Japan lacked modern high-altitude interceptors, and when B-29 attacks against Japan began in the summer of 1944, there were suggestions of beginning aerial ramming attacks, sometimes called Tai-atari (Body Slamming). The first such aerial attack took place on August 7, 1944. The 10th Air Division in the Tokyo area set up a Tokko unit in October 1944 and their missions were successful enough that all units except for the 17th and 18th Air Regiments were ordered to assign three or four of their planes to a special Shinten (Heaven Quake) unit. A US assessment counted nine B-29s destroyed and 13 damaged by ramming at a cost of 21 Japanese fighters.
Another method to counter American air power was to attack the US aircraft bases. (Other Japanese paratrooper missions against US airfields are detailed in Osprey Elite 127, Japanese Paratroop Forces of World War II.) The IJA set up a number of special air raider units with plans to crash-land them at key American airbases, where the raiders would plant explosive charges to demolish aircraft and fuel dumps. During the 1945 missions, there were no plans for the commandos to escape.
The Giretsu (Gallantry) Airborne Unit was formed in the autumn of 1944 to attack B-29 bases in the Marianas. The planned January 1945 Marianas mission was cancelled when forward bases on Iwo Jima were damaged, but in May 1945 the target shifted to US bases recently established around Yontan on Okinawa. Operation Gi was launched on May 24, with Type 97 (“Sally”) bombers as transports. Several aircraft returned to base with engine problems, and seven reached Okinawa, with 98 personnel. Some of these aircraft were shot down during the approaches to the runways, and the rest crash-landed before midnight. A handful of commando teams survived the crash-landings and staged their attacks, destroying nine aircraft, damaging 29, and setting off a major blaze in the fuel dump. All of the 69 commandos and aircrew who disembarked were killed or committed suicide.
This Type 97 bomber was one of the aircraft converted into a transport for the Giretsu Airborne Unit that attacked US airbases near Yontan on Okinawa as part of Operation Gi on the night of May 24, 1945. The commandos emerging from this aircraft were relatively successful, causing considerable damage at the airbase before being killed. (NARA)
The IJN also planned Operation Ken against the Marianas bases using 300 troops of the Special Naval Landing Force carried by 30 Betty bombers. US forces, however, discovered the plan from radio intercepts and the transport force was destroyed at Misawa airbase by a US carrier air strike on July 14, 1945. At least two other large raids were ready in August 1945, including an IJA attack using gliders, but the war ended before they took place.