Air Campaign #: The Kamikaze Campaign 1944-45

Imperial Japan's last throw of the dice

Air Campaign #: The Kamikaze Campaign 1944-45
Adam Tooby, Mark Lardas
RRP:
NZ$ 48.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 40.42
Paperback
h248 x 184mm - 96pg
26 May 2022 UK
International import eta 10-19 days
9781472848444
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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.

"Big Week" 1944: Operation Argument and the breaking of the Jagdwaffe
Air Campaign: Sink the Tirpitz 1942-44: The RAF and Fleet Air Arm Duel with Germany's Mighty Battleship
Air Campaign: Six-Day War 1967: Operation Focus and the 12 hours that changed the Middle East
Arctic Convoys 1942: The Luftwaffe cuts Russia's lifeline
Battle of Berlin 1943-44: Bomber Harris' Gamble to End the War
Battle of the Atlantic 1939-41: RAF Coastal Command's Hardest Fight Against the U-boats
Battle of the Atlantic 1942-45: The climax of World War II's greatest naval campaign
D-Day 1944: The deadly failure of Allied heavy bombing on June 6
Desert Storm 1991: The most shattering air campaign in history
Gothic Line 1944-45: The USAAF Starves out the German Army
Guadalcanal 1942-43: Japan's Bid to Knock Out Henderson Field and the Cactus Air Force
Ho Chi Minh Trail 1964-73: Steel Tiger, Barrel Roll, and the secret air wars in Vietnam and Laos
Holland 1940: The Luftwaffe's first setback in the West
Italian Blitz 1940-43, The: Bomber Command's War Against Mussolini's Cities, Docks and Factories
Japan 1944-45: LeMay's B-29 Strategic Bombing Campaign
Kamikaze Campaign 1944-45, The: Imperial Japan's last throw of the dice
Legion Condor 1936-39: The Luftwaffe Develops Blitzkrieg in the Spanish Civil War
Malaya and Dutch East Indies 1941-42: Japan's air power shocks the world
Malta 1940-42: The Axis' Air Battle for Mediterranean Supremacy
Norway 1940: The Luftwaffe's Scandinavian Blitzkrieg
Oil Campaign 1944-45, The: Draining the Wehrmacht's lifeblood
Operation Crossbow 1944: Hunting Hitler's V-weapons
Operation Linebacker I 1972: The First High-Tech Air War
Ploesti 1943: The great raid on Hitler's Romanian oil refineries
Rabaul 1943-44: Reducing Japan's Great Island Fortress
Rolling Thunder 1965-68: Johnson's Air War Over Vietnam
Ruhr 1943, The: The RAF's Brutal Fight for Germany's Industrial Heartland
Schweinfurt-Regensburg 1943: Eighth Air Force's Costly Early Daylight Battles
Sinking Force Z 1941: The day the Imperial Japanese Navy killed the battleship
Stalingrad Airlift 1942-43: The Luftwaffe's broken promise to Sixth Army
Truk 1944-45: The destruction of Japan's Central Pacific bastion

Mark Lardas holds a degree in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, but spent his early career at the Johnson Space Center doing Space Shuttle structural analysis, and space navigation. An amateur historian and a long-time ship modeler, Mark Lardas currently lives and works in League City, Texas. He has written extensively about modeling as well as naval, maritime, and military history.

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