Japan's Last Hope? Nakajima's Ki-115 

Was there ever an instance where a nation’s Army and Navy got along?😉

I'm curious how many casualties the mutual neglect each branch caused for each other. I'm sure it's in the hundreds of thousands

The US Navy was probably only the IJNs second biggest enemy.

Yeah I mean they assassinated each other. My friends and I make a point of it playing Japan in War Thunder, if we're flying an assortment of IJN and IJA we try to kill each other in the middle of a competitive match 🤣🤣

I mean they had a few minor very civilized discussions about disagreements on occasion... But certainly nothing notewor... Oh nevemind it was the exact opposite 🤣🤦‍♂️

It's also funny how the Rivalry between the Japanese Air force and Navy lived on in that way too, Mitsubishi vs Subaru.

We were military allies 1854-1933 and have been again since 1953, with a 20 year hiatus when the US elected a communist government.

@@KawasakiKitehSure it was. Nothing whatsoever to do with Japans invasion of China.... an act condemned by most nations of the world along with the USA... (I suppose all those other nations were "communist" too?

@@KawasakiKiteh fdr really wanted to help out his cousins in britian. What a way to galvanize the isolationist us than have someone fuck with our boats

@@KawasakiKiteh There have been 2 more Commie Governments elected in the US since F. Roosevelt; Obama and his puppet Biden.

At that point you are better off ditching and go AWOL

Good point.

My uncle bought a fuji rabbit 200 as his first vehicle, he got my dad to bring it home as he had experience with motorcycles and my uncle didnt but wanted to learn (he was a bit slow apparently) my dad apparently was rather scheptical of this brand new japanese scooter on the bus trip to get it, telling my uncle it will probably have been a waste of money and so on, well, when my dad got on it and rode it, he fell in love with it, he loved the shape, it had plenty of power and so fourth, in fact he loved it so much that he tried to show off when entering the street my grandparents lived on and got thrown off it 😂 my poor uncle, brand new scooter with gravel rash down one side after 2 miles of ownership that he had not even ridden himself. My dad had it repaired for him, he had it for many years, my grandfather and dad were fascinated by it, my grandpa (ex ww2 aircraft mechanic for hungary) said it was very good, the japanese know what theyre doing, so from then on, they were converted to buying japanese vehicles, my grandpa got a daihatsu hijet two stroke van, my dad got a 64 toyota crown, and my uncle had the scooter untill the late 70's when he got an isuzu luv diesel, then every time a new model came out, he upgraded to the new one, untill 1995 when he bought his last isuzu rodeo dual cab diesel, he didnt like the next model, so he kept that one untill recently when he passed away. One little scooter changed a whole family of peoples outlook on japanese manufacturing.

That’s a cool story.

@@shakeydavesr I have a 2001 Subaru Outback LL Bean with the H6 engine; It is the one of the best cars I've ever owned. AND it was built in the United States, Indiana.

@@Colt45hatchback THAT is an AWESOME story!

I would buy your grandpa a beer...

Almost. Compound vowels can sound very similar to other western sounds, such as "ai" sounding like "eye." If you say "a" then "i" over and over, speeding it up, you'll eventually get to "eye." It's similar to the "r" sound being between "r" and "l."

@@princeofcupspoc9073 greg just needs to watch more anime. it's the only possible solution.

Each of the letters a, i, u, o, e also have a long version, as in your example 'ai' given by Pincefcups..., and 'u' is not always pronounced at the end of some words; and 'n' varies depending on whether it starts a syllable or ends it: so not always straightforward.

@@princeofcupspoc9073 I realize that it does get more complicated, but I was trying to keep it simple. With the basic vowel sounds you can pretty much figure out any pronunciation

@@stephenarbon2227 I think it is but the „u“ has such a weak ring that you don’t really notice it and it just sounds like it’s not pronounced. Sasuke from Naruto sounds like Saske but that’s because s and su sounds very similar to unfamiliar ears and is not pronounced like the su in „super“ or „soup“. It’s more akin to the German ü sound.

It's not a thing to feel bad about, Takuma-san. Previous generations of all our countries did things we will never do again. We are not them.

@@lqr824 Not everywhere it's the case. Look at Russia today.

@@volters9561 You're certainly correct there. Many (or most, or all?) nations were excessively cruel in the past in ways that were not acceptable--and strides have been taken to correct them. For example the US used to have slavery, used to relocate native Americans by force, locked up Japanese-American civilians in camps while doing nothing of the kind to German-Americans or Italian-Americans, and so on. But we've also taken great pains to correct these, even if not totally corrected yet. Germany too, obviously, has utterly left its genocidal ways behind. BUT YES AS YOU SAY: RUSSIA IS PROBABLY NEARLY AS BAD NOW AS ANY TIME IN ITS HISTORY. ZERO PROGRESS. JUST TAKING WHAT YOU WANT BY FORCE, RAPING, MURDERING CIVILIANS FOR SPORT. UTTERLY DISGUSTING.

​@@lqr824 Some Italian Americans were interned during the war, as were thousands of Italian nationals. There was a plan to intern all of them, like Japanese Americans, but it wasn't practical. Also, AP Giannini, founder of Bank of America, told FDR to screw himself. This was all covered up at the time.

@@gregmuon Sure it was discussed briefly, but dropped. If it was taken up temporarily, it was only on the smallest of scales. One of the people involved in setting up the camps who was interviewed in the 1974 ITV series World at War was shown saying something to the effect of: "there were of course too many German and Italian Americans to lock up... and anyway they were GOOD Americans." I believe Joe DeMaggio is credited with explaining to America that Italian Americans' loyalty lay with America, which I guess was nice if you were Italian American, but Joe didn't speak up for Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Americans hadn't been around long enough to gain DeMaggio's hero tatus anyway. Besides, if you're going to lock up Americans of specific foreign ancestries, but only have enough budget to lock up say 10% of them, why use that budget to nearly exclusively to lock up people of ancestry A, but nearly none of it for ancestry B or C? Unless you were racist, why not just lock up 10% of all people of ancestries you were concerned about?

Yes, it is very possible that Toshiro Mifune's dedication to alcohol derived from training very inexperienced young pilots on a one way ticket. But it is good to remember that many Japanese people were simply traumatised from very heavy bombings they had to witness.

@@paoloviti6156 That was my point at the end. In short, I very much agree with you.

@@paoloviti6156 except that you're looking at this from a western perspective. I think if you had the Japanese cultural perspective of the time you might feel differently. At the end of the day it was all one big epic tragedy that this war even had to occur but the Japanese were brutal Empire and they treated their own people with the same disregard for human life that they treated others....

@@Mike-eq4ky absolutely true, again you are correct...

@@paoloviti6156... And I don't mean to imply that I don't have empathy and respect for these fine Japanese pilots, they were both products and prisoners of their time. When you look at those photos you realize it might have been you...

I wonder if the decision not to use fabric for the fuselage was because fabrics may have been just as scarce. You cant exact make clothes for soldiers out of metal.

I think the image might be USS St. Lo in the aftermath of the Battle off Samar. Pretty sure I've seen that image associated with that ship. Context, she was part of TF77.3 and had just escaped being steamrolled by the Center Force when the first ever kamikaze strike was launched against them. St. Lo was hit and sank, becoming the first ship to be destroyed in this manner. That was late October of '44

My uncle, Gene Rocchi, was the officer in charge of the two quad 40mm mounts immediately aft of the island. I have an official Navy photo of him standing at attention on the Lexington's flight deck during burial at sea services the following day. His khakis are still filthy from the fire. I still remember my uncle taking me with him to San Francisco (or maybe NAS Alameda?) about 1960 to visit the Lex. I was probably a freshman in H.S. then.

@@francisbusa1074 I have a couple photos of that ceremony, too. Lots of history books show the attacks, few show the casualties.

@@rayschoch5882 Yes, I've seen where so many men were burned alive in the 20 mm gun gallery at the outboard side of the island.

There's a RU-vidr- Channel name Dynodon 64, who's building a scale WAR Corsair experimental airplane using a Subaru car engine....

I worked for someone in mgmt. at an airline who said "pilots are like tires, we wear them out and change them". I'm not making that up.

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Sad affair that most, if not all bean counters wear blinders... McNamara sure did yet as inventive in stupidity he was, Mac was just trying to reinvent himself & keep his job...

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles if that were actually true they wouldn't be paid so well and there wouldn't be a severe shortage right now. my brother just switched careers from a good paying navy job to airline pilot cuz they're paying ridiculous bonuses for even regional airlines. whoever said that to you is just a soulless piece of shit.

@Thomas LeMay I don't agree with that statement as any person in a profession is irreplaceable if they're good at their jobs. Sadly among journalists and politicians there are few that are that good at their job. The same can even be said about historians, but there probably aren't enough historians to make the bad ones visible enough.

U.S. policy in WWII was implicit, don't send a person when you can send a bullet. The German Generals complained the U.S. Army depended too much on artillery. Evidently they had never heard the expression "if you have a big gun, shoot it".

K........................more like the "eternal sitting duck " ............with a bomb in gizzard ???

I know nothing about flying, but I presume that slower is better for ease-of-flying? Given the quality of pilots they had at that point, would a faster plane have potentially been a bigger problem. Greg calls it a deathtrap, but I wonder how much of that was due to the plane, and how much was due to the fact they were taking people with almost no training and telling them to fly that plane and then crash it into a ship.

@@shannonkohl68 Slower isn't any easier really and it makes you a much much easier target for enemy fighters and AA.

At least you get to fly a plane for your last few hours on Earth, as compared to explosive vest infantry guy...

@@obsidianjane4413 Or one of the engine room crew as the the battleship Yamato made it's final suicide voyage.

is toyota still owned by toyoda family?

@@jebise1126 yes

Hamamatsu is half-way between Tokyo and Nagoya, and is the home of Yamaha, Suzuki, and Roland music companies. Right in front of the station is a great music instrument museum. I'd highly recommend to any musician to get out at that station and take a look before continuing your journey.

"...guffaw..." me too:) - although I liked my 2002 WRX.

What a waste of talent and human life. There is... Some... Twisted logic to using Kamakazi... Suicide attacks... As an act of desperation in an effort to save your people but not even understanding the operational environment these poor Pilots were forced to execute their mission in makes it even more tragic, specifically examples like not having landing gear on the airplane when it could take five missions to actually find a target! The waste of human life is just insane...

They were trash. They were trained to mercilessly kill and kill for sport. The best thing for Japan was to be blasted into oblivian. Sorry, but they were evil personified.

Sadly true. My only point being that if you had been a Japanese youth raised in that time period of the Japanese empire under the Bushido code and they're disdain for any non-japanese adventure to Guess that you would have turned out exactly the same. And by this point in the war they weren't even trained enough to land an aircraft safely once they got it into the air so they had no chance whatsoever, hence the comment about empathy

If you get a chance, the Japanese movie "The Eternal Zero" is an entertaining flick which explores some of the issues around the use of kamakazi's.

@@Mike-eq4ky Sympathy for the devil, eh? They were trained to treat all other people as animals and made the Germans look like boy scouts in comparison. No empathy for them conducting the genicide of millions of people nor the tools they used to do the genocide. We should not marvel at German gas chambers nor at the Japanese methods. Sorry, evil is evil.

The Japanese High Command had a really old-fashioned view of war, in many respects, which really came back to bite them in their behinds later.

​@@MrAstrojensen Many Japanese officers realized they were in trouble when their bansia charges against the Marines on Guadalcanal failed. They learned what the French, British, Germans, and Americans learned in WWI, human flesh is no match for automatic weapons.

@@MrAstrojensen Yes, the Allies stunned the world by declaring right from the start of the war that they would continue the war of aggression until the other side did everything they asked unconditionally! This was a surprise to the world, because no country in history has ever started a war with such a declaration. In the US, there was no speech of explanation to the public, but in the UK, there was a speech to the public urging them not to take this as a barbaric declaration. Japanese officers thought that Americans had learned in WW1 that there was no point in sending their children to foreign theaters of war where it would be useless to the masses, but it took until the Vietnam War for them to learn. Also, only the British and the US used very advanced warfare methods such as bombing cities for mass civilian casualties, which was not explicitly stated in international law because no one thought they would ever do it.

Sorry to hear of all the misery your family suffered. Thank you for sharing this story.

My uncle Joe was on a minesweeper off Okinawa, probably a picket boat mission, and they were hit multiple times by suicide flyers. Lost half their crew.

It seems surreal that his death was 78 years ago. It isn’t impossible that I could be alive 22 years from now which would make it 100 years since my Uncle was killed/died of wounds. The past isn’t as distant as it seems sometimes. We , most all of us, have connections that go that far back. I have known men who’s brothers rode with Forrest in the great war of northern aggression (southern sympathy showing). My wife’s great x 2 or 3 grandfather was a private in company C of the 19th Alabama volunteers. Known as the Jefferson Warriors (Jefferson County was where he lived), he joined at 15 in 1862. He was wounded at the battle of Atlanta and at Franklin, TN. He was captured in Dec of 44 on the Hillsborough Pike south of Nashville in 1864 terms. In Nashville today.

@@carltodd1486 That is cool that you’ve been able to find out so much of your family history. My grandfather (mothers father) had passed in the early nineties a number of years after he had a debilitating stroke the partially paralyzed on his right side. He regained mobility for the most part, but his speech was muffled, like how someone talks when they have a sore throat. But I was in grade school at the time of his stroke and only remember very little of what he’d told me about what he’d told me about his time in the military. He was an orphan in era leading up to the Great Depression in the Chicago area and ran away and joined the army with forged papers because he was too young. I had stumbled across a website that had military registrations of some sort and found a list where had signed up at a place in Illinois and went to basic in Pearl Harbor, or went to Basic training, then was sent to Pearl Harbor. Can’t remember, and cannot for the life of me remember the website I found the info on,,, arrrrgh,,, it was just a couple years ago, but I had saved a screenshot of it and lost it when phoned froze and crashed. Serious heartbreak there,,, All I really remember was that he was in the Corp of Engineers, (retired I believe in the seventies from Ft Belvoir in VA, 5 miles from where I grew up) But really the only thing that stands out in my mind was that I Romberg he said he put down metal decking for airstrips, I think my grandmother said it was in Europe. He also was in Korea. I remember as a small child going with my Grandmother to pick him up from work on base and I just wanted to climb on the dozer,,, lol. But he went to work as a civilian still running equipment and another thing I recall was that he said he would go fill in holes after missle testing. He even brought home a couple of small parachutes from whatever they were launching. THOSE, I remember vividly because I damn near broke both my legs jumping out of trees thinking the parachutes would slow me down,,,,nope,,,LOL. But, I really wish I knew more about his military history. I still kick myself for not locating the website I mentioned before.

@@shakeydavesr Sounds like your man was what the Navy would have called a SeaBee. Construction battalions were essential . Without them there would be no airstrips, no docking facilities for ships to unload, no facilities for troops to occupy (as opposed to flopping in the jungle - not gonna be combat effective for long if you sleep in mud in the rain while being shot at, shelled, infiltrated etc. As for airfields, they used a product called pierced steel planking. It worked wonders. It was quick to install and made airstrips usable very quickly. And these strips we reasonably easy to repair as opposed to tar MacAdam (tarmac).

7:54 my sentiments, exactly. Down to the number of o's 😂

It would be your last day going to work, that's a plus right?

@@Eth3realwarrior Being dead would suck!

You mean it would be like driving a Ford Pinto?

@@fafner1 Yeah' the good old Ford family roaster.

Please let us know, and start a new comment with the info as this one will be buried by then.

Any pilot who rams his aircraft into a ship will definitely crush his jewels!

The other is supposedly a P-63 So sad R.I.P.

Oh no! I hadn't heard.

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Texas Raiders

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles And I got the wrong airfield, Texas Executive

I suppose that rubber would have also been a strategic material, but even two skids would help

@@martijn9568 not mentioned by Greg, but while we always think of the Battle of Britain aircraft taking off from literal fields, I think the Japanese actually used purpose-built runways. Ground flat enough to grow food on was always in extremely tight supply, so much so that the land was mostly vegetarian from 900 to 1900, with very few herds in meadows, so you wouldn't have just a random meadow of grass that planes could use. The Germans seemed to have enough flat land for planes to land on too, so some designs had skids (Ar-234, He-163).

Thanks Dustin, I have over 100 right now, and more on the way.

That wasn't at all unique to the Kamikazes. That was pretty standard in the Japanese military, especially the Army.

I don't see a single person in Japan who has sued their country for forcing them to become a member of a kamikaze unit.

Yes, it looks great, but it's a true force of nature.

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles I just helped him last weekend and that is the first time I've ever seen it like that. Crazy seeing a fresh video about it. I'm sure though the Wisteria the Japanese used was Japanese Wisertia. My friend is plagued with Chinese Wisteria. The difference being one vine twist clockwise and the other counter clockwise. By the way man you have an awesome channel. It's new info to me on WW2 stuff narrated by an Amercan English speaker. It's not too often I learn new stuff on WW2. If I haven't subscribed already I am as soon as I post this reply.. Excellent job sir.

Yes, it's true for the US too.

I wouldn't call someone a coward for not flying a suicide mission.

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Their own military called them that, I do not believe that... either way he was executed by his own forces which was both unfortunate and for him unlucky as the war was already lost...

Thanks for your comment. In every video I sincerely try to provide info people haven't heard, even about commonly see airplanes.

Yes, but that's because of the situation the Japanese put themselves in by not valuing pilots in the first place.

They make some decent stuff, but 9 out of 10 of their cars are not too attractive.

I’ve always wondered that too. To my mind, it made no sense to switch up construction materials, so their must have been a reason for cloth covered control surfaces, and another reason that it isn’t done anymore.

Weight, reduced the amount of input needed to move them.

My impression - not authoritative (I'm not a pilot) - is that weight (by which I mean the effort necessary to move that control surface) was a significant factor.

Great question. There is one very big reason. The USAAF and Navy required all control surfaces to be dynamically balanced, or 100% statically balanced. Adding mass in front of the hinge-line causes the control surface to deflect under load in the opposite direction. This eliminates most aerodynamic flutter and goes a long way to preventing aeroelastic divergence. Every pound of weight behind the hinge-line would require 2-4 pounds of mass to balance. By using fabric, they saved weight aft of the hinge and therefore saved even more in balance weight. Fabric covered surfaces are generally inferior in every other way. The fabric "balloons" at high speed, changing the aerodynamic shape of the wing and controls. Fabric provides little to no strength or torsional stiffness as riveted metal does. Fabric requires a complex internal structure especially when trim-tabs are included. Many early fighters still used fabric controls after converting to metal skin elsewhere. This may also be due to fatigue concerns and lack of experience with the "new" aluminum.

@@TheJustinJ Great answer JJ, thanks 😊

Wouldn't the bomb be in the way of that skid?

There was sense to the madness

Yes, landing with the bomb probably wouldn't end well. but at the end they were looking at being able to jettison it.

Not even being allowed to erase your disgrace with Seppuku...

I guess thats a problem with being one of the not so good pilots, perhaps they were slow in the mind also. Like, i feel like if i was placed in that situation, knowing you arent allowed to come back from that. And either not finding or not wanting to find a target... I think id probably have either crashed myself right into the scrap pile on return, or simply not returned

@@Colt45hatchback I’m sure he could have found any target like an enemy tug boat or something? Maybe he was just a bad procrastinator

@@fredsalfa well its hard to say not knowing all the details, maybe he just didnt want to die, maybe he was really bad at navigation, or any other number of factors. I just feel that, knowing you arent allowed to come back from your 10th tokko mission, and even if you were, there would be alot of shunning and so fourth. Id have made other arrangements. Then again, i also have a bit of a twisted outlook on living compared to most. I can sort of take it or leave it to a point, so maybe for him the possibility of them just not sending him anymore and living in shame as a coward but alive was worth more to him than it would be for me. But who knows, i can only think about what i would do in that situation. Either find something to crash into, or end myself back at base via crashing into the scrap pile, or perhaps if i was hell bent on living, maybe just fly to hokkaido or somewhere else far away, ditch on the shore somewhere and remove my uniform, walk ashore and pretend to be someone else for as long as possible

@@Colt45hatchback Yes a lot of possibilities there. It’s hard to fathom what would have happened. Especially when were talking about voluntary death 💀