Any Records of German ?

Any report of intentional diving of airplanes on allied ships, etc? I am assuming that suicide was not a tactic in the ETO and they would have more likely used a parachute and fight another day rather then take her in. For the Japanese it was a cultural thing as well as a military tactic.

Not diving on ships, but there were Wilde Sau geschwader that were using heavily armoured fighters, FW-190, and there are reports and pictures giving evidence of them cutting the tails of Allied Bombers.

A suicide squadron was formed, but never went operational. In theory, there was a marginal chance of survival, as even the Nazi brass didn't think that the populace would like the idea of true suicide attacks, but the chances were pretty slim. The weapon was a piloted V1 and the pilot would have had to eject across the intake of the ramjet, while it was still running.

Colin Bignell

Pilots sometimes dived on enemy ships when they thought they weren't going to make it back anyway. There's a famous picture of the Japanese heavy cruiser Mikuma with a US dive bomber on one of the aft turrets. The bomber was hit by AA, IIRC, and the pilot presumably thought he and the gunner were dead men anyway.

The fuel from the aircraft caused a fire that was very important in destroying the cruiser.

The German U-boat service was a suicide corps in all but name during the Normandy Landings. Non-Schnorkel boats were to attempt to penetrate the screen around the shipping lanes and anchorage and do what damage they could - up to and including ramming ships as small as landing craft. Two attacks by midget submarines against the anchorage resulted in about 80-90% fatalities. Overall, of some 40,000 German submariners during the war, 30,000 were fatalities and around 5600 wound up as pow's.

Hell, the Russians would sometimes try to ram bombers. Of course individual decisions aren't the same as ordering *someone else* to kill themself as military policy.

Ramming was a standard Red Airforce tactic - it was frequently quite surviveable. see e.g. Soviet Aces of WW2 by Hugh Morgan.

The Germans OTOH developed various piloted missiles, however none was used in action.

Cheers

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Is there any evidence that the pilot was not dead? I would have thought that a dive bomber stood a fairly good chance of ramming the target if the pilot was killed during the last part of the attack run.

Colin Bignell

That looks like it.

Look at the superimposed aft turret, second from the stern, the most prominent in the picture because it's silhouetted against the smoke or whatever. There's wreckage on top of it. That's the dive bomber.