Which ship was the 1st to be attacked by a Kamikaze pilot?
You have to make a distinction between ‘individual’ kamikaze attacks, made on the pilot’s own initiative when their plane was fatally damaged and had no chance of making it back – such as Pearl Harbour where Lt. Iida deliberately crashed his damaged plane into Kaneohe Naval Air Station – and ‘organised’ massed attacks starting in 1944. There were a number of publicised suicide attacks in 1944 – including Admiral Arimas (possibly unintentional) crash into the carrier USS Franklin on October 15th. The first ‘organised’ kamikaze attack was on 25th October 1944, when a flight of bomb-carrying Zeros attacked US ships off Leyte. This was a planned mission, with the intention of making suicide attacks, for which the bombs had been fitted to increase the destructive power of the planes when they struck the enemy ships.They caused damage to the escort carrier USS Kitkun Bay and several other ships, while one of them struck the flight deck of the USS St. Lo, and penetrated into an area where US
