Surely each of us has heard the Japanese word "kamikaze" in a wide variety of contexts, which has come into wide use after the Second World War. It translates as "Divine wind" (the one that, according to legend, at the end of the XIII century scattered the ships of the Mongols who were approaching Japan). During the war in the Pacific, this was the name given to the suicide pilots who sent their cars filled with explosives at enemy ships. But the Germans also had them …
Asian Allies Experience
Following the kamikaze, kaitens appeared in Japan, also suicide bombers - pilots of guided torpedoes. Neither one nor the other could inflict significant damage to the enemy, but their very appearance had a serious psychological impact on the enemy. Naturally, Japan's strategic ally, Nazi Germany, was well aware of Japan's use of fanatical suicides. However, the Germans were in no hurry to use the Japanese experience on European fronts. Hitler said: "Such sacrifices are not in the traditions of Western white civilization and do not correspond to the Aryan mentality." However, in the fall of 1944, after catastrophic defeats on the Eastern Front and the landing of Anglo-American troops in Normandy, when it became clear that Germany had lost the world war, the Nazis had to forget about the “Aryan mentality” and look for any saving straw. Then they remembered about the kamikaze.
Riding a rocket
Prior to that, the Nazis had pinned their hopes on the "miracle weapon" being developed - the "weapon of retaliation," as Goebbels' propaganda called it. First of all, they meant the V-1 (cruise) and V-2 (ballistic) missiles, with the help of which the Germans hoped to suppress England. But the Nazis miscalculated - while imperfect, especially in terms of accuracy, the missiles did not reach the target. Only one in four flew to the coast of Britain.
The first who came up with the idea to compensate for the imperfection of technology with the skill and dedication of the pilots were Hanna Reitsch, the famous German pilot, pilot of the Fuehrer, and SS Obersturmbann-Fuehrer Otto Skorzeny - Reich saboteur No. 1. They proposed to launch the V-1 from the carrier aircraft. Further, the pilot was supposed to control the rocket. Hannah Reitsch offered herself as a tester for the first flights of this kind. A unit of two hundred pilots was created and four variants of the manned V-1 were worked out, but they all turned out to be incapacitated: the rocket often collided with the carrier aircraft at the start and was difficult to control by a person. In addition, "V-1" and without a pilot did not carry enough explosives, and the proposed re-equipment reduced it in half.
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In February 1945, when the futility of this venture became apparent, the program was curtailed. And there was also a semi-fantastic project of a suicide-bomber heavy ballistic missile designed to strike New York.
Hit the enemy with your chest
In 1942, Anglo-American aviation began systematic carpet bombing of Germany. Day and night, more than 6,000 bombers destroyed German factories and cities. And then Colonel Heyo Herrmann, a combat pilot, awarded the highest awards of the Reich, proposed to form fighter formations, the main weapon of which would be a ram of enemy bombers. He argued that a single massive use of 800 aircraft piloted by volunteers would have resulted in the destruction of at least 400 heavy bombers. This, in his opinion, would force the enemy to stop raids on Germany for 2-3 weeks, where, taking advantage of the respite, they could form the Me-262 jet fighter formations, which would then ensure the dominance of the Germans in the air. Herrmann's proposal was approved by the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering. The air force of volunteer pilots, ready to ram, was named "Elba Training Unit", formed mainly from "green" youth who had just graduated from flight schools.
Obviously, the pilots who were assigned such tasks were doomed to certain death when they were carried out, and those who gave the orders were well aware of this. The experience of the Japanese kamikaze was studied in Germany, but no one dared to recognize their pilots as deliberate suicides. Otto Skorzeny, an expert on the human psyche in extreme situations, believed that a soldier, even in the most critical circumstances, needed to be convinced that he had at least some chance of survival. If there is such a hope in the depths of the soul, a person will act more effectively. Therefore, the term "kamikaze" was not used for German pilots. It was believed that pilots going to ram, after aiming their aircraft at the target, or even after ramming, have the opportunity to jump out with a parachute. Although everyone understood that the possibility of being saved was close to zero. And this was confirmed by practice. Thus, these German pilots actually became kamikaze.
On April 7, 1945, their first (and last) battle took place. Herrmann managed to deploy only 183 fighters against 1,300 bombers aimed at the industrial centers of Northern Germany and 792 cover fighters. The operation failed: inexperienced German pilots could not even hold an open formation, some completely lost their orientation, flying in the opposite direction. Of the German aircraft participating in the attack, 133 were shot down, while 77 pilots were killed. The Americans lost 22 bombers and successfully bombed all targets. The swift offensive of the Red Army aimed at Berlin, which began on April 16, 1945, forced the Germans to finally abandon their grandiloquent arguments about Western civilization. The hastily formed squadron of 40 pilots for the first time was bluntly named "SO-Einheit" (it stands for "The unity of self-sacrifice"), in other words - a suicide unit. All the pilots of the squadron signed a document ending with the words: "I am fully aware that the operation in which I have to participate must end in my death." The pilots were tasked with sending planes loaded with explosives to bridges and temporary crossings across the Oder.direct to bridges and temporary crossings across the Oder.direct to bridges and temporary crossings across the Oder.
In the evening of April 15, 1945, dances were arranged for the pilots of the squadron, female attendants of the airfield and signalmen were invited. Then they sang a German folk song about inexorable death in chorus: “Here comes an inexorable death and takes you on your last journey …” But the results of three days of suicide attacks were more than modest - only two bridges were struck, which were quickly restored. Of the 39 pilots who participated in the attacks (one refused at the last moment), 35 were killed. A day later, Marshal Konev's tanks destroyed the Uterbog airfield, from which German kamikaze were taking off.
Suicide bombers at sea
At the end of the war, the idea of using soldiers performing a combat mission at the cost of their lives was adopted by the leaders of the German Navy. In March 1944, a sabotage and assault formation "K" (or - a close combat formation) was formed, which was intended to act against enemy ships in coastal waters, as well as to destroy bridges, locks and port facilities. It consisted of divisions of midget submarines (single and double), human-controlled torpedoes (similar to kaiten), high-speed exploding boats and combat swimmers (the so-called frog people). According to various sources, the total number of the compound ranged from 10 to 16 thousand people. The combat orders given to them did not directly prescribe death in the course of their execution, but, approaching close to the object of the attack, people could practically complete the task, as a rule,only at the cost of your own life. There is no exact information about the losses of personnel of the "K" formation. According to a number of historians, they accounted for at least 70-80%. English explorer Paul Kemp called the German sailors-saboteurs of the end of World War II naval kamikaze.
In general, the German “divine wind”, no matter how the Nazi fanatics tried to fan it at the end of World War II, could not stop either the carpet bombing of Germany by the Allied aircraft, or the offensive impulse of the Red Army, or create a serious threat to the allied fleet in the North and Mediterranean Seas. … The sacrifices of the German kamikaze and kaitens were in vain.
By the way
The Kaiten torpedo proved to be an ineffective weapon. Preparation for launch was lengthy and quite noisy. Since the "Kaitens" were designed for a shallow maximum immersion depth and were attached outside the boat, the permissible immersion depth of the boat itself decreased accordingly, and the vulnerability to anti-submarine weapons increased. Long-range launch accuracy and reliability were unsatisfactory. The Japanese submarine commanders understood this. I-58, which sank the cruiser Indianapolis (three days after it delivered the Kid atomic bomb, later dropped on Hiroshima, to Tinian), attacked with conventional torpedoes, despite the presence of four Kaitans and against the requests of their pilots. The largest ship sunk by the Kaitens was the American tanker Mississineva.
Magazine: War and Fatherland # 1 (42). Author: Konstantin Rishes