The Kamikaze Airplane

Kamikaze, which in Japanese means ‘divine wind’, was not a term used by the Japanese to reference their special attack units but came into common use in the West. Instead, shimpu and shimbu were more often used by both the UN and the IJA respectively. May 1944 would signal the beginning of dedicated suicide attack missions against the US and her allies. The effect of being on the receiving end of such attacks was horrific and would take its toll on US sailors.

A post-war report by the US Strategic Bombing Survey bluntly stated that kamikaze attacks were effective and given the situation for the Japanese, very practical. Statistics of sunk and damaged US ships during the Philippines campaign (October 1944 to Janu­ary 1945) showed that kamikaze attacks were far more effectual. Of course, being subjected to such attacks wreaked havoc on morale as well as a surge in mental illness. The US Navy, the focus of the majority of kamikaze attacks, saw such illness rise by 50 per cent in 1944 when compared to 1941. So bad was the problem that during the Okinawa campaign, the US Navy stopped warning crews that kamikaze attacks were to be expected as they only added to the sailor’s stress levels. General George C. Marshall wrote in a 1945 report to the US Secretary of War that, ‘The American soldier has a very active imagina­tion… and is inclined to endow the death­dealing weapons of the enemy with extraordinary qualities…’ And thus the ‘Kamikaze Airplane’ appears on the scene.

Following the close of World War 2, an illus­tration of an aircraft appeared in either Popu­lar Mechanics or Popular Science magazine. The aircraft, labelled a kamikaze plane, was a curious mixture of what appeared to be the tail of a Mitsubishi A6M Reisen, a fuselage not too unlike the Nakajima Kitsuka and a canopy similar to aircraft such as the Kawanishi NIKI Kyofu (meaning ‘Mighty Wind’ but known as Rex to the Allies) or the Nakajima Ki-84 Hay – ate (meaning ‘Gale’; Frank to the Allies). Even more curious was the fact that the aircraft used air-cooled radial engines, one in each wing, but in a pusher configuration.

The Kamikaze Airplane was said to have been sighted by some US Navy crew mem­bers as it flew over their ships. It was from

The Kamikaze Airplane – data

No specifications were provided for the aircraft. Deployment

None. The Kamikaze Aircraft was strictly fictional.

their descriptions that the illustration of the aircraft was created. The result was certainly unlike any plane then in the theatre but there is some precedent in terms of genuine air­craft being misidentified. One example was the ‘Kawasaki Type 97 Medium Bomber’ that was given the codename Julia. Because of very inaccurate illustrations of the plane that were derived from a written description, Julia was in fact the Kawasaki Ki-48 (Lily). It may very well be that the Kamikaze Airplane was actually a US Grumman F7F-2N Tigercat of which two US Marine Corps squadrons equipped with the plane began operating from Okinawa in September 1945. One was

VMF(N) 531 while the second was a photo reconnaissance unit. With the Tigercat being new to the Pacific Theatre, it can be surmised that some sailors and crew mistook the twin – engine Fighter for a Japanese plane and sub­sequently described something other than what was actually seen. However, the Kamikaze Airplane was written off as a spec­tre of the imaginations of sailors who had borne the brunt of kamikaze attacks.