There is a manga series based on the history of the "kaiten", called "Tokkou no Shima" (特攻の島), which is pretty good.

It depicts the commander of a kaiten-bearing submarine as lying to his superiors and reporting that each of the kaiten launched from his submarine sunk US ships, when in fact none of them hit their targets. It is implied that reporting anything but success was unacceptable, and the Japanese military leadership expanded this program because of being misled by such false or exaggerated reports.

Aside from this article, just continuing to scroll down reveals quite a few interesting headlines.

Here's one I found particularly interesting in light of current events and reports of looting:

"How German Soldiers Used Lentil Soup as an Effective Defense Mechanism Against the Soviets"

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/lentil.html

To gain time for a retreat they cooked soup for the attacking underfed Russian soldiers. The ruse was successful.

> The Soviets were hot on their heels at first, but once they reached the steaming pots of soup the scent was simply too much to resist. The hungry Soviet troops clambered over each other to grab some of the soup, inadvertently giving the Germans more time.

"The Type 1 suffered from water leaking into the pilot and engine compartment, but due to the nature of the weapon, solving these issues was a low priority."

Funny that.

This website has one of the unique implementations (in a good way) of hijacking the browser's "Back" button.

As you scroll, and each story comes into focus, the URL changes to identify that story. This is good if the reader wants to share a story she is currently reading, and needs to copy the URL.

But when you press the "Back" button, instead of just changing the URL to that of previous story's, and scroll to the previous story, it takes you through your whole history on the website, all the way back to where you came from; back to HN, in my case.

Interesting, to say the least.

I'd love for it to _not_ bother cycling/scrolling through previous stories, as it's taking me back to where I came from.

"The advantages of human guidance throughout the craft’s trajectory proved to be of little use in practice, with kaitens causing minimal damage to the enemy"

I wonder if it could've been more successful with more warhead

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Suicide torpedoes were proposed by the Polish military in 1939 and the program appears to have gotten as far as signing up recruits but to my knowledge none were ever deployed.

Interesting how I scroll onto this while finishing up Dan Carlin's Hardcore history series about Japan/Pacific WW2 history. Still can't really grasp what life would have truly been like then.

The Japanese had an almost unbelievable fire and intensity.

http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-62-Superno...

Japanese Suicide Drone with meat-AI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yokosuka_Ohka_Model_22.sv...

(Looks like something you'd see in Tatooine.)

Drafting the Japanese suicide pilots were also a way for the military to clear the ranks of naysayers / peaceniks/ less committed to the cause.

USS Bowfin Submarine Museum in Pearl Harbor has one of these.

Interesting is that some post below this one there is a small book with a washed-up version of Shinto, that is the ideology that lead to this and other war atrocities.