Wings Comics - Kamikaze
Wings Publishing
Co., Fall 1952, No. 117, 36 pages
This comic book, published during the Korean War in the fall of 1952,
contains a four-page story about Japan's kamikaze attacks in the last
months of World War II. The comic book's other five stories all deal with Korean
War battles, and even the story entitled "Kamikaze" starts with a
dogfight over North Korea in 1952 and then flashes back to the last big air
battle before the jet era.
"Kamikaze," written by Lt. Commander Bill Watson of the U.S. Navy,
has no real plot, and the comic describes the kamikaze attacks by the
Japanese only in general terms. The last page shows a kamikaze plane hitting a
destroyer with the number 802, which reflects true history even though the
comic does not mention the ship's name. A kamikaze plane hit the destroyer USS
Gregory (DD-802) on April 8, 1945, but the ship's gunners succeeded in
downing two other kamikaze planes. The damage caused by the kamikaze crash into Gregory
knocked the ship out for the rest of the war.
The motivations of Japanese kamikaze pilots remain unknown in this story
other than their desire to take as many Americans with them as they could. The
author, who refers to the kamikazes as "flying dead men," presents an
objective history of Japan's suicide attacks, but the details remain vague. A
Japanese plane is shown about ready to hit the carrier Franklin, but in
real history a plane dropped two bombs on the ship and did not crash
into her.
The final page explains that the kamikazes "chalked up a pretty good
score," but the Americans shot down so many that the Japanese finally ran
out of planes. The comic ends quite abruptly in the final frame with the
dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
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Kamikaze plane
heading
toward USS Gregory (DD-802)
| Kamikaze pilot
hit
by American fighter
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