Dan Snow's History Hit - The Kamikaze Hunters

Episode Date: April 28, 2024

Please note, this episode contains discussion of suicide.In 1945, after lengthy delays, the Royal Navy sent a powerful fleet into the Pacific. After the disastrous Japanese invasions in Southeast Asia, Churchill was desperate to reassert British military might in the region. Aboard the carriers of these fleets were elite British and Commonwealth pilots, tasked with combating one of Japan's most fearsome weapons - the kamikaze.In the second episode of our three-part series on the kamikaze, Dan is joined by Will Iredale, author of 'The Kamikaze Hunters: Fighting for the Pacific, 1945'. Will tells us all about the 'Forgotten Fleet', and the escapades of naval aviators like Chris Cartledge and his fellow 'kamikaze hunters'.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/We'd love to hear from you- what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It's a big year in Japanese history. There are two big dates that we're paying attention to this year. The first of those anniversaries, and perhaps the most obvious one, is the anniversary of the start of kamikaze attacks in World War II. They began 80 years ago, in October 1944. But there's also a second anniversary that's very important, and the two are linked. The astonishing events that gave those kamikaze attacks their name. Kamikaze means divine winds, and the name are linked. The astonishing events that gave those kamikaze attacks their name. Kamikaze means divine winds and the name derives from the timely typhoons that smashed Mongol invasion fleets that had come to conquer Japan in 1274, 750 years ago.

This week we're releasing a three-part series looking at the kamikaze phenomenon. First of all we're looking at the deeply depressing story of the World War II suicide missions from the Japanese point of view. In this episode, though, we're going to look back at what it was like to face those attacks from the flight decks, from the cockpits of Allied ships. And tomorrow we'll hear about the possibly divinely sent typhoons that saved Japan from the mighty Mongol Empire in the 13th century. This, though, is part two, and I'm going to take you back to 1945. The Royal Navy, the British Royal Navy, just put one of its most powerful fleets in its history to sea. It was not deployed

in the Channel, the Mediterranean, North Atlantic. The war in those waters was staggering to a close. Instead, that fleet was sent to the Pacific Ocean. Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, was desperate to save the reputation of the British Empire in Asia, desperate to re-establish a strong military presence in the region after the disasters of the Japanese invasions of Southeast Asia in 1941 and 1942. And so a huge fleet was assembled. By the time the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, there were four huge battleships, six big aircraft carriers, 15 smaller ones,

and that's around 750 aircraft total across the fleet. There was an armada of smaller warships as well. But we should say, despite that giant scale, they were dwarfed by the American effort in the Pacific. The British fleet was known as the Forgotten Fleet. Perhaps that's because they felt overshadowed by their mighty American allies, or perhaps that's because people back in Britain had finished the war in their own heads at least. They'd moved on, they were looking forward to the peace that would follow. But for the men of that fleet, forgotten or not, there was a war still left to fight. Men like Chris Cartlidge, who was a fleet air arm pilot,

one of the last veterans of the Pacific theatre, he sadly just passed away in the early months of 2024. So this really is a podcast about that fleet, but more specifically about men like Chris Cartlidge, who was a so-called kamikaze hunter. Because when the Brits arrived in the Pacific in 1945, they found that they were faced with a terrifying new phenomenon of war, these Japanese suicide strikes. Young men, brainwashed, strapped into the cockpits of aircraft and told to pilot their aircraft and munitions straight into enemy ships, the kamikaze. We're going to find out how men like Chris operated against the kamikaze. He, by the way, became a member of the so-called Goldfish Club, an elite group of people who've

bailed out, landed in the sea, and survived. He was flying the brilliant Corsair aircraft, known to men at the time as the Bent Wing Widowmaker, because of its very distinctive bent wing and its lethal effectiveness in battle. Unlike the kamikaze pilots they faced, who were usually very young, inexperienced, terribly brainwashed, these men were highly trained. Chris had months and months to prepare for service, first of all in the North Atlantic, then the Pacific, and during that time, I should say, during that time of training, he was once court-martialed for failing to report crashing into the rudder of another aircraft during takeoff. But friends, he had a good reason not to report it. He didn't report it because he was anxious to go out on a date in Liverpool with a particularly attractive Wren, a young woman

serving in the Navy. And as far as I'm concerned, that is a very, very good reason not to report crashing your aircraft. So fair play to him. His superior officer luckily seems to have agreed with me. He didn't want to lose such a good pilot, so his punishment was to miss out a couple of months of seniority, which we can all agree is a fair price to pay for a great night out. I've got a historian on to tell us about Chris and his comrades, many of whom he was lucky enough to meet. He's Will Iredale. He's published many books, but the first of them, a great hit, was Kamikaze Hunters Fighting for the Pacific 1945. He's been on the podcast before.

It's great to have him on again. He's going to tell us what it was like trying to deal with the kamikaze attacks and taking on men who are willing to kill themselves to inflict terrible damage on the enemy. This is Fighting the Kamikaze. Just to warn you all, this episode does talk about suicide. To war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Will, great to have you back on the podcast, buddy.

Great to be here, Dan. Thanks for inviting me. I mean, we don't really remember the role of the Royal Navy in the war in the Pacific or the war in the East after the cataclysm of the loss of the two great big capital ships, two battleships off Malaya. What has been going on? Even though there's lots of exciting things going on two great big capital ships, two battleships off Malaya. What has been going on? Even though there's lots of exciting things going on, especially around Sri Lanka,

what has been going on since 1942 to 1945? Not a huge amount. And as we know, you touched upon it, the demise of Force Z, as it was known in, what, December 41. And obviously the loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse sunk on almost a thousand men, I think it was, wasn't it, that were lost. And Britain's naval presence in the Far East kind of lay in tatters, Dan, to be honest with you. I mean, they were humiliated.

And it would be the best part of three years before they really had any presence again in the Far East. And as you say, the buildup really began once they dealt with the Mediterranean and Battle of the Atlantic. Then all eyes could turn to a degree to the Far East. And a big naval base was set up in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in Trincomalee. But it wasn't until kind of really March 45 that the then British Pacific Fleet was kind of formed, or rather it certainly had its orders to sail from its base in Sydney to join the Americans. And the American force by that stage was the most gigantic naval force ever assembled. And that can actually overshadow the British Pacific Fleet was an extraordinarily powerful fleet. I mean, possibly the greatest

fleet that the Royal Navy ever put to sea. Look, this is the thing, right? So when I first started researching this, I remember meeting a Royal Navy fighter pilot, a guy called Keith Quilter, who flew the Corsair, which I'm sure we'll come to shortly. And I met Keith and I found out that he was on an aircraft carrier, HMS Formidable, and it got hit by kamikazes. And I thought, well, hang on, that can't be right. It was the Americans who were out in the Far East, in the Pacific. And of course, I was completely wrong. How ignorant can you get? You know, not only was the Royal Navy out there, the British and also the Commonwealth forces, but it was the biggest fleet the Royal Navy had ever assembled, certainly in the Second World War, spearheaded by four aircraft

carriers at any one time, each with a crew of sort of 10,000, supported by hundreds of ships. Because you have to remember that the distances we're talking about were vast. The base was in Sydney, and they were operating off the coast, well certainly start with Okinawa and then off the coast to Japan and it's like having a base in somewhere like Alexandra and the front line being in Nova Scotia. You know we're talking huge distances here and we're talking massive numbers of men and machines. and we're talking massive numbers of men and machines. And so you've got this fleet going to help the Americans and they therefore are caught up in some of these terrible battles of the Pacific War

and they experience this terrifying weapon the Japanese deploy, which is kamikaze, which is these are suicide bombers, basically. That's right. So the Japanese, in essence, the Japanese knew that their air force was no match for the Allies, certainly by late 1944. Most of the experienced Japanese airmen had been killed in earlier battles with the US Navy. And so, of course, losing men and aircraft rapidly, they decided that attaching 500-pound bombs to aircraft and diving into targets might achieve more damage than

conventional bombs. And of course, the point being, Dan, if enough American blood was shed, then the Japanese high command believed that Roosevelt, bowing to public pressure, wouldn't have the stomach for an all-out invasion of Japan. Now, that was Operation Downfall. That was planned for the autumn of 1945, exactly when they didn't know yet. But so that was really the point. They wanted to see if they could create enough bloodshed so that the Americans would sue for peace. The first Japanese attack took place in October 1944 on the deck of USS St. Lowe. I think it ended up killing over 100 men. And then, of course, special attack units were formed.

It was something that neither the Americans or the British had come across before. And for the guys on board, it was terrifying. The idea of fighting against these people who were willing to kill themselves deliberately to further the cause of who they're fighting for, it was terrifying. Because you've interviewed so many of these gentlemen sailing into it. By that stage, I mean, it came as something of a surprise to the Americans in late 1944. for. It was terrifying. Because you've interviewed so many of these gentlemen sailing into it, because by that stage, I mean, it came as something of a surprise to the Americans in late 44. But as the British Pacific Fleet was steaming to join the Americans, they sort of knew, they must have heard rumours, they knew what was coming. And they must have, I suppose, started to prepare countermeasures or ways of dealing with them.

Yeah, well, Churchill specifically, certainly after St. Louis, I mean, after that was attacked, he said, we want our best brains put on this to try to counter the measure. And all sorts of weird and wonderful kind of Churchillian contraptions would come up, like firing rockets in the air that kind of burst out big nets and that sort of thing, you know. But essentially, yes, when the British Pacific Fleet, you have to remember, Dan, just going back slightly, it was largely political by design, really. I mean, Churchill realised that after some reluctance, that a British fighting force alongside the US Navy would be recognised after the conflict as an important contribution to the defeat of Japan. So by hook or by crook, the Royal Navy had to be out there alongside the Americans. But yeah, you're right, as they sailed north, they didn't really know what they were going to expect. I alluded to these British

carriers, they were like massive kind of 750 foot long slabs of steel, effectively, the British carriers had been created for warfare in the cooler climates, in sort of European climates. So they had, you know, four-inch steel decks. They were known as steel coffins because the heat of the Pacific would just make them act like an oven. And the conditions on board were pretty grim. None of the carriers, unlike the American carriers, were air-conditioned. So as they sailed Fort North, they were thinking, right, they were working up, they were getting the aircraft ready, they were kind of doing practice drills. And they obviously knew that they would be operating somewhere in the north of the Pacific.

But each airman and each member of the ship's company obviously had no idea exactly what role they'd be playing until early March when they reached their positions and they were ready to actually take their place. Now we talk about those big steel decks because they might have been hot and miserable but they did have one huge advantage when it came to fighting kamikazes. Well that's the point isn't it? So the American aircraft carriers they were wooden decks the point being they would get their aircraft off the decks to meet any threats from the enemy so in other words they would kind of hopefully kill off any enemy aircraft before they reach their carriers. Now, as we saw, that often wasn't the case. When it came to the British aircraft carriers, because they had steel decks, it meant that unless the kamikaze was lucky

enough to either kind of go down the funnel, which is a million to one chance, or hit the weak point of the carrier, which is where the kind of lift going down to the hangar below was, because it was made of steel, essentially what happened is that actually within about an hour of most of the British carriers being hit, they'd been able to fill it with quick-drying cement, sweep it over and land aircraft on again. I think in a sense, you know, the damage of the kamikaze attacks on the British carriers was more psychological than it was physical. Yes, a number of people were killed.

Yes, many people were injured and it was terrifying. But it was more not knowing what might happen that was the real sort of psychological thing. And after the kamikaze attack on HMS Indefatigable on the 1st of April 1945, they were landing aircraft back on again about an hour later. There was a US liaison officer on board and he said later, when a kamikaze hits a US carrier, it's six months repair at Pearl Harbour. In a limey carrier, it's a case of sweepers, manual brooms. And I think they were genuinely taken aback. Let's remember that the whole reason the Royal Navy was there is because their job was to act on the sort of left-hand flank, if you like, of the Americans, as they were obviously invading Okinawa to then use Okinawa as a springboard for the final invasion

of Japan. And they had asked the British to keep a check of the kamikazes that would be coming from Formosa, obviously now Taiwan, and using a number of islands called the Sakashima Gunto. They would use them like stepping stones to then launch attacks on the Americans. So the British and the Commonwealth air crews from the four carriers would take off day after day. They would bomb and attack airfields on these various little islands, and then they would land on again. They'd do that for sort of a couple of days, then they'd retreat to a space in the ocean where they'd replenish with what was known as the fleet train, which was hundreds of ships bringing all sorts of supplies from, you know, aviation fuel to aircraft parts

to razor blades to cigarettes to food. And so it was whilst they were doing that on April 1st, when Operation Iceberg, which was the name for the whole operation, when that started and the Americans launched their invasion of Okinawa, that is when we saw the first kamikaze attack on the British fleet. And that is when we saw Indefatigable being hit. And if I can read to you, Dan, there's some really lovely colour from the time from eyewitnesses on board. And one sailor said, I've been through the Blitz, we've had bombs, we've had incendiaries, we've had landmines thrown at us, but it's the first time I've had the bloody plane thrown at me as well. You can feel it's aimed at you, especially when he looks around

and you think, can he see me? So it kind of, it felt personal, you know? Isn't that a terrifying thought that you would have been able to see the little head of the pilot in the cockpit as he's in the last few seconds of his life? Right, exactly. As I say, they just hadn't counted anything like that before. It was not knowing what they kind of might need. That was really, I think, the psychological thing

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be they on American or British carriers? I mean, obviously, it's nice to have the steel deck, but ideally, they're not going to get that far. Is it a matter of, as you said, strike distant at their bases, hit them basically before they take off? Is it a matter of intercepting them in the air with an aircraft and interceptor? Or were these aircraft carriers able, and their surrounding destroyers, to shoot them down with deck-mounted guns, or all of the above? Well, I think, in a sense, the way to answer that question is to look at what happened on April 1st when Indefatigable was attacked. So you've got to think it was Easter Sunday, the Americas had

landed on Okinawa 2,000 miles to the northeast, and aircraft were being launched off the British carriers to continue their attacks on the airfield. They were also, you often had aircraft orbiting above the fleet known as CAPs, Combat Air Patrols. But on that morningfield. They were also, you often had aircraft orbiting above the fleet known as CAPs, combat air patrols. But on that morning, 10 to 7 morning, the British radar on board, I think it was in DFAT actually, picked up a formation of around 20 aircraft flying 75 miles to the west and they were closing fast. And so the fleet went into what was known as Code Red and they braced itself for an attack. They didn't necessarily know it was a kamikaze attack. They thought maybe it was a conventional attack.

And they had two forms of defence. Firstly, the fighters were vectored to intercept. But of course, that's much more difficult said than done. And in this case, 40 miles from the fleet, the incoming raid of those Japanese aircraft, they split in two. And that was classic tactics, because of course, that made their attacks more difficult to defend. Now, some aircraft were shot down by the fighters, but a number have got through. And then the last line of defence is the fleet's gunfire. And this alludes to what you were saying, these kind of layers of defence,

if you like. Now, the maximum range of the ship's guns was about 11 miles. And then once they got in that range, they could fire off shells at something like 2,300 feet per second. But even then, I think it was something like 30, 40 seconds at most they had, essentially. So there really wasn't a great deal of time. And then if, of course, there was cloud cover or kind of, you know, mist or fog, the kamikazes would be able to use that and evade that and then potentially dive out of the cloud at their targets. And I guess also think about being on board the aircraft carrier as well, Dan. I mean, one of the people who I interviewed, Kerry Mulligan, the actress, her grandfather, Denzel, he was in the radar defence team on board

Interfac. And I interviewed her a couple of years ago about this, and we found quite a lot of detail about Denzel. And you imagine he would have been there in the island watching the attack develop on radar. They would have been plotting the position of the incoming aircraft. Outside the guns would be, you know, booming away in a sort of thunderous roar. And there would be lots of those little puffs of black smoke of flack as the kamikazes were flying, heading towards the fleet. And of course, the British fighters would be trying to shoot them down. So there would be dogfights as well, all around the sky. And in terms of Indefat, there was a wonderful British sea fire pilot, a guy called Dickie Reynolds. He was known as Dead Eye Dick because he'd shot down so many aircraft in his short career. He got into a really sneaking,

twisting dogfight with a Zero. He managed to shoot down one, but a second one he failed to, and that was the one that ended up flying and hitting Indefat. When you were talking to these gentlemen, did kamikaze pilots behave differently? Well, first of all, did people like the guy you mentioned, did he know that, oh, here's one, this is a kamikaze pilot, I definitely need to shoot this guy down? Or was the sky just full of aircraft weaving and diving, and you just took targets so you saw them?

The latter, I think. There is one, Dariax said, there's a guy called Wally Stradwick, and he was flying in his Corsair above the fleet when the first kamikaze hit. I think HMS Formidable, this was on May the 4th. And he essentially looks on helplessly because if you're vectored to the right place and you manage to have a go shooting down the aircraft great but if you're not then you find yourself a little bit impotent you're kind of

stooging around elsewhere waiting to be told by radar control where to go and you have to remember it sort of works both ways as well Dan because if the kamikaze pilot wasn't able to identify a target, he suddenly found himself stooging about nowhere to go. And certainly by this stage of the war, most of the kamikaze pilots were very, very young and really rather inexperienced. And actually, by the time we get to kind of March, April, May 45, a number of the British Pacific Fleet airmen, they're quite well blooded. They flown against the Tirpitz back in August 44. They flew in a massive raid on the oil refinery, the Palembang in January 45. So they're pretty well blooded. So in fact, once they were able to identify and lock in on the kamikazes, if the kamikazes

hadn't identified the target and gone for it, then the British airmen were able to kind of mop up. So yeah, talk about some of the episodes in your book, extraordinary, that the one Keith Quilter, who was on the deck of HMS Formidable, he describes what it's like to be caught up in a kamikaze attack. Yeah, that's right. So Keith was sort of typical of, I guess, the flyboys of that stage of the war. So he was, 89% of the airmen by now were volunteers. Over half had been trained in the States. Many of them flew American aircraft. Keith flew the Corsair, which was, I personally am probably biased, I think it was pretty much the naval aircraft of the Second World War. It was named as a bent-winged bastard of Connecticut, where it came from, and also because of its kind of reptilian shape. And Keith was in

1842 Squadron, which was one of, I think, something like a dozen Royal Navy squadrons that had been, you know, he had 18 months training in the States before he then came to the UK. And he'd formed up as a founding member of 1842 Squadron. And yeah, he was sitting on the deck of HMS Formidable on May the 4th, 1945, when it became very clear that a kamikaze attack was underway. He was in his aircraft waiting to fire off the deck, but when it became clear that he wouldn't get off in time, he said he'd never got out of his aircraft quick enough, scrambled out, jumped onto the deck and down the nearest flight of stairs to the hangar below, just before the aircraft struck. And it made a hell of a bang. And yeah, he was lucky to escape

with his life, frankly. Many of the other aircraft caught on fire. I mean, it just sounded like a vision of hell. Yeah, look, the scene down on Full Middle was grim, you know. And actually, perhaps better, just very briefly, if I I may just to read out a brief excerpt from a guy called Anthony Kimmons he was a film director who joined the navy at the outbreak of war and he was the fleet's press liaison officer and he was on board another aircraft carrier indomitable sailing alongside for me when it was hit and he actually he wrote this down and then broadcast it a few days later in a radio broadcast or a few weeks later and he said we were just getting our breath back when a voice beside me said god look up for me it was a ghastly sight all you could see was the bare outline of her hull and rising above it from

stern to stern an enormous pool of black smoke belching furiously as huge red tongues of flame shot upwards every time something else caught fire, and right amidst ships a gigantic white fountain as high pressure steam screamed into the sky. But the thing was, which almost took one's breath away, was the fact that something else was screaming upwards too. More kamikazes were diving to attack, and to our amazement traces from Formie were racing up to meet them. It did not look possible that anyone could be alive in that inferno and yet somehow or other gun crews scorched and with their throats clogged were still sticking to their jobs and whether she was hit again or not we couldn't see

there was too much smoke and flame but she still held on. Her engines were heaving over, boilers would be put out of action but those men down in the boiler engine rooms were determined that she should keep her place within the fleet. So that kind of gives you an idea of what it must have looked like. And in fact, you know, despite the casualties, I think there was something like 40 in all, aircraft were taking off and landing on Formidable less than an hour later. Again, thanks to those steel flight decks. Almost immediately back in action. What a warrior. Let's finish up with Keith Quilter, because he goes on to have several very lucky escapes, doesn't he? Tell me about him.

At the end of Operation Iceberg, the Royal Navy has kind of proved its worth to the Americans, and so they invite the Navy to join them for the final showdown of Second World War, if you like, the kind of softening up of targets on the male island of Japan itself in July, August 45. And this was extraordinarily hairy for the airmen of the British Pacific Fleet. They had no idea what they might encounter. There were rumours that 10,000 Kamikaze aircraft had been put aside ready to counter any kind of attack. So on July the 17th, the British Pacific Fleet launched their first attacks on the mainland of Japan. And 10 days later, Keith Quilter, aged 23 then, he took off from Formidable, about 50 miles off the coast of Japan. And he was leading, I think, two flights of four, if I remember correctly. It was early in the morning, it was kind

of just after dawn in the morning. And their job was really to kind of unite targets of opportunity really down, so airfields or kind of, you know, any ships they saw in certain ports that they thought might be worth having a go at. And Keith saw one, there was a kind of ship moored in a little city on the east coast of South Japan called Owassi. He didn't know what it was called then, but that was the city. And so he took his Corsair down, you know, took it down to treetop height, flying at 300 miles an hour, dropped his 500 pound bombs against the ship and flew out towards the sea. One of his wingmen raided him and said, look, Ian Sterling, your wingman, he's been shot down further inland in his ditch's aircraft. So Keith thought, well, I better go and have a look. As he was flying back round to have a look, so he got hit as well by aircraft fire. So he had to ditch

his aircraft in the harbour of Owasi, got less than a mile from the land itself, jumped out, inflated his little dinghy and paddled like nobody's business towards the open sea. And of course, the Japanese saw this and began to put out a boat to capture him. And then Keith saw this black sinister shape kind of coming into the harbour and thought, well, I'm done for here. But realised it was an American submarine when he saw the US ratings on board. And they sort of came up to his dinghy. And of course, he introduced himself. And the first thing apparently they said was, we got ourselves a goddamn limey. But they pulled him aboard.

And he said, well, if you wouldn't mind picking my mate Ian up, he's a few hundred feet further in. So they went and got him. The submarine was the USS Scabbard Fish, which was an American sub, which was acting as what we know as a sort of lifeboat patrol service, picking up downed airmen. And there we are. He spent the rest of his war, which was about, what, three weeks, in this submarine. And he heard the bombs being dropped over the American radio. And, which was about, what, three weeks, in this submarine. And he heard the bombs being dropped over the American radio, and of course, eventually, the surrender being

announced. It's extraordinary how they were able to survive. There's another account in your book of being locked in the cockpit, but the plane was cartwheeling across the waters, and he was thrown out through the canopy. I mean, it's astonishing, these survival stories. Yeah, that was Keith's squadron mate, Chris Cartledge, founding member of 1842 Squadron. And Chris was in the first flight of British aircraft that attacked mainland Japan in the Second World War. And he attacked an airfield, you know, this saw daylight, remember, Dan? Treetop height again, coming at 300 miles an hour over the airfield. He got shot down. He managed to fly back to the fleet, but as he was trying to land on, so his aircraft hit the water, he went straight in. And people looking at it said, well,

he couldn't survive that. And he somehow managed to, you know, he was strapped in and somehow he broke through of that. The canopy came off, he went through and he found himself bobbing in the water. And, you know, Chris is a really interesting one, Dan, because here we are now in 2024 and last week I was at his funeral um he only died about three and a half weeks ago he was pretty much if not the last then one of the last kamikaze hunters one of the last of those young men who fought against the uh Japanese in the far east you know in the pacific so it's rather lovely that you mention him because um he really was a big part of that in terms of

the Brits being well I just want to read something if I may Dan because briefly again 1842 squadron there were 18 members of that squadron when it was founded in April 45 16 70 months later half of them were dead 50 percent of that squadron died in those last few months of the war and he wrote a letter home on the 15th of September 1945 when the BBF had got back to Sydney and he wrote back to his parents and he said considering the small amount of operations our squadron has taken part in it has not been very lucky of the 18 original pilots represented in the first squadron photograph only six remain in the squadron and nine are. These total losses since have formed up

are 15. I hope they weren't wasted. Sometimes I feel they were, for he achieved so little and was so entirely out of date. I suppose it's no use being morbid about it, but one shouldn't forget otherwise that what little we did achieve will definitely be wasted. So I think the feeling at the time, and what he was alluding to there, Dan, was the Americans had these big aircraft carriers and these massive, they were four times the size and they had air conditioning and they had this and the other. And the British, yes, they played their role, but it was always a bit of a rag tag affair and they were always slightly playing second fiddle. And I'm not taking anything away from what they did. I think it was a magnificent achievement. But it's worth remembering the warts and all of the side of it too, you know.

You're right, tough that he's lost so many comrades and yet they wouldn't be remembered, say, like the Battle of Britain or the Defence of Malta or some of that. As a historian, what do you think the British contribution was? Well, I think, look, it had a short life, didn't it, the BPF? I think something like 105 airmen were killed across 36 strike days.

That was only 20% of the fleet air arm, overall fleet air arm crew killed in 45. But I think at the sharp end, on the decks of the carriers and the cabs of the aircraft flying sortie upon sortie against the kamikazes, I don't think the bravery and skill of the men involved can be questioned. And I get back to that point that I made earlier, Dan, about the political point.

Churchill could sleep soundly knowing that right up to the last day of the war, remember that on the 15th of August, the last Allied airman of World War II was killed, Freddie Hockley, over Tokyo Bay. He was executed after the surrender. So they were right there until those last moments of the war. And I think that that is the legacy. That's the important point we have to remember, that they were there and they played that crucial role right until those final hours of the war. Thank you very much indeed, Will Ardell. Tell us what the name of your book is called. So that book is called The Kamikaze Hunters. Kamikaze Hunters, Fighting for the Pacific, a bestseller. Go out and get it, everybody. Thank you very much, Will, for coming on the podcast.

Thank you, Dan. Hopefully see you soon.