truth, it was not really a plane - rather a large (from 600 to 1200 kg in various modifications) bomb, equipped with small plywood wings for gliding and a jet engine for short-term acceleration. The MXY7 chassis did not have, he could not take off and land too. To deliver the Cherry Blossom to the battlefield, G4M and P1Y Ginga carrier aircraft were used; modifications of bombers were developed that could carry several MXY7s at the same time, but these works were not completed until the end of the war.

Despite the fact that the Americans immediately renamed the Ohka to Baka (that is, "fool" in Japanese) for allegedly unjustified sacrifice and inefficiency, it was the only model of an aircraft designed specifically for suicides that was mass-produced - 852 such machines were built.

However, somewhere the Americans were right: it was far from a perfect weapon. Bombers laden with MXY7s became slow, clumsy, and vulnerable, often dying before they could rid themselves of their deadly cargo. The handling of the Ohka was so primitive that getting it right on target was not a trivial task for an experienced pilot, let alone a novice kamikaze pilot.

In the spring of 1945, the Nakajima aircraft manufacturing company received an order to develop the simplest and cheapest kamikaze aircraft that could be manufactured in the shortest possible time and equipped with any serial aircraft engine; the plane had to be able to take off on its own - there were several months left before the end of the war, and the Japanese were preparing to fight on their territory.

The model was named Ki-115 Tsurugi. The plane turned out to be unsophisticated: made of tin and wood, with poor flight characteristics and the simplest control, with a landing gear that was thrown away after taking off from the ground (and attached to the next one taking off). The cockpit was open, and a target was drawn on the windshield. His only task was to carry an 800-kilogram bomb to the target. By August 1945, 105 of these machines were assembled, and then the war ended abruptly. Not a single Tsurugi, except for the prototype, ever flew into the air. Tellingly, quite a few copies of the Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka and Ki-115 survived - the Americans later found them in hangars. The latter caused serious bewilderment: it did not immediately become clear that this aircraft was designed to fly in one direction.

For the war on its territory, the Kokusai Ta-Go aircraft was also developed. Even simpler than the Ki-115 Tsurugi, it was made of metal-reinforced wood covered with canvas and equipped with a low-powered engine - it was assumed that such an aircraft could be assembled in any workshop from readily available replaceable materials. Ta-Go could lift a 100 kg bomb. Its aerodynamic characteristics were terrible, but it was not designed for any complex aerobatics: the task was to climb somewhere close to the enemy, fly over a small area and collapse from above. The only copy of this aircraft was found by American soldiers in one of the hangars after the Allied troops entered Japan.

Generally speaking, Japan did not have time to seriously turn around with kamikaze aircraft: development, testing, mass production - all this took time, but there was no time. Some models did not advance further than prototypes, others remained in the drawings altogether. So, for example, one of the designed modifications of the Ohka with folding wings was supposed to be launched by a catapult from submarines and from underground shelters. Among the developments that have never been realized are the Kawanishi Baika pulse-jet kamikaze aircraft, as well as two variants of the Mizuno Shinryu and Mizuno Shinryu II kamikaze glider. The latter had an aerodynamic "duck" configuration, unusual for aircraft of that era.

There is a bearded anecdote about a partisan who did not know that the war was over, and year after year continued to derail freight trains, supposedly German. On the other hand, there are many true stories about Japanese soldiers who continued to fight, not knowing about the surrender of Japan.

Since 1942, when a series of Japanese defeats began and position after position had to be surrendered, it was not always possible to evacuate military units located on the islands. The soldiers were left without support and communication, left to their own devices. Most often they died in senseless "banzai attacks", rarely surrendered, some went into the jungle and caves and started a guerrilla war. The partisans had nowhere to find out about the surrender, so some of them continued to fight in the late 40s and even 50s. The last Japanese guerrilla, Hiro Onoda, surrendered to the authorities in 1974.

DEATH RIDERS-TEISINTAI

Kamikaze is the most famous special case of the phenomenon called "teishintai", that is, "voluntary detachments." Such detachments were formed in various branches of the military and had "special tasks" - to inflict damage on the enemy at the cost of their own lives.

So, for example, in May 1945, a subdivision of submarines was formed, which were supposed to ram American ships off the coast of Japan in the event of an invasion; the crews of these boats were only suicide bombers. And at the very beginning of the war, five ultra-small submarines with a crew of only two people each participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The operation plan assumed that the crews had a chance to escape, but in fact this chance was unrealistically small. None of the boats returned.

The practice of using manned kaiten torpedoes by the Japanese is quite widely known. A total of 420 units were built, and there were several varieties. Torpedoes were not very effective because they could not dive deep and became easily visible when moving. In total, the kaiten sank two American ships. An eerie feature of this type of weapon: there was only enough air in the cabin for an hour, and the hatch opened only from the outside; if an hour after leaving the carrier submarine, the pilot did not find the target, he died of suffocation.

In the battles in the Philippines and Okinawa, along with kamikaze aircraft, the Sinyo (naval) and Maru-ni (army) exploding boats were used. They were produced with a margin, more than 9,000 pieces, since the boat is simpler and cheaper than an airplane. Of this number, several hundred were sent into battle, but the effect of their use was insignificant: the attacking boats became easy prey for aviation and naval artillery, and hundreds of them were destroyed by bombers in the parking lots.

Another type of suicide soldier is the fukuryu divers. It was assumed that when the American invasion of the Japanese islands began, the Fukuru would be on the lookout for coastal waters and blow up transport ships. In total, more than a thousand suicide bombers were trained. Nothing is known about the success (or failure) of their attacks; several inexplicable explosions of American ships could well be the work of the Fukuryu.

However, one way or another, the most massive and effective (as far as it is appropriate to talk about efficiency here) among all varieties of teishintai were kamikaze pilots.

RESULTS

Were kamikazes effective on a war scale? As history shows, suicides did not save Japan from capitulation and did not even win a single major battle. In addition, there is an opinion that atomic explosions have become a "special" response of the Americans to the "special attacks" of the Japanese kamikaze.

It was assumed that kamikaze explosions, in addition to material damage, will also have a psychological effect, but the American propaganda machine minimized this effect: all information about kamikaze attacks was classified and not distributed, the first publications about Japanese suicides appeared in the press after the war.

The dry statistics are as follows: about 5000 pilots made deadly attacks in which 81 ships were destroyed and about two hundred more were damaged. This, according to Japanese researchers, the American side, speaking of its losses, calls much more modest figures (2314 sorties, 1228 of which ended in the death of pilots - shot down by the enemy or killed in ram attacks).

August 10, 1945, after the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and entry into the war with Japan Soviet Union, Emperor Hirohito decided to surrender (which occurred a few weeks later). Shortly thereafter, Vice Admiral Onishi Takijiro committed seppuku. In his suicide letter, he wrote:

“I admire hero pilots with all my heart. They fought valiantly and died believing in our victory. Death and I want to atone for my share of guilt in unfulfilled hopes and apologize to the souls of the dead pilots and their orphaned families. I want young Japanese people to learn from my death. Do not be reckless, your death will now only play into the hands of enemies. Bow to the emperor's decision, no matter how hard it is for you. Be proud to be Japanese. You are the treasure of our country. And in times of peace, with self-sacrifice worthy of a kamikaze, fight for the well-being of Japan and for world peace."

And at the end - two three-line haiku:

Washed and clear
Now the moon is shining.
The fury of the storm has passed.

Now it's all done
And I can sleep
For millions of years.

Kamikaze is a term that became widely known during the Second World War. This word denoted Japanese suicide pilots who attacked enemy aircraft and ships and destroyed them by ramming.

The meaning of the word "kamikaze"

The appearance of the word is associated with Kublai Khan, who, after the conquest of China, twice assembled a huge fleet in order to reach the shores of Japan and conquer it. The Japanese were preparing for war with an army many times superior to their own forces. In 1281, the Mongols gathered almost 4.5 thousand ships and a hundred and forty thousandth army.

But both times it did not reach a major battle. Historical sources claim that off the coast of Japan, the ships of the Mongolian fleet were almost completely destroyed by sudden storms. These typhoons that saved Japan from conquest were named " divine wind", or "kamikaze".

And when, during the Second World War, it became obvious that the Japanese were losing to the United States and the allies, detachments of suicide pilots appeared. They were supposed to, if not turn the tide of hostilities, then at least inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy. These pilots became known as kamikaze.

First kamikaze flight

From the very beginning of the war, there were single rams performed by pilots of aircraft on fire. But these were forced sacrifices. In 1944, an official suicide pilot squad was formed for the first time. Five pilots on Mitsubishi Zero fighters, led by Captain Yukio Seki, took off on October 25 from the Philippine airfield Mabarakat.

The first victim of the kamikaze was the American aircraft carrier Saint Lo. It was hit by Seki's plane and another fighter. The ship caught fire and soon sank. So the whole world knew who the kamikaze were.

"Living weapon" of the Japanese army

After the success of Yukio Seki and his comrades, mass hysteria about heroic suicides began in Japan. Thousands of young people dreamed of doing the same feat - to die, destroying the enemy at the cost of their lives.

Hastily formed "special shock troops", and not only among the pilots. Teams of suicide bombers were also among the paratroopers, who were dropped on airfields or other technical structures of the enemy. The suicide sailors controlled either boats filled with explosives or torpedoes of enormous power.

At the same time, an active processing of the consciousness of young people was carried out, they were inspired that kamikaze are heroes who sacrifice themselves for the sake of saving the Motherland. They are completely obedient to the caller to constant readiness to death. to which one should aspire.

The last sortie of suicide bombers was arranged as a solemn ritual. White bandages on the forehead, bows, the last cup of sake were an integral part of it. And almost always - flowers from girls. And even the kamikaze themselves were often compared to cherry blossoms, hinting at the speed with which they bloom and fall. All this surrounded death with an aura of romance.

Relatives of the dead kamikaze were awaited by the honor and respect of the entire Japanese society.

The results of the actions of the shock troops

Kamikaze are those who made almost four thousand sorties, each of which was the last. Most of the flights led, if not to the destruction, then to damage to ships and other military equipment enemy. They managed to inspire horror in American sailors for a long time. And only towards the end of the war with suicide bombers did they learn to fight. In total, the list of dead kamikazes consists of 6418 people.

US official figures speak of about 50 ships sunk. But this figure hardly accurately reflects the damage caused by the kamikaze. After all, ships did not always sink immediately after a successful attack by the Japanese, they managed to stay afloat, sometimes for several days. Some vessels were able to be towed to the shore, where they were repair work without which they would be doomed.

If we consider the damage to manpower and equipment, then the results immediately become impressive. After all, even giant aircraft carriers with enormous buoyancy are not immune from fires and explosions as a result of a fiery ram. Many ships burned out almost completely, although they did not go to the bottom. About 300 ships were damaged, and about 5,000 US and allied sailors were killed.

Kamikaze - who are they? Change of world view

After 70 years since the appearance of the first suicide squads, the Japanese people are trying to determine for themselves how to treat them. Who are kamikaze? Heroes who deliberately chose death in the name of bushido ideals? Or victims drugged by state propaganda?

During the war, there was no doubt. But archival materials lead to reflections. Even the first kamikaze, the famous Yukio Seki, believed that Japan was killing its best pilots in vain. They would do more good by continuing to fly and attack the enemy.

Be that as it may, kamikaze is part of the history of Japan. The part that causes pride in ordinary Japanese for their heroism, and self-denial, and pity for people who died in the prime of life. But she does not leave anyone indifferent.