JAP NAVAL SUICIDE
CRASH BOAT
TACTICS
(For description of
boats see Equipment &
Materiel.Section)
This week's chapter in
the running serial of
Zap ramming, lunging,
crashing and
depth-charging suicide
devices is a kind of
Naval sequel to the Army
"Liaison Boats" of the
Japanese "Fishing*
Battalions desbribed in
Weekly Report No. 77.
The narrators of this
new tale of
still
undaunted Japanese
desperation are four PWs
- a 2nd Class Petty
Officer, a
PO3/c,
and two leading seamen -
who were taken from the
water by American
vessels while trying to
escape by swimming from
CORREGIDOR to BATAAN.
These four PWs belonged
to as many different
Suicide Crash Boat
units, and knew of the
existence of four
additional units. Each
unit, normally
comprising 150
men, was charged with
the maintenance and
operation of 30 crash
boats. The function was
to destroy the enemy by
running the speedy mall
craft, each operated by
one man and carrying a
contact-detonated
explosive charge of from
250 to 300 kgs in
its
bow, head on into Allied
vessels. In this tactic,
then, the Naval Crash
Boat was a
little
more honestly suicidal
in
its
effect than the Army
Liaison Boats with their
alleged 12-foot getaway
space from the hull of
the victim vessel.
The boats of these Naval
suicide units were
housed in CORREGIDOR
tunnels. According to
one of the PWs, there
were ten of the boats in
each of six tunnels 15
meters in from shore
just SE of CAVALRY
POINT. There were thirty
near the N entrance of
MALINTA TUNNEL. These
30, the PW asserted,
required only
15
men and
5
minutes to be moved on
their wheel base from
the entrance to the
shore. And there were
other crash boats in
other tunnels. For the
Japanese this too was
a
tale of woe. The PWs
reported
it:
6o
of the boats were
destroyed in the
vicinity of
MONKEY POINT, and, on 15
December, 150 of them
were destroyed in the
area W of MALINTA HILL.
Moreover, at least one
of the units, the
HORIUCHI, lost
all
of
its
boats and
its
organizing officers when
the transport which
carried them was sunk by
an Allied submarine off
the PHILIPPINES.
No instance of the
effective
use of so much as one of
the boats has been
reported to date as a
reward to the Jap for
the pains he took to
train these units at the
SASEBO Naval
Base in
the
fall
of
1944
and to set them up on
CORREGIDOR. The
concentration of the
units in the tunnels of
the ROCK suggests again
a long-range enemy
preparation for "an
expected (amphibious)frontal
attack on MANILA" and
for denying the Allies
the use of the Bay.
The
Jap miscalculated. The
boats on CORREGIDOR
presumably have been
destroyed.
It is,
however, too early to
crow. Among the craft we
must keep our
weather-eye open for in
the future are these
Naval Suicide Crash
Boats.
