Kamikaze Suicide Bomber 1945 Okinawa Colour Documentary

By the end of 1944, the majority of Japanese commanders realized how disastrously the war was progressing. Senior Japanese naval air commanders decided there was no alternative but to use the desperate tactic of loading planes with bombs and crash-diving them into the flight decks of enemy carriers. In October 1944 at Leyte Gulf, the first of these crash-diving units sank the carrier Saint Lo and damaged a number of other ships. These initial successes and the declining effectiveness of conventional tactics against the U.S. Navy's improving defences led to the decision to dramatically scale up what had come to be known as kamikaze units for the impending Okinawa campaign. Armed with a half-ton of explosives, the crew of an antiquated Val dive bomber set out to crash into a U.S. ship off Okinawa. One of the 1900 obsolete Kamikaze aircraft that would be sacrificed by the Japanese high command during the Okinawa campaign. There was, however, one significant distinction with this aircraft: it was being flown by a talented young pilot with close to three years of combat experience.

Видео Kamikaze Suicide Bomber 1945 Okinawa Colour Documentary канала World War 2 in Colour