Desperate to halt the US juggernaut in the Pacific War, Japan unleashed its suicide squadrons off the Philippines
The implications were clear. Without some dramatic redress, disaster loomed for Imperial Japan. In the autumn of 1944, Admiral Takijiro Onishi, recently appointed commander of the once mighty First Air Fleet, was presented with an impossible task. The war in the Pacific had taken a decidedly negative turn for the Japanese Empire, and the US Navy, steadily growing in strength, was poised to strike at the heart of the Home Islands.
With the American landings in the Philippines on the island of Leyte in October, Onishi had concluded that a radical departure from conventional air tactics was the only option to stemming the inexorable American tide. As the epic Battle of Leyte Gulf unfolded, he was afforded the opportunity to employ that radical tactic – suicide air missions against high-value enemy targets, par ticularly the aircraft carriers of the US Navy, whose complement of warplanes had wrought destruction across the Pacific.
At first, Onishi had opposed the concept of suicide attacks. However, individual pilots had already sacrificed themselves in their zeal to die for Emperor Hirohito, crashing their crippled planes into American vessels, or setting out from the beginning to do so. Under Onishi, the idea became a sanctioned military course of action. The stark reality of the situation had prompted the admiral’s change of perspective. During the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, Japanese carrier air power had been all but wiped out. In fact, the defeat was so thorough that American fighter pilots had labelled the air aspect of the fighting the ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’.
Then, in mid-October, US carrier-based aircraft had conducted a series of raids against Japanese installations on the island of Formosa. Again, Japanese losses in planes and pilots were significant, while American raids on bases at Truk and Palau in the Caroline Islands resulted in even greater losses. Through the course of these recent actions, the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Army as well had lost a combined total of more than 800 aircraft. Such devastating losses were irreplaceable. Onishi understood that his remaining planes, numbering roughly 150 and many of them now obsolescent, and his dedicated but ill-trained pilots, were destined to meet similar fates in the unfolding Leyte Gulf battle if conventional tactics remained the order of the day.
Sacrifice for the rising Sun
Through years of senior command, Onishi
