Day with a Difference - Aug 01, 2006

Today's Inspirational Quote:

Progress is the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow -Ralph Waldo Emerson

KamiKaze - World War II

Kamikaze is a word of Japanese origin, (pronounce kA´´mukA´zE) which in the English language usually refers to suicide attacks carried out by Imperial Japan's military aviators by crashing their planes into warships. In the Japanese language, kamikaze usually translated as "divine wind" (kami is the word for "god", and kaze for "wind"), came into being as the name of a legendary typhoon said to have saved Japan from a Mongol invasion fleet in 1281.

Japanese forces, after their defeat at the Battle of Midway in 1942, lost the momentum they had at the start. The task facing the Japanese air forces seemed totally impossible. The 1st Air Fleet commandant, Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi decided to form a suicide attack unit, the Kamikaze Special Attack Force. In a meeting at Magracut Airfield near Manila on October 19, Onishi, visiting the 201st Navy Flying Corps headquarters, suggested: "I don't think there would be any other certain way to carry out the operation [to hold the Philippines], than to put a 250 kg bomb on a Zero (carrier-based fighter planes) and let it crash into a U.S. carrier, in order to disable her for a week."

By the end of World War II, the Japanese naval air service had sacrificed 2,525 kamikaze pilots and the army air force had given 1,387. According to an official Japanese announcement, the missions sank 81 ships and damaged 195, and according to a Japanese tally, suicide attacks accounted for up to 80 percent of US losses in the final phase of the war in the Pacific.

Expand your knowledge base

"Squawks" - problem listings that pilots generally leave for maintenance crews. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by Air Force pilots and the replies from the maintenance crews.

Request: "Something loose in cockpit."
Response: "Something tightened in cockpit."

Request:"Dead bugs on windshield."
Response: "Live bugs on order."

Request:"Test flight OK, except autoland very rough."
Response:"Autoland not installed on this aircraft."

Have a memorable day!
Priya