The Japanese had lost nearly a thousand airplanes in October alone, and the replacement aviators flying into Philippine airbases had only rudimentary skills. Pilot cadets were being rushed through truncated programs and sent to frontline units having logged just a few dozen hours of flight time. Most received no formal gunnery or navigation training. If these new aviators were going to die in their cockpits anyway, as seemed inevitable, perhaps suicide tactics offered the only realistic hope of scoring a valedictory blow against the enemy.
