Download or read book Kamikaze Destroyer USS Hugh W Hadley DD774 written by Jeffrey R. Veesenmeyer and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merriam Press World War 2 History. The Hadley was a destroyer which served in the U.S. Navy and in early May 1945 was assigned to radar picket duty at Okinawa. On 11 May, a large force of Japanese aircraft attacked. Hadley fought off these attackers, but not without damage to itself. Hadley fought on, but was hit by a bomb and three kamikaze aircraft. Hadley shot down a record 23 aircraft that day and aided in splashing many others, but lost 30 crew members. A determined crew kept her afloat and she was towed back to the States. This new book by a relative of a crew member killed that day off Okinawa, tells the story of the ship, and that fateful day, through the words of many of the survivors, which the author interviewed. This is not just a story about a ship, but about the men that made that ship a legend in the annals of Navy history. 9 appendices, bibliography, 112 photos, 7 illustrations, 6 maps.

Download or read book Kamikaze Attacks of World War II written by Robin L. Rielly and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book details more than 400 kamikaze attacks performed by Japanese aircraft, manned torpedoes, suicide boats and suicide swimmers against U.S. ships during World War II. Part One focuses on the traditions, development and history. Part Two details the kamikaze attacks on ships. Appendices list all of the U.S. ships suffering kamikaze attacks"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Kamikaze Destroyer written by Jeffrey Veesenmeyer and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-05-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merriam Press Naval History NH3 First Edition (2014) USS Hugh W. Hadley (DD-774) was an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer which served in the United States Navy during World War II. Commissioned in November 1944, and after extensive shakedown training off the coast of California, Hadley sailed for Ulithi where she joined the Okinawa invasion force. In early May 1945 Hadley was assigned to radar picket duty along with the USS Evans. The following day a large force of Japanese aircraft attacked. The two ships fought off these attackers, but not without damage to themselves. Evans took several hits and was dead in the water; Hadley fought on, but was hit by a bomb and three kamikaze aircraft. Hadley shot down a record 23 aircraft that day and aided in splashing many others, but lost 30 crew members. A determined crew kept her afloat and she was towed back to the States. She was decommissioned in December 1945 and scrapped in 1947. In addition to one battle star for her World War II Service, Hugh W. Hadley received the Presidential Unit Citation for her performance in the action off Okinawa 11 May 1945. This new book by a relative of a crew member killed that day off Okinawa, tells the story of the ship, and that fateful day, through the words of many of the survivors, which the author interviewed. This is not just a story about a ship, but about the men that made that ship a legend in the annals of U.S. Navy history. 9 appendices, bibliography, 112 B&W photos, 6 illustrations, 6 maps, color painting.

Download or read book Kamikaze written by Peter C. Smith and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-11-28 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this brand new publication from eminent historian Peter C. Smith, we are regaled with the engaging and often incredibly disturbing history of the Kamikaze tradition in Japanese culture. Tracing its history right back to the original Divine Wind (major natural typhoons) that saved Japan from invaders in ancient history, Smith explores the subsequent resurrection of the cult of the warrior in the late nineteenth century. He then follows this tradition through into the Second World War, describing the many Kamikaze suicide attacks carried out by the Emperor's pilots against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign.These pilots were at the mercy of an overriding cultural tradition that demanded death over defeat, capture or perceived shame. Despite often being under-trained and ill-prepared psychologically for the sacrifices they were about to make, they were nonetheless expected to make them. The dedication of sacrifice for the Emperor and the Nation is explored by dissecting the traces left behind by these pilots. Smith provides a detailed look at the heartbreak of the pilot's families and the men themselves, the notes they left and the effects on those who did not share their philosophy. The views of individuals under attack are also included in this balanced history.Countless attacks carried out over the Philippine Islands (including the sinking of the St Lo) are analyzed and the Okinawa campaign is afforded particularly strong coverage, with the sinking of HMAS Australia explored in detail. The collective sacrifice is then summed up, with reflections from survivors on both sides appraising events in a humane historical context. A detailed appendices then follows, featuring units formed, sorties mounted, ships sunk and damages inflicted.

Download or read book US Navy Ships vs Kamikazes 1944 45 written by Mark Stille and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-22 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ineffectiveness of conventional air attacks on US Navy surface ships, particularly heavily defended targets like carrier task groups, forced the Japanese to re-evaluate their tactics in late 1944. The solution they arrived at was simple – crash their aircraft into American ships. This notion of self-sacrifice fit well within the Japanese warrior psyche and proved terrifying to the American sailors subjected to it. These tactics brought immediate results, and proved effective until the end of the war. This book examines this terrifying new way of waging war, revealing how the US Navy was forced to adapt its tactics and deploy new weapons to counter the threat posed by kamikaze attacks, as well as assessing whether the damage caused to American naval strength by the loss of so many pilots and aircraft actually had a material impact.

Download or read book The Kamikaze Campaign 1944 45 written by Mark Lardas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-05-26 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated history of how Japan devised and launched a new kind of air campaign in late 1944 – the suicidal assaults of the kamikaze units against the approaching Allied fleets. As summer changed to autumn in 1944, Japan was losing the war. Still unwilling to surrender, Japan's last hope was to try to wear down US resolve enough to reach a negotiated settlement. Extraordinary measures seemed necessary, and the most extraordinary was the formation of Special Attack Units – known to the Allies as the kamikazes. The concept of organized suicide squadrons was first raised on June 15, 1944. By August, formations were being trained. These formations were first used in the October 1944 US invasion of the Philippine Islands, where they offered some tactical success. The program was expanded into a major campaign over the rest of the Pacific War, seeing a crescendo during the struggle for Okinawa in April through May 1945. This highly illustrated history examines not just the horrific missions themselves, but the decisions behind the kamikaze campaign, how it developed, and how it became a key part of Japanese strategy. Although the attacks started on an almost ad hoc basis, the kamikaze soon became a major Japanese policy. By the end of the war, Japan was manufacturing aircraft specifically for kamikaze missions, including a rocket-powered manned missile. A plan for a massive use of kamikazes to defend the Japanese Home Islands from invasion was developed, but never executed because of Japan's surrender in August 1945. Packed with diagrams, maps and 3D reconstructions of the attacks, this book also assesses the Allied mitigation techniques and strategies and the reasons and the degree to which they were successful.

Download or read book Kamikaze written by Steven J. Zaloga and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The destruction of much of the remainder of the Japanese fleet and its air arm in the later half of 1944 left the Japanese Home Islands vulnerable to attack by US naval and air forces. In desperation, the Imperial Japanese Navy proposed using “special attack” formations, or suicide attacks. These initially consisted of crude improvisations of conventional aircraft fitted with high-explosive bombs that could be crashed into US warships. Called “Divine Wind” (Kamikaze), the special attack formations first saw action in 1944, and became the scourge of the US fleet in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. In view of the success of these attacks, the Japanese armed forces began to develop an entire range of new special attack weapons. This book will begin by examining the initial kamikaze aircraft attacks, but the focus of the book will be on the dedicated special attack weapons developed in 1944. It also covers specialized suicide attack weapons such as anti-tank lunge mines.

Download or read book East China Sea 1945 written by Brian Lane Herder and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-04-28 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study describes the air-sea offensive supporting the ground-force invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in February and April 1945, which led to the sinking of the Yamato and the onslaught of the Japanese kamikaze. During the Pacific War, the island invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa were the last two major ground campaigns. By the time these took place in early 1945, the US Navy had reached an exceptional level of coordination in its amphibious operations, and was able to overrun and subdue Japanese territories efficiently. Faced with the increasing might of these forces and to prevent further defeat, Imperial Japan deployed its kamikaze aircraft and attacked many US heavy aircraft carriers and destroyers; several were sunk, while others were knocked out of the war. This superbly illustrated book explores the air–sea aspects of the pivotal battles that took place, and includes the “death ride” of the Japanese battleship Yamato (the largest ever built), and the mass kamikaze attacks off Iwo Jima and Okinawa, as well as the Iwo Jima and Okinawa amphibious invasions and the naval and air bombardments of the two islands. It also considers the contribution of the USAAF and the British Pacific Fleet to the eventual victory of US air and ground forces.

Download or read book East China Sea 1945 written by Brian Lane Herder and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-04-28 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study describes the air-sea offensive supporting the ground-force invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in February and April 1945, which led to the sinking of the Yamato and the onslaught of the Japanese kamikaze. During the Pacific War, the island invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa were the last two major ground campaigns. By the time these took place in early 1945, the US Navy had reached an exceptional level of coordination in its amphibious operations, and was able to overrun and subdue Japanese territories efficiently. Faced with the increasing might of these forces and to prevent further defeat, Imperial Japan deployed its kamikaze aircraft and attacked many US heavy aircraft carriers and destroyers; several were sunk, while others were knocked out of the war. This superbly illustrated book explores the air–sea aspects of the pivotal battles that took place, and includes the “death ride” of the Japanese battleship Yamato (the largest ever built), and the mass kamikaze attacks off Iwo Jima and Okinawa, as well as the Iwo Jima and Okinawa amphibious invasions and the naval and air bombardments of the two islands. It also considers the contribution of the USAAF and the British Pacific Fleet to the eventual victory of US air and ground forces.

Download or read book Hell from the Heavens written by John Wukovits and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking toward the heavens, the destroyer crew saw what seemed to be the entire Japanese Air Force assembled directly above. Hell was about to be unleashed on them in the largest single-ship kamikaze attack of World War II. On April 16, 1945, the crewmen of the USS Laffey were battle hardened and prepared. They had engaged in combat off the Normandy coast in June 1944. They had been involved in three prior assaults of enemy positions in the Pacific-at Leyte and Lingayen in the Philippines and at Iwo Jima. They had seen kamikazes purposely crash into other destroyers and cruisers in their unit and had seen firsthand the bloody results of those crazed tactics. But nothing could have prepared the crew for this moment-an eighty-minute ordeal in which the single small ship was targeted by no fewer than twenty-two Japanese suicide aircraft. By the time the unprecedented attack on the Laffey was finished, thirty-two sailors lay dead, more than seventy were wounded, and the ship was grievously damaged. Although she lay shrouded in smoke and fire for hours, the Laffey somehow survived, and the gutted American warship limped from Okinawa's shore for home, where the ship and crew would be feted as heroes. Using scores of personal interviews with survivors, the memoirs of crew members, and the sailors' wartime correspondence, historian and author John Wukovits breathes life into the story of this nearly forgotten historic event. The US Navy described the kamikaze attack on the Laffey "as one of the great sea epics of the war." In Hell from the Heavens, the author makes the ordeal of the Laffey and her crew a story for the ages.

Download or read book The Last Century of Sea Power Volume 2 written by H. P. Willmott and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-22 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An important contribution . . . a thoughtful account of the years preceding the Second World War and, at much greater length, of the war itself.” —History In this second volume of his history of naval power in the 20th century, H. P. Willmott follows the fortunes of the established seafaring nations of Europe along with two upstarts—the United States and Japan. Emerging from World War I in command of the seas, Great Britain saw its supremacy weakened through neglect and in the face of more committed rivals. Britain’s grand Coronation Review of 1937 marked the apotheosis of a sea power slipping into decline. Meanwhile, Britain’s rivals and soon-to-be enemies were embarking on significant naval building programs that would soon change the nature of war at sea in ways that neither they nor their rivals anticipated. By the end of a new world war, the United States had taken command of two oceans, having placed its industrial might behind technologies that further defined the arena of naval power above and below the waves, where stealth and the ability to strike at great distance would soon rewrite the rules of war and of peace. This splendid volume further enhances Willmott’s stature as the dean of naval historians. Praise for The Last Century of Sea Power series “The author, dean of naval historians, provides a sweeping look at, and analysis of, the transformation of naval power . . . Wilmott is fearless in his judgments.” —Seapower “H. P. Willmott is the finest naval historian and among the finest historians of any discipline writing today.” —Bernard D. Cole, author of The Great Wall at Sea

Download or read book Three Minutes Off Okinawa written by Roy S. Andersen and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book US Navy Ships vs Kamikazes 1944 45 written by Mark Stille and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-22 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ineffectiveness of conventional air attacks on US Navy surface ships, particularly heavily defended targets like carrier task groups, forced the Japanese to re-evaluate their tactics in late 1944. The solution they arrived at was simple – crash their aircraft into American ships. This notion of self-sacrifice fit well within the Japanese warrior psyche and proved terrifying to the American sailors subjected to it. These tactics brought immediate results, and proved effective until the end of the war. This book examines this terrifying new way of waging war, revealing how the US Navy was forced to adapt its tactics and deploy new weapons to counter the threat posed by kamikaze attacks, as well as assessing whether the damage caused to American naval strength by the loss of so many pilots and aircraft actually had a material impact.

Download or read book Desperate Sunset written by Mike Yeo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-26 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the middle of 1944, Imperial Japan's armed forces were in an increasingly desperate situation. Its elite air corps had been wiped out over the Solomons in 1942–43, and its navy was a shadow of the force that had attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. But the Japanese had one last, desperate, card to play. The Japanese High Command decided that the way to inflict maximum damage on the superior enemy forces was to get the poorly trained Japanese pilots to crash their explosive-laden aircraft onto their target, essentially turning themselves into a guided missile. The kamikazes announced themselves in the immediate aftermath of the Leyte Gulf naval battles, sinking the USS St. Lo and damaging several other ships. The zenith of the kamikaze came in the battle of Okinawa, which included ten kikusui (Floating Chrysanthemum) operations which involved up to several hundred aircraft attacking the US fleet. Fully illustrated throughout, Desperate Sunset examines the development and evolution of the kamikaze using first-hand accounts, combat reports and archived histories.

Download or read book Fire From the Sky written by Robert C. Stem and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2010-03-17 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By late 1944 the war in the Pacific had turned decisively against the Japanese, and overwhelming Allied forces began to close in on the home islands. At this point Japan unveiled a terrifying new tactic: the suicide attack, or Kamikaze, named after the Divine Wind which had once before, in medieval times, saved Japan from invasion. Intentionally crashing bomb-laden aircraft into Allied warships, these piloted guided missiles at first seemed unstoppable, calling into question the naval strategy on which the whole war effort was based.This book looks at the origins of the campaign, at its strategic goals, the organization of the Japanese special attack forces, and the culture that made suicide not just acceptable, but honourable. Inevitably, much mythology has grown up around the subject, and the book attempts to sort the wheat from the chaff. One story that does stand up is the reported massive stock-piling of kamikaze aircraft for use against any Allied invasion of the home islands, if the atomic bombs had not forced Japans surrender.However, its principal focus is on the experience of those in the Allied fleets on the receiving end of this peculiarly alien and unnerving weapon how they learnt to endure and eventually counter a threat whose potential was over-estimated, by both sides. In this respect, it has a very modern resonance.

Download or read book World War II Kamikazes written by Earle Rice and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the events and personalities that were instrumental in Japan's adoption of kamikazi missions in World War II.

Download or read book Memoirs of a Kamikaze written by Kazuo Odachi and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) Winner** An incredible, untold story of survival and acceptance that sheds light on one of the darkest chapters in Japanese history. This book tells the story of Kazuo Odachi who--in 1943, when he was just 16 years-old--joined the Imperial Japanese Navy to become a pilot. A year later, he was unknowingly assigned to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps--a group of airmen whose mission was to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes into enemy ships. Their callsign was "ten dead, zero alive." By picking up Memoirs of a Kamikaze, readers will experience the hardships of fighter pilot training--dipping and diving and watching as other trainees crash into nearby mountainsides. They'll witness the psychological trauma of coming to terms with death before each mission, and breathe a sigh of relief with Odachi when his last mission is cut short by Japan's eventual surrender. They'll feel the anger at a government and society that swept so much of the sacrifice under the rug in its desperation to rebuild. Odachi's innate "samurai spirit" carried him through childhood, WWII and his eventual life as a kendo instructor, police officer and detective. His attention to detail, unwavering self-discipline and impenetrably strong mind were often the difference between life and death. Odachi, who is now well into his nineties, kept his Kamikaze past a secret for most of his life. Seven decades later, he agreed to sit for nearly seventy hours of interviews with the authors of this book--who know Odachi personally. He felt it was his responsibility to finally reveal the truth about the Kamikaze pilots: that they were unsuspecting teenagers and young men asked to do the bidding of superior officers who were never held to account. This book offers a new perspective on these infamous suicide pilots. It is not a chronicle of war, nor is it a collection of research papers compiled by scholars. It is a transcript of Odachi's words.