Kamikaze

Kamikaze (pronounced kah-mi-kah-zee or kah-muh-kah-zee)

(1) A member of a World War II era special corps in the Japanese air force charged with the suicidal mission of crashing an aircraft laden with explosives into an enemy target, especially Allied Naval vessels.

(2) In later use, one of the (adapted or specifically built) airplanes used for this purpose.

(3) By extension, a person or thing that behaves in a wildly reckless or destructive manner; as a modifier, something extremely foolhardy and possibly self-defeating.

(4) Of, pertaining to, undertaken by, or characteristic of a kamikaze; a kamikaze pilot; a kamikaze attack.

(5) A cocktail made with equal parts vodka, triple sec and lime juice.

(6) In slang, disastrously to fail.

(7) In surfing, a deliberate wipeout.

1945: From the Japanese 神風 (かみかぜ) (kamikaze) (suicide flyer), the construct being kami(y) (god (the earlier form was kamui)) + kaze (wind (the earlier form was kanzai)), usually translated as “divine wind” (“spirit wind” appearing in some early translations), a reference to the winds which, according to Japanese folklore, destroying Kublai Khan's Mongol invasionfleet in 1281.  In Japanase military parlance, the official designation was 神風特別攻撃隊 (Shinpū Tokubetsu Kōgekitai (Divine Wind Special Attack Unit)).  Kamikaze is a noun, verb & adjective and when used in the original sense should use an initial capital, the present participle is kamikazeing and the past participle, kamikazed; the noun plural is kamikazes.

HESA Shahed 136 UAV.

The use of kamikaze to describe the Iranian delta-winged UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle, popularly known as “drones”) being used by Russia against Ukraine reflects the use of the word which developed almost as soon as the existence of Japan’s wartime suicide bomber programme became known.  Kamikaze was the name of the aviators and their units but it was soon also applied to the aircraft used, some re-purposed from existing stocks and some rocket powered units designed for the purpose.  In 1944-1945 they were too little, too late but they proved the effectiveness of precision targeting although not all military cultures would accept the loss-rate the Kamikaze sustained.  In the war in Ukraine, the Iranian HESA Shahed 136 (شاهد ۱۳۶ (literally "Witness-136" and designated Geran-2 (Герань-2 (literally "Geranium-2") by the Russians) the kamikaze drone have proved extraordinarily effective being cheap enough to deploy en masse and capable of precision targeting.  They’re thus a realization of the century-old dream of the strategic bombing theorists to hit “panacea targets” at low cost while sustaining no casualties.  Early in World War II, the notion of panacea targets had been dismissed, not because as a strategy it was wrong but because the means of finding and bombing such targets didn’t exist, thus “carpet bombing” (bombing for several square miles around any target) was adopted because it was at the time the best option.  Later in the war, as techniques improved and air superiority was gained, panacea targets returned to the mission lists but the method was merely to reduce the size of the carpet.  The kamikaze drones however can be pre-programmed or remotely directed to hit a target within the tight parameters of a GPS signal.  The Russians know what to target because so many blueprints of Ukrainian infrastructure sit in Moscow’s archives and the success rate is high because, deployed in swarms because they’re so cheap, the old phrase from the 1930s can be updated for the UAV age: “The drone will always get through”.

Imperial Japan’s Kamikazes

By 1944, it was understood by the Japanese high command that the strategic gamble simultaneously to attack the US Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor and territories of the European powers to the south had failed.  Such was the wealth and industrial might of the US that within three years of the Pearl Harbor raid, the preponderance of Allied warships and military aircraft in the Pacific was overwhelming and Japan’s defeat was a matter only of time.  That couldn’t be avoided but within the high command it was thought that if the Americans understood how high would be the causality rate if they attempted and invasion of the home islands, that and the specter of occupation might be avoided.

USS New Mexico (BB-40) hit by Kamikaze off Okinawa, 12 May 1945.

Although on paper, late in the war, Japan had over 15,000 aircraft available for service, a lack of development meant most were at least obsolescent and shortages of fuel increasingly limited the extent to which they could be used in conventional operations.  From this analysis came the estimates that if used as “piloted bombs” on suicide missions, it might be possible to sink as many as 900 enemy warships and inflict perhaps 22,000 causalities.  In the event of an invasion, used at shorter range against landing craft or beachheads, it was thought an invasion would sustain over 50,000 casualties to by suicide attacks alone.  Although the Kamikaze attacks didn't achieve their strategic objective, they managed to sink dozens of ships and kill some 5000 allied personnel.  All the ships lost were smaller vessels (the largest an escort carrier) but significant damage was done to fleet carriers and cruisers and, like the (also often dismissed as strategically insignificant) German V1 & V2 attacks in Europe, significant resources had to be diverted from the battle plan to be re-tasked to strike the Kamikaze air-fields.  Most importantly however, so vast by 1944 was the US military machine that it was able easily to repair or replace as required.  Brought up in a different tradition, US Navy personnel the target of the Kamikaze dubbed the attacking pilots Baka (Japanese for “Idiot”).

HMS Sussex hit by Kamikaze (Mitsubishi Ki-51 (Sonia)), 26 July 1945.

Although it’s uncertain, the first Kamikaze mission may have been an attack on the carrier USS Frankin by Rear Admiral Arima (1895-1944) flying a Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (Allied codename Judy) and the early flights were undertaken using whatever airframes were available and regarded, like the pilots, as expendable.  Best remembered however, although only 850-odd were built, were the rockets designed for the purpose.  The Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (櫻花, (Ōka), (cherry blossom)) was a purpose-built, rocket-powered attack aircraft which was essentially a powered bomb with wings, conceptually similar to a modern “smart bomb” except that instead of the guidance being provided by on board computers and associated electronics which were sacrificed in the attack, there was a similarly expendable human pilot.  Shockingly single-purpose in its design parameters, the version most produced could attain 406 mph (648 km/h) in level flight at relatively low altitude and 526 mph (927 km/h) while in an attack dive but the greatest operation limitation was that the range was limited to 23 miles (37 km), forcing the Japanese military to use lumbering Mitsubishi G4N (Betty) bombers as “carriers” (the Ohka the so-called "parasite aircraft") with the rockets released from under-slung assemblies when within range.  As the Ohka was originally conceived, with a range of 80 miles (130 km), as a delivery system to the point of release that may have worked but such was the demand on the designers to provide the highest explosive payload, thereby limiting both the size of the rocket and the fuel carried, restricting the maximum speed to 276 mph (445 km/h) which would have made the barely maneuverable little rockets easy prey.

Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka.

During the war, Japan produced more Mitsubishi G4Ms than any other bomber and its then remarkable range (3130 miles (5037 km)) made it a highly effective weapon early in the conflict but as the US carriers and fighters were deployed in large numbers, its vulnerabilities were exposed: the performance was no match for fighters and it was completely un-armored without even self-sealing fuel tanks, hence the nick-name “flying lighter” gained from flight crews.  However, by 1945 Japan had no more suitable aircraft available for the purpose so the G4M was used as a carrier and the losses were considerable, an inevitable consequence of having to come within twenty-odd miles of the US battle-fleets protected by swarms of fighters.  It had been planned to develop a variant of the much more capable Yokosuka P1Y (Ginga) (as the P1Y3) to perform the carrier role but late in the war, Japan’s industrial and technical resources were stretched and P1Y development was switched to night-fighter production, desperately needed to repel the US bombers attacking the home islands.  Thus the G4M (specifically the G4M2e-24J) continued to be used.

A captured Japanese Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (Model 11), Yontan Airfield, April 1945.

Watched by Luftwaffe chief Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (1893-1946), Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) awards test pilot Hanna Reitsch the Iron Cross (2nd class), Berlin, March 1941 (left); she was later (uniquely for a woman), awarded the 1st-class distinction.  Conceptual sketch of the modified V1 flying bomb (single cockpit version) (right).

The idea of suicide missions also appealed to some Nazis (predictably most popular among those not likely to find themselves at the controls.  The idea had been discussed earlier as a means of destroying the electricity power-plants clustered around Moscow but early in 1944, the intrepid test pilot Hanna Reitsch (1912–1979) suggested to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & of state 1934-1945) a suicide programme as the most likely means of hitting strategic targets.  Ultimately, she settled on using a V1 flying bomb (the Fieseler Fi 103R, an early cruise missile) to which a cockpit had been added, test-flying it herself and even mastering the landing, some feat given the high landing speed.  As a weapon, assuming a sufficient supply of barely-trained pilots, it would probably have been effective but Hitler declined to proceed, feeling things were not yet sufficiently desperate.  The historic moment passed.

Hezbollah

Hezbollah (pronounced hez-buh-lah or khes-bah-lah (Arabic))

A Shiʿite Muslim political and military organization (though genuinely with cross-denomination support), based in Lebanon but involved also in various regional operations.

1985: From the Persian hezbollah and the Arabic حِزْبُ اللّٰه‎ (ḥizbu llāh) (literally "Party of God"), the alternative spellings being Hizbullah, Hizballah & Hizb Allah, the construct being hezb (hizb) (party) + Allah (God); an adherent is styled a Hezbollahi although in Western commentaries that term seems to be applied more loosely.  Hezbollah is a proper noun.  Hezbollahzation & Hezbollahization are non-standard nouns used only in political science although, like balkanize etc, if use spreads they may enter general use.

The Hezbollah

Flag of the Hezbollah (right), the public display of which is banned in some jurisdictions where both the organization's political & military wings are listed as "terrorist organizations".  The national flag of Mozambique (left) also includes a depiction of a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle although the Africans fixed a bayonet to the barrel which was a nice touch.  Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975 although the flag wasn’t officially adopted until 1983 as a modified version of what was essentially the battle flag of the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front, the Marxist (later styled “democratic socialist”) resistance movement which fought a war of liberation (1964-1974) against the Portuguese colonial forces).

Although the Hezbollah began to coalesce in 1982-1983 (in the wake of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon), it wasn’t until 1985 it assumed the familiar structural arrangement with both military and political wings.  Unlike many organizations with similar pasts, although the personnel structures don't (wholly) overlap, the Hezbollah has never made any attempt to suggest there is any functional or philosophical separation between their political & military wings.  Despite that, during periods when regional tensions are more subdued, they do receive invitations usually restricted to the respectable and a Hezbollah delegation attended the coronation of Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022).

Like the Hezbollah, Hamas, a militant Palestinian resistance movement also operates as an apparatus with military, political and administrative divisions but the distinctions are less defined than those of the Lebanese operation and the name of Hamas comes from a similar linguistic tradition.  Formed in 1987 after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation, its roots lie in Muslim Brotherhood so, unlike the Hezbollah, it’s thus a Sunni group although the historical and theological differences haven’t prevented the two cooperating when the circumstances have appeared compelling.  The word Hamas is an acronym of the Arabic phrase حركة المقاومة الإسلامية (Ḥarakah al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah) (Islamic Resistance Movement), used originally as the initializsm HMS.  In 1988, when the The ميثاق حركة المقاومة الإسلامية حماس (Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement and better known in the West as the “Hamas Covenant” or “Hamas Charter”) was published, this was glossed by the adoption of the Arabic word (حماس) (hamās) (strength, zeal, bravery).

The very existence of the Hezbollah disturbs some but certainly not the structural-functionalists who note that for an institution to continue to exist, the niche it inhabits must remain.  Those whose fastidiousness in this & that lead them to suggest some alternative to Hezbollah would be preferable seem never to go into details and the reluctance is understandable.  There are many countries in which the substitution of one political party for another can be modelled and the implications pondered but it's scarcely possible to imagine Lebanese politics without the Hezbollah.  As far as can be foreseen, it seems something permanent and Lebanon has for decades been a troubled place, badly served by its elite; it is not going to become a liberal democratic state in the Nordic mode.  Just as the yakuza (the Japan-based transnational organized crime syndicates and usually in katakana as ヤクザ) deploy rapidly in the aftermath of disasters like the Kobe earthquake (1995) and the Fukushima “incident” (2011) to provide affected populations with food, shelter and medical aid, it was the Hezbollah’s well-resourced (compared with the Lebanese state) social welfare infrastructure which was mobilized to provide the first response after the explosion in the Port of Beirut (2020).

The Beirut Port explosion, 20 August 2020, viewed from the sea, showing the mushroom cloud and effect of the blast wave.  It was one of the most powerful non-nuclear, man-made explosions ever recorded.

Such comparisons are intriguing because the yakuza are an integral part of the Japanese nuclear industry and much money was paid to them by TEPCO (the Tokyo Electric Power Company which ran the Fukushima plant) to keep secret the existence of cracks in vital parts of the machinery.  Although much of the world seems to think the meltdown (TEPCO and the Japanese government preferred “incident”, a word with a long cultural tradition until the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) called a spade a spade) was something which “happened in 2011”, it’s an ongoing event and will be for the next 40-50 years because unless TEPCO continues to pump water into the “hot” reactor core, the meltdown will resume.  That water has to go somewhere and for those 40-50 years the plan is to continue to pump it into the Pacific Ocean; there is no immediate alternative.  The pumping project will likely demand increasing yakuza involvement because they are willing lucratively to be involved in projects others prefer to avoid.  Some allege the invaluable role fulfilled by the Hezbollah in responding to the explosion at the Port of Beirut in August 2020 has a similar quality of circularity because the triggering of some 2¾ tonnes of ammonium nitrate (an explosive equivalent in excess of 1 kiloton of TNT (similar to some small, tactical nuclear weapons)) because a Hezbollah weapons cache was held in the same facility.  No evidence has been produced to support that and most analysts believe the blast was the result of an enormous quantity of explosive being stored in a low security environment, welding work on the day said to have “lit the fuse”.  However, whether all will ever be known about the matter is unclear because the Hezbollah (and others with their own reasons) have managed to ensure investigations have been curtailed.

Lindsay Lohan's Instagram post of photographs taken while on holiday in Lebanon, June 2022. 

Hezbollah has been the name of various Islamic groups in the twentieth century, the first known reference in English being from 1960, describing an Indonesian guerilla battalion of 1945 that appears to have been either an off-shoot of or successor to Laskar Hizbullah, formed by the Japanese to give military training to young Muslims they had recruited to their cause (an aspect of which was the training to become a kamikaze (ie suicide bomber)).  Laskar Hizbullah was ostensibly national-wide but, unlike the Lebanese namesake, had little effective central organization and, given the circumstances of 1945, didn’t enjoy the ongoing support from Tokyo the Hezbollah has had from the ayatollahs in Tehran.  It was militarily ineffective but its idea (if not the actual structures) carried over to post-war anti-colonial forces and (debatably) the communist movement which in the mid-1960s the Indonesian government suppressed, the death-toll of that claimed to be close to half-a-million.

Drone

Drone (pronounced drohn)

(1) A male bee in a colony of social bees, stingless and making no honey whose sole function is to mate with the queen

(2) An unmanned aircraft or ship that can navigate autonomously, without manned control or beyond line of sight.

(3) In casual use, any unmanned aircraft or ship that is guided remotely.

(4) A person who lives on the labor of others; a parasitic loafer.

(5) A drudge.

(6) To make a dull, continued, low, monotonous sound; a hum or buzz.

(7) To speak in a monotonous tone.

(8) To proceed in a dull, monotonous manner.

(9) In music, originally, a continuous low tone produced by the bass pipes or bass strings of musical instruments (later extended to the notion of "drone music", a "clearing house" term for a range of sub-genres and elements).

(10) The pipes (especially of the bagpipe) or strings producing this tone or the bagpipe equipped with such pipes.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English drane & drone (male honeybee), from the Old English drān & drǣn (male bee, drone), from the Proto-Germanic drēniz, drēnuz & drenô (an insect, drone), from the primitive Indo-European dhrēn- (bee, drone, hornet); the Proto-Germanic was the source also of Middle Dutch drane, the Old High German treno (the German Drohne, is from Middle Low German drone), the origin of which may have been imitative (there was the Lithuanian tranni and the Greek thronax (a drone)).  It was cognate with the Dutch drone & Middle Dutch drōnen (male bee or wasp), the Low German drone & German drohne (drone), the dialectal German dräne, trehne & trene (drone), the Danish drone (drone) and the Swedish drönje & drönare (drone).  An earlier variation was the Old English drān, related to the Old High German treno (drone), the Gothic drunjus (noise) and the Greek tenthrēnē (asp) which was the source of the sense of a sound, the meaning emerging 1490–1500, related also to the Middle English droun (to roar), the Icelandic drynja (to bellow) and the Gothic drunjus (noise).

The meaning referring to pilotless airframes appears first to have been used by the military in 1945-1946, initially in the sense of towed target drones, the "pilotless aircraft directed by remote control".  Even in 1946, military theorists were speculating about the potential use of "drones" although much of what was then described was closer to the modern smart bombs or guided missiles.  The meaning "a deep, continuous humming sound" emerged circa 1500, apparently an independent imitative formation in the sense of the 1630s noun threnody (song of lament), from the Greek thrēnōdia (lamentation), the construct being thrēnos (dirge, lament) + ōidē (ode).  The Ancient Greek thrēnos was probably from the primitive Indo-European imitative root dher- (to drone, murmur, hum), source also of the Old English dran (drone), the Gothic drunjus (sound) and the Greek tenthrene (a species of wasp).  The specific technical use "bass pipe of a bagpipe" was first adopted in the  1590s.   The figurative sense of "an idler, a shiftless, lazy worker" (based on the idea of the male bees which make no honey), dates from the 1520s.  Drone quickly became a popular way to describe a mono-tonal, boring speech delivery.

Drones and UAVs

The modern military term for what most people casually call a drone is unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) a more accurate descriptor given the original target drones were either objects towed by “target tugs” or radio controlled aircraft dumbly flying on pre-set paths.  Research on the concept of unmanned flying devices for reconnaissance target practice or even ordnance delivery had begun even before the military had adopted combat aircraft and by the mid-1930s, the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the UK had hundreds of radio controlled biplanes but the word drone appears to have been adopted only in 1945-1946 to describe the objects towed behind piloted aircraft.  Used to provide a moving target for either air-to-air or surface-to-air target practice, the target tugs towing the drone tended to be painted in lurid color schemes to differentiate tug from target although tugs still suffered hits from "friendly fire".  Over time, slang developing as it does, the terms “target drone” and “drone” came often to refer not just to the towed target-object but also the “target tug”, the aircraft towing the target, less a leakage from military use than just a misunderstanding that caught on.  Now, most UAVs sold to hobbyists or for commercial use are marketed as drones.

Paint scheme for target tug towing drone used for surface-to-air target practice on de Havilland Mosquito TT (target tug) Mark 35, No 3 CAACU (Civilian Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit), Exeter, UK, 1963.

The use as a target tug (TT) was the last operational role for the Mosquito, one of the more remarkable aircraft of World War Two.  Developed as a private venture by de Havilland, it was greeted by the by the Air Ministry with not their usual mere indifference but outright hostility to the very concept of a light, unarmed bomber made from plywood which relied for protection on speed rather than firepower.  The company however persisted and the Mosquito, which first flew in 1940, became one of the outstanding and most versatile combat aircraft of the war deployed as a fighter, fighter-bomber, night-fighter and bomber in roles as diverse as photo-reconnaissance, maritime strike, long-range surveillance, ground-attack and pathfinder missions guiding heavy bombers.  There was even a naval version for carrier operations, operated by the Fleet Air Arm.

The post-war career too was notable.  Equipped with the latest radar, the Mosquito was retained as a front-line, all-weather fighter until 1951-1952 when night-fighter versions of the Gloster Meteor and de Havilland Vampire entered service.  The last of the 7771 Mosquitos produced did not leave the production line until 1950, the long Indian summer necessitated by the UK’s technology deficit and although few probably thing of the Mosquito as a Cold War fighter but that was its unexpected penultimatum.  The less celebrated but valuable swansong came as a target tug, painted in vivid colors to decrease the danger from “friendly fire” and these platforms remained in operational service until finally retired in 1963, some of the decommissioned aircraft subsequently used by film studios for wartime features.  In addition to the RAF’s Mark 35s, a number of Mark 16 bombers were converted to TT Mark 39s, operated also by the Royal Navy and two ex-RAF Mark 6 (fighter-bombers) were in 1953-1954 converted to the TT Mark 6 standard for the Belgian Air Force which used them as target tugs at the Sylt firing ranges.  For an airframe which the authorities were at the time inclined to reject, the Mosquito enjoyed a remarkable operational life of over two decades; the Treasury got their money's worth.

Lindsay Lohan in Netflix's Irish Wish (2024) being filmed by drone (the car is a 1965 Triumph TR4A).  Camera-equipped drones have reduced the cost of filming such scenes.

It's no exaggeration to suggest drones (even the military now often use the term instead of UAV) have been a revolutionary weapon in armed conflict.  Able to function as long duration reconnaissance or weapons platforms, depending on the device, they can in real-time be controlled by soldiers in the field or from command centres thousands of miles away.  Cheap and mass-produced, they have emerged also as a "Kamikaze" weapon and, because off-the-shelf commercial drones can easily be adapted for offensive purposes, they present a challenge to established militaries when used by irregular combatant forces (including terrorist groups) which have not previously had access to weapons which can be deployed in mass at long range.    

The Germans, the Russians and Drone Music

Although musicologists categorize “drone music” as a sub-genre in the minimalist tradition, when produced thus it’s really an application of a element of sound which has been a component of many pieces nobody would describe as even vague drone-like.  Ethno-musicologists also object to the usually Eurocentric treatment of the topic, pointing out that musical traditions from Morocco to Mongolia contain much that can only be called a drone and along with a rhythmic beat, the two are probably the basis of most of the early music created by humans.  As a modern form however, to be thought of as “drone music”, compositions tend to be long and characterized by slight or sudden, jarring harmonic shifts.  The form obviously pre-dates means of electronics production but the availability in the twentieth century essentially allowed the genre to be created and it was figures such as Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) and Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) who created the works which first came to public attention.  The critical response varied, those attracted to the avant-garde anxious not to seem reactionary while others would probably have agreed with comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who condemned as “formalists” those artists who pursued novelties and technical challenges just to impress their peers and a small elite cohort.  The public reaction to the form in its early years seems mostly to have varied between scepticism and the dismissal of the very idea such sounds could be called “music”.  Still, it endured and although never more than a niche as a stand-alone product, continues to underpin many popular forms, notably those listened to in clubs or at festivals by those under the influence of some substance and as the artists well know, there is a relationship between the drone and the chemicals.

By the time the German experimentalists Tangerine Dream released Zeit (Largo in four movements, 1972), it’s possible all that could be done in droning had been done and it can be argued everything since has been a variation but that hasn’t stopped the explorations, the Europeans especially entranced although it was the film-makers who found snatches of drone so useful in creating dramatic effects.  Curiously, there are those who have argued the credit (or the blame, depending on one’s view) for the emergence of drone music belongs to Richard Wagner (1813–1883), on the basis that by the end of his career, tonality had constantly shifting key centres, modulated so often there was little but ambiguity about what the final notes should be.

That’s fine but, so the argument goes, if there are more and more shifting key centres, there comes a point at which there’s no longer a centre of pitch, thus Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) twelve-tone system in which instead of a composition being based on major or minor scales and chords, a tone row was created, the twelve appearing in a specific order (thus the nickname “tone row”).  Musically (and politically, according to some), the idea of a tone row is methodically to avoid a preference for one note over another; all are equal.  Unlike tonal music in which pull active tones “pull” to resolve to resting tones, what came to be called “atonal music” came about because so far had Wagner pushed the boundaries that tonality could do nothing but disintegrate.  For the avant-garde, this created a gap in the market for “critic-ready compositions” because just as a visual form like cubism deconstructed the “bits” of the image and let them be seem in isolation as part of a whole, music could be rediced to a collection of drones and these could be performed singularly, in parallel or as a lineal set.  “By Schoenberg, out or Wagner” is an intriguing explanation for the origin of drone music and not all will agree.