The Ta-Gō - Japan’s Last-Ditch Kamikaze
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- Опубликовано: 11 июн 2024
- Facing defeat in World War Two, the Japanese resorted to many desperate expedients.
And one of the most desperate was the Ta-Gō, the cheapest and easiest to build Kamikaze aircraft they could come up with.
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And no, I don't speak Japanese.
time for the download the blueprints and 3d printer time joke!
Watch Anime- some weeb
You *don't*?
That's unfortunate Ed because if you did you *might* have picked up on one of the best Kamikazi tales of all (reputedly a true tale but.........)
It was reported (sorry folk, no link - Google is your friened etc) close to the end of the war a Japanese General visited a Kamikazi squardron which had been treated pretty miserably by the guys at the top. (Crap rations, no girls etc etc just bulls hit).
He gave them a long and rousing patriotic speach about everyone needing to take the war to the enemy etc etc..
At the end of which the Squadron commander stood, bowed to the General, and said 'For the Emperor! We will follow you and the General Staff Sir'.
No missions were ordered for that unit.
Thanks ED.....You make great video's...🖤👍👀
Speaking Japanese is one thing, pronunciation is a somewhat lesser challenge. Interesting presentation.
"Wow boss, your son is pretty good at drawing airplanes. He's what, five now?"
"No no, those are the blueprints I want you to work from. The big square tail will save you having to fool around with a protractor."
Bro wats a protractor?
@@spottydog4477 Look it up, junior. It'll be right alongside 'slide rule'
@@ThePhoenix198 can only draw "fat" lines with my crayons!
In case everybody missed it the horizontal milling machine being operated by a Japanese worker was made in Cincinnati. It says so right on the machine.
Early globalisation at work! Globalisation is a hell of a thing. Like right now China's looking increasingly dangerous to those nearby... Doing anything about it hurts the global economy... So China's rise has been seen as inexorable, although in truth it's not and could have been controlled
@@dave8599
Nothing says you can't run industrial power tools off of hydraulic systems.
The advantages. Constant torque at all rpms. On the fly Infinity variable spindle speeds from zero to 100% with nothing more than a flow control valve. Variable pressure output via pressure relief valves that take the place of transformers and/or rheostats. The downsides. Running tubing or hoses from a central supply. Leaks. All, and I mean all hydraulic systems will leak. Did i mention leaks. Noise. Hydraulic systems can be noisy. The last place I worked built industrial centrifuges for a variety of uses. One model model used a hydraulic motor to spin the centrifuge. The machines already had hydraulics on them as they use a hydraulic motor with flow control valves to control both the rpms and power output in terms of torque for the internal augers used to move the dewaterin material out of the machine.
One thing the Amish do is to convert woodworking machinery to hydraulic and run the hydraulic pump with a gas or diesel engine. Your already having to buy the fuel anyway so why not just run the equipment with electricity from the generator. Or put in a couple of vertical axis wind turbines and use those. As to the vertical axis wind turbines. The aren't as efficient as the horizontal axis ones (40% vs 50%) but they are more efficient in terms of how much area they take up plus they have certain other benefits. One is that all you have at the top of the mast is the bearing set. Second is the generator is down at base level. Third is you do not have to be able to rotate them into the wind.
www.centrisys-cnp.com/videos
@@hydorah
Blame Nixon. And in part blame ourselves. Everybody loves a bargain. Also blame companies like WalMart. They kept pushing suppliers to reduce costs. In the end the only way companies could continue to sell to them was to chase ever cheaper production costs. But China's facing a couple of big problems. One is demographics brought on by the one child policy. Another is a badly skewed Male to female ration due to spouses choosing genders via abortions
@@hydorah It got nothing to do with globalisation... USA started XX century as the biggest producer of good quality high tech products. Just like now everything is Made in China in old days most of the good quality hardware was produced in USA, now most of stuff is produced in China and quality of stuff "Made in USA" is often very poor.
my town's "Menshed" got given this exact model machine a few years ago!
You forgot to mention the third reason for the adoption of kamikaze tactics: japanese pilots' chance of survival, even in conventional attacks, was virtually nil. They were going to die in any case.
That wasn’t a reason they did it.
@@XxBloggs some of them certainly didn't but their planners had to take in account this aspect too. IMO this "plane" is the aerial counterpart of a schoolgirl and her granny fighting against G. I. Joe with a bamboo stick. U. S. soldiers should have left their rifles and taken scythes instead. That's why through the years i grew ever more convinced that the "A" Bomb was the lesser evil after all.
@@Riccardo_Silva That is what they did on Okinawa. Or just killed themselves.
At splat is right, practicality or pragmatism wasn't a consideration at high or low levels. It was the mentality that death was preferable to dishonor and losing the war, their culture, and way of life. Japanese propaganda said that Americans were barbarians who were going to rape and pillage (like the Japanese army did, irony) was something they would rather die first. This is why its hard for Westerners to understand why they had so many willing volunteers for the Kamikaze.
@@jamestheotherone742 that is why i, and many far more authoritative persons than me, think that, after all, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki avoided a worse bloodshed. Had Japan had to be occupied by landing forces we now would be complaining about millions, instead of hundreds of thousands, of wasted japanese lives
@@Riccardo_Silva a few of the fire bomb raids actually killed more civilians than the A-bombs. the worst was between one and two hundred thousand in a single raid
When you got Ta-Go you got Ta-Go!!!
....really....
It's Ta-Go Tuesday! Two kamikaze aircraft, stuffed with lettuce, tomato, Cheddar cheese, a generous helping of our signature seasoned, crumbled beef (don't ask how we sourced it, just dig in and enjoy) and fresh-daily chunky salsa (again, pay no mind as you fatten your behind). All in a crispy corn shell tortilla fuselage, open-topped, and every Tuesday, two Ta-Gos are just $2. (Add $0.79 for a medium soft drink.) Eat-in, use our new Blaz'n For Plenty (read it aloud) Delivery app, or drive-thru and let us pack a snack sack of them Ta-Go 4 U.
Comedic genius 👏 sir 👏
Once you Ta-Go you are Ta-Gone
This video is a perfect example of why I watch your channel. You cover the less flashy stuff most don't care about if they know of it at all, but that is still worth discussing.
Test Pilot, "The thing is an absolute death trap to fly...... it'll be perfect for the job!!".
The reasoning was even more logical and brutal than that. The allied ships were turning into AAA farms and their radar assisted gun laying with proximity fused munition, combined with radar directed CAP's and superior fighters, were devastating. We're talking about 80% to 90% loss per sortie. Conventional attack was suicide anyway.
(source for this are interviews that Military History Visualized did with Justin, who is a scholar studying the pacific campaign)
@@leary4 Just stop... you have zero understanding of this topic...
Not to mention that low level approach was a bad idea even before proximity fuse development because ships were simply using main guns to just shot into water and planes were crashing into wall of water created by underwater explosions.
@@Bialy_1 I was an fc2 in the usn... Kinda sucks for u lol skipster
@@leary4
Would you care to explain Japanese losses then? If what you said was close to the truth then they shouldn't have been getting swatted down like flies... but they were.
@@leary4 My father was an accountant, I know percentages for the backstabbers that they are. ;-)
High flying planes get picked up on radar. Low flying planes get picked up by radar from picket destroyers because they can't fly low for the entire sortie. (bc. fuel economy and not being able to find their target). Then they get are fodder for Combat Air Patrols of superior (especially in a dive, which they can do because being forewarned) Hellcats.
By that time the US had an abundance of Fletcher class destroyers to use as pickets.
The proximity fuse (code named VT fuse, look it up, it's fascinating) made AA guns devastating especially in the circumstances you describe.
An incoming aircraft is a dot only to the ship it's attacking. The rest of the Task Group sees a low/slow plodding rectangle and sees exactly where it's going.
Also remember that the Japanese had a very limited pool of experienced pilots.
1. They long had a habit of having elite standards for entry into flying schools. Thus they had a limited cadre of extremely good pilots, but they had no reserves and only a thin pipeline for replacements.
2. They didn't recall successful pilots to the flying schools but let them fight to the death. And the more died, the bigger the burden became on the ones who were left.
By the time they started using Kamikaze, they may have had planes, but they didn't have any pilots left that could survive a conventional attack, or even a landing.
This is a quote from Norman Friedman's "Fighters Over The Fleet, Naval Air Defense From Biplanes To The Cold War":
"A Japanese officer later said that his country had adopted suicide tactics because conventional tactics were inherently suicidal."
@@leary4 and it sucks for you that there are dozens of genuine footage reels existing of low level Japanese planes getting smoked while attempting an approach to a battle group.
Apparently you didn't learn much.
The Ta-Go, for when the Ki-115 isn't last-ditch enough for late-war imperial Japan's tastes.
You have to remember, that unless ordered to, the WW2 Japanese Navy wouldn't use anything that the Japanese Army had, nor would their Army use anything their Navy had!!! (Except as a last ditch situation on an island that was being conquered!)
Yup...
Too true- the Ki-115 was an F-22 compared to the Ta-Go.
@@timengineman2nd714 you could always tell if the aircraft was Army or Navy by its numbering scheme. Almost all Army aircraft numbers began with KI, naval aircraft were letter/number/letter/number, such as the A6M2 for the Zero fighter, or the KI100 army interceptor.
@@locutus155 Yeah, and a lot of their (Army/Navy) weapons didn't have interchangeable ammo either! (Like one used a 6.5 rimless and the other used a 6.5 semi rimed cartridge in their machine guns.)
After the war Capt. Miziyama took his talents for making things smaller and cheaper into the Japan's electronics industry.
Ah, Mizi-Yamaha?
I bet he made a bomb out of it!
Thank you for posting this bit of aviation history.
I could see such an aircraft being useful in kamikaze strikes on American landing craft in the event of an invasion. Take off from a concealed airstrip behind the invasion beach, fly at low altitude to avoid American fighters and then dive down onto a loaded boat as you come over the beach before you are in the US flak umbrella. Cheap and possibly effective.
It makes a lot more sense when you put it that way. The designer was thinking of a defensive fight against an invasion of the Japanese home islands after all, which could leave plenty of targets without close fighter cover that would be devastated by a small kamikaze.
Also would work great against tanks and arillery
Exospray - with respect, I disagree.
Kamikaze attacks with planes of 2.5 to 3+ times the speed and much greater armor protection only got through 14% of the time (according to the US Air Force).
These things sputtering along at 90mph and zero armor protection?
With useless pilots?
And now they have not only enemy fighters and AA? But all the guns of the soldiers firing up at them?
They would literally be better off using the ammo, steel and fuel for actual weapons, IMO.
The ONLY thing I can see this thing good for is attacking infantry units at night.
But how they were supposed to see what they were hitting is beyond me.
@@McRocket read again, he said about using them against landing craft, not well protected destroyers and cruisers. Rifle fire ain't gonna do jackshit against aircraft too (let alone by seasick men crammed together like sardines), as many nations discovered during the start of the war.
There would be air cover for the advancing craft, but send enough up and they'll be overwhelmed for long enough for many to get through.
Though _how exactly_ one would manage to hide an airstrip from the prying eyes of recon aircraft so close to such an important area is another question.
Yeah, I was kinda thinking the same thing.
Pretty much worthless against capital ships.
Low altitude attacks on massed land targets are another matter. The Soviets were pretty successful using string bag biplanes against the Germans.
I think the "closest thing to an extravagance" on the plane was the landing gear. Once launched, it was never expected to land. Would have been better to have a wheeled launch-sled, jettisoned after take-off.
I was thinking the same.
The Komet used that,no?
@@digschopper9321 Yes, you are correct, and that particular plane was expected to land and be reused.
I think skids would have been used on production craft, or even a catapult. Remember, Japan also needed to shorten flight training; catapult launching would further reduce the amount of pilot training required to fly these missions.
@@aliaslisabeth1031 Good call, but catapult tech back in the WW2 era was not up to scratch, particularly in a war-weary Japan
By the Ta-Go came into existence, the Japanese had started to switch from Carriers and Battleships as their primary "Special Attack" targets to Transports and various Landing Ships (but not small Landing Craft) that were carrying men and material to the island that was being attacked.
Therefore the 100 Kg (~220 pound) bomb could inflect damage! Also, I imagine that they would have either attacked at night or "in dawn's early light" to limit visual sighting by non-radar equipped fighters, and considering the types of radar available at that period of the war, an almost all wood airplane just might slip through!
An insulting load, none-the-less.
That's assuming these crates can actually hit the boats in the first place. Do you think the Navy was not adjusting to circumstances?
Ed, your research and output is outstanding. You make great use of historical resources, both stills and film. Another terrific video.
Many thanks.
The test flight of this aeroplane didn't go well - the plane made a safe landing :)
The first Ta-Go looks like a design from the early 30's.
Japan had something of a Catch 22 as far as Kamikaze attacks were concerned. They needed good pilots for the aircraft they intended to use for those attacks but at the same time they could not afford to use their best pilots as these were needed to defended Japan. So, many of the pilots they used were given the bare minimum of training. This in turn caused problems because they needed to get passed the US pilots who by this time were highly experienced. And even if they did that their lack of experience often led to failure. When you see film footage of a Zero crashing into the sea instead of a ship it could well be because the pilot could not control the aircraft while in a dive. Something experienced pilots knew about.
Nice work, Ed 😎👍. Don't forget that Captain Chicken Teriyaki survived 24 kamikaze missions by the time the war ended.
these are the types of planes I love hearing about.
My first thought was "What is the radar cross section of this aircraft?" It might have been really difficult to pick up on radar. If the fleet was close in for invasion, the slow speed and short range would be mitigated. This aircraft might have been more effective than you think.
Doubt it. How would the pilot find a ship at night. During the day, it's slow speed would make it a sitting duck.
The slow speed, incredible vulnerability, poor handling, and relatively low bomb load would have made it almost entirely pointless.
Love this channel! Keep them coming.
I could see it being kinda tricky to shoot down actually. I mean, it probably cruised below the stall speed of a Hellcat.
Looks like a mini-max ultralight
Another great vid. Thanks Ed
a good account! thanks for making this program. very interesting!
If the war would have gone on for another 6 months, the Allies could have defended their ships with trampolines.
Anti-kamikaze trampolines. brilliant!
@@bogie_bandit218 lucky the US ships used better steel than the WTC's.... otherwise a single Tago could have lined up the whole pacific fleet and fly through the lot (and then on to the Pentagon)
Another almost aircraft, keep them coming!
Thank you for this video, I was honestly not even aware of this plane, interesting for sure!
Excellent, as ALWAYS!
Brilliant piece of aviation history.
Never heard of this one before. Thanks!
I've discovered your channel with this video and i'm not disappointed. +1 sub
thanks ed!
One winders if the good captain ever reflected on that fact that he was making a plywood and fabric clunker that was a literal throwaway (as was the pilot).
An example of reflecting on WTF have i done (notwithstanding the closing scene of "The Bridge on the River Kwai") is a character in Oliver Lange's "Next of Kin."A brilliant nuclear engineer at Los Alamos, he labored for years and finally built a thermonuclear device that would fit in a shoe box. Realizing what he had done, her came to his senses and fled to the Arizona desert and became a drunk.
Thanks Ed.
With bomb relatively light to make any harm to medium sized vessel, I would say the plane could be useful in night raids similiar to that of Soviet Po-2. Only difference is, the Soviet pilots tried to survive and were dropping bombs and Japanese wouldn't want to survive and would be dropping bombs + their own aircraft.
Good aircraft. Now explain to designer that he will be the one testing it and he will be enlisted in first squadron to fly these things
Very interesting. Thanks never heard of it before.
2:10 Oh the irony! Japanese war production on an American Cincinnati milling machine.
Funny seeing a Cincinnati 2L horizontal milling machine 2:45 in the Japanese wartime factory.
This is fascinating. I have never heard of it.
Interesting stuff always..
You certainly find some unique aviation history.
That thing at 1:13 ......I'd never heard of them, until I stumbled across one at a little air museum just south of the Grand Canyon in 1996.
One thought that came up to me: being entirely made of wood (engine & bomb being the sole exceptions) and so small, these things would be almost invisible to radar right untill very close. A perfect weapon for a night raid...
Engine will be giving radar reflection... and night flying is only for experienced pilots not for poorly trained kamikaze.
@@Bialy_1 It's not like the kamikaze pilots would have to worry about an instrument landing, because they had no instruments and wouldn't be landing.
@@Bialy_1 yes on the radar, but it will be very small target signature, a serious problem for a 1945 radar. And the training will be an issue, but remember these pilots only have to _take off_ and fly straight for a few miles; the invading USN fleet was supposed to be close inshore, so would be hard to find, specially if it's a clear night, or full moon. And if one or two pilots get lost or crash... ah well...
So wood is invisible to radar then ?? Hmm….
Anyone else notice the Cincinnati horizontal Milling machine in the Japanese plant ? Guess they purchased a lot of good machine tools leading up to the war.
We weren't at war until we were at war. I've heard that even to this day there are still valves and other components in some older American oil refineries with Swastikas cast onto them, bought from the Germans in the pre-war era. Pre-war Japan was rapidly industrializing, so surely they were buying a lot of industrial machinery from more industrialized nations such as the US. In fact one of their struggles was that once they were at war with the US they couldn't buy stuff from the US, leading to shortages of a lot of things they needed such as raw materials. Only source then was Germany, but getting anything between Japan and Germany was very difficult with everyone along either possible route (across the Atlantic and Pacific, or through the Indian Ocean) at war with them.
@@quillmaurer6563 I am in Houston, TX and work in a refinery. I have seen these valves. Those valves are so well built many are still in use.
'the flow of defeat' is also when the bladder below deck mutinies during intense group gaming
The Japanese were using "CINCINNATI" milling machines!
Yep. Until the 30's Japan was a friendly nation that the US had good trade relations with. Lots of machine tools were sold there and some of the steel used in weapons used against the US was American scrap metal.
Japan got a big part of their steel and oil from the US thats why it was such a big deal when the US stopped trade with japan
with that bomb load, speed and range it is more likely it would have been used against beach landing assaults for homeland defence as by this time the Japanese were expecting an invasion. LSTs, landing craft and beachheads would have been probable targets for this weapon.
Ta-Gos would've made very good target practice for the landing troops.
Random side note, I couldn't help but notice the Cincinnati mill pictured @ 2:15. (I had a nearly identical one) I've often thought that a study of foreign equipment/materials in Japan during the war would be very interesting. I once read that the Japanese battleships were built on douglas fir cribbing exported from the Oregon, Washington and Western Canada before the war. The Japanese were also quite fond of American locomotives, and having ordered the first 2-8-2 type it was christened the Mikado. The style also caught on in the states, the name causing some friction in the war years and an attempt was made at redubbing it to the MacArthur, which didn't stick.
Apart from the explosion, it looks like a fun little plane.
Others have pondered if, had there been a whole bunch of these left at the end of the war, could they have removed the bombs and made them into light civil aircraft? Maybe so, though the design and build quality were probably extremely poor.
Great Video! Can you do one about the Ryan FR-1 Fireball? It was a half piston, half jet fighter, and the first to land on a carrier under jet power (accidentally)
The last US ship sunk in WW2 by kamikaze was hit by a Yokosuka K5Y, a pre-war design bi-plane with 120 mph top speed. So these would have worked, if they got through to the ships.
Death trap, oh wait. Excellent video on a little known aircraft, brilliant. Cheers.
Thank you …….good stuff.
as a machinist, freakiest part about this whole video is seeing those Japanese machinists working at mills while wearing flip-flops!!!!🤯🤯 I can't even imagine. I would have lost a foot already probably both of them
@@dave8599 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😎
As soon as I get a chance I'm going to be googling to see if I can find any images of like foundry workers in Japan in the 30s and 40s and see if they are also wearing flip-flops and socks. Like I can't imagine the injury rate and I also can't fathom why they would wear zero foot protection 🤯🤯 Oh and yes Dave I think that is probably why they're squinting😉
2:09 Those "flip-flops" that you snigger at are GETA, wooden sandals with cotton/leather straps and have front and back wooden "blades" to raise the foot out of water/mud/metal shavings. These Do Not use any strategic materials, can be made/repaired easily, and were used since the Samurai days. Modern Zorii which you fellows call "flip-flops" are made of synthetic and natural rubber, which was strategic material in World War II. Even today, Geta are quite useful for getting around the neighborhood, especially to the communal bathhouse. Check out the Wikipedia for the difference between Zorii and Geta for details.
@@michaelfrench3396 this wasn't specific to Japan (the lack of PPE, not the wooden sandals).
while in western countries everyone had closed leather shoes, almost none were reinforced, had protection integrated or worn over them
same for face protection, the few videos and photos of workshops and construction yards i've seen, often the only workers with facemasks or googles were welders.
same goes for head protection, the only places you would see a lot of people wearing hard hats were the frontline and the mine
@@Otokichi786 okay thank you for the super long explanation of what flip flops are. Now tell me how you're not going to lose a foot if you're taking a piece of metal out of a Chuck and you accidentally drop it on your foot that's not covered with anything except a sock?
Can you explore the Interstate TDR1 BOMBER?
i got to fly one in the '70s. The air force museum had given it to the Antique Airplane Association in Blakesburg Iowa. During their annual fly in, we traded them out of it.
We took the control surfaces back to Tulsa and recovered them. Then we went back to Blakesburg and flew the airplane to Tulsa.
Kamikaze Flight Instructor: "Now watch carefully, because I'm only going to show you once!"
‘Now, lucky recruit…
This is called a landing gear on most aircraft but, on this one we’re calling it a takeoff gear..
Get it..?!’
Air cooled inline 4 cylinder engine putting out 100 horses with essentially a wooden sport plane attached. That engine sounds like it could have potential even now
How in the world do you discover these aircraft? I always enjoy your content.
On the one side, I admire the courage of these pilots. On the other side I condemn the men who ordered these attacks fully knowing they would not change anything at all.
I believe that the US Navy had a report on Kamikaze attacks. What they found was that only about 4-6% of Kamikaze attacks actually hit their targets.
A few dozen of these swarming landing craft would be a problem.
It IKEA sold a plane this would be it
That would make a interesting kit/home built plane if some blue prints were available.
Address the handling issues and you'd have a nice little kitplane design for the sports fliers.
100 of those things with a squadron of zeros escorts would have been a serious threat to a carrier
We're they serious ? Fighter cover and ship AA would have made short work of those paper planes ... unless they flew so slowly that everyone fell asleep ! .. "KAMIKAZI !! ... arrggh ... waits .. waits ... waits .. looks at watch ... wait .. Zzzzzzzz ..dead!" . Give the Okha longer range rockets and you have a serious threat.
It reminds me of the RC airplane called Das Ugly Stik, but a low wing.
I can't imagine a late ear 40mm or 5"/38 being able to possibly miss this.
Looks like a great new air force one to me.
the Japanese had a wide range of more or less crazy ideas how to utilize kamikaze, not just aircraft, but speedboats, midget subs, piloted torpedoes, even frogmen; there is an Ohka video on TakaLeon's channel with an interview with the designer of Ohka - an old, broken engineer.. not a cheerful watch but definitely worth it
I'm surprised they didn't have a drop wheel carriage so they could be re-used and reduce drag. I don't think many would make it to the Allied ships.
The last version, which was unsuccessful, was dubbed the "No Go".
I saw one for real at my dads' headquarters at Keesler AFB
A slow, wooden plane with a poor bomb load would have splatted on the deck of an enemy warship without doing too much damage. One of the biggest weaknesses of the Kamikaze concept was the fact that a crashing plane doesn't have the terminal velocity and penetrative capacity of an armor-piercing bomb.
The American carriers had wooden decks.
20ga of gasoline makes a mess, everything else is bonus.
@@dongorrie1828 Kamikazes rarely made it past the destroyer screen. The flak, combat air patrols, and the fact that badly-trained pilots tended to hit the first ship they encountered impaired their effectiveness.
@@brucebaxter6923 Kamikazes sank few major warships compared to trained pilots, a waste of resources really.
@@rkitchen1967
Planes per ship and pilots per ship they were roughly an order of magnitude better off than the USA.
Landing gear? Not sure that was exactly necessary. May be a set of dolly wheels for take off that could be jettisoned & reused?
The thing I find interesting about this, is how is an Army Captain is initiating a design concept? I'm sure there is a lot more to the story that we don't know about, but I find that curious.
Enjoyable as always Ed.
It isn't strange considering the IJA had the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service complete with their own plane development separate from the IJN.
One again Ed - ever heard even a peep about this thing.
Thank you!
IMO, other than attacking infantry units/supply depots at night?
(assuming the probably, totally untrained pilots could even find targets in the middle of the night)
I see no other remotely reasonable use for these things.
☮
Given the wood construction and very, very limited use of metal, it is possible that these would have been nearly invisible to the radar of the day and to the proximity fuses of anti aircraft. But then again given their small size if the hit any kind of armored vessel they would not do much other than scorch the paint. One US admiral was quoted as saying when asked about suicide plane striking his flag ship "sweepers man your brooms".
There is a kind of poetic irony in the name of the quasi-aircraft in question sounds so much like "to go," IMHO...
There were ohkas with 20mm cannons, at least proposed, supposedly one built
Never seen this plane before 🇯🇵
Wooden So what would the radar return be. Used as a nighttime kamikaze attack could have been an option.
The Kamakaze attacks were largely ineffective because they went for capital ships that were heavily defended by air cover and surrounding ships putting up curtains of AA. We now know that the Japanese had stockpiled 10,000 aircraft of all types to be used against Operation Downfall. But they intended to use them against soft targets - the unarmored and slow troop transports and landing craft. Even if only 5 to 10% got through it would have been a bloodbath for the US. And I might not be sitting here since my father was going to be in the initial landing on Kyushu.
"The range was around 93 miles - I don't know if that's with the bomb or not."
I was just wondering whether it was one-way. 😬
There was no way these things were going to penetrate the flak walls and CAPs put up by the USN and allied navies. However, I wonder if Operations Olympic and Coronet had taken place, they could have emerged from their hiding places, flown below tree-top level and hit supply dumps, hospitals, and so on.
2:21 Cincinnati mill in Japan, lol
I can't look at this and not think of Sideshow Bob's kamikaze attempt with the wright brother's plane. This looks like it would just bounce off whatever it was trying to crash into. 😂
In his memoire, Lieutenant DJ Hamer DSC, RAN, describes the psychological effects of the kamikaze upon Allied ship crews, particularly in relation to actions in Lingayen Gulf, Luzon Island.
Desperate times, desperate measures.
Would this work as an ultralight plane today? (Without the bomb of course)
0:01 anyone know the cruiser or battleship or whatever it is in the picture?
Could probably reboot the design as an LSA. Would be pretty cool retro plane... I'd say cooler than a Pietenpol Air Camper. No need for the 100kg surprise anymore. lol
The concept of swarms of kamekazi aircraft defeats the original premise of one death for many. How many of these would have been needed for just one 100kg bomb to get through the ship's defenses? Something much faster, flying higher and capable of vertical dives might have been a better idea.
Are the blueprints for the prototype available? Pretty sure with modern dacron and aluminum tubing this bird would fly on 1/2 the horses and carry a 300lb plus pilot.
Possibly, but there's a lot of far better refined homebuilts out there these days.
Interesting design, have you looked at the Minimax fleet of ultralight aircraft? They fly with only 27 hp !
Like a VW engine.
I have a Corby Starlet with an 1835cc VW engine. It cruises at 220 km with an endurance of 5 hours. It is aerobatic as well!
So I'm wondering about the logic behind this concept. If the aim of using kamikaze planes was to maximize damage for minimum expenditure then obviously a faster, more powerful aircraft was more likely to make it through to its target, while a slow and flimsy one such as this (complete with barely trained pilot and small payload) was almost certain to be shot down, necessitating the use of dozens or even hundreds of them in order to score a hit.
Seems to me that while unit cost was very low, effectiveness was likely to be almost non-existent, thus rendering it more costly than the very thing it was supposed to replace.
if you fly a swarm of them, you could conceivably overwhelm the defenses.. the question is what are you gunning for? Targeting a CV might result in needing 100 planes for 1 to ge through with the Ta-Go.
@@joselitostotomas8114 Indeed you might, but remember that each Ta-go would be a *new* aircraft, while normally kamikazes were aircraft that had reached the end of their service life and were effectively being "recycled" so weren't using ever scarcer resources.
@@Kevin-mx1vi You still need to replace those expended aircraft. So making mass produced aircraft where the the only metal is the engines and the housing is a logical step.
I think they readjusted priorities. Casualties were so high,successes so low,but here one man plus airplane could take out a landing craft full of men or supplies. Better than waiting around to die,better than a company of men killed and failing to take out oh,a tank for instance. Take out the landing craft,tank and personnel on board. Not a battleship,not an aircraft carrier,but just maybe it might make the casualties so heavy the US would reconsider invasion. Take out lots of landing craft,or maybe battlefield targets such as tanks,etc. Desperate times,desperate measures.
Yep, the Japanese were planning to surrender prior to the A-Bomb attacks, SURE they were...
Interesting subject, as always, Ed Nash.
What people dont realize is the "Atomic bombs" saved lives..American Intel at that time was horrible, the thought was that Japan was down to its last 2,500 planes..once the Japanese surrender after the bomb drops, and rebuilding of Japan the allies realized the Japanese where hiding their planes and flying manned missiles, there where anywhere from 12,500 - 14,000 planes left, and Japan was going to use these for "Kamikaze" attacks on the landing craft of the allies, if an invasion of the mainland was going to come to fruition..in essence, the bombs, saved lives..and pretty much, lots of American lives at that.