There weren't any Kamikazes at Pearl Harbor

[MrScorpio]

Ted Cruz thinks that there were Kamikazes at Pearl Harbor.

This man is a fucking moron.

[WCGreen]

1. I'm sure he believes that Godzilla attacked Tokyo in the 50's

[still_one]

2. Mothra my friend

[marble falls]

3. Tell me about it, the freak is my Senator.

[stevenleser]

4. OMG, thanks for letting us know about that gem.

I may use that one on my show next week in my hall of shame section.

[dballance]

5. I Know You Are Correct, Because I Love Studying History. For Your Own Sake Though...

You should add a link to some historical reference to back you up. Otherwise you'll end up getting all the people who don't know that Kamikazes were only part of the last-ditch efforts of the Japanese. They pretty much knew they'd lost and were just trying to exact as much damage as possible to forestall the looming invasion that the Allies were going to do before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

ON EDIT: Otherwise you might get some people making nasty comments about you sympathizing with the attack.

[JHB]

15. Here's Wikipedia because it's easy (and currently on topic)...

...but keep an eye out for members of the 101st Chairborne Division editing it to conform to Cruz, the way they did with Paul Revere and other Palin flubs.

Kamikaze aircraft were essentially pilot-guided explosive missiles, purpose-built or converted from conventional aircraft. Pilots would attempt to crash their aircraft into enemy ships in what was called a "Body Attack" (体当たり; 体当り, taiatari) in planes laden with some combination of explosives, bombs, torpedoes and full fuel tanks; accuracy was much better than a conventional attack, and the payload larger. A kamikaze could sustain damage which would disable a conventional attacker and still achieve its objective. The goal of crippling or destroying large numbers of Allied ships, particularly aircraft carriers, was considered to justify sacrificing pilots and aircraft.

These attacks, which began in October 1944, followed several critical military defeats for the Japanese. They had long lost aerial dominance due to outdated aircraft and the loss of experienced pilots. On a macroeconomic scale, Japan experienced a decreasing capacity to wage war, and a rapidly declining industrial capacity relative to the United States. The Japanese government expressed its reluctance to surrender. In combination, these factors led to the use of kamikaze tactics as Allied forces advanced towards the Japanese home islands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze

[Travelman]

18. Erm...

From your link:

Before the formation of kamikaze units, deliberate crashes had been used as a last resort when a pilot's plane was severely damaged and he did not want to risk being captured or he wanted to do as much damage to the enemy as possible since he was crashing anyway; this was the case in both the Japanese and Allied air forces. According to Axell and Kase, these suicides "were individual, impromptu decisions by men who were mentally prepared to die."[2] In most cases, there is little evidence that these hits were more than accidental collisions, of the kind that sometimes happen in intense sea-air battles. One example of this occurred on 7 December 1941 during the attack on Pearl Harbor. First Lieutenant Fusata Iida’s plane had been hit and was leaking fuel, when he apparently used it to make a suicide attack on Kaneohe Naval Air Station. Before taking off, he had told his men that if his plane was badly damaged he would crash it into a "worthy enemy target."[3]

While they weren't officially called kamikaze at the time, there actually were kamikaze attacks at Pearl Harbor. This Wiki citation is one, there were a couple of others (though IIRC they actually happened at Hickham Field, so technically they weren't at Pearl Harbor).

Anyone who has an interest in the history of what happened at Pearl Harbor, particularly in the mindsets of the Japanese commanders who put the plan in motion, should read Gordon Prange's At Dawn We Slept. It's incredibly exhaustive and thoroughly covers pretty much every imaginable aspect of the events of December 7, 1941.

[JHB]

19. If you want to take it to that level, acts of "If I'm going down I'm taking...

...a crapload of them with me" have been around for the entire history of warfare.

Yes, I've known about Iida's dive since reading Walter Lord's Day of Infamy sometime back when Jimmy Carter was president. And yes, "kamikaze" has become a colloquial term for just about any suicidal attack. What does that have to do with Cruz?

When Tailgunner Ted starts paying more attention to what does and does not constitute things like "socialist" or "communism", and stops accusing people of sedition just because they have a different political view, then I'll be more willing to cut him some slack on his looseness with other terminology.

[dballance]

23. And Right On Queue Travelman Proves Me Correct

Some day I'd like to be disappointed in these circumstances and not be proven correct. Nope, he didn't go with the sympathizer angle but still just had to get a useless, negative comment in there to try to refute you.

[stevenleser]

20. No. True Kamikaze attacks were deliberate and planned from before the pilot took off.

The pilots from the very beginning were trained to crash their planes into a ship. They were never going to fly back to their airfield under any circumstances. They knew when they took off it was a one way trip that ended with their death. That is not the same as what Lieutenant Iida did.

Iida intended to return to his carrier after the attack. That very fact makes his attack not a kamikaze attack.

[frylock]

6. ted cruz didn't believe that it was over when the germans bombed pearl harbor

[Kennah]

7. That's just plain mean. RIP Bluto.

[Major Nikon]

8. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

[JHB]

14. That's SENATOR Blutarsky to you!

What office does Cruz hold again?

Life imitates parody.

[pinboy3niner]

9. I thought Ted Cruz WAS a Kamikaze

He seems destined to go down in flames, all of his own doing. Isn't that a Kamikaze?

[JI7]

10. what exactly did he say ?

it's something he should be ridiculed for

[Javaman]

11. you mean ted cruz said something completely fucking stupid and monumentally

factually incorrect???? again.

that's my moronic senator you are talking about.

I pray that he's a one term wonder.

[slackmaster]

12. No, the Germans never had Kamikazes.

But they did use slave labor to build guided missiles, and not-so-guided ones.

[pampango]

17. That is what I had always thought, but they actually did - in the last week of the war.

The Leonidas Squadron, formally known as 5th Staffel of Kampfgeschwader 200 was a unit which was originally formed to fly the Fieseler Fi 103R (Reichenberg), a manned version of the V-1 flying bomb, in attacks in which the pilot was likely to be killed, or at best to parachute down at the attack site. The Reichenberg was never used in combat because Werner Baumbach, the commander of KG 200, and his superiors considered it an unnecessary waste of life and resources, and preferred to use the Mistel bomb, piloted from an aircraft which released it and returned, instead. However, from 17 April until 20 April 1945 (during the Battle of Berlin) thirty-five pilots of the Leonidas Squadron flew suicide sorties against Soviet bridges over the river Oder with little noticeable effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas_Squadron

Obviously this was nothing compared to the scale on which kamikazes were used by Japan. I just had never known that Germany did this even a little.

[rppper]

21. I just watched a history channel....

Last edited Thu Mar 7, 2013, 06:47 PM - Edit history (1)

Segment that dealt with Japanese and German "kamikazes" a few nights ago...seems Germany did have a dedicated air group towards the end of WWII that would crash their aircraft into allied bombers, but the pilot was supposed to bail out prior to the collision....there are a few recorded instances of this...I'll try to find a link...

Found it...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando_Elbe

[Recursion]

13. Two of my favorite drill instructor quotes from boot camp:

1. "We won at Pearl Harbor because we were prepared!"

2. "Nasty belligerent pigs like you are the reason the Russians beat us to the moon!"

(Yes, they know it's stupid; they're trying to make sure you can keep your composure when you hear stuff like that.)

[catnhatnh]

16. As an organized effort,no...

But as an individual initiative it occurred from the start;From Wiki



One example of this occurred on 7 December 1941 during the attack on Pearl Harbor. First Lieutenant Fusata Iida’s plane had been hit and was leaking fuel, when he apparently used it to make a suicide attack on Kaneohe Naval Air Station. Before taking off, he had told his men that if his plane was badly damaged he would crash it into a "worthy enemy target."[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze

[cthulu2016]

22. More Divine Wind from Cruz

[bluedigger]

24. What about the five midget submarines?

While not technically kamikazes, they were all on a one way trip. One submariner did survive to be captured, however.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_attack#Submarines