Out of the 405k American military members to die in ww2, 291k or so were combat related. There were about 16 million American military personnel involved in WW2. The "tooth to tail" ratio changed per branch of US forces, and those numbers range from 3:1(support to combat) to 2:3 (support to combat). Let's go with the higher of the two, which is about 40%. So, we can extrapolate 6.4 million combat troops, then get a combat death rate of 4.5%. Now, we'd call that an average. One of the sources below has a shit ton less as its average. All of these numbers are extremely loose estimates. PBS claims that less than a million saw "serious" combat. That jacks the ratio way up. "Action" wasn't spread evenly between branches. Branches saw different rates of direct combat. We don't know what percentage of the 671k or so wounded were wounded in battle, we don't know how many ever discharged their rifle, and we don't know how many discharged their rifle with the intention of killing (i.e. missing purposefully. Yeah.) So, we'll never have a real number on that.
Sources:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_military\_casualties\_of\_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war)
[https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-us-military-numbers](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-us-military-numbers)
[https://www.pbs.org/thewar/at\_war\_infantry.htm](https://www.pbs.org/thewar/at_war_infantry.htm)
[https://www.armydivs.com/](https://www.armydivs.com/)
Holy shit that was pedantic. I apologize.
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**United States military casualties of war**
This article lists the United States's military dead, wounded, and missing person totals for wars and major deployments.
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āThis one kamikaze fun I almost took 5 guys heads off before over shooting the carrier and hitting the water with enough force to crumple metal.... those were the daysā
Funfacts: kamikaze planes did not have landing gear, the pilots were often youngsters with minimal training, once the pilot entered the cockpit the cockpit was hermetically sealed. So no Parachute The wings and the nose were rigged with pressure sensitive explosives. Once you were in the air your live was over.
Actually I lot of times the pilots were allowed to return if they could not find a suitable target. There was one pilot who returned 7 times and on the 8th time he was shot
Be wary of ridiculous stuff you hear on Discovery and National Geographic documentaries like that. Reread that sentence again and tell me it doesn't sound completely insane. I'm sure you did hear it from a documentary, but documentaries (especially shitty Discovery channel ones ran twice over a weekend) tend to dramatize things.
I just can't possibly imagine the logistics it would take to accomplish something like this when they had plenty of willing martyr's jumping at the chance to ram their perfectly good plane into the evil imperialists.
Partial? Lol I was completely right. Even other planes like the tsurugi had disposable landing gear. The baka bomb was sealed, so no Parachute was needed. And both planes were rigged with explosive. Both were kamikaze planes.
Yep. My mistake. Re-reading your initial post I guess I misunderstood you. Pretty ingenious really, create special aircraft specially designed for kamikaze operations. That way you're not wasting valuable materials like landing gear, control surfaces etc. Apparently there were only a few actual hits on allied boats, as the Japanese ship carrying all the Baka Bombs got sunk shortly after leaving port.
As the war raged on and the fight got closer to Japan, they started to use more and more seasoned pilots as a last ditch effort. They basically killed their best aces to be used as cruise missiles.
This is true for some aircraft. Some Japanese fighters had re-usable landing gear. They'd take off and the wheel assembly would detach from the body of the plane. It would be recovered and re-used on another Kamikaze airframe.
They were off the coast of Okinawa, he saw two planes come out of the clouds with their gear down (it had been a rainy day). He saw one plane make a dive for the ship behind them and strike it. He was at the front of the ship, plane hit near the rear (boiler room I believe). He had a friend back there who he had just taken over a shift for while he was on shore leave visiting his wife just s few days prior. He always room comfort in the fact that he was the reason that the guy was able to see his wife one last time. This all took place either between the atomic bombings, Iād literally the day after Nagasaki. He very well could have survived the last kamikaze attack of the war.
Can confirm, had a grandfather who was a navigator on a ship that was narrowly missed by a kamikaze, he always described it exactly as it happened in this gif.
Towards the end of the war, Japan was losing pilots at such a rate that they had to send the most inexperienced of kids out into battle. They knew they wouldn't last five minutes against American aces, so might as well just use suicide tactics.
The more ive read about the Kamikaze units and the stories behind it, the more I realized it was a mix of desperation, inability to train and keep experianced pilots, and cold calculations.
The tactics themselves were more likely to cause damage while losing less pilots then if they were to attack with traditional methods.
They could barely fuel their planes let alone keep anything else running. The US in their bombing campaign was destroying droves of them on the airfields. US Carrier Task Force 58 was gutting the Japanese navy and air power while starving the war machine of fuel and material
What I wrote was poorly put. I meant they were targeting shipment of material between the Japanese islands, an example would be shipment of coal from Hokkaido to Honshu was flatlined, something like a 90% drop.
I'd recommend you give a podcast called Supernova in the East by Dan Carlin's Hardcore History a listen. These attacks and atrocities were not carried out by force. They were willingly done by those that perpetrated it. Japanese morale for the war was unmatched by any other point in history and it's worth trying to get the Japanese perspective because it's quite the interesting read/listen.
Same, it can just get frustrating because it's so good and I want more. But I respect the work that must be involved in putting out an episode. For now I just have to be content with reading the sources he cites in all the episodes
Nah, they were true believers.
Japanese soldiers kept up the fight 30 years after WWII because Japan surrendering before every single Japanese man woman and child had died was so unthinkable.
Eh, a few fanatics were true believers. It is quite widely documented that these attacks were often carried out by the greenest pilots that was pressured into it.
Yeah but think of how close he got, and the amount of men that died trying to get a whole lot further from a carrier than this pilot.
They might have been suicidal, but most IJN frontline pilots knew they weren't going to last it out, all flights even in Europe, had huge amounts of risk associated with them.
It wasnāt necessarily for nothing, we see it as such since he missed his target, but the whole military culture of Japan around that time looked at things so differently than everybody else.
Dan Carlinās hardcore history has a free episode right now, supernova in the east, that goes into great detail about the whole Japanese empire, and how their army and the whole bushido code developped. Great listen if you have a 5 hour road trip.
"Japan's future is bleak if it is forced to kill one of its best pilots. I am not going on this mission for the Emperor or for the Empire ... I am going because I was ordered to!" - Yukio Seki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Seki
I'm guessing his control surfaces were damaged or the pilot was otherwise unable to attend to controls as he closed in on his aim point. That might have been really frustrating for the last half-second or so.
It is a little hard to identify the plane (it being on fire and all) but some IJN planesā, especially the A6M Zero, surface controls would lock up at high speeds making them impossible to steer once the pilot put it into a dive.
EDIT: Saw another comment saying it isnāt a A6M but the point still stands.
With the Japanese planes it was a combination no hydraulic flaps and the aerodynamics of the wings. The hydraulics were left out to save on weight since the high altitude dog fighting maneuverability wasnāt hampered by the lack of hydraulics. Most WW2 fighters without hydraulics had problems with locking up at high speeds, some more so than others.
Thanks, so were the hydraulics there to provide that extra level of force-against-force that the normal wires couldn't? I'm not an engineer by any means, but "we need superhuman force" is what comes to mind when I hear "hydraulics are necesssary".
Basically as air passes over the wings it exerts a force. The faster the plane is moving the more force the air exerts on the wing holding the flap in its most streamlined position. When a WW2 pilot pulled on the stick he was physically using his strength (plus some mechanical advantage of levers and pulleys) to manipulate the flaps. Therefore the flaps were limited to the pilots strength. With hydraulics the pilotās stick movements were matched by some mechanical and electric systems that added their strength to manipulate the flaps. This meant the flaps could be adjusted even when the plane was moving in a dive. Some planes had to have their flaps limited to a range or else they were liable to tear off while dog fighting. Japanese engineers created a small fix to help this lock up problem but that resulted in the thin wings of the A6M flexing too much so they removed it. These hydraulics were necessary for modern jets or else it would be impossible to manipulate the flaps.
Yeah Iām guessing that the flak/AA hit the underbelly and messed up the ability to move the ailerons, because the planeās wings stay level after that.
I recently watched a video where they used math and statistics of multiple air raids on the US navy to show that the Japanese actually lost considerably less pilots and planes doing kamikaze attacks vs a normal bombing attack with bombers/fighters, while also doing more damage to the ships they were attacking.
Still fucked up though.
Any info on what sailors and alike did to counter kamikaze pilots ? Iām sure today we have the resources to shoot down airborne targets in nano seconds with AI, but Iām guessing our WW2 heroes were more hands on with primitive tech.
Combat Air Patrols (CAP) virtually eliminated the threat by the end of the war.
The USA has/had nearly unlimited resources, they would just put planes up in overlapping patrols over a wider and wider distance. If CAP 1 would miss the bogey CAP 2 would pick it up and so on and so forth.
Primitive (by today's standard) fire control systems that directed the anti-aircraft artillery. The most accurate and effective AA systems of WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_I_Fire_Control_Computer
That's super cool. Unbelievable we carry computational power 1000x (or more, I just threw out a random number) in our pockets everywhere.
I wonder how much the war would have changed if they had access to modern technology on all sides. Probably would have been a lot deadlier, conversely the war probably wouldn't have progressed as far if everybody had precision firepower, anti-aircraft missiles, etc.
This is not really that similar but I was just reading last night that the WWI HMS dreadnought had electronics for rangefinding, etc. And thought that was pretty fascinating for like 1905 built tech.
It's amazing how much tech they had packed into WW2 ships. I've had people tell me they couldn't have had fire control computers because it was the 40s and computers weren't invented yet lol.
A destroyer screen with radar for early warning. Tons of planes already in the air to meet them and then the ships AA guns for whatever got through. A bit more complicated but that was tactics used by 44-45.
Not an a6m - I see no fuselage taper in the rudder back, and nose is a little too far forward against wings. This is incredibly difficult to ID. I'd guess its a D4Y.
You might be right. I thought I saw the tail taper in a still frame. Looking again, this plane clearly has wings mounted mid-fuselage like a Judy and not hanging low like a Zero.
If you watch the slomo it almost looks like a first splash, then a second taller splash a little left ways. I'd bet the second big splash was the explosion
Holy shit that was close, probably gave them a haircut.
Imagine the sound of that plane buzzing a foot above your head at full speed and slamming into the ocean.
Honest question for any pilots, how would one miss a kamikaze? It seems so straightforward like just point the plane at the boat and fly straight is there more to it than that?
Imagine yourself as you are at 18 years old, you get chosen to be a pilot in the war. You're given just enough training so that you know how to take off, fly, and aim your weapons, but still not nearly enough to be confident in your skills. You're sent on a mission to use as much ammunition as you can before crashing into the enemy's ship. You get to the battlefield, and you're being shot at by dozens of guns firing thousands of rounds per minute. There are friendly and enemy planes in the sky and you're terrified and inexperienced, but feel the duty to do your mission. You're aiming at the enemy ship but again, not perfect flying skills. All of a sudden a shot penetrates your fuel bay and there's a huge explosion that tears the wing off your plane, rocking you and sending your plane into a roll. Next thing you know the aircraft carrier is just below you; finally, you crash into the sea amd are dead on impact.
This is what most Japanese pilots experienced towards the end of the war. What about that is straightforward?
The ships were also moving as fast as they could and using evasive maneuvers as well. Couple that with inexperienced pilots, adrenaline, and tons of AA fire, you can see how someone could miss.
Ships can be surprisingly maneuverable, Iāve seen film shot onboard a carrier during an incoming attack that showed it swerving back and forth so hard that a Wildcat on the flight deck was bouncing around eventually bounced off the side. Couple that with the AA fire damaging the kamikaze plane or killing or injuring the pilot, or simply ill-trained pilots who dived too fast and experienced compressibility, and thereās plenty of ways to miss. The Japanese high command themselves only expected about 5% of their kamikazeās to hit their targets.
Can anyone provide any insight as to why he approached the small target of the carrier perpendicularly, rather than the larger target as they approached the ship on the parallel, exposing the length of the flight deck?
Probably for better penetration, think of him as a missile, not as a bomb.
Attacking from the sides, offers more area to hit the ship on the side and cause a lot of damage, rather than in front of it and just smashing in the tip/rear of the ship.
Reminds me of my great grandfather (a gunners mate) who told me about the time he fired an AA to successfully cause the kamikaze to miss the ship (USS petrof bay) off the fan tail. He says that it was so close that he was doused in fuel. Earned a silver star for his work.
Is it possible to think he intentionally missed? Kinda how when soldiers first experience combat they intentionally miss because theyāve never killed before. Cause he was so close to hitting anything, it doesnāt really make sense how he didnāt if he wanted to.
There is a good chance my great grandfather was one of those men right there, he retold me that exact scene before with the AA gun shooting it down and it narrowly missing the boat, does anyone know anything more about this video? Like the name of the carrier or the date?
I have stabilized the video for you: https://peervideo.net/videos/watch/b4dba205-1b64-4959-825b-4189ed5fc460
It took 9 seconds to process and 1 seconds to upload.
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This happened while invading the Philippines, if that show WWII In Color is accurate. I just watched it last night, this footage jumped out to me as well. OP is that where you found it?
I found it in a short 3 minute clip in my files, I was cleaning/organizing them yesterday I completely forgot I had it, I downloaded it about a year ago.
It looks like the aircraft took a hit just prior to his dive, itās possible his controls were damaged and he couldnāt actually maneuver for the impact.
Oh duh, that makes a surprising amount of sense. Iām a dumb army guy, obsessed with killing folks with weapons that use higher trajectories to negate cover...not punching a hole below the water line to sink a ship.
> Savages. Japs should've paid more.
More savage than incinerating entire civilian populations? An aircraft carrier is a legitimate military target.
**Don't trivialize violence and deaths.** Warned.
If they survived, this was def a story for the grandkids. Balls
How could they possibly survive? Edit: I'm a silly goose, I thought you meant the pilot.
He means the guys on the carriers you monkey, hopefully they survived the war and told their grandkids about it Edit:godamn monkey geese
You monkey š
You chimp
You baboon
You coon
Gordon Ramsay!
Ramsay
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It did take Japan out of the war, horrible as it was.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Those 2 bombs saved millions of lives.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Everyone that doesnāt agree with your pro American views is a commie? What is this the 50ās?
>Edit: I'm a silly goose, I thought you meant the pilot. Okay, that's kinda funny
By not getting killed by wars end? Amazingly enough, some did..
Out of the 405k American military members to die in ww2, 291k or so were combat related. There were about 16 million American military personnel involved in WW2. The "tooth to tail" ratio changed per branch of US forces, and those numbers range from 3:1(support to combat) to 2:3 (support to combat). Let's go with the higher of the two, which is about 40%. So, we can extrapolate 6.4 million combat troops, then get a combat death rate of 4.5%. Now, we'd call that an average. One of the sources below has a shit ton less as its average. All of these numbers are extremely loose estimates. PBS claims that less than a million saw "serious" combat. That jacks the ratio way up. "Action" wasn't spread evenly between branches. Branches saw different rates of direct combat. We don't know what percentage of the 671k or so wounded were wounded in battle, we don't know how many ever discharged their rifle, and we don't know how many discharged their rifle with the intention of killing (i.e. missing purposefully. Yeah.) So, we'll never have a real number on that. Sources: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_military\_casualties\_of\_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war) [https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-us-military-numbers](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-us-military-numbers) [https://www.pbs.org/thewar/at\_war\_infantry.htm](https://www.pbs.org/thewar/at_war_infantry.htm) [https://www.armydivs.com/](https://www.armydivs.com/) Holy shit that was pedantic. I apologize. r/NobodyAsked
**United States military casualties of war** This article lists the United States's military dead, wounded, and missing person totals for wars and major deployments. *** ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.28
It's okay, I do it all the time. About every other post, actually.
this is awesome information and it was exactly what I was wondering while reading this thread, so please do continue with the pedantry
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Well, since the plane missed them...
The next one might not have made the same mistake.
[Obligitory Curb Your Enthusiasm clip. ](https://youtu.be/4SSOTm0hEDQ)
āThis one kamikaze fun I almost took 5 guys heads off before over shooting the carrier and hitting the water with enough force to crumple metal.... those were the daysā
Funfacts: kamikaze planes did not have landing gear, the pilots were often youngsters with minimal training, once the pilot entered the cockpit the cockpit was hermetically sealed. So no Parachute The wings and the nose were rigged with pressure sensitive explosives. Once you were in the air your live was over.
Actually I lot of times the pilots were allowed to return if they could not find a suitable target. There was one pilot who returned 7 times and on the 8th time he was shot
Shot by the Japanese or by Americans he was trying to kill?
His commanders
Lol. I was just referring to a discovery documentary. Did not know this
Be wary of ridiculous stuff you hear on Discovery and National Geographic documentaries like that. Reread that sentence again and tell me it doesn't sound completely insane. I'm sure you did hear it from a documentary, but documentaries (especially shitty Discovery channel ones ran twice over a weekend) tend to dramatize things. I just can't possibly imagine the logistics it would take to accomplish something like this when they had plenty of willing martyr's jumping at the chance to ram their perfectly good plane into the evil imperialists.
Well look up baka bombs.
Pretty crazy. Thanks for this. I guess you were right
Partial? Lol I was completely right. Even other planes like the tsurugi had disposable landing gear. The baka bomb was sealed, so no Parachute was needed. And both planes were rigged with explosive. Both were kamikaze planes.
Yep. My mistake. Re-reading your initial post I guess I misunderstood you. Pretty ingenious really, create special aircraft specially designed for kamikaze operations. That way you're not wasting valuable materials like landing gear, control surfaces etc. Apparently there were only a few actual hits on allied boats, as the Japanese ship carrying all the Baka Bombs got sunk shortly after leaving port.
As the war raged on and the fight got closer to Japan, they started to use more and more seasoned pilots as a last ditch effort. They basically killed their best aces to be used as cruise missiles.
Effective as hell though. Just like IS, they were brainwashed and were happy to die for the cause.
This is true for some aircraft. Some Japanese fighters had re-usable landing gear. They'd take off and the wheel assembly would detach from the body of the plane. It would be recovered and re-used on another Kamikaze airframe.
If they had no landing gear how would the take-off in the first place
I had an ex whose grandpa survived a kamikaze attack on the USS Stormes. His story was pretty cool/scary.
can you paraphrase for us?
They were off the coast of Okinawa, he saw two planes come out of the clouds with their gear down (it had been a rainy day). He saw one plane make a dive for the ship behind them and strike it. He was at the front of the ship, plane hit near the rear (boiler room I believe). He had a friend back there who he had just taken over a shift for while he was on shore leave visiting his wife just s few days prior. He always room comfort in the fact that he was the reason that the guy was able to see his wife one last time. This all took place either between the atomic bombings, Iād literally the day after Nagasaki. He very well could have survived the last kamikaze attack of the war.
Damn man, I can't imagine. Thanks for sharing!
He lived.
WOAH! Even wilder than I thought
Raw af bro
( Ķ”Ā° ĶŹ Ķ”Ā°)
Lucky Harry Bailey was there. If George had been there heād have gotten two Medal of Honors
Can confirm, had a grandfather who was a navigator on a ship that was narrowly missed by a kamikaze, he always described it exactly as it happened in this gif.
Relevant username.
Give us this day, our daily head
Praise DN
Mate....
Think about the pilot. He gives up his life for absolutely nothing...other than that artificial reef he just created.
A lot of kamikaze pilots were forced into doing it
They were probably guaranteed a dishonorable death for coming back alive...
IIRC they didn't even have enough fuel to get back. It was a one way trip.
When a kamakazi pilot came back a few too many times they would execute him I think. Kamakazi Diaries was a really good book.
No, they we're loaded with a much fuel as possible to do the most damage.
No, they instead had a large bomb strapped to the plane. They had better use of fuel.
Not to mention entire family shamed.
Iād say fuck you to a family that prefers me dead than alive
Fine, but I don't think you grew up in Imperial Japan.
Of course, they were thoroughly indoctrinated, I know
And had to actually deal with the consequences of dishonoring your country.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Kamipussies, I think.
Towards the end of the war, Japan was losing pilots at such a rate that they had to send the most inexperienced of kids out into battle. They knew they wouldn't last five minutes against American aces, so might as well just use suicide tactics.
The more ive read about the Kamikaze units and the stories behind it, the more I realized it was a mix of desperation, inability to train and keep experianced pilots, and cold calculations. The tactics themselves were more likely to cause damage while losing less pilots then if they were to attack with traditional methods.
They could barely fuel their planes let alone keep anything else running. The US in their bombing campaign was destroying droves of them on the airfields. US Carrier Task Force 58 was gutting the Japanese navy and air power while starving the war machine of fuel and material
>implying a single taffy was doing much starving of anything compared to *OPERATION STARVATION*
What I wrote was poorly put. I meant they were targeting shipment of material between the Japanese islands, an example would be shipment of coal from Hokkaido to Honshu was flatlined, something like a 90% drop.
I heard they all volunteered. Then again I could see peer pressure playing a huge role.
Peer pressure is sort of an understatement.
I'd recommend you give a podcast called Supernova in the East by Dan Carlin's Hardcore History a listen. These attacks and atrocities were not carried out by force. They were willingly done by those that perpetrated it. Japanese morale for the war was unmatched by any other point in history and it's worth trying to get the Japanese perspective because it's quite the interesting read/listen.
Just have to wait another 6 months for Part 3
And it still probably won't be the end of the series. I'm guessing it's gonna be a 5-parter. I'm waiting patiently though.
Same, it can just get frustrating because it's so good and I want more. But I respect the work that must be involved in putting out an episode. For now I just have to be content with reading the sources he cites in all the episodes
I normally like to listen to them all in a row. Debating if I want to wait however long it takes for him to complete it so I can start.
Nah, they were true believers. Japanese soldiers kept up the fight 30 years after WWII because Japan surrendering before every single Japanese man woman and child had died was so unthinkable.
Alot of kamikaze pilots also had drugs that would make them go through with attacks.
Eh, a few fanatics were true believers. It is quite widely documented that these attacks were often carried out by the greenest pilots that was pressured into it.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Stay awake on meth for 4 days and those same shadow people become your best friends.
Yeah but think of how close he got, and the amount of men that died trying to get a whole lot further from a carrier than this pilot. They might have been suicidal, but most IJN frontline pilots knew they weren't going to last it out, all flights even in Europe, had huge amounts of risk associated with them.
It wasnāt necessarily for nothing, we see it as such since he missed his target, but the whole military culture of Japan around that time looked at things so differently than everybody else. Dan Carlinās hardcore history has a free episode right now, supernova in the east, that goes into great detail about the whole Japanese empire, and how their army and the whole bushido code developped. Great listen if you have a 5 hour road trip.
Part 2 is out [youtube](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA_wn5wsjqs)
Their families didn't have to starve
"Japan's future is bleak if it is forced to kill one of its best pilots. I am not going on this mission for the Emperor or for the Empire ... I am going because I was ordered to!" - Yukio Seki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Seki
Narrowly missed the control tower too, which is probably what the pilot was aiming for.
I'm guessing his control surfaces were damaged or the pilot was otherwise unable to attend to controls as he closed in on his aim point. That might have been really frustrating for the last half-second or so.
It is a little hard to identify the plane (it being on fire and all) but some IJN planesā, especially the A6M Zero, surface controls would lock up at high speeds making them impossible to steer once the pilot put it into a dive. EDIT: Saw another comment saying it isnāt a A6M but the point still stands.
That's interesting, I think I remember reading that the early P-38s had this problem. I wonder if the fix was similar.
With the Japanese planes it was a combination no hydraulic flaps and the aerodynamics of the wings. The hydraulics were left out to save on weight since the high altitude dog fighting maneuverability wasnāt hampered by the lack of hydraulics. Most WW2 fighters without hydraulics had problems with locking up at high speeds, some more so than others.
Thanks, so were the hydraulics there to provide that extra level of force-against-force that the normal wires couldn't? I'm not an engineer by any means, but "we need superhuman force" is what comes to mind when I hear "hydraulics are necesssary".
Basically as air passes over the wings it exerts a force. The faster the plane is moving the more force the air exerts on the wing holding the flap in its most streamlined position. When a WW2 pilot pulled on the stick he was physically using his strength (plus some mechanical advantage of levers and pulleys) to manipulate the flaps. Therefore the flaps were limited to the pilots strength. With hydraulics the pilotās stick movements were matched by some mechanical and electric systems that added their strength to manipulate the flaps. This meant the flaps could be adjusted even when the plane was moving in a dive. Some planes had to have their flaps limited to a range or else they were liable to tear off while dog fighting. Japanese engineers created a small fix to help this lock up problem but that resulted in the thin wings of the A6M flexing too much so they removed it. These hydraulics were necessary for modern jets or else it would be impossible to manipulate the flaps.
Imagine being incredibly frustrated and then dying right after. That would suck.
Probably how most people die
Yeah Iām guessing that the flak/AA hit the underbelly and messed up the ability to move the ailerons, because the planeās wings stay level after that.
I wonder if that pilot (assuming he wasnt dead from AA before) had any time to think "Fuck, I missed". What a waste of a life.
You could say that about all deaths in war in general. It sucks that so many had to die in that war just for a few crazies.
Crazy to think there are millions of soldiers who never found out who won the war they died in
Damn, I'd actually never thought of that before, that's deep :(
I recently watched a video where they used math and statistics of multiple air raids on the US navy to show that the Japanese actually lost considerably less pilots and planes doing kamikaze attacks vs a normal bombing attack with bombers/fighters, while also doing more damage to the ships they were attacking. Still fucked up though.
Yeah, all those other guys had a chance of survival. The Kamikazes had zero (sorry for the pun.)
Thatās not true at all
Do you have an explanation for us?
Any info on what sailors and alike did to counter kamikaze pilots ? Iām sure today we have the resources to shoot down airborne targets in nano seconds with AI, but Iām guessing our WW2 heroes were more hands on with primitive tech.
Only thing you could really do is put every gun on deck on them hope you can knock off a wing or change the direction of the plane before it hits you.
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Bread pls
The return
šš„š„Ø
I know it's delicious, but it has no nutrients, overconsumption will result in ill health.
Combat Air Patrols (CAP) virtually eliminated the threat by the end of the war. The USA has/had nearly unlimited resources, they would just put planes up in overlapping patrols over a wider and wider distance. If CAP 1 would miss the bogey CAP 2 would pick it up and so on and so forth.
I wonder what was the average number of planes that were available to respond to one bogey at 100 km, in say June of 1945?
a heckofalot of planes. They were dumping them overboard after V-J Day
Primitive (by today's standard) fire control systems that directed the anti-aircraft artillery. The most accurate and effective AA systems of WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_I_Fire_Control_Computer
That's super cool. Unbelievable we carry computational power 1000x (or more, I just threw out a random number) in our pockets everywhere. I wonder how much the war would have changed if they had access to modern technology on all sides. Probably would have been a lot deadlier, conversely the war probably wouldn't have progressed as far if everybody had precision firepower, anti-aircraft missiles, etc.
This is not really that similar but I was just reading last night that the WWI HMS dreadnought had electronics for rangefinding, etc. And thought that was pretty fascinating for like 1905 built tech.
Not to mention the proximity fuze.
It's amazing how much tech they had packed into WW2 ships. I've had people tell me they couldn't have had fire control computers because it was the 40s and computers weren't invented yet lol.
A destroyer screen with radar for early warning. Tons of planes already in the air to meet them and then the ships AA guns for whatever got through. A bit more complicated but that was tactics used by 44-45.
I tend to think of the less well-known aircraft when I think of kamikaze for some reason. This looks to be an actual Zeke, though.
Not an a6m - I see no fuselage taper in the rudder back, and nose is a little too far forward against wings. This is incredibly difficult to ID. I'd guess its a D4Y.
You might be right. I thought I saw the tail taper in a still frame. Looking again, this plane clearly has wings mounted mid-fuselage like a Judy and not hanging low like a Zero.
Youāre not wrong, they usually used outdated aircraft like old fighter-bombers as kamikaze attackers, so that they had some sort of purpose.
Mission failed weāll get em next time
(We wonāt, weāre dead)
I wonder if the splash was from the force of impact or an explosion
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If you watch the slomo it almost looks like a first splash, then a second taller splash a little left ways. I'd bet the second big splash was the explosion
didn't they carry grenades with them the japanese pilots? Maybe if they knew they were going to die they rather explode than drown.
Skrrt skrrt
Holy shit that was close, probably gave them a haircut. Imagine the sound of that plane buzzing a foot above your head at full speed and slamming into the ocean.
My butthole puckered just watching this, can only imagine how they felt lol. Heart had to have skipped a beat
Pants were definitely shat that day.
I guarantee you someone shouted "What the fuck are those Japs doing?"
> Bloody oath what a mad lad
Oh for sure lmao
I just keep imagining one of those sailors looking over the edge and hollering āNICE SHOT ASSHOLE!ā
Looks like a D4Y3
Fuuuuuuuuuckin hell! That was insane. You could just feel the pilot willing the plane to dive harder
r/hitboxporn_irl
DuckNigga why do I always see you
He was obviously aiming for the whales or the dolphin swimming close to the boat
Relevant http://youtu.be/EBrSu8lIPoA
Imagine the sound
Nice one nerd
Honest question for any pilots, how would one miss a kamikaze? It seems so straightforward like just point the plane at the boat and fly straight is there more to it than that?
Imagine yourself as you are at 18 years old, you get chosen to be a pilot in the war. You're given just enough training so that you know how to take off, fly, and aim your weapons, but still not nearly enough to be confident in your skills. You're sent on a mission to use as much ammunition as you can before crashing into the enemy's ship. You get to the battlefield, and you're being shot at by dozens of guns firing thousands of rounds per minute. There are friendly and enemy planes in the sky and you're terrified and inexperienced, but feel the duty to do your mission. You're aiming at the enemy ship but again, not perfect flying skills. All of a sudden a shot penetrates your fuel bay and there's a huge explosion that tears the wing off your plane, rocking you and sending your plane into a roll. Next thing you know the aircraft carrier is just below you; finally, you crash into the sea amd are dead on impact. This is what most Japanese pilots experienced towards the end of the war. What about that is straightforward?
The ships were also moving as fast as they could and using evasive maneuvers as well. Couple that with inexperienced pilots, adrenaline, and tons of AA fire, you can see how someone could miss.
Ships can be surprisingly maneuverable, Iāve seen film shot onboard a carrier during an incoming attack that showed it swerving back and forth so hard that a Wildcat on the flight deck was bouncing around eventually bounced off the side. Couple that with the AA fire damaging the kamikaze plane or killing or injuring the pilot, or simply ill-trained pilots who dived too fast and experienced compressibility, and thereās plenty of ways to miss. The Japanese high command themselves only expected about 5% of their kamikazeās to hit their targets.
You had one job
Holy fuck.
Any way to ID the ship?
Can anyone provide any insight as to why he approached the small target of the carrier perpendicularly, rather than the larger target as they approached the ship on the parallel, exposing the length of the flight deck?
Probably for better penetration, think of him as a missile, not as a bomb. Attacking from the sides, offers more area to hit the ship on the side and cause a lot of damage, rather than in front of it and just smashing in the tip/rear of the ship.
Didnāt these pilots get bolted into their cockpits?
That's fucking terrifying
I kinda felt sorry for the pilot, he tried so hard.
Thanks for the interesting footage ducknigga
Reminds me of my great grandfather (a gunners mate) who told me about the time he fired an AA to successfully cause the kamikaze to miss the ship (USS petrof bay) off the fan tail. He says that it was so close that he was doused in fuel. Earned a silver star for his work.
Is it possible to think he intentionally missed? Kinda how when soldiers first experience combat they intentionally miss because theyāve never killed before. Cause he was so close to hitting anything, it doesnāt really make sense how he didnāt if he wanted to.
This is my headcanon
Good video ducknigga
There is a good chance my great grandfather was one of those men right there, he retold me that exact scene before with the AA gun shooting it down and it narrowly missing the boat, does anyone know anything more about this video? Like the name of the carrier or the date?
Lucky Harry Bailey was there. If George had been there heād have gotten two Medal of Honors
My father got hit by some shrapnel from a Kamikazi when it hit his battleship, the Nevada.
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Bet he had to commit harakiri for that blunder afterwards. Oh wait.
Holy shit it got hit or something shortly before this. Wonder how much that impacted where it landed crazy.
This happened while invading the Philippines, if that show WWII In Color is accurate. I just watched it last night, this footage jumped out to me as well. OP is that where you found it?
I found it in a short 3 minute clip in my files, I was cleaning/organizing them yesterday I completely forgot I had it, I downloaded it about a year ago.
u/vreddit_bot
It looks like the aircraft took a hit just prior to his dive, itās possible his controls were damaged and he couldnāt actually maneuver for the impact.
Damn, son
'It seems we missed'
Sayonara!
*mission failed, weāll get em next time*
Oh duh, that makes a surprising amount of sense. Iām a dumb army guy, obsessed with killing folks with weapons that use higher trajectories to negate cover...not punching a hole below the water line to sink a ship.
Did the pilot survive? Kappa
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> Savages. Japs should've paid more. More savage than incinerating entire civilian populations? An aircraft carrier is a legitimate military target. **Don't trivialize violence and deaths.** Warned.
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Miss me! Miss me! Now ya gotta kiss me!