ORIGINAL: Oleg MastrukoORIGINAL: neuromancer
so the Japanese fell in love with the concept.
Thanks for adding some bizarre humour to the thread [:D][:D]
[:)]
The Japanese had a real problem with when something worked (sinking a CVE in this case), they would run with it even when it stopped being nearly as effective.
It is seriously debatable if the Kamikazee was really more effective than using the same planes as they were intended to be used. There were a lot of planes to get relatively few hits.
But after the US figured it some counter-measures, they weren't nearly as good.
But - apart from furious barrage of AA fire - there were NO really effective, kamikaze-specialised counter measures. I've read accounts of some US admirals who said that luckily for all war ended *before* any effective counter measure for kamikazes was invented. And something to the tune of paraphrasing famous Churchill quote "the only thing I was ever afraid were the subs" (insert kamikazes instead of subs).
Yes and no.
It was hard to stop entirely, this is true. But what worked very well was picket ships.
Admittedly the 'Polish Minesweeper' method (no offense to any Poles that may be reading) but it did more or less work.
As I said, the Divine Wind (fart of the Emperor?) tended to attack the first thing they saw. To return from a mission (period) was a sign of failure. So they would fly along and dive at the first ship they saw was a great way to succeed at the mission without losing honour. What it was not, was militarily meaningful.
As geozero pointed out, few Capitol ships were hit by them. Mostly they were Destroyers or smaller. The pickets.
I don't know if the pickets were organized specifically as 'trip wires' for the Kamikazees (I know military practice is to have picket ships anyway, but they could have had fewer ships, and mostly smaller ones for the Kamikazees to go after).
The dual advantage of smaller ships for the Kamikazees to dive after is that they would be harder to hit, being smaller, faster, and more agile. And if they did get hit, fewer people died, and the ship was easily replaced (the bloody economics of war).
I am sad to note that kamikaze attacks seem favorite, and nigh on unstoppable tactics of today's terrorists as well.
Circumstances are right for them.
But all this may *still* not be enough to warrant any special rules within the scope of this game, that much I agree with.
This game works with abstract values, and that's its beuty. Geo asked recently whether "jet aircraft" are modelled. They're not modelled as such, but any advanced aircraft in the game may be considered "jet" if that makes the player happy. If you build tank unit with attack factor 9 or 10, you're free to imagine it's Tiger. So, if Japanese player manages to research anti ship attack to 4 or 5 by '45, he can imagine it's dedicated kamikaze unit and that's it [:D]
O.
True, true.
Which is why the idea of just adding a few air groups to represent activating anything that could fly is reasonable, but without any special rules. As I said, technically these should be low quality units (barely trained pilots in mostly obsolete aircraft), but that would be a pain to code specially, so just activate 2 or 3 fee units, and call it a day.
War winner? Hardly. But it would probably be annoying.
