[HN Gopher] Kaiten: Japan's fully-manned kamikaze torpedos durin...
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Kaiten: Japan's fully-manned kamikaze torpedos during WWII
Author : metabagel
Score : 51 points
Date : 2022-05-19 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.warhistoryonline.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.warhistoryonline.com)
| [deleted]
| trzy wrote:
| Suicide torpedoes were proposed by the Polish military in 1939
| and the program appears to have gotten as far as signing up
| recruits but to my knowledge none were ever deployed.
| zardo wrote:
| The first submarine that sunk an enemy ship (h.l. Hunley) was a
| suicide torpedo with a crew of 8.
| saberdancer wrote:
| Not intentionally.
| corrral wrote:
| My recollection from Cussler's version of the story was
| that the detachable torpedo on their bow (the idea was to
| ram a pointy torpedo on the bow of the sub into the enemy
| ship, detach, then it blows up on a delay so the sub could
| escape, IIRC) got stuck and didn't detach properly.
| zardo wrote:
| All that's known for sure (since it was found and raised
| a few years ago) is that it was close enough to the
| explosion for the shockwave to kill the crew, but far
| enough away to not damage the sub itself.
| robonerd wrote:
| Historically, torpedoes were bombs on the end of sticks
| that you'd ram the enemy with, but these were generally
| not intended to be suicide weapons (the stick was for
| safety.) Self-propelled torpedoes came later, and the
| original bomb-on-a-stick sort of torpedo may now be
| called "spar torpedoes."
| jessriedel wrote:
| The Hunley was not a suicide torpedo. It was a new and highly
| dangerous submarine. The crew died shortly after sinking the
| Union's Housatonic, but their death was accidental rather
| than a necessary part of the attack method.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunley_(submarine)
| zardo wrote:
| IIRC, things may have gone according to plan. That is the
| suicide was accidental, but it was designed in. They didn't
| understand that shockwaves would travel further underwater
| and getting to safety may not have been possible.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| That's frightening, first crew drowns in it, so they raise
| it off the seabed, clean out the bodies and send in another
| crew who also drown. Then they raise it again for a third
| crew to take over. At this stage I'd be like "mister,
| thanks but no thanks".
| robonerd wrote:
| The Nazis planned to use similar suicide tactics with a manned
| version of their V-1 cruise missile. They built and flew
| prototypes, but Hitler was persuaded to drop the project before
| it was put to use.
|
| Formalized suicide attack programs with purpose-built hardware
| are chilling to think about, but there is also a broader class
| of suicide attacks that include impromptu decisions and last
| resorts which seem easier to understand. On both sides of WW2,
| there are cases of pilots trying to crash into the enemy after
| realizing their fate was sealed anyway. This may have happened
| with an American B-26 at the Battle of Midway, and one of the
| Japanese pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor apparently announced
| his intention to do this before the battle (in both cases they
| missed their target.)
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The Russian army also had some chilling tactics. Basically
| they had more soldiers than guns during the battle of
| Stalingrad. So they sent them in pairs where one person was
| supposed to pick up the gun in the (likely) case the other
| person got shot. To prevent people from refusing orders, they
| simply shot anyone running the wrong way. Ordering people to
| march towards (almost) certain death is probably as old as
| war is.
|
| What set the Japanese apart is the fanatical culture that
| resulted in people volunteering for this. The modern
| equivalent would be suicide bombers.
| corrral wrote:
| > The Russian army also had some chilling tactics.
| Basically they had more soldiers than guns during the
| battle of Stalingrad. So they sent them in pairs where one
| person was supposed to pick up the gun in the (likely) case
| the other person got shot. To prevent people from refusing
| orders, they simply shot anyone running the wrong way.
| Ordering people to march towards (almost) certain death is
| probably as old as war is.
|
| This was depicted in the film Enemy at the Gates
| (2001)--and probably other, earlier films, I'd expect--and
| then strikingly similarly (i.e. they likely deliberately
| modeled their version on the scene from the film) in the
| first Call of Duty game (2003), back when that series was
| all WWII shooters.
| the_af wrote:
| It should be noted this was false at Stalingrad, and
| "Enemy at the Gates" has a terribly inaccurate depiction
| of that battle.
|
| There are no reliable sources stating that the Red Army
| [1] had more soldiers than guns by that time. Just some
| pop culture from a terrible movie that has somehow
| permeated into "knowledge" about the Eastern Front.
|
| [1] also wrong to call it "the Russian army", it was the
| army of the Soviet Union and had non-Russians.
| trzy wrote:
| I've heard that they did order soldiers to advance
| through mine fields (effectively de-mining a path through
| them using abundant human bodies) or face the NKVD. The
| calculation was simple: you might survive the minefield
| but you had a 100% chance of being executed for refusing
| the order.
| the_af wrote:
| You "heard" where? And during which part of the battle of
| Stalingrad was this?
| sleiben wrote:
| It's from Eisenhower's book `Crusade in Europe` where he
| tells a story from general Georgy Zhukov how Soviet
| soldiers were cleaning the minefields.
|
| Though it's not related to Stalingrad afair.
| corrral wrote:
| Interesting. More evidence that CoD copied the film,
| then, I suppose.
| the_af wrote:
| Your understanding of the Red Army is incorrect. Please
| cite academic sources (so not Enemy at the Gates, awful
| movie) showing that _at Stalingrad_ the Red Army had "more
| soldiers than guns".
| golergka wrote:
| Never saw that movie, but it's pretty much common
| knowledge in modern Russia, and was described in very
| numerous accounts by war veterans.
| the_af wrote:
| It's still wrong. The Red Army didn't have a guns
| shortage at Stalingrad.
|
| "Common knowledge" is not knowledge, not in "modern
| Russia" either. Cite one academic source, please.
| trhway wrote:
| >a broader class of suicide attacks that include impromptu
| decisions and last resorts which seem easier to understand.
|
| In USSR/Russia such attacks by Soviet soldiers (using say
| your body to close the machine gun embrasure) have been
| widely celebrated. Where is similar behavior by Ukrainian
| soldiers against Russian forces in today's war is blamed by
| Russian propaganda on "Ukrainian nationalists being pumped
| full of drugs".
| alexdowad wrote:
| There is a manga series based on the history of the "kaiten",
| called "Tokkou no Shima" (Te Gong noDao ), which is pretty good.
|
| It depicts the commander of a kaiten-bearing submarine as lying
| to his superiors and reporting that each of the kaiten launched
| from his submarine sunk US ships, when in fact none of them hit
| their targets. It is implied that reporting anything but success
| was unacceptable, and the Japanese military leadership expanded
| this program because of being misled by such false or exaggerated
| reports.
| sbassi wrote:
| Interesting is that some post below this one there is a small
| book with a washed-up version of Shinto, that is the ideology
| that lead to this and other war atrocities.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| You perhaps meant to say bushido, the extremist warrior code
| embraced by Japanese samurai
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido), instead of (state)
| Shinto, the modified religion that encouraged nationalism and
| emperor worship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Shinto)?
| krapp wrote:
| The ideology that led to this and other war atrocities was
| Western imperialism. State Shinto[0] blended the Imperial
| government's authoritarian doctrine with religion in a similar
| way that Nazism did with German culture, but was more a matter
| of propaganda than religion. In particular, emperor worship was
| an invention of the state and not an aspect of traditional
| Shinto practice.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Shinto
| bowsamic wrote:
| Sorry that you're getting downvoted, this is a totally
| accurate and well informed take
| robonerd wrote:
| It's not something special to Shinto. Similar programs have
| been proposed and developed (if not actually carried out) in
| many other ideological contexts. The Chinese used suicide
| tactics against the Japanese, as did the South Koreans against
| North Korean tanks. America built a man-portable nuclear bomb
| and although it came with a timer, the soldiers who were
| trained to deploy it believed this would be a suicide mission.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Buddhism was also used to support the war. Are you going to
| claim that Buddhism is an ideology that led to war atrocities?
|
| Btw Shinto wasn't even made into an official religion until the
| Meiji restoration, really it should be thought of as Kami
| worship, and depending on the Kami it involves very different
| things. Buddhism and Shinto were also heavily syncretised until
| the Meiji restoration. The Buddhist bodhisattvas and Buddhas
| were even made into kami iirc
| kergonath wrote:
| > Are you going to claim that Buddhism is an ideology that
| led to war atrocities?
|
| There is nothing special about Buddhism. Any ideology can be
| used to justify atrocities and none of them should be
| considered unimpeachable. Just ask the Rohingya.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yes but I don't see them making that claim, but they
| should. Maybe you misread my comment, I wasn't saying "are
| you even going to claim that _Buddhism_ has led to war
| crimes?", I'm asking if the poster will also commit to that
| point, since they must also do so logically
| nosianu wrote:
| Aside from this article, just continuing to scroll down reveals
| quite a few interesting headlines.
|
| Here's one I found particularly interesting in light of current
| events and reports of looting:
|
| "How German Soldiers Used Lentil Soup as an Effective Defense
| Mechanism Against the Soviets"
|
| https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/lentil.html
|
| To gain time for a retreat they cooked soup for the attacking
| underfed Russian soldiers. The ruse was successful.
|
| > _The Soviets were hot on their heels at first, but once they
| reached the steaming pots of soup the scent was simply too much
| to resist. The hungry Soviet troops clambered over each other to
| grab some of the soup, inadvertently giving the Germans more
| time._
| sandworm101 wrote:
| There would need to be some very specific circumstances for
| this to work. The general rule of all cooking is that it takes
| much longer to cook food than to eat it. So spending time
| cooking soup, rather than fleeing, would be a net loss of time.
| Whatever time the Russians were delayed eating your soup would
| be less than the time you were delayed in making it.
|
| The only way it would work would be to just put the pot over
| the fire and run. Without someone watchin it, the window of
| time between soup getting hot and soup burning/boiling into
| nothing would be slim. A more likely version might be that
| starving Russian troops were so hungry that, upon finding
| ingredients left out, they stopped to make soup themselves.
| scrumbledober wrote:
| throw some ingredients in a pot, put it on the stove, and
| high tail it out of there. if it takes 20 minutes for the
| Russians to show up there's a nice fresh pot of lentil soup
| waiting for them
| ericbarrett wrote:
| You can keep a covered pot of lentils on a warm stove (or
| campfire) for hours, maybe days if the temp is right.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Not everyone needs to stay to cook soup :)
| rightbyte wrote:
| The persuit might be triggered by the Germans retreating. So
| the Soviet soldiers might not have advanced unless there was
| a retreat.
| robonerd wrote:
| I never found a source for this, but I once heard that during
| the Second Punic War the Roman senate stalled Hannibal's army
| in a similar manner, using prostitutes.
| [deleted]
| pcurve wrote:
| "The advantages of human guidance throughout the craft's
| trajectory proved to be of little use in practice, with kaitens
| causing minimal damage to the enemy"
|
| I wonder if it could've been more successful with more warhead
| giva wrote:
| Italy had something similar, not designed to kill its own crew
| however.
|
| https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siluro_a_lenta_corsa
| schoen wrote:
| The SLC doesn't seem to have its own page in English
| Wikipedia, but is covered in the article
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_torpedo
|
| which also includes some other countries' versions (it seems
| like the Italian SLC might have been the most-used of these).
| jandrese wrote:
| I don't think the issue is that they didn't do enough damage on
| a hit, rather that the mostly missed their targets. WWII
| torpedoes, even the relatively excellent Japanese versions,
| didn't have a good hit rate in the war. Steering with a
| periscope in choppy seas while managing ballast levels and in
| less than ideal conditions is incredibly difficult. While the
| crews were trained that training couldn't be too comprehensive
| as the Japanese training corps were already stretched thin and
| all training resources spent on these pilots are ultimately
| lost on their first mission.
|
| Even in the article the success they noted was against an
| anchored ship, something you are much more likely to be able to
| hit with a conventional unguided torpedo.
|
| There is also the environment of the war itself and logistical
| problems with these devices. The article notes that they can't
| be carried in a regular torpedo tube, so they had to be
| attached as a parasite on the top of the sub. But this
| prevented the sub from doing crash dives, which were vital to
| staying alive when allied fighters and bombers appeared
| overhead, which was a constant threat by the time these were
| available. They were just underdeveloped and then the war was
| over. Shortly after that people started working out self-
| guidance systems for torpedoes and the the book was forever
| closed on these man guided systems.
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