mxy-7 ohka cherry blossom

The Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (櫻花, Ōka; "cherry blossom"; 桜花 in modern orthography) is a purpose-built, rocket-powered human-guided kamikaze or suicide_craft aircraft that was produced by the Yokosuka Naval Air Technical Arsenal and deployed by Imperial Japan toward the end of World War II. Allied personnel commonly referred to the aircraft as "Baka Bombs" (baka being a Japanese pejorative term meaning "fool" or "idiot").

The Ohka was conceived during 1943 by Ensign Mitsuo Ohta and, following design assistance from the University of Tokyo, and was approved by the Imperial Japanese Navy on 16 August 1944. Development was carried out in secret, partially to not impact the Japanese public's perception of the conflict. Effectively a flying bomb, the Ohka was designed to be as cheap as possible, typically featuring plywood wings and an aluminum fuselage while only being furnished with rudimentary cockpit instrumentation. While initially planned to be produced entirely in-house by the military, the high rate of production desired by military planners eventually necessitated the production of the wings and tail units to be subcontracted out to private firms, such as the Nippon Aircraft Company. The Navy ordered full-rate production to proceed ahead of powered flights being performed in November 1944.

The principal variant, and the only one to see combat, was the Model 11; it was armed with a 1,200-kilogram (2,600 lb) warhead and was powered by three Type 4 Model 1 Mark 20 solid-fuel rocket motors. Starting on 21 March 1945, the Ohka flew combat missions against Allied ships in the Pacific Ocean theater. Although extremely fast, the Ohka had a very short range of 37 km (23 mi), thus it had to be carried into action as a parasite aircraft by a much larger bomber that proved to be vulnerable to interceptors. The Ohka participated in the Battle of Okinawa of 1945, but was not very successful. While several escort vessels and transport ships were sunk or damaged, Ohkas were never able to damage capital ships. The Japanese developed several versions of the Ohka, including the K-1 unpowered trainer aircraft and the turbojet-powered Model 22. While efforts were made to overcome the aircraft's shortcomings, particularly its short range, the Surrender of Japan came before any of the improved combat models saw deployment.