Marine security

China's Mighty Missile Arsenal: The 21st-Century Kamikaze?

Like an urban dweller fearful of muggers around every corner, the U.S. Navy is now contemplating a grim future where no neighborhood is safe. Whether it operates in the South China Sea, the Baltic or the Persian Gulf, the Navy has to reckon on salvos of deadly antiship missiles. When even an organization like Hezbollah can get its hands on ship-killer missiles, it's a signal that world's oceans are a dangerous place.

But seventy-two years ago, the U.S. Navy faced a similar threat. By late 1944, the U.S. Navy was the mightiest fleet on Earth. The Nazi U-boat threat had been mostly vanquished, the Japanese surface fleet decimated, and Japanese airpower a shadow of its former glory.

Yet four months later, U.S. sailors were terrified. Japan had unleashed the kamikazes, the "divine wind" of suicide aircraft that over the next ten months would sink more than fifty ships and damage hundreds more.