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Racing against invasion: engineering a kamikaze "cruise missile".

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In the summer of 2007, I was a volunteer researcher at the Paul E. Garber Restoration Facility of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum (NASM), when a bomb-shaped aircraft featuring two cockpits was pulled out of storage for inspection on the hangar floor. Its unmistakable resemblance to the Imperial Japanese Navy's Ohka kamikaze aircraft piqued my interest. Curiously, the artifact bore an unusually brief description: "acquired from the Navy in 1974" and identified as "Kugisho MXY7-K2 Ohka 43B." I wondered why Japan would have built a two-seat trainer for kamikaze missions, especially since it already had used the single-seat MXY7-K1 trainer. And what did the 43B designation signify? Finding no satisfactory explanations on the Ohka in published English-language sources (1) or from experts like Robert Mikesh, former NASM senior curator and author of Japanese aircraft books, I set off on my own research. I dug into recently discovered Japanese writings as well as some rare wartime Kugisho and Aichi Aircraft engineering records found in NASM's special collection. My quest took me through the entire history of the kamikaze aircraft development from wartime demands to the deliberations, decisions, and design evolution by the Imperial Japanese Navy's Kugisho--the Air Technical Arsenal, equivalent to the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics--headquartered at Yokosuka naval base.

In the process, I found that Japan's abrupt and unexpected "unconditional surrender" had left unfinished the Ohka "human bomb" development. However, this little-known project would go on to have intrinsic significance in air power history, beyond the accelerated development of the only combat-deployed Ohka Model 11. At war's end, the year-long Ohka development produced nine distinct variants of the manned aircraft bomb, from gliders to jets to assorted launching modes--all in various stages of design, engineering, test or production.

Different Perspectives

One of Japan's last wartime innovations acquired the nickname of "Baka" (a derogatory term "Fool" in Japanese) bomb among the Allied forces so targeted. (2) The very notion of a human bomb put the Ohka on the list of famous World War II aircraft. It also ensured that the Ohka would be well documented, analyzed, and judged for its short and limited war record, unorthodox systems specifications, and its rather dismal record of tactical effectiveness.

The Japanese perspective was from the decidedly losing side of the war. The fatalism had indeed given rise to the kamikaze warfare--an act of desperation even in the Japanese Bushido (the honor code of the Samurai warrior) tradition of extreme loyalty. Japan devoted all of its available technological resources to the war effort knowing full well that it would be for naught. It was a race to fend off the Allied invasion, which would be the moment of certain death for the determined nation to fight honorably until the last man.

To the Western mind, the term kamikaze was perceived as an obsession for self-sacrifice. Webster's dictionary later defined kamikaze as "a Japanese air attack corps assigned to make a suicidal crash on a target." In fact, kamikaze is an alphabetical pronunciation of the Japanese Kanji (Chinese character) Shimpu, which literally translates to "Divine Wind" and refers to the sudden overnight storm that sank the Mongolian fleet threatening to invade Japan in 1281. When the Imperial military, after agonizing deliberations, decided to call for the last ditch, certain death tactics, they called it the Tokko Tai, meaning Special-Attack Force. To honor the patriotic sacrifice, Shimpu was attached as the salutary prefix to that force designation. Thus, Shimpu Tokko Tai means Divine-Wind Special-Attack Force. The Allies connected the prefix Shimpu to kamikaze, while the Japanese kept Tokko as spoken solemnly in wartime. The Japanese do not associate Tokko with the notion of suicide; in Bushido, suicide connotes atonement for a failure or a shameful act and therefore is a wrong descriptor in this case of patriotic sacrifice. (3)

It is interesting to note the late emergence of the Japanese accounts of the Ohka history, upon which this paper is based. This history was due, in part, to a marked reticence by the former Ohka project engineers to relate their decidedly somber chronicle. Their writings reflect their "painful experience" of shouldering the nation's fate and their responsibility for engineering the final weapon of the war that sent young pilots to their "Hisshi-Hissho (certain death in certain victory)." Rear Admiral Jun Okamura, an author and former Imperial Navy engineering officer wrote, "Each case of a young pilot's brave dive into the enemy ship hit deep in the guts of us engineers, as if a silent protest of the pilots against the minute...

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