Well, it’s snowing like crazy outside and I’ve decided to not clean the driveway in shifts, but just wait for it to quit… which leaves me some time to either do nothing (I’m really good at it) or to just ponder some things, like how does the guy that drives the snowplow get to work in the morning? Or why if you sit up or sit down, its the same? Or is it further to Chicago or by bus?
Anyhow, there are a lot of life’s little mysteries — in keeping with the World War II theme of my last update one has been asked and discussed hundreds or thousands of times is why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
For those of you not old enough to be familiar with kamikaze, that was the name given to a small group of Japanese pilots in World War II whose sole purpose was to carry out suicide missions. Most people believe that most Japanese pilots flew their missions for the purpose of ramming into enemy targets — much like the terrorists did at the World Trade Center. Actually, Japan had a small, special group of pilots trained for suicide or kamikaze missions (kamikaze means godly or “divine winds in Japanese.)
Sometimes Japanese pilots, when unable to complete their missions or suffered damage to their airplanes, ran out of ammo, or for some reason couldn’t return to their base, would try to inflict as much damage as they could by ramming their aircraft into a target. These instances were often called kamikaze attacks, but technically kamikaze only refers to the missions that were specifically planned suicide missions.
But back to the question — technically, they didn’t wear helmets. They wore leather “flight caps” that covered their head and ears. These kept the pilots from getting too cold or going deaf when they flew with their cockpit canopies open as they often did to get a better view when taking off, landing or looking for landmarks. They also held the airplane’s radio earphones and offered some protection against banging their heads against the canopy.
Even though kamikaze pilots didn’t technically wear helmets, I can see why, in case their suicide mission was unsuccessful, they’d want to protect them for another attempt. There weren’t many pilots skilled enough to slam a Mitsubishi Zero into an aircraft carrier. They needed to be able to fly above the cloud layer, gauge correctly where the boat or target was, then sweep out of the clouds to hit the ship (or target) before the anti aircraft battery shot them down. If you have a pilot with those skills, you want to at least protect him the best you can before he kills himself.
But seriously, this is a dumb question….
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