I'm no military strategist, but...

I watched a channel 4 documentary over the weekend called 'The Day of the Kamikaze', which was a fascinating historical portrayal of the Japanese Kamikaze fighters who fought for their country on the Pacific front during WW2.

As ever, I found myself utterly enthralled by the production. I love documentaries on pretty much anything, even stuff I'm not generally into, but war stuff is like waving a pouch of the white stuff in front of a Bolivian playboy. I can't get enough of it.

That said, I do not pretend to be an expert on war matters and I am no military strategist. Yes, sure, I am a politico and a genius in the art of political debate. My political knowledge is second to none. But I couldn't tell Sir Michael Jackson how to best surround a Bosnian Serb village with a view to kidnapping armed insurgents. I also wouldn't be very good at telling tanks what to do.

I've had years of playing Command and Conquer as a bored student at Uni. Believe me, I've tried. Those soldiers are pesky blighters to pin down.

But something about the documentary had me reeling. It was the depiction of the final stages of the Battle of Okinawa in the dying days of the war. The Kamikaze pilots had some limited success up until the summer, but it was obvious the Japanese were on their way out. It wasn't if, but when.

"I feel proper moody today, Clive. Can't think why..."

So it was somewhat of a surprise to learn of a certain strategy, or putsch, ordered by the Japanese High Command once they realised that man power and the air force was fucked and something urgent needed to be done to prop up the effort on Okinawa.

They elected to carry out a weird operation called Operation Ten-Go.

It was like a Kamikaze mission, except with the Navy not the Air force. The aim was to use every last scrap of the remaining Japanese fleet to steam towards Okinawa, fighting its way through the Allied Naval shield so as to beach on the land, use the Artillery aboard the ships as though land based canons and the sailors as make shift land infantry to back up the dying Okinawa force.

To call it last chance saloon was obviously an understatement. It was a decision that effectively threw away the Navy. The High Command obviously didn't think it worth keeping, what with it containing the world's biggest Battleship and all. No, no. They wouldn't need it in the event of a US land invasion, because everyone had been handed bamboo poles so they'd simply fight the yanks off on the streets.

Why waste time on boats when you can unleash Granny, Kill Bill style?

Yet this isn't what made me scratch my head in bemusement. You see, the clever chaps in charge of things in Japan decided it would be a good idea to put Operation Ten-Go into effect at dawn. So by the time the fucking ships got going, it was late morning.

Funnily enough, and I can't think how this happened, Allied planes spotted the mass swarm of Jap ships in the Ocean, and reported it. So the Americans knew what was going on, and pretty much intercepted the little scheme and obliterated the fuckers before they got anywhere near the objective. Over three and a half thou Japanese dead, and the big old beaut 'Yamato' stuffed into the sea like Pimento in a ripe Olive.

So here's the question: Why didn't the fucking stupid cunts set sail at night when it was less likely they'd get spotted by a plane?

Why did they go during the day? Why didn't they use the cover of an inclement evening? A cloudy, rainy, grotty patch around 2am even.

Because if they weren't seen, and they managed to break through, it might have made a little bit of a difference.

If I were running the show, I wouldn't have bothered sending them in the first place, because they were needed at home.

I also wouldn't have run the suicide plane missions, because antagonizing the Americans was never going to be a great idea. There's sneaky missions like Pearl Harbour, there's brutal long winded battles that consume American lives, and then there's dive bombing planes into boats and fucking everything up.

That said, I couldn't help but be moved by the staggering sense of honour and duty amongst the Japanese military. It was all pervading, extending throughout society as a whole. The idea of putting something higher above self has always fascinated me, and you don't get more extreme an example of this human phenomenon as with the case of the Japanese war generation, who quite simply saw things on a wholly different level to Western nations.