War is a time of extreme measures and no doubt one of them took shape in Fieseler Fi103. The following website brings a special report containing an amazing collection of photos of this German design tested by the Luftwaffe in the final years of World War II. To access the photos, visit the link below:
http://aviacaoemfloripa.blogspot.com.br/2011/01/um-bomba-voadora-tripulada-e-suicida.html
Best Regards!
This is a suicidal plane?
The Germans are not characteristic of this warfare under ww2, rather the Japanese troops made suicid missions
The Japanese Military was far more involved in “suicide” weapons than the other Axis members, but Germany did have a program of training pilots to ram Allied Bombers. Called Sonderkommando “Elbe” the planes were fitted differently than normal fighters, as they were expendable, so unneeded equipment was removed to save resources. I have no statistics to show how many of the the pilots involved in this program died as a result, but it probably wasn’t a high percentage. Not exactly a suicide plane, but pretty close.
Alas, I don’t have references with me any more, but I recall that very early in the Pacific War there were instances of American pilots in extremis intentionally ramming Japanese planes or (less sure on this) ships.
It’s certainly my recollection from much reading that the first ‘kamikaze’ pilots in the Pacific War, in the sense of intentionally sacrificing themselves by using their planes as weapons, were Americans.
Anyone who has been in a desperate fight for something very important could probably understand the willingness to sacrifice all, and much more so when imbued with America’s national spirit against Japan at the time.
The difference between the early few American ‘suicide’ pilots and the very much later and very many Japanese ‘suicide’ pilots (a surprising number of whom survived the war, which says so much about Japan’s war management), was that the American pilots seemed to be occasional individuals who had decided to give their all contrary to the general principles and orders governing their conduct, while the Japanese were trained for their tasks in accordance with Japan’s approach to the war who conformed with Japan’s general principles and conduct that everyone should give their all.
There isn’t anything conclusive to infer from these differences about the characteristics of Americans and Japanese at the time, particularly as America’s industrial might beat Japan, apart from wondering about the failure of the Japanese militarists’ spirit (‘Chi’ and its variants in Japan and Asia) which was supposed to overcome the effete Americans and their Western allies.
Who was that american who rammed entire ship?