Was Kamikaze a good tactic?

Pilots are an expensive resource.

...

Tactic: yes. Most duel worthy pilots died at midway and they didnt have resources for mass torpedos.

Not sure why fellow amerilards always think the pacific theatre was 100% a win.

Not so cut and dried.

The force of kamikaze impacts were transfered to the hull. It led to warped hulls and machinery damage that was not quite simple or inexpensive to repair.

No.

Fighters were the main defense against kamikazes. Look up Big Blue Blanket for a development on that line.

Second, destroyers on radar picket duty were quite vulnerable and frequently attacked. Task groups with higher numbers of cruisers and battleships could pour out tremendous amounts of AA fire and had more directors available to control it.

Does anybody body have the docmentary about the pacific war where they interviewed a surviving kamikaze pilot?

I once saw a History channel documentary in which they claimed that the Japs could have done more damage if they chose to target more strategically valued targets (oil storages and shit) instead of ships -which mostly ended up getting repaired- because 'muh honoru'.

Is there any validity to this or is this history channel tier bullshit?

Not that many pilots died at Midway. The real meatgrinder was in the Guadalcanal campaign. The attrition was severe enough that virtually every pilot that flew on the Pearl Harbor attack was dead in less than a year of war being declared.

Google "Japan oil WW2" and you can find some great pdf on this. IIRC estimates at the time were that the war could have been extended by about two years had the destroyed the oil tanks and machinery shops at Pearl Harbor.

A bit unreliable, but it kept the mongols out of the isles.

Neat, thanks.

> Not sure why fellow amerilards always think the pacific theatre was 100% a win.
Because we have read literally anything about comparative industrial capacity.

Think about this. The USS Neosho was anchored on battleship row and suffered not a single hit. It would have been catastrophic had the tanker exploded.

No, because it takes longer to train a pilot than it takes to build a plane - even if the pilot only has to ram the plane into something.

>No. it wasted lives and had no chance of altering the war's outcome

I read somewhere, I think 'A Tomb Called Iwo Jima,' about Japanese airmen going on a Kamikaze mission in their two-seater plane (Kate maybe), with both men on board. I assume they weren't actual Kamikaze pilots but rather regular aviators who had decided to sacrifice themselves.

Wow that is incredible footage!

Do you have any more footage/links like that?

It was the only tactic they had left. By mid 1944 major units such as Task Force 38/58 were relatively invulnerable to Japanese conventional air attacks. Go look up the Battle Of The Philippine Sea for the ultimate example.

>>
Search on YouTube for Japanese Air Attacks On US Navy Aircraft Carrier Task Force. At about 1:05 watch the fireworks.

It's history channel tier bullshit. Think about it for a moment. A Val carried a 250 kg bomb, a Kate an 800 kg bomb. (or a type 91 torpedo, but that won't be carried if you're aiming at a ground installation)

1st wave, 89 Kates, 51 Vals. 71,200 kg+ 12,700 kg=83,950 kg.

Second wave, 54 Kates, 78 Vals 43,200+ 19,500= 62,700 kg.

So you're looking at about 146 metric tons of bombs here.

In comparison by bomb load, that's equivalent to about 23 Avro Lancasters, the main heavy bomber that the British used to raid German facilities. (It's not an exact comparison, the Lancaster's bomb load would be more or less depending on how much fuel they were carrying)

It was a very rare raid indeed that would knock a German port facility out for more than a week, and those ones committed a hell of a lot more force than 2 dozen bombers. The only one that I can think of offhand that had such success was St Nazaire, and

A) That committed a hell of a lot more force

B) The Germans in all likelihood could have repaired the port if they chose to do so, but did not due to previaling strategic considerations that wouldn't likely apply to Pearl Harbor, overall naval inferiority and the lack of use of BB for commerce raiding, their main fleet action.

If the Japanese blow up oil storehouses and other port facilities, the U.S. will send a bunch of engineers over the next week and fix everything up pretty quickly. The only way to prevent it is to have the Mobile fleet hang around the area and blockade the islands more or less indefinitely, which is going to be tough since the longer ranged airplanes can directly fly from the West Coast to Pearl, making it hard to stay out there.

Why would blowing up an empty tanker be "Catastrophic"?

Look up the article "Oil Logistics In The Pacific War" from the Air Force Journal Of Logistics. You really need to read that.

This article?

cc.gatech.edu/~tpilsch/INTA4803TP/Articles/Oil Logistics in the Pacific War=Donovan.pdf

I don't see anything in there about how the Japanese could have possibly stopped the U.S. from repairing and re-oiling Pearl Harbor up. Have you ever heard of the Construction Battalions? Later on in the war, they'd build entire ports capable of hosting double digit capital ships on coral atolls with no infrastructure to speak of in a couple of weeks. How is blowing up some of the port facilities going to stop the U.S. from doing the same here? It's not enough to just destroy the oil already present, you need to stop the U.S. from bringing in more, what with their about 3.8 million barrel a day production.

Much, much heavier raids than the Japanese attack at Pearl harbor failed to do that, so why do you think the IJN could have knocked Pearl out for "two years" Nimitz's quote nonwithstanding?

Actually posted that yesterday before remembering the Neosho had uploaded her load of av gas before the attack.
Good lookout.

That being said, the Pacific Fleet was severely short of Oilers.

And if push came to shove, the Americans could build more; it takes about 2 years to replace a battleship, a couple of months to spit out a new oiler. One more or less isn't going to have much of a long term effect.

The line "later on in the war" says it all.

>America didn't have the capacity to build port facilities in late 41/early 42

I'd like any evidence whatsoever you have to support that.

And the more I read this article, the more full of crap it is.

Look at this.

>Oil logistics after Pearl Harbor

>The Japanese followed up their attack on Pearl Harbor with submarine operations off the west coast of the United States. These operations were planned to concentrate on striking warships versus logistical support ships and merchantmen. Although the Japanese managed to sink some ships, their submarine operations were a rather feeble effort compared to German U-boat operations against U.S. commercial shipping in the ATlantic. The Germans committed wholesale slaughter among the East Coast of the United States after Pearl Harbor. The number of available German submarines for these operations was even less than the Japanese deployment.

They also had much less area to cover, were far closer to their own bases, and most importantly, despite sinking about 3 million tons or so of American shipping in the Second Happy Time, they didn't actually slow down American reinforcement of Britain and later to the U.S.S.R. The shipments didn't actually stop, this wasn't an invisible blockade; and a Japanese submarine net wouldn't do much better even if they were aiming at merchantmen.

For fuck's sake, KD6, the main class of submarine the Japanese had at the outset of the Pacific war, had about a 14,000 nm range. If you want to go halfway between Oahu and the West Coast, you've got about 3,100 nautical miles each way, meaning you're using up 45% of your fuel just getting to the strike zone and back, nevermind all the patrolling hoping to find a cargo ship before the Catalinas get you.

I mean yeah, if EVERYTHING went right for the Japanese, they could have done a lot of damage and prevented Pearl Harbor from getting up and running again. When the fuck does everything ever go right?

Lay off the video games for a while. It'll do you some good.

Read a book about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of aerial bombardment in WW2 to cause lasting damage. It'll do you some good. Start with this, it's simple enough for even someone like you to understand.

I've been a lot further, mainly the entirety of Martin Middlebrook's works on Bomber Command's operations.

I would dare you to post your exact words in a serious place such as the AxisHistory forums for example.

A mere 76 Yankee has a better grasp of Logistics than you have.

>I've been a lot further, mainly the entirety of Martin Middlebrook's works on Bomber Command's operations.

Well then, show me a single port that the British knocked out of commission with airpower alone. Bear in mind, that since they had pretty much the entire coast of France to work with, to say nothing of ports in Germany itself or up in Norway, any given port is far less strategically vital than Pearl Harbor.

Let's also not forget that British air raids were enormously heavier in terms of explosives delivered than the Pearl Harbor strike could ever be, what with land based planes delivering far more tonnage than CVP. Or that Nazi Germany had far less of a war economy to absorb damage than the U.S.

Then tell me again why you don't think the Americans could have repaired facility damage to Pearl Harbor. And before you bring up a submarine blockade, remember, despite the horrific losses the Americans were taking in the Atlantic, it didn't stop them from nearly quintupling the amount of deliveries to Britain in the same time period.

ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/BigL/BigL-5.html

Some have a bit of gore

gettyimages.com/videos/kamikaze?collections=afe&excludenudity=false&page=1&phrase=kamikaze&sort=best#license

IIRC it was the only war development that was never considered at any point in US wargames. Also at that point it wasn't about how we win, but how we take as many people with us to hell.