You *don't*? That's unfortunate Ed because if you did you *might* have picked up on one of the best Kamikazi tales of all (reputedly a true tale but.........) It was reported (sorry folk, no link - Google is your friened etc) close to the end of the war a Japanese General visited a Kamikazi squardron which had been treated pretty miserably by the guys at the top. (Crap rations, no girls etc etc just bulls hit). He gave them a long and rousing patriotic speach about everyone needing to take the war to the enemy etc etc.. At the end of which the Squadron commander stood, bowed to the General, and said 'For the Emperor! We will follow you and the General Staff Sir'. No missions were ordered for that unit.
"Wow boss, your son is pretty good at drawing airplanes. He's what, five now?" "No no, those are the blueprints I want you to work from. The big square tail will save you having to fool around with a protractor."
In case everybody missed it the horizontal milling machine being operated by a Japanese worker was made in Cincinnati. It says so right on the machine.
Early globalisation at work! Globalisation is a hell of a thing. Like right now China's looking increasingly dangerous to those nearby... Doing anything about it hurts the global economy... So China's rise has been seen as inexorable, although in truth it's not and could have been controlled
@@dave8599 Nothing says you can't run industrial power tools off of hydraulic systems. The advantages. Constant torque at all rpms. On the fly Infinity variable spindle speeds from zero to 100% with nothing more than a flow control valve. Variable pressure output via pressure relief valves that take the place of transformers and/or rheostats. The downsides. Running tubing or hoses from a central supply. Leaks. All, and I mean all hydraulic systems will leak. Did i mention leaks. Noise. Hydraulic systems can be noisy. The last place I worked built industrial centrifuges for a variety of uses. One model model used a hydraulic motor to spin the centrifuge. The machines already had hydraulics on them as they use a hydraulic motor with flow control valves to control both the rpms and power output in terms of torque for the internal augers used to move the dewaterin material out of the machine. One thing the Amish do is to convert woodworking machinery to hydraulic and run the hydraulic pump with a gas or diesel engine. Your already having to buy the fuel anyway so why not just run the equipment with electricity from the generator. Or put in a couple of vertical axis wind turbines and use those. As to the vertical axis wind turbines. The aren't as efficient as the horizontal axis ones (40% vs 50%) but they are more efficient in terms of how much area they take up plus they have certain other benefits. One is that all you have at the top of the mast is the bearing set. Second is the generator is down at base level. Third is you do not have to be able to rotate them into the wind. www.centrisys-cnp.com/videos
@@hydorah Blame Nixon. And in part blame ourselves. Everybody loves a bargain. Also blame companies like WalMart. They kept pushing suppliers to reduce costs. In the end the only way companies could continue to sell to them was to chase ever cheaper production costs. But China's facing a couple of big problems. One is demographics brought on by the one child policy. Another is a badly skewed Male to female ration due to spouses choosing genders via abortions
@@hydorah It got nothing to do with globalisation... USA started XX century as the biggest producer of good quality high tech products. Just like now everything is Made in China in old days most of the good quality hardware was produced in USA, now most of stuff is produced in China and quality of stuff "Made in USA" is often very poor.
You forgot to mention the third reason for the adoption of kamikaze tactics: japanese pilots' chance of survival, even in conventional attacks, was virtually nil. They were going to die in any case.
@@XxBloggs some of them certainly didn't but their planners had to take in account this aspect too. IMO this "plane" is the aerial counterpart of a schoolgirl and her granny fighting against G. I. Joe with a bamboo stick. U. S. soldiers should have left their rifles and taken scythes instead. That's why through the years i grew ever more convinced that the "A" Bomb was the lesser evil after all.
@@Riccardo_Silva That is what they did on Okinawa. Or just killed themselves. At splat is right, practicality or pragmatism wasn't a consideration at high or low levels. It was the mentality that death was preferable to dishonor and losing the war, their culture, and way of life. Japanese propaganda said that Americans were barbarians who were going to rape and pillage (like the Japanese army did, irony) was something they would rather die first. This is why its hard for Westerners to understand why they had so many willing volunteers for the Kamikaze.
@@jamestheotherone742 that is why i, and many far more authoritative persons than me, think that, after all, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki avoided a worse bloodshed. Had Japan had to be occupied by landing forces we now would be complaining about millions, instead of hundreds of thousands, of wasted japanese lives
@@Riccardo_Silva a few of the fire bomb raids actually killed more civilians than the A-bombs. the worst was between one and two hundred thousand in a single raid
This video is a perfect example of why I watch your channel. You cover the less flashy stuff most don't care about if they know of it at all, but that is still worth discussing.
It's Ta-Go Tuesday! Two kamikaze aircraft, stuffed with lettuce, tomato, Cheddar cheese, a generous helping of our signature seasoned, crumbled beef (don't ask how we sourced it, just dig in and enjoy) and fresh-daily chunky salsa (again, pay no mind as you fatten your behind). All in a crispy corn shell tortilla fuselage, open-topped, and every Tuesday, two Ta-Gos are just $2. (Add $0.79 for a medium soft drink.) Eat-in, use our new Blaz'n For Plenty (read it aloud) Delivery app, or drive-thru and let us pack a snack sack of them Ta-Go 4 U.
The reasoning was even more logical and brutal than that. The allied ships were turning into AAA farms and their radar assisted gun laying with proximity fused munition, combined with radar directed CAP's and superior fighters, were devastating. We're talking about 80% to 90% loss per sortie. Conventional attack was suicide anyway. (source for this are interviews that Military History Visualized did with Justin, who is a scholar studying the pacific campaign)
@@leary4 Just stop... you have zero understanding of this topic... Not to mention that low level approach was a bad idea even before proximity fuse development because ships were simply using main guns to just shot into water and planes were crashing into wall of water created by underwater explosions.
@@leary4 Would you care to explain Japanese losses then? If what you said was close to the truth then they shouldn't have been getting swatted down like flies... but they were.
@@leary4 My father was an accountant, I know percentages for the backstabbers that they are. ;-) High flying planes get picked up on radar. Low flying planes get picked up by radar from picket destroyers because they can't fly low for the entire sortie. (bc. fuel economy and not being able to find their target). Then they get are fodder for Combat Air Patrols of superior (especially in a dive, which they can do because being forewarned) Hellcats. By that time the US had an abundance of Fletcher class destroyers to use as pickets. The proximity fuse (code named VT fuse, look it up, it's fascinating) made AA guns devastating especially in the circumstances you describe. An incoming aircraft is a dot only to the ship it's attacking. The rest of the Task Group sees a low/slow plodding rectangle and sees exactly where it's going. Also remember that the Japanese had a very limited pool of experienced pilots. 1. They long had a habit of having elite standards for entry into flying schools. Thus they had a limited cadre of extremely good pilots, but they had no reserves and only a thin pipeline for replacements. 2. They didn't recall successful pilots to the flying schools but let them fight to the death. And the more died, the bigger the burden became on the ones who were left. By the time they started using Kamikaze, they may have had planes, but they didn't have any pilots left that could survive a conventional attack, or even a landing. This is a quote from Norman Friedman's "Fighters Over The Fleet, Naval Air Defense From Biplanes To The Cold War": "A Japanese officer later said that his country had adopted suicide tactics because conventional tactics were inherently suicidal."
@@leary4 and it sucks for you that there are dozens of genuine footage reels existing of low level Japanese planes getting smoked while attempting an approach to a battle group. Apparently you didn't learn much.
You have to remember, that unless ordered to, the WW2 Japanese Navy wouldn't use anything that the Japanese Army had, nor would their Army use anything their Navy had!!! (Except as a last ditch situation on an island that was being conquered!)
@@timengineman2nd714 you could always tell if the aircraft was Army or Navy by its numbering scheme. Almost all Army aircraft numbers began with KI, naval aircraft were letter/number/letter/number, such as the A6M2 for the Zero fighter, or the KI100 army interceptor.
@@locutus155 Yeah, and a lot of their (Army/Navy) weapons didn't have interchangeable ammo either! (Like one used a 6.5 rimless and the other used a 6.5 semi rimed cartridge in their machine guns.)
I could see such an aircraft being useful in kamikaze strikes on American landing craft in the event of an invasion. Take off from a concealed airstrip behind the invasion beach, fly at low altitude to avoid American fighters and then dive down onto a loaded boat as you come over the beach before you are in the US flak umbrella. Cheap and possibly effective.
It makes a lot more sense when you put it that way. The designer was thinking of a defensive fight against an invasion of the Japanese home islands after all, which could leave plenty of targets without close fighter cover that would be devastated by a small kamikaze.
Exospray - with respect, I disagree. Kamikaze attacks with planes of 2.5 to 3+ times the speed and much greater armor protection only got through 14% of the time (according to the US Air Force). These things sputtering along at 90mph and zero armor protection? With useless pilots? And now they have not only enemy fighters and AA? But all the guns of the soldiers firing up at them? They would literally be better off using the ammo, steel and fuel for actual weapons, IMO. The ONLY thing I can see this thing good for is attacking infantry units at night. But how they were supposed to see what they were hitting is beyond me.
@@McRocket read again, he said about using them against landing craft, not well protected destroyers and cruisers. Rifle fire ain't gonna do jackshit against aircraft too (let alone by seasick men crammed together like sardines), as many nations discovered during the start of the war. There would be air cover for the advancing craft, but send enough up and they'll be overwhelmed for long enough for many to get through. Though _how exactly_ one would manage to hide an airstrip from the prying eyes of recon aircraft so close to such an important area is another question.
Yeah, I was kinda thinking the same thing. Pretty much worthless against capital ships. Low altitude attacks on massed land targets are another matter. The Soviets were pretty successful using string bag biplanes against the Germans.
By the Ta-Go came into existence, the Japanese had started to switch from Carriers and Battleships as their primary "Special Attack" targets to Transports and various Landing Ships (but not small Landing Craft) that were carrying men and material to the island that was being attacked. Therefore the 100 Kg (~220 pound) bomb could inflect damage! Also, I imagine that they would have either attacked at night or "in dawn's early light" to limit visual sighting by non-radar equipped fighters, and considering the types of radar available at that period of the war, an almost all wood airplane just might slip through!
I think the "closest thing to an extravagance" on the plane was the landing gear. Once launched, it was never expected to land. Would have been better to have a wheeled launch-sled, jettisoned after take-off.
I think skids would have been used on production craft, or even a catapult. Remember, Japan also needed to shorten flight training; catapult launching would further reduce the amount of pilot training required to fly these missions.
My first thought was "What is the radar cross section of this aircraft?" It might have been really difficult to pick up on radar. If the fleet was close in for invasion, the slow speed and short range would be mitigated. This aircraft might have been more effective than you think.
The first Ta-Go looks like a design from the early 30's. Japan had something of a Catch 22 as far as Kamikaze attacks were concerned. They needed good pilots for the aircraft they intended to use for those attacks but at the same time they could not afford to use their best pilots as these were needed to defended Japan. So, many of the pilots they used were given the bare minimum of training. This in turn caused problems because they needed to get passed the US pilots who by this time were highly experienced. And even if they did that their lack of experience often led to failure. When you see film footage of a Zero crashing into the sea instead of a ship it could well be because the pilot could not control the aircraft while in a dive. Something experienced pilots knew about.
Random side note, I couldn't help but notice the Cincinnati mill pictured @ 2:15. (I had a nearly identical one) I've often thought that a study of foreign equipment/materials in Japan during the war would be very interesting. I once read that the Japanese battleships were built on douglas fir cribbing exported from the Oregon, Washington and Western Canada before the war. The Japanese were also quite fond of American locomotives, and having ordered the first 2-8-2 type it was christened the Mikado. The style also caught on in the states, the name causing some friction in the war years and an attempt was made at redubbing it to the MacArthur, which didn't stick.
@@bogie_bandit218 lucky the US ships used better steel than the WTC's.... otherwise a single Tago could have lined up the whole pacific fleet and fly through the lot (and then on to the Pentagon)
One thought that came up to me: being entirely made of wood (engine & bomb being the sole exceptions) and so small, these things would be almost invisible to radar right untill very close. A perfect weapon for a night raid...
@@Bialy_1 yes on the radar, but it will be very small target signature, a serious problem for a 1945 radar. And the training will be an issue, but remember these pilots only have to _take off_ and fly straight for a few miles; the invading USN fleet was supposed to be close inshore, so would be hard to find, specially if it's a clear night, or full moon. And if one or two pilots get lost or crash... ah well...
With bomb relatively light to make any harm to medium sized vessel, I would say the plane could be useful in night raids similiar to that of Soviet Po-2. Only difference is, the Soviet pilots tried to survive and were dropping bombs and Japanese wouldn't want to survive and would be dropping bombs + their own aircraft.
Anyone else notice the Cincinnati horizontal Milling machine in the Japanese plant ? Guess they purchased a lot of good machine tools leading up to the war.
We weren't at war until we were at war. I've heard that even to this day there are still valves and other components in some older American oil refineries with Swastikas cast onto them, bought from the Germans in the pre-war era. Pre-war Japan was rapidly industrializing, so surely they were buying a lot of industrial machinery from more industrialized nations such as the US. In fact one of their struggles was that once they were at war with the US they couldn't buy stuff from the US, leading to shortages of a lot of things they needed such as raw materials. Only source then was Germany, but getting anything between Japan and Germany was very difficult with everyone along either possible route (across the Atlantic and Pacific, or through the Indian Ocean) at war with them.
Great Video! Can you do one about the Ryan FR-1 Fireball? It was a half piston, half jet fighter, and the first to land on a carrier under jet power (accidentally)
with that bomb load, speed and range it is more likely it would have been used against beach landing assaults for homeland defence as by this time the Japanese were expecting an invasion. LSTs, landing craft and beachheads would have been probable targets for this weapon.
One winders if the good captain ever reflected on that fact that he was making a plywood and fabric clunker that was a literal throwaway (as was the pilot). An example of reflecting on WTF have i done (notwithstanding the closing scene of "The Bridge on the River Kwai") is a character in Oliver Lange's "Next of Kin."A brilliant nuclear engineer at Los Alamos, he labored for years and finally built a thermonuclear device that would fit in a shoe box. Realizing what he had done, her came to his senses and fled to the Arizona desert and became a drunk.
Can you explore the Interstate TDR1 BOMBER? i got to fly one in the '70s. The air force museum had given it to the Antique Airplane Association in Blakesburg Iowa. During their annual fly in, we traded them out of it. We took the control surfaces back to Tulsa and recovered them. Then we went back to Blakesburg and flew the airplane to Tulsa.
Others have pondered if, had there been a whole bunch of these left at the end of the war, could they have removed the bombs and made them into light civil aircraft? Maybe so, though the design and build quality were probably extremely poor.
as a machinist, freakiest part about this whole video is seeing those Japanese machinists working at mills while wearing flip-flops!!!!🤯🤯 I can't even imagine. I would have lost a foot already probably both of them
As soon as I get a chance I'm going to be googling to see if I can find any images of like foundry workers in Japan in the 30s and 40s and see if they are also wearing flip-flops and socks. Like I can't imagine the injury rate and I also can't fathom why they would wear zero foot protection 🤯🤯 Oh and yes Dave I think that is probably why they're squinting😉
2:09 Those "flip-flops" that you snigger at are GETA, wooden sandals with cotton/leather straps and have front and back wooden "blades" to raise the foot out of water/mud/metal shavings. These Do Not use any strategic materials, can be made/repaired easily, and were used since the Samurai days. Modern Zorii which you fellows call "flip-flops" are made of synthetic and natural rubber, which was strategic material in World War II. Even today, Geta are quite useful for getting around the neighborhood, especially to the communal bathhouse. Check out the Wikipedia for the difference between Zorii and Geta for details.
@@michaelfrench3396 this wasn't specific to Japan (the lack of PPE, not the wooden sandals). while in western countries everyone had closed leather shoes, almost none were reinforced, had protection integrated or worn over them same for face protection, the few videos and photos of workshops and construction yards i've seen, often the only workers with facemasks or googles were welders. same goes for head protection, the only places you would see a lot of people wearing hard hats were the frontline and the mine
@@Otokichi786 okay thank you for the super long explanation of what flip flops are. Now tell me how you're not going to lose a foot if you're taking a piece of metal out of a Chuck and you accidentally drop it on your foot that's not covered with anything except a sock?
A slow, wooden plane with a poor bomb load would have splatted on the deck of an enemy warship without doing too much damage. One of the biggest weaknesses of the Kamikaze concept was the fact that a crashing plane doesn't have the terminal velocity and penetrative capacity of an armor-piercing bomb.
@@dongorrie1828 Kamikazes rarely made it past the destroyer screen. The flak, combat air patrols, and the fact that badly-trained pilots tended to hit the first ship they encountered impaired their effectiveness.
Yep. Until the 30's Japan was a friendly nation that the US had good trade relations with. Lots of machine tools were sold there and some of the steel used in weapons used against the US was American scrap metal.
If you could find enough photos and blueprints you could probably build your own out of balsa and tissue paper - given it's simplicity that would probably be fairly easy, and more authentic to the design of the original.
On the one side, I admire the courage of these pilots. On the other side I condemn the men who ordered these attacks fully knowing they would not change anything at all.
The last US ship sunk in WW2 by kamikaze was hit by a Yokosuka K5Y, a pre-war design bi-plane with 120 mph top speed. So these would have worked, if they got through to the ships.
the Japanese had a wide range of more or less crazy ideas how to utilize kamikaze, not just aircraft, but speedboats, midget subs, piloted torpedoes, even frogmen; there is an Ohka video on TakaLeon's channel with an interview with the designer of Ohka - an old, broken engineer.. not a cheerful watch but definitely worth it
Pilot dies first flight or your money back! Note: Training and relocation flights not covered. If you avoid crashing that is at your own non-peril. Warranty void if plane is modified or pilot has overly strong desire to live.
So I'm wondering about the logic behind this concept. If the aim of using kamikaze planes was to maximize damage for minimum expenditure then obviously a faster, more powerful aircraft was more likely to make it through to its target, while a slow and flimsy one such as this (complete with barely trained pilot and small payload) was almost certain to be shot down, necessitating the use of dozens or even hundreds of them in order to score a hit. Seems to me that while unit cost was very low, effectiveness was likely to be almost non-existent, thus rendering it more costly than the very thing it was supposed to replace.
if you fly a swarm of them, you could conceivably overwhelm the defenses.. the question is what are you gunning for? Targeting a CV might result in needing 100 planes for 1 to ge through with the Ta-Go.
@@joselitostotomas8114 Indeed you might, but remember that each Ta-go would be a *new* aircraft, while normally kamikazes were aircraft that had reached the end of their service life and were effectively being "recycled" so weren't using ever scarcer resources.
@@Kevin-mx1vi You still need to replace those expended aircraft. So making mass produced aircraft where the the only metal is the engines and the housing is a logical step.
I think they readjusted priorities. Casualties were so high,successes so low,but here one man plus airplane could take out a landing craft full of men or supplies. Better than waiting around to die,better than a company of men killed and failing to take out oh,a tank for instance. Take out the landing craft,tank and personnel on board. Not a battleship,not an aircraft carrier,but just maybe it might make the casualties so heavy the US would reconsider invasion. Take out lots of landing craft,or maybe battlefield targets such as tanks,etc. Desperate times,desperate measures.
The thing I find interesting about this, is how is an Army Captain is initiating a design concept? I'm sure there is a lot more to the story that we don't know about, but I find that curious. Enjoyable as always Ed.
Given the wood construction and very, very limited use of metal, it is possible that these would have been nearly invisible to the radar of the day and to the proximity fuses of anti aircraft. But then again given their small size if the hit any kind of armored vessel they would not do much other than scorch the paint. One US admiral was quoted as saying when asked about suicide plane striking his flag ship "sweepers man your brooms".
Air cooled inline 4 cylinder engine putting out 100 horses with essentially a wooden sport plane attached. That engine sounds like it could have potential even now
Wood and canvas is probably the best construction method if you want your suicide attack to make it through AA fire. Metal and in some cases plywood is susceptible to explosive cannon shells, canvas just gets a 20mm hole.
You're not wrong, but the pilot also ends up with a 20mm hole if you forego an armoured cockpit. Enough hits poking holes might affect the airworthiness, as well.
@@johnladuke6475 fling enough explosive aircraft in the direction of a ship and a few are probably going to make a hit. Maybe add a small piece of armour ahead of the pilot but these planes simply had to swarm a ship and rely on numbers to get a plane on target. It was shown that most kamikaze attacks missed the target anyway, if the new strategy is all out kamikaze then there's little point trying to overbuild an airframe, it has already been accepted that the pilot and plane aren't coming back.
You know, with some fine tuning of the design, the Ta-Go could have been an economical airplane to develop and grow private civilian aviation, like the French Jodel, the American Stits series, etc. Yeah I've never seen an etc., just like the, "and more", also the multi seater "and many more" noted in TV commercials. Am I drifting?
I had the same thought - in terms of design, construction, and appearance it does look a lot like an early homebuilt aircraft. Though it's design was so rushed they'd probably be better off taking their time to start over from scratch to produce a better design. Though another thought would be if they had actually produced a whole bunch of these - many thousands - but never used them. Say had the development occurred earlier, and the government been interested in having them for use against landing craft for the anticipated Home Island invasion (a more suitable target than armored ships, as many are pointing out). But then the A-bombs were dropped, Japan surrendered, and the aircraft left as war surplus. With bombs removed, and sold for peanuts, they might have become popular as light GA aircraft in the immediate Japanese postwar. With such popularity, improved versions for homebuilding might be developed. The aircraft - a weapon of war turned into a peaceful civilian recreational craft - might have even become symbolic in Japan's peaceful postwar culture.
We're they serious ? Fighter cover and ship AA would have made short work of those paper planes ... unless they flew so slowly that everyone fell asleep ! .. "KAMIKAZI !! ... arrggh ... waits .. waits ... waits .. looks at watch ... wait .. Zzzzzzzz ..dead!" . Give the Okha longer range rockets and you have a serious threat.
Are the blueprints for the prototype available? Pretty sure with modern dacron and aluminum tubing this bird would fly on 1/2 the horses and carry a 300lb plus pilot.
In his memoire, Lieutenant DJ Hamer DSC, RAN, describes the psychological effects of the kamikaze upon Allied ship crews, particularly in relation to actions in Lingayen Gulf, Luzon Island.
The concept of swarms of kamekazi aircraft defeats the original premise of one death for many. How many of these would have been needed for just one 100kg bomb to get through the ship's defenses? Something much faster, flying higher and capable of vertical dives might have been a better idea.
My father was a USAF officer doing liaison work in Japan between the US military and Japanese government. One of the Japanese people he met became a dear friend, Omori-San. He had been a cadet during WWII at Etajima, the Japanese naval academy. Towards the end of the war and despite not being graduated yet, he was assigned to a suicide unit. At first they were told they would be Kamikaze, but the planes never arrived. Then they were told they were to drive explosive-laden motorboats into US ships, but boats never arrived. Then they were told they would be infantry, with the idea being they would attach explosives to US tanks and such. Then the war ended with the famous proclamation over the radio by Emperor Hirohito. His unit went up to the top of a mountain where most of them committed suicide, some by seppuku, something that caused Omori-san great guilt and sorrow for the rest of his life. He went on to have a career in the Japanese Air-Self Defense forces and upon retirement worked in quality control in Japanese industry, a disciple of Deming, the American quality control guru, forgotten in America but highly revered in Japan. Omori-san was an old man by the time I met him but a wonderful artist that gave us many pieces of art that he had produced himself. Aloha Omori-san, a great friend and honorable man. Both Japan and America were very lucky that the war ended when it did and it appears Japanese High Command was actually remarkably unfazed by the atomic bombs, not really so different from the firebombing that has destroyed so many Japanese cities and actually more concerned by the strong possibility of the Soviets entering the war/invading Japan.
The Kamakaze attacks were largely ineffective because they went for capital ships that were heavily defended by air cover and surrounding ships putting up curtains of AA. We now know that the Japanese had stockpiled 10,000 aircraft of all types to be used against Operation Downfall. But they intended to use them against soft targets - the unarmored and slow troop transports and landing craft. Even if only 5 to 10% got through it would have been a bloodbath for the US. And I might not be sitting here since my father was going to be in the initial landing on Kyushu.
And no, I don't speak Japanese.
time for the download the blueprints and 3d printer time joke!
Watch Anime- some weeb
You *don't*?
That's unfortunate Ed because if you did you *might* have picked up on one of the best Kamikazi tales of all (reputedly a true tale but.........)
It was reported (sorry folk, no link - Google is your friened etc) close to the end of the war a Japanese General visited a Kamikazi squardron which had been treated pretty miserably by the guys at the top. (Crap rations, no girls etc etc just bulls hit).
He gave them a long and rousing patriotic speach about everyone needing to take the war to the enemy etc etc..
At the end of which the Squadron commander stood, bowed to the General, and said 'For the Emperor! We will follow you and the General Staff Sir'.
No missions were ordered for that unit.
Thanks ED.....You make great video's...🖤👍👀
Speaking Japanese is one thing, pronunciation is a somewhat lesser challenge. Interesting presentation.
"Wow boss, your son is pretty good at drawing airplanes. He's what, five now?"
"No no, those are the blueprints I want you to work from. The big square tail will save you having to fool around with a protractor."
Bro wats a protractor?
@@spottydog4477 Look it up, junior. It'll be right alongside 'slide rule'
@@DraftySatyr can only draw "fat" lines with my crayons!
In case everybody missed it the horizontal milling machine being operated by a Japanese worker was made in Cincinnati. It says so right on the machine.
Early globalisation at work! Globalisation is a hell of a thing. Like right now China's looking increasingly dangerous to those nearby... Doing anything about it hurts the global economy... So China's rise has been seen as inexorable, although in truth it's not and could have been controlled
@@dave8599
Nothing says you can't run industrial power tools off of hydraulic systems.
The advantages. Constant torque at all rpms. On the fly Infinity variable spindle speeds from zero to 100% with nothing more than a flow control valve. Variable pressure output via pressure relief valves that take the place of transformers and/or rheostats. The downsides. Running tubing or hoses from a central supply. Leaks. All, and I mean all hydraulic systems will leak. Did i mention leaks. Noise. Hydraulic systems can be noisy. The last place I worked built industrial centrifuges for a variety of uses. One model model used a hydraulic motor to spin the centrifuge. The machines already had hydraulics on them as they use a hydraulic motor with flow control valves to control both the rpms and power output in terms of torque for the internal augers used to move the dewaterin material out of the machine.
One thing the Amish do is to convert woodworking machinery to hydraulic and run the hydraulic pump with a gas or diesel engine. Your already having to buy the fuel anyway so why not just run the equipment with electricity from the generator. Or put in a couple of vertical axis wind turbines and use those. As to the vertical axis wind turbines. The aren't as efficient as the horizontal axis ones (40% vs 50%) but they are more efficient in terms of how much area they take up plus they have certain other benefits. One is that all you have at the top of the mast is the bearing set. Second is the generator is down at base level. Third is you do not have to be able to rotate them into the wind.
www.centrisys-cnp.com/videos
@@hydorah
Blame Nixon. And in part blame ourselves. Everybody loves a bargain. Also blame companies like WalMart. They kept pushing suppliers to reduce costs. In the end the only way companies could continue to sell to them was to chase ever cheaper production costs. But China's facing a couple of big problems. One is demographics brought on by the one child policy. Another is a badly skewed Male to female ration due to spouses choosing genders via abortions
@@hydorah It got nothing to do with globalisation... USA started XX century as the biggest producer of good quality high tech products. Just like now everything is Made in China in old days most of the good quality hardware was produced in USA, now most of stuff is produced in China and quality of stuff "Made in USA" is often very poor.
my town's "Menshed" got given this exact model machine a few years ago!
You forgot to mention the third reason for the adoption of kamikaze tactics: japanese pilots' chance of survival, even in conventional attacks, was virtually nil. They were going to die in any case.
That wasn’t a reason they did it.
@@XxBloggs some of them certainly didn't but their planners had to take in account this aspect too. IMO this "plane" is the aerial counterpart of a schoolgirl and her granny fighting against G. I. Joe with a bamboo stick. U. S. soldiers should have left their rifles and taken scythes instead. That's why through the years i grew ever more convinced that the "A" Bomb was the lesser evil after all.
@@Riccardo_Silva That is what they did on Okinawa. Or just killed themselves.
At splat is right, practicality or pragmatism wasn't a consideration at high or low levels. It was the mentality that death was preferable to dishonor and losing the war, their culture, and way of life. Japanese propaganda said that Americans were barbarians who were going to rape and pillage (like the Japanese army did, irony) was something they would rather die first. This is why its hard for Westerners to understand why they had so many willing volunteers for the Kamikaze.
@@jamestheotherone742 that is why i, and many far more authoritative persons than me, think that, after all, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki avoided a worse bloodshed. Had Japan had to be occupied by landing forces we now would be complaining about millions, instead of hundreds of thousands, of wasted japanese lives
@@Riccardo_Silva a few of the fire bomb raids actually killed more civilians than the A-bombs. the worst was between one and two hundred thousand in a single raid
This video is a perfect example of why I watch your channel. You cover the less flashy stuff most don't care about if they know of it at all, but that is still worth discussing.
When you got Ta-Go you got Ta-Go!!!
....really....
It's Ta-Go Tuesday! Two kamikaze aircraft, stuffed with lettuce, tomato, Cheddar cheese, a generous helping of our signature seasoned, crumbled beef (don't ask how we sourced it, just dig in and enjoy) and fresh-daily chunky salsa (again, pay no mind as you fatten your behind). All in a crispy corn shell tortilla fuselage, open-topped, and every Tuesday, two Ta-Gos are just $2. (Add $0.79 for a medium soft drink.) Eat-in, use our new Blaz'n For Plenty (read it aloud) Delivery app, or drive-thru and let us pack a snack sack of them Ta-Go 4 U.
Comedic genius 👏 sir 👏
Once you Ta-Go you are Ta-Gone
The reasoning was even more logical and brutal than that. The allied ships were turning into AAA farms and their radar assisted gun laying with proximity fused munition, combined with radar directed CAP's and superior fighters, were devastating. We're talking about 80% to 90% loss per sortie. Conventional attack was suicide anyway.
(source for this are interviews that Military History Visualized did with Justin, who is a scholar studying the pacific campaign)
@@leary4 Just stop... you have zero understanding of this topic...
Not to mention that low level approach was a bad idea even before proximity fuse development because ships were simply using main guns to just shot into water and planes were crashing into wall of water created by underwater explosions.
@@Bialy_1 I was an fc2 in the usn... Kinda sucks for u lol skipster
@@leary4
Would you care to explain Japanese losses then? If what you said was close to the truth then they shouldn't have been getting swatted down like flies... but they were.
@@leary4 My father was an accountant, I know percentages for the backstabbers that they are. ;-)
High flying planes get picked up on radar. Low flying planes get picked up by radar from picket destroyers because they can't fly low for the entire sortie. (bc. fuel economy and not being able to find their target). Then they get are fodder for Combat Air Patrols of superior (especially in a dive, which they can do because being forewarned) Hellcats.
By that time the US had an abundance of Fletcher class destroyers to use as pickets.
The proximity fuse (code named VT fuse, look it up, it's fascinating) made AA guns devastating especially in the circumstances you describe.
An incoming aircraft is a dot only to the ship it's attacking. The rest of the Task Group sees a low/slow plodding rectangle and sees exactly where it's going.
Also remember that the Japanese had a very limited pool of experienced pilots.
1. They long had a habit of having elite standards for entry into flying schools. Thus they had a limited cadre of extremely good pilots, but they had no reserves and only a thin pipeline for replacements.
2. They didn't recall successful pilots to the flying schools but let them fight to the death. And the more died, the bigger the burden became on the ones who were left.
By the time they started using Kamikaze, they may have had planes, but they didn't have any pilots left that could survive a conventional attack, or even a landing.
This is a quote from Norman Friedman's "Fighters Over The Fleet, Naval Air Defense From Biplanes To The Cold War":
"A Japanese officer later said that his country had adopted suicide tactics because conventional tactics were inherently suicidal."
@@leary4 and it sucks for you that there are dozens of genuine footage reels existing of low level Japanese planes getting smoked while attempting an approach to a battle group.
Apparently you didn't learn much.
Test Pilot, "The thing is an absolute death trap to fly...... it'll be perfect for the job!!".
The Ta-Go, for when the Ki-115 isn't last-ditch enough for late-war imperial Japan's tastes.
You have to remember, that unless ordered to, the WW2 Japanese Navy wouldn't use anything that the Japanese Army had, nor would their Army use anything their Navy had!!! (Except as a last ditch situation on an island that was being conquered!)
Yup...
Too true- the Ki-115 was an F-22 compared to the Ta-Go.
@@timengineman2nd714 you could always tell if the aircraft was Army or Navy by its numbering scheme. Almost all Army aircraft numbers began with KI, naval aircraft were letter/number/letter/number, such as the A6M2 for the Zero fighter, or the KI100 army interceptor.
@@locutus155 Yeah, and a lot of their (Army/Navy) weapons didn't have interchangeable ammo either! (Like one used a 6.5 rimless and the other used a 6.5 semi rimed cartridge in their machine guns.)
Thank you for posting this bit of aviation history.
I could see such an aircraft being useful in kamikaze strikes on American landing craft in the event of an invasion. Take off from a concealed airstrip behind the invasion beach, fly at low altitude to avoid American fighters and then dive down onto a loaded boat as you come over the beach before you are in the US flak umbrella. Cheap and possibly effective.
It makes a lot more sense when you put it that way. The designer was thinking of a defensive fight against an invasion of the Japanese home islands after all, which could leave plenty of targets without close fighter cover that would be devastated by a small kamikaze.
Also would work great against tanks and arillery
Exospray - with respect, I disagree.
Kamikaze attacks with planes of 2.5 to 3+ times the speed and much greater armor protection only got through 14% of the time (according to the US Air Force).
These things sputtering along at 90mph and zero armor protection?
With useless pilots?
And now they have not only enemy fighters and AA? But all the guns of the soldiers firing up at them?
They would literally be better off using the ammo, steel and fuel for actual weapons, IMO.
The ONLY thing I can see this thing good for is attacking infantry units at night.
But how they were supposed to see what they were hitting is beyond me.
@@McRocket read again, he said about using them against landing craft, not well protected destroyers and cruisers. Rifle fire ain't gonna do jackshit against aircraft too (let alone by seasick men crammed together like sardines), as many nations discovered during the start of the war.
There would be air cover for the advancing craft, but send enough up and they'll be overwhelmed for long enough for many to get through.
Though _how exactly_ one would manage to hide an airstrip from the prying eyes of recon aircraft so close to such an important area is another question.
Yeah, I was kinda thinking the same thing.
Pretty much worthless against capital ships.
Low altitude attacks on massed land targets are another matter. The Soviets were pretty successful using string bag biplanes against the Germans.
After the war Capt. Miziyama took his talents for making things smaller and cheaper into the Japan's electronics industry.
Ah, Mizi-Yamaha?
I bet he made a bomb out of it!
Ed, your research and output is outstanding. You make great use of historical resources, both stills and film. Another terrific video.
Many thanks.
By the Ta-Go came into existence, the Japanese had started to switch from Carriers and Battleships as their primary "Special Attack" targets to Transports and various Landing Ships (but not small Landing Craft) that were carrying men and material to the island that was being attacked.
Therefore the 100 Kg (~220 pound) bomb could inflect damage! Also, I imagine that they would have either attacked at night or "in dawn's early light" to limit visual sighting by non-radar equipped fighters, and considering the types of radar available at that period of the war, an almost all wood airplane just might slip through!
An insulting load, none-the-less.
That's assuming these crates can actually hit the boats in the first place. Do you think the Navy was not adjusting to circumstances?
I think the "closest thing to an extravagance" on the plane was the landing gear. Once launched, it was never expected to land. Would have been better to have a wheeled launch-sled, jettisoned after take-off.
I was thinking the same.
The Komet used that,no?
@@digschopper9321 Yes, you are correct, and that particular plane was expected to land and be reused.
I think skids would have been used on production craft, or even a catapult. Remember, Japan also needed to shorten flight training; catapult launching would further reduce the amount of pilot training required to fly these missions.
@@aliaslisabeth1031 Good call, but catapult tech back in the WW2 era was not up to scratch, particularly in a war-weary Japan
My first thought was "What is the radar cross section of this aircraft?" It might have been really difficult to pick up on radar. If the fleet was close in for invasion, the slow speed and short range would be mitigated. This aircraft might have been more effective than you think.
Doubt it. How would the pilot find a ship at night. During the day, it's slow speed would make it a sitting duck.
The slow speed, incredible vulnerability, poor handling, and relatively low bomb load would have made it almost entirely pointless.
That thing at 1:13 ......I'd never heard of them, until I stumbled across one at a little air museum just south of the Grand Canyon in 1996.
The first Ta-Go looks like a design from the early 30's.
Japan had something of a Catch 22 as far as Kamikaze attacks were concerned. They needed good pilots for the aircraft they intended to use for those attacks but at the same time they could not afford to use their best pilots as these were needed to defended Japan. So, many of the pilots they used were given the bare minimum of training. This in turn caused problems because they needed to get passed the US pilots who by this time were highly experienced. And even if they did that their lack of experience often led to failure. When you see film footage of a Zero crashing into the sea instead of a ship it could well be because the pilot could not control the aircraft while in a dive. Something experienced pilots knew about.
Another almost aircraft, keep them coming!
these are the types of planes I love hearing about.
Nice work, Ed 😎👍. Don't forget that Captain Chicken Teriyaki survived 24 kamikaze missions by the time the war ended.
Thank you for this video, I was honestly not even aware of this plane, interesting for sure!
The test flight of this aeroplane didn't go well - the plane made a safe landing :)
Random side note, I couldn't help but notice the Cincinnati mill pictured @ 2:15. (I had a nearly identical one) I've often thought that a study of foreign equipment/materials in Japan during the war would be very interesting. I once read that the Japanese battleships were built on douglas fir cribbing exported from the Oregon, Washington and Western Canada before the war. The Japanese were also quite fond of American locomotives, and having ordered the first 2-8-2 type it was christened the Mikado. The style also caught on in the states, the name causing some friction in the war years and an attempt was made at redubbing it to the MacArthur, which didn't stick.
Never heard of this one before. Thanks!
Love this channel! Keep them coming.
Brilliant piece of aviation history.
I could see it being kinda tricky to shoot down actually. I mean, it probably cruised below the stall speed of a Hellcat.
a good account! thanks for making this program. very interesting!
Excellent, as ALWAYS!
Kamikaze Flight Instructor: "Now watch carefully, because I'm only going to show you once!"
‘Now, lucky recruit…
This is called a landing gear on most aircraft but, on this one we’re calling it a takeoff gear..
Get it..?!’
If the war would have gone on for another 6 months, the Allies could have defended their ships with trampolines.
Anti-kamikaze trampolines. brilliant!
@@bogie_bandit218 lucky the US ships used better steel than the WTC's.... otherwise a single Tago could have lined up the whole pacific fleet and fly through the lot (and then on to the Pentagon)
Landing gear? Not sure that was exactly necessary. May be a set of dolly wheels for take off that could be jettisoned & reused?
Very interesting. Thanks never heard of it before.
Funny seeing a Cincinnati 2L horizontal milling machine 2:45 in the Japanese wartime factory.
One thought that came up to me: being entirely made of wood (engine & bomb being the sole exceptions) and so small, these things would be almost invisible to radar right untill very close. A perfect weapon for a night raid...
Engine will be giving radar reflection... and night flying is only for experienced pilots not for poorly trained kamikaze.
@@Bialy_1 It's not like the kamikaze pilots would have to worry about an instrument landing, because they had no instruments and wouldn't be landing.
@@Bialy_1 yes on the radar, but it will be very small target signature, a serious problem for a 1945 radar. And the training will be an issue, but remember these pilots only have to _take off_ and fly straight for a few miles; the invading USN fleet was supposed to be close inshore, so would be hard to find, specially if it's a clear night, or full moon. And if one or two pilots get lost or crash... ah well...
So wood is invisible to radar then ?? Hmm….
With bomb relatively light to make any harm to medium sized vessel, I would say the plane could be useful in night raids similiar to that of Soviet Po-2. Only difference is, the Soviet pilots tried to survive and were dropping bombs and Japanese wouldn't want to survive and would be dropping bombs + their own aircraft.
thanks ed!
Anyone else notice the Cincinnati horizontal Milling machine in the Japanese plant ? Guess they purchased a lot of good machine tools leading up to the war.
We weren't at war until we were at war. I've heard that even to this day there are still valves and other components in some older American oil refineries with Swastikas cast onto them, bought from the Germans in the pre-war era. Pre-war Japan was rapidly industrializing, so surely they were buying a lot of industrial machinery from more industrialized nations such as the US. In fact one of their struggles was that once they were at war with the US they couldn't buy stuff from the US, leading to shortages of a lot of things they needed such as raw materials. Only source then was Germany, but getting anything between Japan and Germany was very difficult with everyone along either possible route (across the Atlantic and Pacific, or through the Indian Ocean) at war with them.
@@quillmaurer6563 I am in Houston, TX and work in a refinery. I have seen these valves. Those valves are so well built many are still in use.
Thanks Ed.
I've discovered your channel with this video and i'm not disappointed. +1 sub
Great Video! Can you do one about the Ryan FR-1 Fireball? It was a half piston, half jet fighter, and the first to land on a carrier under jet power (accidentally)
with that bomb load, speed and range it is more likely it would have been used against beach landing assaults for homeland defence as by this time the Japanese were expecting an invasion. LSTs, landing craft and beachheads would have been probable targets for this weapon.
Ta-Gos would've made very good target practice for the landing troops.
2:10 Oh the irony! Japanese war production on an American Cincinnati milling machine.
Looks like a mini-max ultralight
This is fascinating. I have never heard of it.
You certainly find some unique aviation history.
One winders if the good captain ever reflected on that fact that he was making a plywood and fabric clunker that was a literal throwaway (as was the pilot).
An example of reflecting on WTF have i done (notwithstanding the closing scene of "The Bridge on the River Kwai") is a character in Oliver Lange's "Next of Kin."A brilliant nuclear engineer at Los Alamos, he labored for years and finally built a thermonuclear device that would fit in a shoe box. Realizing what he had done, her came to his senses and fled to the Arizona desert and became a drunk.
Can you explore the Interstate TDR1 BOMBER?
i got to fly one in the '70s. The air force museum had given it to the Antique Airplane Association in Blakesburg Iowa. During their annual fly in, we traded them out of it.
We took the control surfaces back to Tulsa and recovered them. Then we went back to Blakesburg and flew the airplane to Tulsa.
3:48 Japanese Fieseler Storch?
Apart from the explosion, it looks like a fun little plane.
Others have pondered if, had there been a whole bunch of these left at the end of the war, could they have removed the bombs and made them into light civil aircraft? Maybe so, though the design and build quality were probably extremely poor.
Interesting stuff always..
as a machinist, freakiest part about this whole video is seeing those Japanese machinists working at mills while wearing flip-flops!!!!🤯🤯 I can't even imagine. I would have lost a foot already probably both of them
@@dave8599 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😎
As soon as I get a chance I'm going to be googling to see if I can find any images of like foundry workers in Japan in the 30s and 40s and see if they are also wearing flip-flops and socks. Like I can't imagine the injury rate and I also can't fathom why they would wear zero foot protection 🤯🤯 Oh and yes Dave I think that is probably why they're squinting😉
2:09 Those "flip-flops" that you snigger at are GETA, wooden sandals with cotton/leather straps and have front and back wooden "blades" to raise the foot out of water/mud/metal shavings. These Do Not use any strategic materials, can be made/repaired easily, and were used since the Samurai days. Modern Zorii which you fellows call "flip-flops" are made of synthetic and natural rubber, which was strategic material in World War II. Even today, Geta are quite useful for getting around the neighborhood, especially to the communal bathhouse. Check out the Wikipedia for the difference between Zorii and Geta for details.
@@michaelfrench3396 this wasn't specific to Japan (the lack of PPE, not the wooden sandals).
while in western countries everyone had closed leather shoes, almost none were reinforced, had protection integrated or worn over them
same for face protection, the few videos and photos of workshops and construction yards i've seen, often the only workers with facemasks or googles were welders.
same goes for head protection, the only places you would see a lot of people wearing hard hats were the frontline and the mine
@@Otokichi786 okay thank you for the super long explanation of what flip flops are. Now tell me how you're not going to lose a foot if you're taking a piece of metal out of a Chuck and you accidentally drop it on your foot that's not covered with anything except a sock?
0:01 anyone know the cruiser or battleship or whatever it is in the picture?
A slow, wooden plane with a poor bomb load would have splatted on the deck of an enemy warship without doing too much damage. One of the biggest weaknesses of the Kamikaze concept was the fact that a crashing plane doesn't have the terminal velocity and penetrative capacity of an armor-piercing bomb.
The American carriers had wooden decks.
20ga of gasoline makes a mess, everything else is bonus.
@@dongorrie1828 Kamikazes rarely made it past the destroyer screen. The flak, combat air patrols, and the fact that badly-trained pilots tended to hit the first ship they encountered impaired their effectiveness.
@@brucebaxter6923 Kamikazes sank few major warships compared to trained pilots, a waste of resources really.
@@rkitchen1967
Planes per ship and pilots per ship they were roughly an order of magnitude better off than the USA.
The Japanese were using "CINCINNATI" milling machines!
Yep. Until the 30's Japan was a friendly nation that the US had good trade relations with. Lots of machine tools were sold there and some of the steel used in weapons used against the US was American scrap metal.
Japan got a big part of their steel and oil from the US thats why it was such a big deal when the US stopped trade with japan
Thank you …….good stuff.
Death trap, oh wait. Excellent video on a little known aircraft, brilliant. Cheers.
We need a model kit of this, preferably in 1:32 scale (to accompany my OKHA)
I was just thinking that.
If you could find enough photos and blueprints you could probably build your own out of balsa and tissue paper - given it's simplicity that would probably be fairly easy, and more authentic to the design of the original.
@@quillmaurer6563 Good idea! I had the same idea years ago for the Natter. Luckily there's a kit for that now.
On the one side, I admire the courage of these pilots. On the other side I condemn the men who ordered these attacks fully knowing they would not change anything at all.
The last US ship sunk in WW2 by kamikaze was hit by a Yokosuka K5Y, a pre-war design bi-plane with 120 mph top speed. So these would have worked, if they got through to the ships.
How in the world do you discover these aircraft? I always enjoy your content.
'the flow of defeat' is also when the bladder below deck mutinies during intense group gaming
A few dozen of these swarming landing craft would be a problem.
the Japanese had a wide range of more or less crazy ideas how to utilize kamikaze, not just aircraft, but speedboats, midget subs, piloted torpedoes, even frogmen; there is an Ohka video on TakaLeon's channel with an interview with the designer of Ohka - an old, broken engineer.. not a cheerful watch but definitely worth it
2:21 Cincinnati mill in Japan, lol
Wonder what kind of warranty the manufacturer gave for the plane.
Not sure about the warranty, but I think all complaints about aircraft performance from kamikaze pilots are filed through the court-martial system.
Pilot dies first flight or your money back! Note: Training and relocation flights not covered. If you avoid crashing that is at your own non-peril. Warranty void if plane is modified or pilot has overly strong desire to live.
No warranty just lots of warnings.
Address the handling issues and you'd have a nice little kitplane design for the sports fliers.
So I'm wondering about the logic behind this concept. If the aim of using kamikaze planes was to maximize damage for minimum expenditure then obviously a faster, more powerful aircraft was more likely to make it through to its target, while a slow and flimsy one such as this (complete with barely trained pilot and small payload) was almost certain to be shot down, necessitating the use of dozens or even hundreds of them in order to score a hit.
Seems to me that while unit cost was very low, effectiveness was likely to be almost non-existent, thus rendering it more costly than the very thing it was supposed to replace.
if you fly a swarm of them, you could conceivably overwhelm the defenses.. the question is what are you gunning for? Targeting a CV might result in needing 100 planes for 1 to ge through with the Ta-Go.
@@joselitostotomas8114 Indeed you might, but remember that each Ta-go would be a *new* aircraft, while normally kamikazes were aircraft that had reached the end of their service life and were effectively being "recycled" so weren't using ever scarcer resources.
@@Kevin-mx1vi You still need to replace those expended aircraft. So making mass produced aircraft where the the only metal is the engines and the housing is a logical step.
I think they readjusted priorities. Casualties were so high,successes so low,but here one man plus airplane could take out a landing craft full of men or supplies. Better than waiting around to die,better than a company of men killed and failing to take out oh,a tank for instance. Take out the landing craft,tank and personnel on board. Not a battleship,not an aircraft carrier,but just maybe it might make the casualties so heavy the US would reconsider invasion. Take out lots of landing craft,or maybe battlefield targets such as tanks,etc. Desperate times,desperate measures.
I'm surprised they didn't have a drop wheel carriage so they could be re-used and reduce drag. I don't think many would make it to the Allied ships.
Never seen this plane before 🇯🇵
That would make a interesting kit/home built plane if some blue prints were available.
The thing I find interesting about this, is how is an Army Captain is initiating a design concept? I'm sure there is a lot more to the story that we don't know about, but I find that curious.
Enjoyable as always Ed.
It isn't strange considering the IJA had the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service complete with their own plane development separate from the IJN.
Interesting design, have you looked at the Minimax fleet of ultralight aircraft? They fly with only 27 hp !
Like a VW engine.
I have a Corby Starlet with an 1835cc VW engine. It cruises at 220 km with an endurance of 5 hours. It is aerobatic as well!
Given the wood construction and very, very limited use of metal, it is possible that these would have been nearly invisible to the radar of the day and to the proximity fuses of anti aircraft. But then again given their small size if the hit any kind of armored vessel they would not do much other than scorch the paint. One US admiral was quoted as saying when asked about suicide plane striking his flag ship "sweepers man your brooms".
Air cooled inline 4 cylinder engine putting out 100 horses with essentially a wooden sport plane attached. That engine sounds like it could have potential even now
It reminds me of the RC airplane called Das Ugly Stik, but a low wing.
There were ohkas with 20mm cannons, at least proposed, supposedly one built
Wood and canvas is probably the best construction method if you want your suicide attack to make it through AA fire. Metal and in some cases plywood is susceptible to explosive cannon shells, canvas just gets a 20mm hole.
You're not wrong, but the pilot also ends up with a 20mm hole if you forego an armoured cockpit. Enough hits poking holes might affect the airworthiness, as well.
@@johnladuke6475 only the plane needs to reach the target.
@@andrewince8824 Your car doesn't get to the grocery store if you just start the engine and walk away. Someone has to be alive to steer.
@@johnladuke6475 fling enough explosive aircraft in the direction of a ship and a few are probably going to make a hit. Maybe add a small piece of armour ahead of the pilot but these planes simply had to swarm a ship and rely on numbers to get a plane on target. It was shown that most kamikaze attacks missed the target anyway, if the new strategy is all out kamikaze then there's little point trying to overbuild an airframe, it has already been accepted that the pilot and plane aren't coming back.
It IKEA sold a plane this would be it
I believe that the US Navy had a report on Kamikaze attacks. What they found was that only about 4-6% of Kamikaze attacks actually hit their targets.
Was Chicken Teriyaki named for the only surviving Kamikaze pilot?
Why wheels? It's not like you'll be coming home after the mission for a frosty Sapporo and need to land...
Came here for this comment, you would have thought they would have had a detachable trolly thingy that could be re-used for multiple launches.
Lifetime guarantee... Short life tho
Yep, the Japanese were planning to surrender prior to the A-Bomb attacks, SURE they were...
Interesting subject, as always, Ed Nash.
You know, with some fine tuning of the design, the Ta-Go could have been an economical airplane to develop and grow private civilian aviation, like the French Jodel, the American Stits series, etc. Yeah I've never seen an etc., just like the, "and more", also the multi seater "and many more" noted in TV commercials.
Am I drifting?
I had the same thought - in terms of design, construction, and appearance it does look a lot like an early homebuilt aircraft. Though it's design was so rushed they'd probably be better off taking their time to start over from scratch to produce a better design. Though another thought would be if they had actually produced a whole bunch of these - many thousands - but never used them. Say had the development occurred earlier, and the government been interested in having them for use against landing craft for the anticipated Home Island invasion (a more suitable target than armored ships, as many are pointing out). But then the A-bombs were dropped, Japan surrendered, and the aircraft left as war surplus. With bombs removed, and sold for peanuts, they might have become popular as light GA aircraft in the immediate Japanese postwar. With such popularity, improved versions for homebuilding might be developed. The aircraft - a weapon of war turned into a peaceful civilian recreational craft - might have even become symbolic in Japan's peaceful postwar culture.
And it would have some history to boot. Morbid but fascinating.
Wooden So what would the radar return be. Used as a nighttime kamikaze attack could have been an option.
There is a kind of poetic irony in the name of the quasi-aircraft in question sounds so much like "to go," IMHO...
We're they serious ? Fighter cover and ship AA would have made short work of those paper planes ... unless they flew so slowly that everyone fell asleep ! .. "KAMIKAZI !! ... arrggh ... waits .. waits ... waits .. looks at watch ... wait .. Zzzzzzzz ..dead!" . Give the Okha longer range rockets and you have a serious threat.
Are the blueprints for the prototype available? Pretty sure with modern dacron and aluminum tubing this bird would fly on 1/2 the horses and carry a 300lb plus pilot.
Possibly, but there's a lot of far better refined homebuilts out there these days.
Good Ta Go
Kinda looks like something Peter Sripol would make. No offense Peter....
Looks like a great new air force one to me.
In his memoire, Lieutenant DJ Hamer DSC, RAN, describes the psychological effects of the kamikaze upon Allied ship crews, particularly in relation to actions in Lingayen Gulf, Luzon Island.
2:09 shows a Japanese worker with a Cincinnati lathe...
Wonder how US-soldiers would have felt, have they seen that picture ?
The concept of swarms of kamekazi aircraft defeats the original premise of one death for many. How many of these would have been needed for just one 100kg bomb to get through the ship's defenses? Something much faster, flying higher and capable of vertical dives might have been a better idea.
Would this work as an ultralight plane today? (Without the bomb of course)
My father was a USAF officer doing liaison work in Japan between the US military and Japanese government. One of the Japanese people he met became a dear friend, Omori-San. He had been a cadet during WWII at Etajima, the Japanese naval academy. Towards the end of the war and despite not being graduated yet, he was assigned to a suicide unit. At first they were told they would be Kamikaze, but the planes never arrived. Then they were told they were to drive explosive-laden motorboats into US ships, but boats never arrived. Then they were told they would be infantry, with the idea being they would attach explosives to US tanks and such. Then the war ended with the famous proclamation over the radio by Emperor Hirohito. His unit went up to the top of a mountain where most of them committed suicide, some by seppuku, something that caused Omori-san great guilt and sorrow for the rest of his life. He went on to have a career in the Japanese Air-Self Defense forces and upon retirement worked in quality control in Japanese industry, a disciple of Deming, the American quality control guru, forgotten in America but highly revered in Japan. Omori-san was an old man by the time I met him but a wonderful artist that gave us many pieces of art that he had produced himself. Aloha Omori-san, a great friend and honorable man.
Both Japan and America were very lucky that the war ended when it did and it appears Japanese High Command was actually remarkably unfazed by the atomic bombs, not really so different from the firebombing that has destroyed so many Japanese cities and actually more concerned by the strong possibility of the Soviets entering the war/invading Japan.
I saw one for real at my dads' headquarters at Keesler AFB
The Kamakaze attacks were largely ineffective because they went for capital ships that were heavily defended by air cover and surrounding ships putting up curtains of AA. We now know that the Japanese had stockpiled 10,000 aircraft of all types to be used against Operation Downfall. But they intended to use them against soft targets - the unarmored and slow troop transports and landing craft. Even if only 5 to 10% got through it would have been a bloodbath for the US. And I might not be sitting here since my father was going to be in the initial landing on Kyushu.
I can't imagine a late ear 40mm or 5"/38 being able to possibly miss this.