The Kamikaze Campaign 1944-45
by Mark Lardas
Illustrated by Adam Tooby
Osprey Publishing, 2022, 96 pages
This brief history of Japan's Special Attack Corps, which carried out aerial
suicide attacks late in the Pacific War, features maps and color illustrations in addition
to typical historical photos found in other books. The historical narrative gets
presented from the Allied viewpoint based on numerous English-language sources.
The chapters focus on strategy, tactics, and equipment with no detailed
descriptions of individuals who were involved and with only short
descriptions of attacks on selected individual ships.
The author Mark Lardas has written over 40 books, most related to military,
naval, or maritime history. He explains how he performed his research for this
history (p. 94):
As with most of these books, assembling the information to write it was
like solving a jigsaw puzzle. No one source has everything, and often I
pulled only a few bits of critical information from the several hundred
sources I used. Additionally, many of the popular histories of the kamikaze
campaign focus on the tactical aspects ̶ the
pilots and the aircraft. This is understandable, as they offer a compelling
story, while the strategic aspects are often confusing.
While this short book provides a generally accurate history of the kamikaze
campaign, it contains quite a few errors on specifics. As a few examples, the
book states that Zero fighters carried 250-kg bombs in kamikaze attacks (p. 10), but numerous
later-model Zero fighters carried 500-kg bombs on suicide missions from Kanoya
Air Base during the Battle of Okinawa. The Chronology section indicates that the
Japanese Army began kamikaze attacks in the Philippines on November 11, 1944 (p.
7), but the Army carried out prior suicide attacks on November 5 and 7 (Hara
2004, 139, 144). Lardas asserts, "Throughout mid-November, kamikazes were an
all-Navy show" (p. 45), but Army Type 4 Heavy Bombers carried out suicide
attacks on November 13 and 15, 1944 (1 on each date), and an Army Type 99 Light Bomber executed a
suicide attack on November 15 (Hara 2004, 145-6). The author writes that
Operation Tan No. 2, which resulted in a Ginga bomber crashing into the aircraft
carrier USS Randolph at Ulithi, took place on March 10, 1945 (pp. 7, 68), but the actual date was March 11. There are also
several misspellings such as USS Callahan (p. 8) (should be Callaghan),
Tokubetiu Kogeki (p. 5) (should be Tokubetsu Kogeki), and Kerama Rhetto (p. 70)
(should be Retto).
The book's most confusing section relates to the 2nd Mitate Special
Attack Squadron's attack off Iwo Jima on February 21, 1945, which sunk the
escort carrier Bismarck Sea (CVE-95), heavily damaged the carrier Saratoga
(CV-3), and damaged four other ships. The section starts as follows (p. 65):
To oppose the Allies, Japan initially launched conventional airstrikes
from Honshu. The aircraft took off from the IJN's Hatori airfield near
Yokosuka, refueling at Hachijo Jima's airfields midway between Honshu and
Iwo Jima. The first attacks were made during the night of February 20/21.
The US counted 13 separate attacks comprising a total of 18-20 aircraft.
These attacks yielded no hits. The escort carriers lacked night-operations
equipped fighters, so the Saratoga was sent to protect the escort
carrier group; along with the Enterprise, it was one of the two night
operations aircraft carriers.
On February 21, a new tokko, the Mitate unit, was organized
and sent to strike the Fifth Fleet. The first wave of these kamikazes
arrived in the afternoon …
There are several errors in the short excerpt above. There was no Hatori
Airfield. Probably this should have been written as Katori Airfield, but it not
near Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture but rather located in Chiba Prefecture. The
2nd Mitate Special Attack Squadron took off from Katori on February 21, 1945,
and there is no reference in any known sources of a separate attack on the night
of February 20/21. The author does not provide specific references
throughout the book, so it cannot be determined where such erroneous information
was obtained. To make the above explanation even more confusing, the book's
Chronology (p. 7) states that February 21-22 were the dates of Japanese kamikaze
attacks at Iwo Jima. The following web pages provide a brief history of the 2nd
Mitate Special Attack Squadron: Katori Air Base Monument
and Iwo Jima 1st and 2nd
Mitate Special Attack Squadrons Monument.
With the number of errors in this summary history, it is best to steer clear
of it and stick with more reliable kamikaze history books such as Robin Rielly's Kamikaze Attacks of World War II: A
Complete History of Japanese Suicide Strikes on American Ships, by Aircraft
and Other Means (2010).
Source Cited
Hara, Katsuhiro. 2004. Shinsō kamikaze tokkō: Hisshi
hitchū no 300 nichi (Kamikaze special attack facts: 300 days of certain-death, sure-hit
attacks). Tōkyō: KK Bestsellers.
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