The Ta-Gō – Japan’s Last-Ditch Kamikaze

as the japanese military was ground down in the bloody battles of the pacific war they took ever more desperate actions to try and stem the flow of defeat probably the most famous of these was the adoption of the kamikaze suicide attack beginning in october 1944 japanese pilots many assigned to dedicated units would seek to crash their bomb laden aircraft directly into enemy ships the thinking was brutally logical the loss of a single aircraft and pilot could result in the deaths of dozens possibly hundreds of enemy additionally the targeted vessel would be severely damaged possibly destroyed and so the japanese began to use kamikazes on mass initially these were existing aircraft that were already in squadron service but the numbers of such planes were finite especially considering the heavy losses that the japanese had already endured something had to be done urgently to make sure that japan's defenders had aircraft for them to mount their suicide attacks the most famous of these efforts was the yokosuka oka this rocket-powered aircraft was essentially an anti-ship missile with a human guidance system almost impossible to stop the occurs were potentially extremely dangerous but they never quite lived up to their promise only sinking or damaging a handful of ships in the last stages of the war and though designed to minimize the use of rapidly vanishing strategic materials the occurs still required some complex manufacturing plus they needed to use a mother plane to be carried towards the target before launch as these often got shot down before they even got within range to attack the occurs limitations were all too apparent to the japanese who plan to remedy them with jet engine installations naturally these would have been even more expensive to build especially in precious materials but while the occur was being developed one japanese officer was working on the problem from the other direction how to make kamikazes as cheap as possible in late 1944 realizing that the allies would soon be landing in japan captain yosuyuka mizuyama of the imperial japanese army recognised the requirement he set about designing a simple cheap and easily produced plane that needed the bare minimum of materials for use by kamikaze units initially he approached the tachikawa aircraft company in the hopes that they would be interested in his concept and design but they had enough on their plate already plus mizuyama's aircraft had no official state backing meaning resources could hardly be squandered on it undeterred the captain rented a small workshop in tachikawa and along with enthusiastic helpers began building his own prototype the first targo dedicated kamikaze aircraft true to his idea this aircraft was built with a wooden framework plywood skin and fabric coverings for the control surfaces the landing gear was fixed and the aircraft was to be powered by a hitachi ha-13 nine-cylinder radial that produced 450 horsepower armament was to be a single 500 kilogram bomb that would be fixed to the aircraft and couldn't be dropped the closest thing to an extravagance on the aircraft was the full pilot canopy which was to be fully glazed however not a lot else is known about this original aircraft because it was destroyed in a bombing raid in february 1945. not being put off mizuyama then approached the kokusai corporation with his idea this company made several types of light aircraft for the japanese military and liked the concept very much but they thought it needed to be even lighter and cheaper bolstered by this support mizuyama went back to the drawing board and by june 1945 he had his prototype ready for testing if his first attempt was modest this aircraft was cheap as chips the engine was now a hitachi ha-47 driving a two-blade wooden propeller this inline air called four cylinder produced 110 horsepower and was about as simple to make as could be of course this cut in power meant the targo was now a lot smaller the aircraft had a wingspan of 8.9 meters just over 29 feet and was 7.4 meters long 24 feet 4 inches it was also much lighter with a maximum takeoff weight of 1290 pounds 565 kilograms and this included the payload now a single 100 kilogram bomb fixed to the aircraft performance was as you'd expect extremely limited the targo had a top speed of 120 miles per hour and range was around 93 miles or 150 kilometers i don't know if that's with the bomb or not i suspect i'm late the pilot now sat in an open cockpit only having a small windshield in front of him construction was as simple as could be being almost entirely wooden and extremely boxy rather than streamlined with only things like the engine mounting being made of metal the only instruments were a compass speedometer altimeter and fuel and oil gauges there was no fuel pump instead the tank was mounted above the engine and used the gravity feed but though simplicity was paramount one feature was built in for the aircraft's unique tactical usage folding wings this was added because it was thought that this would allow more aircraft to be built by taking up less space in the factories but primarily it was included as it was envisaged that the targos could be hidden in small buildings or even caves before being bought out to launch surprise attacks on the 25th of june 1945 the aircraft made its first flight the test pilot reported that the handling was poor somewhat understandable because the targo was built more like a shed than an aircraft he made some recommendations and mizuyama and his team went back to tweaking the design apparently several more test flights were conducted as well as some other design proposals on which no information seems to exist anymore apart from their code names but then in august 1945 the united states dropped atomic bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki and that was the end of the war which was truth be told probably fortunate for the prospective pilots of the targo after all by that point much faster and more powerful aircraft converted for kamikaze use were generally being hacked out of the sky by the defenses of the united states fleets it seems unlikely that the slow and unarmored targos would have been able to make much of a dent in that protection of course had they actually been in a position to build and man substantial numbers of targos then perhaps swarm attacks may have been able to get some attackers through and inflict some damage indeed if the okas were one of the first anti-ship missiles perhaps the targos could have been the early equivalent of the drone swarm attacks that are currently being studied but it was not to be and the targo has vanished into history and almost completely forgotten aircraft

Channel: Ed Nash's Military Matters

Views: 73,491

Rating: 4.9643846 out of 5

Keywords: Ta-Gō, Ta-Go, Kamikaze aircraft, WW2, Second World War, World War Two, Yokosuka Okha., Yoshiyuka Mizuyama, Tachikawa, Hitachi, Kokusai, forgotten aircraft

Id: pOCQlckYHb8

Length: 7min 21sec (441 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2021