During the Second World War, for the first time, suicide volunteer groups - "teisintai" began to form in the Japanese troops, which were used in three elements: earth, water, air. An indispensable attribute of "teisintai" (in those units where it was possible) was the samurai sword.
By the end of the war, suicide bombers were perhaps the main striking force of all branches of the Japanese armed forces. All kinds of suicide bombers did not exist in the Japanese army and navy - paratroopers, demolition men, tank destroyers, torpedo drivers, bomb boats and, of course, pilots.
Regardless of the type of troops and departmental subordination, Japanese suicide squads were called "teishintai" ("shock troops").
Teishintai (in the English transcription teishintai) began to form after 1943, when the situation on the fronts became clearly unfavorable for the empire. The personnel of the ground "teishintai", which also included parachute units, were recruited from the infantry and trained in accordance with the intended use of the unit.
Teishintai (volunteer suicide bombers) are kamikaze (suicide pilots), teishintai paratroopers, ground teishintai, surface teishintai (shingyo), underwater teishintai - on small submarines (kayryu and koryu) and torpedoes (kaitol), pedestrian demolitions (fukuryu, "dragons of fortune").
In particular, the soldiers and officers of these units, sacrificing their lives, carried out sabotage raids to destroy the positions of British artillery in Burma. The number and composition of such combat units fluctuated depending on the needs of a particular operation (the fact is that the personnel of these forces were "one-time", the return of people from the mission was not taken into account).
The most widespread organizational structure of the strike detachment included a command group (officer, non-commissioned officer and messenger), a sabotage and assault squad (15 people), a support squad (12 people) and a reserve squad (12 people).
Promotional video:
These subunits were thrown into enemy territory with the aim of destroying enemy bridges and communications, undermining strongpoints and fortified positions with explosive charges, fighting tanks and destroying enemy manpower.
Usually these tasks were solved as follows: the suicide bomber fastened several dynamite sticks on his belt, put on a white uniform with a headband and shouted "Banzai!" rushed to an enemy ammunition depot or under the tracks of a tank.
The most famous raid of suicide paratroopers was the so-called "7th Operation Chrysanthemum" (Kikusuy to-go sakusen) - the last major operation carried out by the Japanese during the fighting in Okinawa in 1945.
Having suffered a series of sensitive defeats in the battle for the island, the imperial command, keeping in mind the experience of the Philippine campaign, decided to attack American airfields in Okinawa.
The plan provided for the decommissioning of airfield facilities by the special amphibious squad "Giretsu" ("Ardent Devotion"), supported by a simultaneous counterattack by units of the 32nd Japanese Army and a strike by kamikaze air formations (up to 165 aircraft) against the ships of the American fleet.
On May 24, nine obsolete Mitsubishi Ki.21 twin-engined bombers from the 3rd Special Forces Aviation Regiment took off from the Japanese island of Kyushu and headed for Okinawa on low level flight.
To increase the possible flight range (the destination was within reach), defensive armament was removed from the planes, and 12 paratroopers with dead bombs were placed in their bomb bays. Their task was to destroy the base airfields of the B 29 strategic bombers, already stationed by the Americans on the island and delivering powerful blows to the enemy. Two planes died as a result of pilot error during the flight, and the rest were intercepted by an American fighter patrol near the island itself.
Six cars were shot down, only one managed to slip to the coast and soon landed on the runway of the Yontan airfield without releasing the landing gear.
In just a few minutes, a dozen paratroopers managed to destroy a fuel and lubricants warehouse with 2,600 barrels of aviation fuel and seven planes standing nearby, after which all the saboteurs and the K1.21 crew were killed by guards.
The wreckage of two more transports with the bodies of the dead paratroopers was also found. These planes managed to reach Okinawa but were shot down.
The airbase was put out of action for only a few hours, and the number of sorties of American bombers did not decrease, but it remains unquestionable that the effectiveness of the Teishintai operations would be much more significant if at least half of the strike group broke through to Okinawa.
Now about the other Teixintai
Etajima Island is located in Hiroshima Bay, the Inland Sea in southwestern Hiroshima Prefecture, six kilometers from the city of Kuru, to which it is connected by two bridges. In 1930-1940, this island housed the Naval Cadet Corps, the forge of officers of the Japanese Imperial Navy. Now at the edge of the sea coast, clad in granite, there is an exhibition of ship weapons from the Second World War. Tourists from Europe and the United States are not allowed here. At the building of the Marine Corps Museum there are baby submarines for kamikaze. One - with a command compartment for two suicide bombers, the other - for a loner.
Near the museum are the Kaiten man-torpedoes, operated by teishintai, the same suicide bomber as the kamikaze. The museum has a hall dedicated to those killed in the kamikaze and kaiten battles. Their portraits occupy the entire wall from top to bottom, and their names are engraved on a marble board nearby. The huge list also includes kaiten suicide bombers from the submarine I-58, who died heroically on the night of July 29-30, 1945, during the attack of the American heavy cruiser Indianapolis. Of the six kaitens, none returned to the Kure base.
Captain 3rd Rank Hashimoto Mochitsura also graduated from the Etajima Naval Academy on a diving course. This officer participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. In February 1943, Motitsura Hashimoto took up the duties of the commander of the submarine "I-158", which at that time was equipped with radar equipment. An experiment was carried out on this submarine - the study of the operation of the radar in various sailing conditions, until then the Japanese submarines fought blindly. In September 1943, Hashimoto Motoitsura commanded the RO-44 submarine. On it, he operated in the Solomon Islands region as a hunter for American transports. In May 1944, Lieutenant-Commander Hashimoto was sent to Yokosuku, where the I-58 submarine, equipped for the Kaiten man-torpedo carrier, was built according to a new project.
Kaiten is translated into Russian as "Fate Changing" or "Turning the Sky", these are human torpedoes operated by teishintai suicide pilots. These torpedoes did not have ejection mechanisms, the pilot was simply placed in the wheelhouse, the hatch into it was battened down. The pilot searched for the target using a periscope at a shallow depth. After reaching the target and aiming, the pilot switched the torpedo to attack mode - the periscope was retracted, the depth increased and full speed was turned on. In the event of a miss, the pilot could not leave the torpedo and died from a lack of oxygen, subsequently a self-destruction mechanism was added to the design.
The length of man-torpedoes was 15 meters, diameter - 1.5 meters, weight - 8 tons, she carried up to 1.5 tons of explosives. Suicide seamen directed this formidable weapon against enemy ships. Production of "Kaitens" in Japan began in the summer of 1944, when it became obvious that only the dedication of kamikaze pilots and teishintai suicide sailors could change the course of World War II. In total, about 440 Kaitans were produced.
The submarine "I-58" under the command of Captain 3rd Rank Motoitsura Hashimoto was included in the "Congo" squadron. There were 15 fellow students of Motoitsura Hashimoto at the naval school on Etajima Island. By this time, most of the officers who once made up his class had died in battle. Of the 15 people, only five survived. They were all boat commanders of the Congo Detachment. The boats from the Congo squadron fired a total of 14 Kaitens at enemy ships.
The Japanese submarine "I-58" left the base in Kura on its fourth military campaign on July 16, 1945. After a fruitless search for the enemy in the Philippine Sea, the boat entered the shipping line between Guam and Leyte. The I-58 had six Kaiten man-torpedoes on board. Two had to be sent to an American oil tanker. The ship sank immediately. On July 29 at 23:00, acoustics detected a single target. Hashimoto ordered to surface.
At 1,500 meters away was the Indianapolis, a US Navy cruiser. A few days before this event, this cruiser delivered the components of three atomic bombs to the Philippine island of Tinian, two of which were subsequently dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the target ship was still at a great distance, the commander ordered not only the usual torpedo tubes to be prepared, but also ordered the teishintai suicide pilots, who had no names, but only serial numbers, to check their torpedoes too.
Having established the course and speed of the enemy ship, the commander began to approach. He had two options for action: send three to five torpedoes from bow tubes or send kamikaze sailors, especially since, being ready for self-sacrifice, they themselves asked the boat commander. How did the commander of the submarine "I-58" act?
Foreign military historians are racking their brains over this question. Most are inclined to believe that Kaiten crashed into the side of the American cruiser. Two weeks before the end of the war in the Pacific Ocean, a powerful American cruiser was lost. Of the 1199 sailors of the Indianapolis crew, only 316 survived. As if in punishment for bringing in atomic bombs and participating in this barbaric action, the cruiser was sunk in the Philippine Sea by a Japanese submarine under the command of 3rd Rank Captain Mochiyuki Hashimoto.
They say that when a B-29 bomber took off from the Tinian airfield (Marshall Islands) carrying an atomic bomb for the city of Hiroshima, the aircraft crew already knew about the sinking of Indianapolis, which delivered part of this bomb from the United States to Tinian. The aircraft crew made the following inscription on this atomic bomb - "Gift for the souls of the lost crew members of Indianapolis."
The commander of the Imperial Navy submarine, Mr. Motoitsura Hashimoto, was in a POW camp for some time. Having freed himself, he became a captain of the merchant fleet, went on the ship the same route as on the submarine "I-58" - the South China Sea, the Philippines, the Mariana and Caroline Islands, it happened to moor in Hawaii and San Francisco. After retiring, Motoitsura Hashimoto became a priest in one of the Shinto temples in Kyoto. Wrote the book Drowning.
The commander of the cruiser "Indianapolis" Charles McVeigh was tried by the Americans, then acquitted. Farming, committing suicide - punishment for Hiroshima?
Interesting moments
1. The suicide bombers wore white headbands on their heads, exactly the same as the samurai had tied before the battle hundreds of years ago. One of the teisintai techniques on the water looked like this. The suicide bombers dressed in diving suits, after which they were given special poles, at the end of which explosive charges were attached. Waiting for enemy ships in the water, "teisintai" stood in their way and carried out their sabotage.
2. By the end of World War II, 2525 kamikaze pilots had been trained by Japanese naval aviation, another 1387 were provided by the army. According to Japanese statements, 81 ships were sunk and 195 damaged as a result of kamikaze attacks. According to American data, the losses were only 34 sunk and 288 damaged ships. In addition, the psychological effect produced on the American sailors was of great importance.
3. The Japanese army never had problems with the shortage of kamikaze pilots, on the contrary, there were three times more volunteers than planes. The bulk of the kamikaze were twenty-year-old university students, reasons for joining the suicide squads ranged from patriotism to a desire to glorify their family. And yet, the root causes of this phenomenon lie in the very culture of Japan, in the traditions of Bushido and medieval samurai. A huge role in this phenomenon is also played by the special attitude of the Japanese towards death. Dying with honor for their country and for the Emperor was the highest goal for many young Japanese people of that time. Kamikaze was praised as heroes, they were prayed for in temples as saints, their relatives immediately became the most respected people in their city.
4. Following the medieval code of conduct of the Japanese samurai Bushido, these people, despising death, sacrificed themselves for only one mission - the destruction of the superior forces of the enemy. They were the chosen ones, the kamikaze of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The suicide bombers who flew single-action aircraft torpedoes with an MXY-7 "Oka" ("Cherry Blossom") charge mounted in the nose of the fuselage. The torpedo aircraft were equipped with a powerful jet engine, which allowed them to reach speeds of up to 860 km / h. Not knowing the official Japanese name of this aircraft, the Americans nicknamed it "Baka" ("Fool"). "Oka" carried 1200 kg of explosives in the bow compartment. A solid-propellant rocket engine was located in the aft fuselage. The Japanese managed to produce 775 Oka-11s and 50 Oka-22s.
This was quite enough to flood the entire US military fleet, and only the entry into the war of the USSR and the atomic strikes of the Americans did not allow these plans to be implemented.