This a thinly-veiled slap in the face to all the people that fought the Axis, as well as those that died or lost someone during that fight.
You are trying to politicize a strict economic reasoning: how many deaths would it have cost to defeat the USSR in 1947 instead of waiting for it to be ruined and the wall to fall?
Would Japan have not surrendered after the atomic attacks over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the Allies would have been forced to land on the Japanese home islands.
There were plans to carry out the invasion in two phases. The first step, known as ‘Operation Olympic’, aimed to occupy the south of Kyushu Island and should start on November 1st. The second one, ‘Operation Coronet’, would have consisted of landings on Honshu Island, to control the Tokyo plain, and it was planned for March 1946. The whole plan, ‘Operation Downfall’, required 5,000,000 men, 3,000 ships, 66 aircraft carriers, loaded with 2,649 aircraft, and all the airplanes in the 7th, 8th and 10th Army Air Forces. Casualties were expected to be extremely heavy. A study requested by U.S. Navy Secretary estimated that conquering Japan would cost between 1.7 and 4 million casualties including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities and the destruction of 800 Allied ships.
The Japanese High Command understood that human losses were the Achilles’ heel of democracies and decided that, after the failure of the
kamikaze tactics to stop the invasion of Okinawa, the number of casualties infringed to the enemy in Kyushu was high enough. They could still negotiate a peace by exhaustion and avoid the cost of a final battle at Honshu. Therefore, they forgot the idea of sinking aircraft carriers and battleships and turned their attention to the humble Landing Craft Vehicles (LCV).
At this point of time the Japanese were no more interested in sinking the big heavily armoured warships. The political circumstances were more favourable to the kind of war that caused a high number of casualties to the Allies. It was better to try and destroy the little protected troop transports with a warhead of just 250 kg.
During the most critical moments of the amphibious assault, dozens of slow and unstable boats, cramped with troops, vehicles, explosives and fuel, desperately tried to reach the beach under the enemy fire. Some were reached by the artillery but most of them survived. The Japanese thought that this pattern could be altered and devised all kind of defensive strategies to convert Kyushu in a swamp of blood. They took advantage of the three-to-two local numeric superiority of the Japanese army and mobilized the civil population to perform
banzai charges.
At the sea, the 40 surviving submarines of the IJN waited their opportunity. Many
Shinyo suicide motorboats, loaded with 250 kg of explosive, got ready in caves and coastal refugees. It would have been more than enough to destroy the Landing Ship Tank (LST).
Fukuryu divers would wait in submarine shelters built at 15 m of depth to attack the belly of the LCV with anti-tank hollow charges fixed to the end of long poles.
Having most of the interceptors at disposal busy defending the fleet, it was expected that just a few fighter-bombers of the Marines would operate at the landing area, attacking the coastal defences. In that scenario, a suicide attack by light bombers could cause much damage. Many training airplanes from the Flying Schools were modified to counteract that effect. They were Tachikawa Ki.9 and Yokosuka K5Y1 types with a bomb of 100 kg under the fuselage or with a single 200 litres drums full of gasoline and phosphorous, embedded in the rear seat.
The defensive plan of the Japanese High Command (Operation
Ketsu-Go) included the use of the 12,725 airplanes available in one single and uninterrupted attack with the purpose of collapsing the defences of the Allied fleet. A force of 2,000 IJA and IJN Japanese fighters would battle to control the skies over Kyushu Island. While the Allied fleet would still be in open sea and approaching Japan, the warships of the Task Force would be attacked by 330 IJN suicide bombers, then a group of 825 IJA and IJN suicide airplanes would try to sink the troop transports.
Once the invasion ships got close to their proposed anchorages, another 2,000 suicide aircrafts would be launched hour after hour in nonstop attacks which the Japanese hoped could be sustained for 10 days. Thirty-five camouflaged airfields and nine seaplane bases had been built in Kyushu to that purpose. The Japanese also had 20 suicide take off strips with underground hangars, from where the Ki.115
Tsurugi and
Baika Model 1 suicide bombers could operate.
They were also building 20 suicide take off strips in Southern Kyushu, with underground hangars for the
Baikas and
Tsurugis, as well as 35 camouflaged airfields for the conventional
Tokko airplanes and nine seaplane bases. There were 2,500
kamikaze aircrafts in Korea, Honshu and Shikoki airfields ready for ten days of non-stop attacks that would exhaust the defensive resources of the invading fleet and the loss of a third of their ships. But the decisive battle would be fought on the 2,000 yards of sea between the beach and the great supply vessels.
The
Ohka 43-
Otsu suicide bombers would use some straight railway sections and rocket-propelled trolleys to operate. It was very effective but had the handicap of using the new Ne-20 turbojet of which just a few units were available. The Ki.115 could use several types of second-hand conventional engines but it required 80 octane gasoline which was almost non-existent in Japan due to the naval blockade. On the other hand, the Ne-20 could work with a mixture of wood turpentine and charcoal, although the battered Japanese industry could not manufacture them in high numbers on time for
Ketsu-Go.
The Japanese scientists found the solution to this situation with the mass production of pulsejet engines based on the Argus As 109-014 scale drawings that the I-8 submarine had brought from Germany in 1943. The Japanese version, known as
Maru Ka-10 was designed by professors Ichiro Tami and Taichiro Ogawa of the Aeronautical Institute of Tokyo Imperial University in 1944. The
Maru Ka-10 was 3,750 mm long, had 550 mm of diameter and weighted 153 kg, producing 360 kg of thrust at 740 kph. It used Benzol as fuel during the flying tests, although it could also work with low quality oil or heavy kerosene. It was expected that the operational version would burn 1,600 lt of crude pine root oil that the local chemical industry produced as
ersatz fuel.
Japane did never receive the blueprints ofthe V-1 missile or for their manned variant
Reichenberg as the German submarine carrying them was sunk. They were forced to design their own version based in a general description of the German model. The result was a small low wing monoplane made from wood and steel, given the scarcity of aluminium. By the beginning of 1945 their mass production was ordered to the Kawanishi Kokuki K.K. firm, under the
Baika denomination.
The Kawanishi
Baika Model 1 took off from a conventional aerodrome reaching the ignition speed of the pulsejet (360 kph) thanks to the thrust of its three
Toku-Ro.1 Type 2 rockets with 600 kg of thrust, located in the wing roots and in the fuselage centreline. Its main undercarriage (from a Ki.115) and the rockets (from an
Ohka 43) were jettisoned after take-off.
The high rate of fuel consumption of the pulsejet allowed a range of just 204 km at the cruise speed of 556 kph at sea level. The Model 1 could only operate against troops transports located near the southern coast of Kyushu. To that purpose they planned to have a Type 97 warhead with 150 kg of Torpex H.E. (from a Type 91 mod.1 airborne torpedo) to impact under the ship waterline. The ‘Operation Olympic’ never happened thanks to the use of the nuclear bombs that put an end to the war saving a considerable amount of lives to both sides.
On 9 October 1945, the typhoon
Louise passed over the Okinawa Island, with winds of 150-220 kph and heavy seas with 9-11 m waves, causing serious damage to the Allies occupation forces based in Nakagusuku Wan, Amami Oshima, Nagasaki and Wakayama. A total of 12 ships, including six LST, were sunk, 222 grounded and 32 damaged beyond economical repair, and over 60 airplanes were damaged. In Okinawa almost all the food, medical supplies and 80 per cent of all buildings were destroyed with 183 personal casualties.
Would the war have not ended by early September, the tremendous storm would have caused serious damage to the Invasion Force, forcing the cancellation of the ‘Operation Olympic’.
The War against Japan could have become an early Vietnam.
