Did any KamiKaze pilots survive their missions?
Robert J. Kolker
a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
The only data I have is from my Uncle, who
fought in the Pacific Theater. He claimed there
was one, Seto "Chicken" Teryaki.
Bob Kolker
ulith...@my-deja.com
"Robert J. Kolker" <bobk...@usa.net> wrote:
> Does anyone know of a documented case of
> a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
>
bomber, and a pilot bailed out. One of our destroyer
escorts picked him up.(I have that pic,his name was
Sata Omaiti(IJN)),) and transferred him to another ship,
where he died of injuries.)He was a kamakaze diving on
my ship. That was first time we saw a Divine Wind pilot
bail out?
Vince
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Matsuda880
>Does anyone know of a documented case of
>a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
There was a book by Iguchi and Nakajima called Kamikaze Special Attack Units
that gave detailed informations about these units. I don't know if it was
translated out of Japanese.
Toshimi Tominaga also wrote a very powerful book Dive Into Oblivion, as did
Hitoshi Mizuki who wrote Choosing the Plane (You Will Die In). What all these
writers say is that by and large the kamikaze pilots were dragooned into
service, coarsely brainwashed and merciliessly shamed into flying their oneway
missions. tominaga suggests that more kamikaze pilots actually committed
suicide out of dispair, deliberately crashing their planes before reaching the
vicinity of an enemy target than flew to the completion of the mission. That
was the only control they had left over their lives: they could kill
themselves but not the way their bosses wanted them to. Iguchi and Nakajima
estimate that no more than three out of one hundred kamikaze pilots got close
enough to the enemy to even carry out attack manoeuvers and no more than one
out of one hundred actually struck an enemy target. Thus it was an
extravagantly wasteful program carried out by a morally bankrupt ruling class
that had no idea how to extricate itself from the mess they had got into.
> He claimed there
>was one, Seto "Chicken" Teryaki.
this is a suspicious name. Many thousands of kamikaze pilots survived the war
because it ended before they were called upon to launch. Some large handful
also survived because although they launched, bad weather or mechanical
problems gave them a legitimate excuse to return.
Cub driver
I am sure that some did.
In Cook & Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History, the interviewees
include the bride/widow of a young suicide pilot and a "human torpedo"
driver.
There is a Japanese comic book about a suicide pilot. One panel shows
him flutter-kicking behind his aircraft-bomb, in the general direction
of a U.S. Navy formation disappearing over the horizon. There is a
rain cloud in what would have been the speech balloon over his head.
all the best - Dan
see Nothing New About Death at http://www.danford.net
and the Annals of Military Aviation forum at http://www.delphi.com/annals
(send private emails to danford at alumni dot unh dot edu)
Tommi Syrjanen
> themselves but not the way their bosses wanted them to. Iguchi and Nakajima
> estimate that no more than three out of one hundred kamikaze pilots got close
> enough to the enemy to even carry out attack manoeuvers and no more than one
> out of one hundred actually struck an enemy target. Thus it was an
A book I recently read (I think it was O'Neill's "Suicide Squads")
made a comparison between Japanese and US records. The records showed
that the hit rate for the kamikazes was about one in ten. In the big
"Kikusui" attacks with hundreds of planes the hit rate was lower but
there were many cases of individual planes penetrating the US
defensive nets by surprise.
- Tommi
STeveC01e
>a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but I worked with a guy who met
an
ex-Kamikaze. He flew a mission but he developed engine trouble and
returned to
base. I guess his name wasn't "drawn" again and he got lucky.
I would think that happened alot. Or they were shot down before they
got to
their target.
Steve C~
PS:> Why do KamiKaze pilots wear helmets?
Iam436
Rikihei
Inoguchi.
He was with the Japanese Naval Special Attack Force ( Kamikaze) from it's start
to it's end. Very knowledgable.
bekadubya
his plane in the water, but I've never heard of one that survived
an attack where he was trying to kill himself by crashing into a
ship and somehow managed to live.
As for Seto "Chicken" Teryaki, your Dad's pulling your leg. Or
someone's pulling his and he hasnt caught on. Teriyaki is a style
of oriental cooking, not a family name. That would be the same
as "My Dad told me about his WW2 cook, a guy named Joe
"Pheasent" Underglass".
==========================================
Robert J. Kolker wrote in message
<383a24df...@news.curie.dialix.com.au>...
>Does anyone know of a documented case of
>a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
>
>The only data I have is from my Uncle, who
>fought in the Pacific Theater. He claimed there
>was one, Seto "Chicken" Teryaki.
>
>Bob Kolker
>
>
>
>
PDC Sensha
relatively high as early as mid-1943, and given the Japanese mindset, both
about ending the war, and about sacrificing their lives for the "cause",
the
kamakaze program makes a lot more sense than conventional air attacks.
Let's go
through the logic:
1) Naval air attacks in Japanese aircraft had historically suffered very
high
losses (save only at Pearl Harbor, where conditions were somewhat different
than during a real war).
2) The most effective Japanese air attacks against ships were made with
torpedo
bombers, precisely the type of aircraft that were easiest to shoot down by
Allied fighter aircraft of ever increasing efficiency
3) Japanese bombers were either inaccurate (horizontal bombers with heavy
projectiles capable of causing deep penetration and serious damage but
extremely hard to aim) or ineffective (dive bombers with high accuracy but
low
payload)
4) Some of the most effective damage caused by aircraft to naval vessels
has
come from the aircraft themselves. In addition to the bomb or torpedo, most
military aircraft arrive on target with half their fuel load. Burning
gasoline
flows rather nicely, igniting the contents of compartments and causing as
much
or more damage than a bomb or torpedo. There was a Marine Corps aviator
during
the Battle of Midway who proved this quite well when he crashed into the
Mogami
or Mikuma.
5) Even though large strides in weapon guidance had been made by World War
II,
most aircraft delivered weapons in that conflict were only "stabilized" so
that
they would fly true. Torpedo guidance systems (gyros and rudders controlled
by
them) did this with more complicated means than those used by bombs
(nothing
more than a set of fins), but they were not "guided" in the modern sense of
the
word. Put another way, once they were fired, their chance of hitting could
not
be directly influenced by the attacker.
6) Throughout the war, the Japanese were chronically short of naval attack
bombers (dive, torpedo, horizontal), but relatively well supplied with
fighter
aircraft.
So, what was the Japanese military to do? Send off conventional attacks
with
greatly diminished chances of hitting, armed with weapons that were either
increasingly ineffective to a nation without the air superiority to protect
torpedo bombers, or were too light or too inaccurate to deliver otherwise
(in
the case of bombers), and lose a continuing stream of aircrew in the
bargain?
What if there was another way? Let's postulate the delivery of a "guided"
bomb
on the target, one that is expended with more material worth than a simple
bomb
or even a complicated torpedo, but one that can make corrections all the
way up
to impact. Although not set to hit below the waterline like a torpedo, this
airborne weapon would make up for that by the increased speed that an
airborne
object would have over a waterbound torpedo. The increased cost and
complexity
can be made up for by increasing the payload, and thus the damage on the
target. In this fashion of use, even fighter aircraft can present a
significant
hazard to the target upon impact.
Of course, "guided" weapons are not all that new; the US and Germany were
both
working on them during World War I (Sperry was particularly active in this
area, due to the gyroscopes needed for the guidance systems). They always
failed due to the command link, where the radio or wire guidance impulses
were
interrupted due to the imperfect nature of the "state of the art"
technology of
the times.
Herein entered the Japanese mindset. Unlike most nations and their
militaries,
the Japanese people were almost conditioned to accept the glorious death
offered by fighting the nation's enemies. For virtually everyone else,
"fighting to the death" is a flowery figure of speech that doesn't really
mean
what it seems to. To the Japanese, it was a literal expression and one that
was
mostly honored in the observance. "Most armies talk about fighting to the
death; only the Japanese actually did it", a quote from a British officer
of
the period, can equally well be applied to the IJN and their efforts.
If a pilot is pretty well doomed to death anyway (and by late 1943, it was
looking that way for most air missions against American task forces), why
not
make an airplane into a guided weapon by installing a person to operate the
plane all the way into an impact on the target? Course corrections made up
to
the last seconds, surface impact of bombs carried perhaps but made up for
by
the delivery of hundreds of pounds of gasoline ignited by thousands of
pounds
of airframe and engine delivered along with that bomb...all were excellent
reasons to avoid the conventional attacks in many instances and go for the
"suicide" mission.
And, any fool can get an airplane into the air and fly it to a target when
lead
by a mother hen. (I've never flown at the controls of my "dream" airplane
(an
B7A "Grace"...all the manueverability of a A6M "Zero", but while carrying a
torpedo to boot), but I've taken off and flown other light planes with
little
difficulty (while accompanied by a pilot in the other seat, to be
sure)...it's
not that hard to do.) And, this is precisely what the Imperial Navy did
with
the suicide missions. At war's end, they were planning to oppose the
invasions
of the home islands with a flood of older aircraft, counting on a one in
ten
hit ratio to make our efforts very unpleasant for all involved.
(Also, bear in mind that not all Japanese air attacks were of the kamakaze
nature. The more modern aircraft, like the above mentioned Grace, were used
for
standard attacks right up to the end of the war. The mixture of the two
types
of attacks presented a serious problem for controllers on US ships, as they
never knew what they were dealing with until the attack actually was
pressed
home. Luckly, proximity fuses worked equally as well on both types of
attackers.)
The only problem is that the pilots are going to die (in almost all
circumstances, and certainly in the case of a successful impact). That was
a
real problem for us, and for a significant number of Japanese as well, but
when
taken in light of what was happening with conventional attacks at the time,
not
one that was going to pose a problem for the "death before dishonor"
Japanese
military.
Finally, the Japanese were actually designing and testing the subsystems
for
guided missiles at war's end. Of the designs laid out by the Army and the
Navy,
one even was slated to use television as the controlling means. (This in
turn
calls up visions of a camera at the front, a CRT in front of a pilot, and
all
of it operated by a little black hand held device with a bazillion
identical
buttons on same...).
Anyway, for the place and time and people doing the dirty work, the
kamakaze
wasn't the wrong decision. Put the western "Let's give up; we've had
enough"
mindset in place in the minds of the Japanese leadership and military, and
it
seems foolish...TO US. To them at the time and the place, it was the right
thing to do.
Terry L. Stibal
pdcs...@aol.com
Flosi Thorgeirsson
Robert J. Kolker skrev i meddelelsen
<383a24df...@news.curie.dialix.com.au>...
>Does anyone know of a documented case of
>a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
Yes, I'm sure there's at least one. I saw an interview with him for many,
many years ago. I can't remember his name or what kind of plane he flew.
Yes, for some reasons I wanna know what plane. If it was the Yokosuka MXY7
I wanna know how the hell he survived!? It was probably a slow VAL or KATE
and he was shot down before he hit the ship. Anyone know something?
Flosi.
Tommi Syrjanen
> Does anyone know of a documented case of
> a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
My sources are not at hand right now and I couldn't find a www
reference to it with a quick search so I have to rely on my memory.
The only case that I'm certain of happened before the official
adoption of kamikaze tactics in 1944. The Americans had just battered
the Okinawan defences for the first time with airstrikes and the
defenders feared for immediate invasion (which actually happened more
than eight months later). The commander of Japanese fighter forces
stationed in Okinawa ordered the remaining Zeros to participate in a
kamikaze strike against the U.S. carrier force.
The Zeros had no information about the location of the carriers and
they had to fight overwhelming odds right after the takeoff. Most of
the Zeros were shot down but three survived: Saburo Sakai, his
wingman, and a third pilot who was also a high-scoring ace (I think
that he was "The Devil", Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, himself, but I can't
remember it for sure).
Both Sakai and the other ace realized that they had no hope of finding
the carrier force and they independently decided to return to the
base.
The mission in question was different from almost all other kamikaze
missions in that the pilots were ordered to the mission, while most
kamikazes volunteered to the duty.
- Tommi
Cub driver
>themselves but not the way their bosses wanted them to. Iguchi and Nakajima
>estimate that no more than three out of one hundred kamikaze pilots got close
>enough to the enemy to even carry out attack manoeuvers and no more than one
>out of one hundred actually struck an enemy target. Thus it was an
>that had no idea how to extricate itself from the mess they had got into.
This was not the opinion of the American navy at the time. In Broken
Wings of the Samurai, Robert Mikesh cites 650 suicide sorties from the
Philippines (of 1000 a/c available at the beginning of the campaign),
with 174 hits or damaging near misses on American vessels. That sounds
like spectacularly good results to me, esp considering that the pilots
were effectively lost to Japan in any event.
In Ketsu-go, the operation for the defense of the homeland, the
Japanese army and navy seemed to be relying almost exclusively on
suicide tactics, with 10,700 a/c dedicated to these attacks (Mikesh
again, citing Us-bus). It's my impression that the Americans feared
this weapon more than anything they would meet on the beaches.
I have a file on my Japan at War page about Ketsu-go.
Mike Fester
: Does anyone know of a documented case of
: a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
Actually, quite a few did. They were only given enough fuel for a one-way
mission (makes sense, right?) and since they were not highly trained, many
times they ran out of fuel before they found anything. They'd ditch in
the ocean, and either be picked up, drown, or somehow make it to shore.
Mike (remove "@eyrie.org" to reply)
Bill Shatzer
Going from memory (and being away from my reference books) I seem to
recall that the kamikazes were generally provided with full fuel loads and
the "one-way trip" scenario was, by far, more the exception than the rule.
It was, after all, recognized that the kamikazes were often going to be
unable to locate suitable targets because of weather, faulty intellegence,
or just "bad luck". As I recall, this was the case at least half the
time. A bit silly to be dumping half of your attack force into the ocean
to no good effect when providing an extra 100 gallons of gas would allow
them to regain their bases and live to fight (and die) another day. And,
if they did find suitable targets, having that extra 100 gallons of avgas
aboard would only increase the damage to their target when they impacted.
Cheers and all,
nightjar
Bill Shatzer wrote in message
<384d6251...@news.curie.dialix.com.au>...
>....
>
>Going from memory (and being away from my reference books) I seem to
>recall that the kamikazes were generally provided with full fuel loads
and
>the "one-way trip" scenario was, by far, more the exception than the
rule.
As with so many things, the answer is - it all depends....
There were kamikaze attacks using ordinary aircraft that were packed
with explosives. Presumably it would be possible to land or ditch those.
However, the Yokosuka Ohka was purpose built as a kamikaze weapon and
755 were built. It was designed so that once the pilot was inside, there
was no way to land and no way to escape - the pilot was sealed into the
aircraft from the outside. It was carried into action by a Mitshubishi
G4M2e and air launched. It was designed to glide as far as possible
before the pilot ignited a rocket motor for a high-speed final attack.
Colin Bignell
Wayne Mendryk
Legions", written by Denis Warner and Penny Warner, published by Avon
Books 1982.This book not only discusses Kamikaze pilots, but also the
Japanese use of okas (a piloted bomb), human torpedos (kaiten), and
boats.
This book also mentions that a "society", known as "The Hagoromo Society
of the kamikaze Divine Thunderbolt Corps, made up of Oka survivors
(individuals who were placed in (Cherry blossom) missiles) exists today
in Japan.
Bill Shatzer
"nightjar" <nigh...@pavilion.co.uk> wrote:
-snips-
> However, the Yokosuka Ohka was purpose built as a kamikaze weapon and
> 755 were built. It was designed so that once the pilot was inside,
there
> was no way to land and no way to escape - the pilot was sealed into
the
> aircraft from the outside.
According the the USAF Museum website, sealing the pilot into the Ohka
was a WW2 myth and the pilot was -not-, in fact, locked into the
cockpit.
Of course, with no parachute and 2,000 lbs of explosive in the nose, the
ability of the pilot to open the canopy from the inside would not have
affected his survival possibilities a wit, once the "aircraft' was
launched.
But before launch, I can see that it might be useful for the pilot to be
able unlock the canopy from the inside and exit the Ohka unassisted.
I think there was only one US Navy ship which was actually hit by an
Ohka - a destroyer or destroyer escort on radar picket duty. Blew the
poor ship clean in half, as I recall.
Cheers,
--
- Bill Shatzer - bsha...@oregonvos.net -
"Being weak minded is not necessarily a detriment"
-Jesse Ventura-
LLWatts
Habit?
OK, serious answer -- I've never seen an actual Japanese WWII aviator helmet,
but the helmets I've seen have had extra stuff attached, they weren't just head
protectors. A kamikazi pilot may have needed the radio, and probably needed
the oxygen mask (how high did they fly? Waste of effort to kill your kamikazi
pilots by anoxia before they got the enemy in sight). Why come up with another
way to attach all that stuff when there's a perfectly good helmet that will do
the job sitting right there on the shelf?
Confirmation, anyone?
Leah
(remove .nospam to reply)
tam...@oxy.edu
Bill Shatzer <bsha...@OregonVOS.net> wrote:
> On 18 Nov 1999, Mike Fester wrote:
>
> > Robert J. Kolker (bobk...@usa.net) wrote:
> > : Does anyone know of a documented case of
> > : a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
>
> > Actually, quite a few did. They were only given enough fuel for aone-way
[...]
> Going from memory (and being away from my reference books) I seem to
> recall that the kamikazes were generally provided with full fuel loadsand
> the "one-way trip" scenario was, by far, more the exception than therule.
>
> It was, after all, recognized that the kamikazes were often going tobe
> unable to locate suitable targets because of weather, faultyintellegence,
> or just "bad luck". As I recall, this was the case at least half the
Yes. In _The Divine Wind_ by Inoguchi, Pineau, and ? (I can't remember
the third author) they has a bunch of statistics at the back of the
book, the most surprising of which, to me at least, was that on
the average kamikaze attack, 2/3 of the attackers returned to base.
Or maybe it was 1/3, I forget.
If we assume a 50% return rate, then out of 64 kamikaze pilots, even
after 6 missions we'd expect at least one pilot to survive. It must've
been interesting to be such a veteran kamikaze pilot. I wonder if the
Japanese special attack units had a policy of rotating their pilots out
of combat after 25 missions? ;)
--Mike Tamada
JOW
> Does anyone know of a documented case of
> a KamiKaze pilot who survived his mission?
> fought in the Pacific Theater. He claimed there
> was one, Seto "Chicken" Teryaki.
> Bob Kolker
I was on a APD62 in WWII during the 1940s. Our first contact with
suicide missions was at Omorc Bay in the South Pacific on Layte. The
USS Little was hit with a suicide plane, on the bridge, which killed
most of the officers onboard. The "KamiKaze" pilot did not survive.
The word "KamiKaze" was not heard at that time. We knew these attacks
as 'suicide planes'. The term was not made known to us untill we were
back in the States.
I personally never saw a pilot that survived. We occasionally found
bodies of former pilots after the fact; all dead.
John
Campbell McGregor
"I Was A Kamikaze". The author had trained as a kamikaze,
the main point they rammed into them was not to shut their
eyes at the last moment. He went through the ritual of preparing
for his mission, writing his last letter to his parents, but because
of heavy fog the leader of his group of planes decided that they
were not going to find the American ships and turned back. As
I remember this was regarded as a pretty shameful thing to do,
most thought they should have crashed into the sea. He would
have gone on a further mission, but before this Japan surrendered.
I was surprised at how ineffective the kamikazes were, a huge
number lost their lives but they sank very few large American
vessels. They were know in Japan at the time as "shimpu", which
does mean the same as "kamikaze" but has something to to
with different forms of the Japanese language, he assumed that
the latter term came from Japanese-Americans whose
knowledge of Japanese was limited.
Matsuda880
>I was surprised at how ineffective the kamikazes were, a huge
>number lost their lives but they sank very few large American
>vessels.
Yes. Mostly they sank or damaged picket ships.
>They were know in Japan at the time as "shimpu", which
>does mean the same as "kamikaze"
Shimpu means "new wind" = shin is new, fu is the alternative pronunciation of
kaze, wind. Kami means divinity, so the two words are not the same in meaning.
The official designation of the kamikaze was "Tokubetsu kohgekitai," special
attack units.
>different forms of the Japanese language,
Onyomi and kunyomi. Japan adopted Chinese ideograph writing but Japanese and
Chinese are completely different languages (Japanese is in the same family of
languages as Turkish and I think Finnish) so each Chinese character has two
"readings" One is a Japanese approximation of Chinese, for example, in Shimpu,
"shin" is the "Chinese" sound, while the Japanese word for new is "atarashii."
And "fu" would be the Chinese sound while the Japanese word for wind is "kaze."
No wonder Japanese figured foreigners would never be able to figure out what
the hell they were talking about and didn't pay as much attention to codes as
they should have.
>he assumed that
>the latter term came from Japanese-Americans whose
>knowledge of Japanese was limited
The Americans had very good Japanese linguists not only among
Japanese-Americans but white Americans as well. Degrees were given in Japanese
at Yale and Harvard before the war and the army's language school was quick to
develop Japanese language courses during the war. Pronunciation was atrocious,
however, as can be heard in films of GI linguists calling for holed up troops
to surrender. You have to listen hard to realize he is speaking Japanese. I
bet many Japanese soldiers, who were often from rural backgrounds and had
probably never seen a foreigner up close or heard Japanese spoken with a
foreign accent never realized that the enemy was speaking to them in Japanese.