The Cockpit

This is a Japanese anime about a young man who is going to be flying a baka bomb, a rocket-propelled craft launched from a propeller-driven airplane. It could go around 500 miles per hour, making it very hard to shoot down. Theoretically, it would prove massively destructive against ships since it carried an explosive in its nose; it was a form of kamikaze craft.

The main problem was not with the craft, but with the need for the plane to carry it close to the area the target was in and then release it. Those planes were slow and easily shot down by American planes, so the baka bomb, although a terror weapon, never really lived up to its potential.

The irony in this anime is that the young man makes his flight on the very day that Hiroshima was bombed.

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