D. The Effectiveness of Kamikaze Tactics.
As the Japanese had predicted, the kamikaze attacks did adversely affect on American morale. The number of mental disease cases in the U.S. Navy from 9.5 per thousand in 1941, to 14.2 per thousand in 1944. In his report to the Secretary of the Navy, Fleet Admiral King attributed this increase to "the increase in tempo of modern war with its grueling, unfamiliar horrors." In contrast to Japan's hope, however, America's will to fight grew stronger despite the horrors of Kamikaze tactics.
Although the Kamikaze pilots did not break the American will they inflicted more damage than the pilots who engaged in conventional tactics. At the battle for Okinawa for example, the U.S. Navy incurred more combat casualties than the Army and Marine Corps did ashore because of these Kamikazes. The destructive effect to the allied fleet ships was approximately eight times greater for suicide tactics than conventional aircraft attack methods. This figure was a testament to both the failures of the conventional pilots and the large volume (over 3,800 at Okinawa) of Kamikaze pilots. The destructive impact of the Kamikaze was costly as "No more than 1 to 3 percent of the suicide pilots actually hit Allied warships."
Americans quickly adopted measures to counter the Kamikazes through improved detection and gunnery skills. Additionally, during this period deep battles destroyed more than 50 percent of the Japanese aircraft on the ground.
The combination of allied counter measures and destruction of Japanese aircraft rendered the Kamikaze tactic ineffective in stopping allied advancement.
[Commander of Japan's First Air Fleet, Vice Admiral Takajiro] Onishi viewed the Kamikaze attack for what it was, a desperate act. He supported and developed these unprecedented squadrons as a temporary tactic to slow the American advance and give the Japanese Army and Navy a chance to recover from its defeats. Onishi had a clear hope that the employment of the Kamikaze would ultimately save more lives than it would lose. He quickly realized the ineffectiveness of the Kamikaze to achieve operational success but did nothing to end the use of this tactic. Instead he allowed Tokyo to continue to believe that Kamikazes could win the war for Japan, an idea he helped create through inflated battle damage reports.
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