Kamikaze

kamikaze (kä'məkä`zē) [Jap.,=divine wind], the typhoon that destroyed Kublai Khan's fleet, foiling his invasion of Japan in 1281. In World War II the term was used for a Japanese suicide air force composed of fliers who crashed their bomb-laden planes into their targets, usually ships. The kamikaze was first used extensively at Leyte Gulf and was especially active at Okinawa.

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kamikaze

Any of the Japanese pilots in World War II who made deliberate suicidal crashes into enemy targets, usually ships. The word means “divine wind,” a reference to a typhoon that dispersed a Mongol invasion fleet threatening Japan from the west in 1281. The practice was most prevalent in the final year of the war. Most kamikaze planes were ordinary fighter aircraft or light bombers, usually loaded with bombs or extra gasoline tanks before their suicidal dive. Such attacks sank 34 ships and damaged hundreds of others; at Okinawa they inflicted the greatest losses ever suffered by the U.S. Navy in a single battle, killing almost 5,000 men. See also Zero.

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kamikaze

(in World War II) one of a group of Japanese pilots who performed suicidal missions by crashing their aircraft, loaded with explosives, into an enemy target, esp a ship

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Kamikaze 

(Japanese, literally “wind of the gods”), a suicide pilot in the Japanese armed forces in World War II used to fight enemy surface ships in a single-action airplane. In addition to conventional aircraft flown by kamikaze, in 1945 the Japaneseair force had more than 5, 000 single-action airplanes called Bakathat carried explosive charges of up to 1 ton in their front end. The airplane, which had a small jet engine and a limited rangeof action, was directed by the kamikaze to the target, dived, andcrashed into it. More than 2, 500 suicide pilots died in combat inthe Pacific Ocean in 1944 and 1945.