It would seem the whole endeavour to cut off Japan from its resources helped. Not just the bombing. America successfully did to Japan what Germany tried to do to the UK.
I find it interesting that the 8th Air Force Strategy was not primarily destroying their armaments industries, but luring tge Experienced Luftwaffe Pilots into getting massacred by the B-17's. Tough slugfest, but it worked - by the time of D-Day, they were Finished.
The father of one of my boyhood friends served on the USS Little, DD-802. It was sunk by a mass kamikaze attack while on radar picket duty off Okinawa.
Thanks for doing this research. Information like this helps debunk the widely held opinion on RU-vid that strategic bombing in WWII failed to reduce the enemy's war making capability.
What I find interesting is a comparison of two incidents. One is an account of an US dive bomber attack on a Japanese carrier. The US pilot who describes the attack, says that his commander had said before the attack, that he vowed he would sink a Japanese carrier. The US pilot description of the attack says that he watches his colleague in a very steep dive, an that he went all the way in, making the hit and killing himself. It is very clear from the account that the US pilot was not going to be stopped regardless. Another is a Japanese account of a Japanese pilot during the attack on Pearl harbour, that his commander had a leaking fuel tank , from a hit and his commander said he was unable to make the return flight. As a result of the situation he was determined to make a hit in a US battleship, and so the Japanese pilot rode his dive bomber all the way in on a battleship. Both accounts of events were descriptions of how both fighters were determined in the efforts to attack the enemy. I think we need to be aware that both US and Japanese pilots were determined to do whatever it would take to prevail in battle.
This does assume all those planes not built due to strategic bombing would be used as kamikaze. So the premise of the data is very favourable to the argument we saved x ships and men. Some of the planes would have been bombers, reconnaissance, transport, etc. It also overlooks the lack of fuel and loss rate of pilots - could all these extra planes have been fielded and provided with pilots?
During an invasion, the Japanese probably would have started just giving mass "volenteers" a few hours of ground school with maybe sometime in a simulator, and then strapped into a plane for a one way trip. They had no shortage of manpower.
This was my thinking also👍 I'm not sure they had enough pilots available. Although I believe there would have been more attacks, I'm not sure it's a linear correlation, more like a gradual increasing curve.
Did Japan have enough fuel available to send 6,000 additional planes to Okinawa? Or would the additional planes been saved for the invasion of the home islands where the distances to be travelled would’ve been far less? And don’t forget, every week the war went on would’ve extended the B-29 campaign and the submarine campaign against Japan.
Fuel was an issue, especially by 1945 when the Battle of Okinawa began. I know in late 1944 when the Imperial Japanese Navy sortied en masse one last time for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, they consumed most of the remaining fuel the navy had stored. For the rest of the war what remained of the IJN was stuck in port due to fuel shortage. When Battleship Yamato sortied for her 1-way trip to Okinawa in April, 1945, she was originally slated to have a small fraction of fuel because the navy figured she wouldn't need it since she was going to sink anyways, but some guys in between got her more fuel anyways. Even in the air services for Japan fuel was a big issue. There was a lot of infighting as to where that fuel was going in the IJN & IJA air forces. Fuel was needed badly so that the fighters could conduct the air defense of Japan and intercept American bombers. But a lot of fuel was also being spent to fundamentally train the kamikaze air crews. They still needed to go in the air for training, and that required fuel.
We can't forget that the Japanese entered the war knowing full well that they had to win quickly because they simply didn't have the resources or manpower for a lengthy conflict on such a huge scale. The rates of attrition that they expected were gradually met and then far exceeded causing alarm to say the least, so in desperation the kamikazes were formed to try and save the empire, but in truth it only hastened the atrophy of resources and men. Of course it was much more nuanced than just this.
Excellent video! The US report seems to assume 100% of green aircraft could be transferred to Okinawa, in view of the pilot skill level this seems optimistic🤔
I did the math lets use the “114 ships sunk by kamikazes” figure. Given mechanical failures, planes shot down by Anti aircraft or CAP or pilot error (I’m making this number up and being conservative) we’ll give them a 30% loss rate. Even with that loss rate 79.8 ships are sunk. That is still thousands of US Sailors that are killed or wounded
Not according to his video a little while back on the mining of the Japanese ports called Operation Starvation, they had almost no oil coming into Japan at the end. More importantly they were out of pilots, that's what stopped the Kamikaze's, even with the abbreviated training program they just plain ran out of pilots.
The Japanese did horde a supply of fuel away from known refineries for use in defense of the home islands. Even if more planes had been available during the invasion of Okinawa, it is likely that the most of the fuel would have still been kept in reserve to repulse the home islands invasion.
@@jeffbangle4710 Yea but there's always the chance that the location of those reserves would have been targeted and destroyed. Seems like at the end everything the Japanese tried they had Allied forces on their neck, not that they deserved it but they just couldn't catch a break at the end.
FYI There was an oil refinery in Akita Japan bombed on Aug 14. I am sure the remaining kamikaze aircraft would of had enough fuel to fly for an hour. The Japanese wasted a lot of fuel on the Yamato
220 planes lost to score 12 hits in bombing and torpedo attacks. 60 planes lost to score 12 hits in suicide attacks. So conventional bombing and torpedo attacks kill over 3 times as many crew as suicide attacks!
We think of it as a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, but it’s possible any group of people would be forced to adopt these tactics if they were in the same situation.
Given that each additional Kamikaze Attrition would have degraded the Fleet's ability to counter even more attacks, the rate of success would have been compounded by the losses. The more barrels pointed at the sky, the less effective the Kamikaze is, especially with VT Fuses.
USAAF claims to have reduced kamikaze aircraft by 6k and that they had 5k ready to rumble at the end of the war. Doesn't this mean that USAAF did nothing?
One thing that might have raised the hit percentage of Kamikaze's was the introduction of the rocket powered flying bomb called the Cherry Blossom, they'd just started using it when they ran out of pilots for Kamikaze attacks, the gunners on the ships had a much harder time hitting them than any of the conventional aircraft used. But at the end of the day none of it matters and I don't understand why, with 5,000 aircraft held in reserve specifically for Kamikaze attacks, they think damaging Japanese aircraft production is what stopped the Kamikaze attacks and saved ships, the fact is they ran out of pilots not plane's, as stated they had 5,000 held in reserve for Kamikaze's, even with the abbreviated pilot training program for the Kamikaze's they just plain ran out of pilots.
The Ohka was very vulnerable before launch. Most of the shoot downs were by shooting down the transporting Betty bombers (which included the loss of their crew). The VT fused 5” shells were also highly effective as close was good enough.
@@allangibson8494 Yea but the ship's weren't just being attacked by a single Ohka, they also had plenty of traditional Kamikaze aircraft pouring down on them that had those 5" VT fused guns tied up diving down from above, then here comes what literally really is a flying bomb, and not an aircraft packed with explosives, screaming in at practically sea level where no one's looking, they were fast and had a very small frontal area which means you weren't gonna see one until it was too late, I saw an interview with a sailor that was on a ship that survived an attack from one, he said that just about the time he was saying "What the hell is that?" it was on them, the only thing that saved them was the Ohka pilot just plain screwed up and missed the ship, had they started getting those things operational in enough number's there wouldn't have been enough 5" guns to stop them, thank God they were out of pilots.
@@dukecraig2402 The Ohka’s weakness was the Betty bombers they were carried by. They were sitting ducks to late war US fighters. If you physically can’t reach a target the entire effort is wasted. Each Betty shot down was minus ten aircrew.
@@allangibson8494 Yea I understand that but I'm talking about after they were launched, they certainly weren't some kind of "Don't worry about it we've got VT fuses in our 5" gun's" thing. If they'd have been just 2 or 3 months further ahead with that program the US would have lost some ships over them instead of them being just some post war curiosity. I was an air defense gunner in the Army, I understand the concept of one of those things screaming in at the speed they would, being hard to sight and deal with given the weapons that the US had on it's ships at the time, "Relax we've got VT fuses in our 5" gun's" would not have been the reality of things if they could have amassed just 2 or 3 attacking each ship at a time, those 5" gun's were already busy dealing with traditional Kamikaze's diving down from above, and then to have 2, 3 or maybe 4 of those things come screaming in at sea level, something that's so small you're not going to see it until it gets pretty close in the first place, yes the Japanese would have still lost the war but there'd be a bunch of memorials to US ships lost from those things, the fact that the Beatty bombers were vulnerable with them isn't what saved that from happening and neither was VT fused 5" gun's, it's the fact that they didn't have enough for a coordinated attack with fighter cover to get just half of 40 through at once, thank God they didn't start that program months before they did, if they had a bunch of people who say "My grandfather was in the Navy in the Pacific in WW2" wouldn't be around to say that because grandfather wouldn't have come home from the war, those things had enough explosives in them to split most ships in half.
Interesting that the graphs seem to indicate production continued to rise despite the submarine blockade but dropped precipitously once bombing commenced. Parallels to Europe?
Can anyone help me with this question? I have read that the use of the proximity fuze in anti-aircraft shells was extremely effective, such that it blew the planes out of the sky. ( Perhaps this was towards the end of the war, like at Okinawa)
Please google the lecture "Kamikaze: The Evolution of Japan's Special Attack Forces" by Jon Parshall from the yt-channel "World War II History Round Table" He is talking about the growing Problems of the japanese air forces to attack US task forces with the growing effectivenes of AA-guns, CAP etc. and the wrong perception of the japanese high command about their kamikaze-effectiveness
I sub to that channel and Jon Parshall is one of, if not thee, pre-eminent historian of the Pacific campaign today. It is a joy to listen to his lectures and guest appearances on other channels (i.e. The Unauthorized History of the Pacific War Podcast), so I shall definitely search their back catalogue of videos. Thanks for the tip, my friend.
Dedicated suicide attacks were very practical, in that attacking US ships, especially in task forces, was a nearly suicidal endeavor anyhow, due to lack of Japanese flight training time, US CAP, and US antiaircraft fire capability, thanks especially to the proximity fuzes on US 5" rounds, in concert with their high rate of fire.
Japan was hoarding aircraft for the defence of the home islands. It is difficult to see how bombing the aircraft factories protected against kamikazes.
This is an excellent lecture by Gen. Scales. At 12:20 he asserts that the Japanese decided that the American center of gravity was casualties. I'll let him expand on that. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-czJwvfKoztI.html
Another commenter summed this premise up in two words... Looney Tunes! The 1945 Air Staffer who wrote the report must have been so cock-a-hoop at the recent US victory that he (I'm assuming it's a he, not being sexist, but most US services personel then were male) threw all common sense went out of the window! Several unstated and unrealistic assumptions were made for the outcome to have been even possible: Firstly that all aircraft production would have continued to escalate at the same rate it was before the factories were bombed. I would argue that had the aircraft intustry not been tageted, a more effective target at the time would have been the oil industry, and the earlier start of the sea mining campaign. That could have reduced not only production of the airctaft and componentes, but their training and use as well. Even if his assumtion of the B29s just not being there, the blockading of Japan by submarine and naval aircraft was shattering the Japanese economy. Starving families were exiting the cities to find food in the countryside. Only going by this channel's well researched videos! Secondly the number of japanese able and willing to jump into a palne and try to kill themselves in a suicide mission was unlikely to be unlimited. Other commenters have stated that while there were many kamikaze planes held in reserve at the end of the war, there were not enough pilots to fly them, so they were unusable. The staffer who wrote the report assumes that there were unlimited supplies of kamikaze pilots available to fly the extra planes. That is not a given. Thirdly that in the event of increased kamikaze air attack, the US Navy would have sat on their hands and done nothing to incerase their air defences. A number of things could have be tried, from incerased CAP, to more picket ships and more dedicated AA ships, all incerasing the attrition rate of the kamikaze crews. Some would undoubtedly have got through, and done more damage, but I suggest nowhere near the additional 89 sunk ships that the report writer assumes. We would normally accuse someone writing such a report today of "monday morning quaterbacking", but given that the report was written at the time of the end of hostilities, that cannot be said of this writer, but an over abundance of enthusiasm and of over hyping the B-29 (a plane definitely woth hyping to some degree judging only by the output of this channel's high quality and largely unbiased output) is definitely something he can be accused of - IMHO.
Or pilots to fly them. I think it's odd that they claimed that stopping production of Japanese aircraft with B29's is what stopped Kamikaze attacks when at the same time they know that 5,000 aircraft were held in reserve for being used as Kamikaze aircraft. Typical military "intelligence", apparently it wasn't any different between WW2 and when I was in the Army in the 80's.
@@dukecraig2402 Compared to the 10K there would be otherwise. Flight training a lot of pilots takes a lot of fuel. There was fuel to fly but it was necessary to ration it to only the most important combat sorties. Which in 1945 was just air defense interceptors and anti-ship kamikaze. Bombing aircraft factories and fuel production reduced both of those. If you are wrong on internet comments, just imagine how hard military intelligence is in war time.
I believe if the daylight B-29 raids had continued, instead of the shift to night bombing, at lower altitudes (c. 20,000 ft) then the damage to the Japanese air arm would have been greater, i.e., to encourage the Japanese to send interceptors up to be destroyed by both B-29 defensive fire and US fighter escorts. This was precisely the strategy used against Germany.
