As early as 1942, Australian troops advancing along the
Kokoda Trail across the Owen Stanley Mountains, Papua-New Guinea, encountered
suicide snipers: volunteer rearguards lashed into the treetops. Similar tactics
were met with by US Marines on Tulagi and Guadalcanal in 1942. By the time of
the US landings at Cape Torokina, Bougainville, in November 1943, a
countermeasure had been found in the Doberman Pinschers of the 1st Marine Dog
Platoon, 2nd Marine Raider Division. After several months’ training, these
canine auxiliaries proved able to “point” snipers concealed in trees or bush.
Suicidal weapons and tactics also played a significant part
in Japanese anti-tank measures. Most island garrisons were short of heavy
artillery or shells, especially anti-tank guns – since tanks were used in
comparatively small numbers in most Pacific campaigns – and often resorted to
grenades and mines of improvised types that called for self-sacrifice by their
users. The IJA’s Type 99 Hakobakurai grenade-mine could either be placed in
advance as an anti-tank or anti-personnel trap or be thrown at an AFV, to
adhere by means of four magnets set around its canvas cover. When thrown,
however, it almost invariably bounced off, and many Japanese died in attempting
to approach tanks closely enough to affix magnetic charges by hand.
By 1943, Japanese infantry trained as tank-hunters were
often using either hollow-charge grenades effective only when thrown from
c.10yds (9m), or “satchel charges”, impact-fuzed explosives in a cloth bag
(naval troops sometimes used small depth charges in sacks) to be tossed on to or
thrust beneath a tank. Soldiers often strapped the charges to their bodies and
flung themselves beneath the tanks’ tracks. On Okinawa, the US 193rd Tank
Battalion assaulting the Shuri Line at Kakazu, 19 April 1945, lost 22 of the 30
tanks committed – six of them to the suicide assault squads of the IJA’s 272nd
Independent Infantry Battalion, who sacrificed themselves to place 22lb (10kg)
satchel charges beneath the Shermans’ bottom plates.
On Kwajalein, in February 1944, a US tank commander reported
an attack by five Japanese armed only with swords, who beat furiously on the
armour plating until all were shot down. Hardly more effective were the “human
bombs” encountered by British armour during the advance into Burma in 1944–45.
A Japanese soldier would crouch in a well-camouflaged fox-hole in a road or
track, with an artillery shell or aircraft bomb with an exposed impact-fuze in
its nose. He would attempt to detonate his charge with an improvised hammer as
a tank or truck passed above him.
In 1945, anti-tank units were advised by an IJA manual to
attack “with spiritual vigour and steel-piercing passion”. The weapon provided
was the “lunge mine”, a conical grenade mounted on a 5ft (1.5m) pole.
Approaching a tank, the soldier pulled out the safety pin separating the
striker at the pole’s end from the percussion cap. The pole was then wielded
like a bayoneted rifle, thrust against the armour plating, where the rods
projecting from the grenade’s head ensured a “stand-off” effect. As well as
destroying its user, the charge was claimed to penetrate up to 4–6in
(100–150mm) armour at 0ยบ, but details of its effectiveness are scanty.
An odd “tank-busting” project of the IJNAF must be
mentioned. Yokosuka planned to build, with the Mizumo company, a suicide weapon
based on the small, experimental MXY5 assault glider of 1941–42. This unpowered
aircraft would either make a rocket-assisted takeoff or, for longer-range
missions, be towed aloft by a “Frances” bomber. Its pilot was expected to
deliver an internally-mounted, impact-fuzed charge of c.220lb (100kg) with
pin-point accuracy in a steep dive on an enemy AFV. Only one prototype of this
Shinryu (“Divine Dragon”) glider-bomb was completed.
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