Kamikaze

By the latter half of 1944, the Imperial Japanese Navy had lost most of its remaining fleet and aircraft, leaving the home islands exposed to American naval and air power. Desperate for a response, the navy turned to "special attack" units, a polite term for suicide missions. The first of these used ordinary planes loaded with high-explosive bombs, hastily modified and flown into American warships. Known as the Kamikaze, or "Divine Wind," these units first fought in 1944 and became a serious threat to the US fleet during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945.

The success of these attacks encouraged Japan's armed forces to design a wider range of special attack weapons. The book opens with the early kamikaze aircraft missions but concentrates on the purpose-built weapons developed in 1944. These include the Ohka, a rocket-powered guided missile, and the Kaiten, a crewed torpedo submarine. It also looks at more specialised suicide weapons, such as the anti-tank lunge mine.

Much of the material comes from US intelligence reports and photographs gathered after the war. These sources are little known and have rarely been published.