Word: cockpit
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This little aircraft is a captured Japanese suicide rocket bomb, fitted with a pilot's cockpit, steering controls and an explosive warhead in the nose. It may have been modeled after the pilotless German V-i robomb, which it resembles in size and destructive capacity. Japanese broadcasts have glorified it under the name Jinrai ("sudden peal of thunder"), but U.S. fighting men promptly tagged it with another Japanese term, baka ("stupid"). In operation, Stupid is carried near its target by a bomber, then cut loose. The pilot glides down and can fire three rockets in the tail to give...
...second "whoosh" from three powerful rockets. Since the nose was simply a ton of TNT, the "Kamikaze" suicide pilot had only to aim himself at his objective, then prepare to meet his ancestors. There was no landing gear; the pilot was doomed from the moment he stepped into the cockpit...
...Locked Cockpits. Now nearly all Jap air attacks are suicidal. Last week the Navy confirmed reports that the Japs were building a special Kamikaze plane, with a cockpit into which the pilot is locked before the takeoff. The plane (reportedly in production in Manchuria) is a pusher type, engine and propeller at the rear of the fuselage. Its torpedo-like nose carries a long ton (2,240 Ibs.) of explosive, fused to let go upon impact of nose or wings...
...combat, about as exciting as such material can hope to be, after it has been filmed so well and so often. A California-trained, English-speaking Japanese ace named Tokyo Joe (Richard Loo) adds a novel note of hatred by gritting "Yenkk" and other Homeric epithets into his cockpit radio, and meets his death in a long delirious streaking fall over fleabitten mountains, which is perhaps the best shot in the picture. Dennis Morgan, Dane Clark, John Ridgely and (barring some fancy eye-rolling) Raymond Massey are sincere and believable Flying Tigers, and Andrea King is a sincere, believable...
Blood Pressure and Breathing. Lieut. Kirsch's seat was in the forward cockpit just behind and between the two pilots. From there he took pilots' blood pressures, counted respirations by watching the rhythmic rise & fall of the little flow indicator ball in the oxygen control box (most flying was done at heights requiring masks), took pulses and armpit temperatures, watched for trembling, pallor, changes in pupil size. In all, he observed 16 different men during the ordeal by flak. Only three showed no fright reaction...