The Year of the Kamikaze

摘要

As Japan entered the final year of World War Ⅱ in the fall of 1944, its once-fearsome air forces were severely diminished, especially the carriers and aircraft of the imperial Japanese navy. The Japanese had at first extended their perimeter in a big loop that encompassed Southeast Asia, the Dutch East Indies, Wake Island, and the tip of the Aleutian chain in the Bering Sea. The reversal began in 1942 with the loss of four aircraft carriers at Midway and continued to the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" in June 1944, where US forces gutted what was left of Japanese naval airpower and secured bases from which B-29 bombers could strike the Japanese home islands. The A6M Zero fighter had lost its quality edge to the US Navy's FGF Hellcat and F4U Corsair and the Army Air Force's P-38 Lightning. Experience and training levels fell as Japan's best pilots were killed in action.