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This Japanese Rocket-Powered Manned Missile Struck Horror into Allied Sailors in WWII

It's important to understand the pilots of the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka piloted anti-ship missiles were not just trained soldiers who craved death more than we desire life. They were real human beings with wives, families, children, emotions, and ambitions, just like you or I.
Okha Bomb 8 photos
Photo: National Museum of the United States Air Force
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They were simply caught up in a global conflict that even today can be challenging to understand. Even so, the sheer savagery of what Imperial Japan designated "Okha," Japanese for cherry blossom, reached a speed not yet seen in warfare.

Any justification for a military force to be so desperate that it deems suicide missions appropriate probably sounds strange, perhaps even alien to people with modern sensibilities. But from late 1944 to 1945, Imperial Japan was in very dire straights indeed. Japanese forces had failed to contain the Allied Pacific Island hopping campaign.

Whether at Guadalcanal, Midway, the Doolittle Raids, Saipan, or Leyte Gulf, the combined forces of American, British, Australian, Phillipino, and Chinese manpower ran rough shot over the Japanese Navy for a year after bloody year between early 1942 and early 1945.

At the heart of this assault was the might of the United States Navy's Pacific Fleet. An armada of more than ten aircraft carriers, dozens of battleships, cruisers, submarines, destroyers, and their escorts. All backed by air support from fast and deadly fighters like the Vought F4U Corsair and Grumman F6F Hellcat.

Okha Bomb
Photo: National Museum of the USAF
In the days before the first atomic bomb test, both sides of the Pacific conflict anticipated a mainland invasion of Japan was inevitable. With a naval fleet that intimidating, Imperial forces decided something novel and terrifying was needed to neutralize the incoming allied naval threat.

The term "Kamikaze attack" is an icon of post-war global culture. But during the war, the notion that an enemy pilot could strap himself into his airplane and set their sights directly at your home ship with no return ticket must have seemed preposterous. The Allied powers of the Pacific had to learn quickly and with great pain and suffering that Imperial Japan was not beneath this drastic measure.

It started with simple piston-engined fighter and dive bomber attacks in the late summer of 1944. It was when these alone proved too vulnerable to fighter attacks that a radial new weapon was constructed. The Cherry Blossom manned missile has a shape that generally mimics a long cigar with the cockpit sitting between the wings and the twin rudders.

The only Okha variant to see combat was the early Type 11 variant. This type used an airframe consisting of a long tubular fuselage made of the thinnest aluminum possible. The wings were made of Japanese Red Pinewood to save weight. The only purpose the pilot served was to ignite the triple Type 4 Mark 1 Model 20 solid-propellant rocket motor arrangement in the rear of the aircraft and steer the most very basic of control surfaces into allied
ships.

Okha Bomb
Photo: Google Creative Commons (Fair Use)
With a combined power output of 1764 pounds of thrust (7846.6 nM, 10,462 hp), this featherweight aircraft no heavier than a crossover SUV could dive to speeds exceeding 500 miles per hour ( 804 kph) when dropped from any number of different Japanese twin-engined bombers.

The Okha manned missile saw the most use attacking Allied shipping off the coast of Okinawa. Notably, the Japanese carrier transporting the first batch of Okhas was sunk by American Submarines. Okha attacks damaged a handful of American and British ships, but none ever sunk their targets.

They were responsible for dozens of casualties, including damaging the destroyer USS Hugh W. Hadley beyond repair. Even so, post-war analysis of the Okha program was deemed negligible at best and a complete and total failure at worst.
Upgraded models with metal wings and better engines never saw combat before a Soviet invasion, and two nuclear bombs brought the war to a close. The Okha earned a nickname among the Allies before the end of the war, christening them as "Baka Bombs," Baka being an offensive Japanese word roughly translating to "idiot."

Okha Bomb
Photo: National Museum of the USAF
Today, surviving examples of the Okha are on display in museums both in Japan and elsewhere across the globe. One bright orange Okha trainer is displayed alongside other oddities from the war at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Check out more from our trip to that museum right here on autoevolution.
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Editor's note: Gallery also contains self-taken photos used with permission from the National Museum of the Unites States Air Force.

 

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