Japanese Guided Missiles in World War II

Abstract

WORLD War II produced many new types of weapons, several of which have effected revolutionary changes in the nature of combat. These include a host of aerial innovations, radar, proximity fuses, automatic computers, shaped charges, and so on. Outstanding among them all, however, are two particular weapons which have widened the scope of war: the operational guided missile and the atomic bomb. Both weapons involve such radical departures from accepted means of offense and defense that they require an entirely new concept of armed internal conflict. Germany began her guided missile research in prewar days and, during the war, introduced and used many and varied types of missile weapons. These included the Henschel Hs 293 series, the Fritz X, Rheintochter, Schmetterling, Wasserfall, V-l, V-2, and others. Germany clearly led the world in missile development and utilization. The United States, however, engaged in considerably more missile work than has been generally realized. In free-falling bombs, the Americans developed a series of weapons which included Azon, Razon, and their successors; at Rabaul they tested Felix heat-seeking In 1943 the familiar B-17s launched hundreds of GB-1 glide bombs against Cologne, and improved models of these bombs finally were used. As the war neared its end, Japanese ships frequently encountered the Bat, radar-homing glide bomb. Fighter planes were converted into radio-controlled, televisionguided bombs. England tested experimentally a few ground-to-air and air-to-ground, radio-controlled guided missiles, but these were of little significance in the over-all war picture. It is not commonly known that during the latter stages of World War II Japan rushed the development of the guided missile for tactical purposes. The Oka, Kikka, Shinryu, Baika, Tsurugi, and Toka were all piloted suicide bombs which glided, or were powered by rockets, jets, or piston engines, to their targets. Remote-guided bombs were developed also for use against American warships and aircraft. The following descriptions pertain to these guided missiles. All organizations referred to are Japanese.