Chapter 104 Kamikaze

While the U.S. search plane spotted Kurita's troops, the Japanese air observation post also saw these uninvited guests.Realizing that an air attack might be imminent, Kurita ordered the fleet to speed up to 24 knots and sounded the air defense sirens. Nearly two hours have passed, and the air strike did not come as expected. An important reason is that the US aircraft carrier that was ready to go was also hit by an air strike. When the Japanese Navy formulated the "Jie 1" combat plan, it decided to let the Philippine naval aviation depart from the land airport to cover the Kurita fleet's intrusion into Wright Island through offshore operations.

Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi was ordered to carry out the operation.Onishi, known as the authority of the Japanese naval aviation, had single-handedly planned and organized the bombing of Chongqing, China, and Yamamoto relied heavily on him during his lifetime.This gentleman had been promoted to the military headquarters, but after the Mariana naval battle, he didn't know which nerve in his head was misplaced, and he actually wrote a poster-like material and distributed it everywhere in the military headquarters, threatening to force the leaders of the navy to collectively Resigned to take responsibility for the failure of the naval battle.

The reaction of the leaders was to immediately transfer this ignorant guy to the front line.At first Daxi had an expression of indifference, thinking that as long as he went out on his own, he would definitely do a better job than those bastards.Unexpectedly, when he saw Manila, there were only 150 naval planes left for him to command, and less than 100 could be used in battle. Moreover, the performance of the planes was extremely poor, and the poor piloting skills of the pilots reached an astonishing level. Daxi was stunned and stunned.A skinny camel still has a lot of meat, and the Naval Air Force is not even as good as a skinny camel. How can we fight with such a rotten army?

The leaders of the military command are really vicious. I just dropped a few leaflets on a whim and made a few complaints, so I was sent to such an unlucky position. Isn't this clearly killing someone with a knife?At this time, Daxi wanted to cut off his tongue and sew his lips together, but there is no medicine for regret in the world, once it comes, it cannot be returned. After thinking about it, Onishi summoned the grassroots officers to give a lecture: "If the Kurita Fleet's intrusion operation fails, the situation will be even more severe. For this reason, we must severely attack the enemy aircraft carrier and paralyze them for at least a week."

At first hearing this, everyone thought it was just a slogan for the sake of going through the motions - it would be difficult for those bomber pilots who lacked training to break through the tight blockade of the US ship's air-to-air firepower, let alone paralyze the opponent. Unexpectedly, Daxi really had a trick, and it was a poisonous trick that only a guy like him could come up with: "Let our fighter jets be loaded with bombs and aim at the deck of the enemy aircraft carrier!" The Onishi Army has 30 "Zero" types, and he advocates hanging 250 kg bombs on each "Zero" type, so that these "Zero" types can directly hit.From Onishi's point of view, there is no such thing as lack of experience. Anyway, if you bump your eyes closed, there is nothing in the soup or rice, and if you bump into it, you will make money.

After hearing this creepy new tactic, everyone in the room couldn't help but froze and fell silent.After a while, someone asked Daxi's staff officer, "How effective is this kind of direct collision with people and planes?" The staff officer replied: "Compared with a bomb dropped sharply from a very high altitude, the effect may not be too great, but it is possible to damage the deck of the aircraft carrier and make it temporarily unusable." The new method of warfare proposed by Ohnishi is called "special attack operations", which originally did not have a deep ideological foundation in the Japanese navy.The Japanese navy and army are very different in terms of combat thinking and methods. The army learned from Germany and adopted the iron-blooded system, while the navy learned from the United Kingdom.When the Japanese ship sank, the captain usually sank with the ship. This not only has the characteristics of the East, but also is the customary practice of the British Navy.

The British and American navies cherish the lives of sailors very much, and the Japanese navy has more or less inherited from it.At the same time, naval and air warfare is qualitative warfare. It may take only one month to manufacture a cannon or an airplane, but it takes at least two to three years to train a qualified pilot or sailor. If a pilot or sailor is lost in a war, it will be very difficult to replace one of the same quality. Unlike the army's frequent "Long Live Assault", in the tradition of the Japanese Navy, meat bomb tactics or suicide attacks do not exist and are not allowed.

However, this was only before the Mariana naval battle. Afterwards, the United Fleet, which had suffered a major defeat, was suffering from lack of combat skills, and "special attack operations" gradually became a hot topic among some Japanese naval commanders.At the same time, with the sharp decline in the quality and ability of pilots, flight training accidents are also increasing day by day. Four or five young pilots die tragically due to poor landing skills every day.The other pilots who witnessed the accident scene were frightened so that their faces turned pale and then red, red and white, so they secretly muttered below: "They are all dead, and it is better to crash into the deck of the enemy ship and fight with the enemy than to die after training. It would be better if the ships were destroyed together. Wouldn't it be possible to sink an enemy ship by attacking alone with bombs?"

It was originally the pilots who were afraid of training and complained, but it turned out to be in the arms of the generals who advocated suicide attacks. They all asked for the young pilots to be organized into special attack units. Toyota strongly disagreed at first, but it was beyond his control.Soon, in an air battle over the sea surrounding Taiwan Island, the command plane of Major General Masamune Arima was shot down, and he himself was killed on the spot.Some people said that Arima was killed in a collision with a plane, and the newspapers and media in Japan that had no good news to report took advantage of the situation to exaggerate, vividly describing Arima as a hero who led the entire fleet to attack the US aircraft carrier.

In fact, there is no such thing at all.Arima had no choice but to take command in person when his predecessor escaped and the morale of the army was slackened. When he got on the plane, he said angrily: "In this war, those who stand on top and command are really damned!" Arima did not crash into the US aircraft carrier. He fell into the sea and drowned after the plane was shot down.However, because of the needs of Japanese domestic public opinion and the high-level commanders he resented, Arima was reluctantly regarded as the advocate of "special attack operations" and the first person killed in battle after his death.

With this "precedent", Toyota half-heartedly admitted the legitimacy of "special attack operations", which was an important prerequisite for Onishi to propose new tactics. After receiving the approval of the Combined Fleet Command, Onishi named the attack team participating in the collision "Kamikaze".The name "Kamikaze" is because when Kublai Khan's Mongolian army crossed the sea to attack Japan, they encountered a strong typhoon. As a result, the fleets sent twice were swallowed by the waves, and a few surviving Mongols were washed to the coast of Japan by the waves. , became a slave to the Japanese. The Japanese believed that the typhoon had blessed them, so they worshiped it and called it "Kamikaze".The Emperor of Japan at the time told his subjects: "Kneel down and thank the Kamikaze for destroying the Mongol fleet." Six centuries have passed, and in the face of the unparalleled naval superiority of the US military, Japan has lost the ability to control its own destiny. They can only use this most risky and unimaginable gambling method to try their luck.For this reason, the slogan put forward by Onishi and others is: "One aircraft for one warship!" To attack a US ship, the US ship must first be found.According to the provisions of the "Jie 1" plan, the Onishi troops should "search for the enemy at about 700 nautical miles", but the coastal search and reconnaissance capabilities of this unit are pitifully weak, let alone 700 nautical miles, and even 200 nautical miles are difficult to guarantee.Because of this, Toyota assigned all of Kurita's search machines to Onishi. On the morning of October 24th, the Japanese search plane flying out of the Luzon Island base discovered the 38th Task Force, and the "Kamikaze Squadron" was immediately dispatched to attack the Sherman Brigade. At that time, Sherman Group, like other aircraft carrier groups, was preparing to attack Kurita's force.Knowing that a batch of Japanese planes were flying towards our team, the commander, Major General Sherman, immediately decided to send the carrier-based bombers and torpedo planes that were planned to attack back to the hangar, and instead sent fighter jets to take off to fight.As for aircraft carriers, they all enter the storm zone to avoid air strikes. The Japanese planes that came to attack were divided into three batches, each with 50 to 60 planes.The U.S. military pilots are all seasoned veterans. After going up, they picked up the fledgling rookies one by one into the reincarnation circuit.Among them, Lieutenant Colonel McCampbell and his wingmen shot down a total of 15 Japanese planes, and McCampbell shot down 9 planes alone, setting a record for a single combat plane to shoot down an enemy plane in the Pacific War. McCampbell became more and more courageous as he fought, clung to the Japanese aircraft formation that had suffered heavy losses, and chased almost all the way to Manila before returning.Only then did he realize that the plane's ammunition and gasoline were almost exhausted.When he returned to land on the carrier, there was barely enough gas left to slide him to the landing arrestor, and any later would have been dangerous. During the entire air battle, none of the Japanese planes could reach the skies above Sherman's brigade to attack.After 9:30 in the morning, the Japanese plane was no longer visible in the sky, and the aircraft carrier drove out of the stormy area one after another in order to recover the plane.At this time, a fish that slipped through the net suddenly swooped down from the clouds, and the blind cat ran into a dead mouse, and it happened to fall headfirst on the flight deck of the "Princeton" aircraft carrier. The bomb directly passed through the hangar deck, igniting six torpedoes The gasoline in the machine suddenly became difficult to contain the fire. Although the damage control team once controlled the fire on the ship, the unextinguished flame spread to the torpedo compartment, causing another violent explosion.The stern and the rear of the flight deck were like flowers blooming, steel plates the size of houses were flying everywhere, broken steel fragments, broken gun barrels, steel helmets, and broken objects were shot towards the rescue cruiser "Birmingham" like grape bullets . The deck of the "Birmingham" suddenly flowed into rivers of blood, more than 200 sailors were killed instantly, and the cruiser lost its combat capability. The Princeton floated miserably all afternoon until Sherman dispatched a cruiser to sink her to the bottom of the sea with a few torpedo rounds in the evening.This is the first aircraft carrier lost by the US military since the USS Hornet was sunk two years ago.