The Lake Norman Brief
Kamikaze
Kamikaze: the Japanese special attack corps, October 1944 – August 1945, and the ships and men they struck. Chapters of the lkn-law.com collection.
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Memory: Chiran, Yasukuni and the Word “Kamikaze”
How the special attacks have been remembered since 1945: the postwar silence and the recovery of the pilots’ letters, the Chiran Peace…
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By the Numbers, and the End: Ugaki’s Last Flight and Ōnishi’s Death
How many flew, how many died, how many ships were sunk and damaged, and why the sources disagree; what the special attacks…
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The American Answer: Radar, Fighters, Guns and the Men at the Mounts
How the U.S. Navy learned to fight the special attacks: radar and fighter direction, the “Big Blue Blanket” and doubled fighter squadrons,…
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The Picket Line and the Ships: Laffey, Bunker Hill, Enterprise and the British Carriers
The radar picket destroyers and gunboats that ringed Okinawa and took the heaviest losses of the kamikaze war; USS Laffey’s eighty minutes…
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Okinawa: The Ten Kikusui Attacks, April – June 1945
From the Iwo Jima and Ulithi raids of February and March 1945 to the last mass attack on 21–22 June: Japan’s Ten-gō…
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The Weapons: Converted Aircraft, the Ohka, the Kaiten and the Shinyo
What the special attack units actually flew, steered and rode: Zeros and bombers fitted with a single bomb, army fighters and trainers,…
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The Pilots: Who They Were, How They Were Chosen, What They Wrote
The 3,800–4,000 airmen who died in special attacks: teenage “boy pilots” and drafted university students, Navy and Army; how “volunteering” worked; training,…
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Leyte Gulf and the Philippines: The First Special Attacks, October 1944 – January 1945
From the disputed hit on HMAS Australia and the sinking of St. Lo off Samar to the fast carriers, Ormoc Bay, Mindoro…
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Origins: A Losing War, Ōnishi Takijirō and the Special Attack Corps
How Japan came to organized suicide air attacks in October 1944: the losses of the Marianas, a shrinking pool of trained pilots,…