Divine Tempests

Last week Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz reported "desperate, suicidal" Japanese air attacks on U.S. ships near Okinawa by a "special attack corps." Thus the Pacific fleet boss lifted secrecy from an enemy tactic that had been a tabooed topic (and a source of endless scuttlebutt) since the Leyte campaign.

The Admiral's communique told the U.S. public what the U.S. press had dutifully refrained from telling: that the Japanese have organized a suicide corps of flyers whose mission is to crash-dive their explosives-laden aircraft into ships; that this Kamikaze (Divine Tempest) Corps has damaged some major U.S. fleet units and sunk some smaller ships.

Dead Men Make No Reports. Several factors had ordained secrecy about the Kamikaze attacks. At first they were made by only one or two planes at a time; they might have been merely a show of fatal bravado by individual Jap airmen. Obviously no suicide pilot ever returned to report. The Jap command had no way of knowing how the attacks turned out, and the Navy took pains not to tell.

Admiral Nimitz's reference left no doubt that the Navy now recognizes these banzai air charges as a tactical policy, a desperate attempt to halt the U.S. fleet's advances on the home islands. It was also clear that the Navy would not have permitted correspondents to tell of crash dives if it had not found ways to make them mainly ineffective.

The Navy still would not permit itemization of losses and damage, but said that no fast carrier, battleship or cruiser had been sunk by Kamikaze planes. Failing to knock out major vessels, the enemy had turned his tactic against more vulnerable escort carriers, destroyers, transports and auxiliary vessels. The net effect on U.S. fleet operations has been negligible, the cost in enemy aircraft and pilots high.

Good Planes, Good Pilots. Last week off Okinawa Kamikaze planes attacked in groups of two to six. Most of them were shot out of the air before they got close to their targets. One fell into the sea only 200 yards from the amphibious operations flagship carrying Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner and Lieut. General Simon Bolivar Buckner. In one day of flaming air action the Japs lost 118 planes.

What the Navy has learned about the Kamikaze Corps' make-up and organization is largely negative, but it is enough to spoil some splendid tales:

The corps is not made up entirely of specially recruited personnel with only enough flight training to carry out a fatal mission. Many attacks are at night; it takes skilled pilots to attack a target in the dark.

There is no confirmation to widespread Navy rumors that the pilots are chained to the controls. Several have chosen not to be "divine tempests," and have been fished out of their planes after ditching them in the sea.

There is no indication that the Kamikaze groups use only obsolete aircraft. Most of their planes are of modern, combat type.

There has been only one reported instance of a Kamikaze pilot being found dressed in a ceremonial black silk robe (the scuttlebutt has enlarged on this to draw a picture of mass pre-suicide funeral ceremonies before the airmen take off).

Navy men were agreed that a Kamikaze attack was a hair-raising experience. But U.S. gunnery is growing more hair-splitting all the time. The strange little men are probably trying to think up something else.

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