duglarri

duglarri t1_je7a7d2 wrote

Reply to TIL Early drones were developed during the First World War. These radio controlled planes were primarily for target practice but by 1942 a drone with a built in TV camera was capable of delivering a torpedo to a ship 20 miles from the controller. by jamescookenotthatone

There was the US Navy program in the Pacific in 1943 that resulted in video-guided kamikaze drones that may have actually been the inspiration for the real kamikazes. The Japanese didn't start deploying Kamikazes until very late 1944- prior to that, though, the would have seen American "planes" diving and crashing into Japanese targets in the Pacific, part of trials of some very effective drones by the Navy.

The drones actually worked very well, with success rates of around 25%, compared to bombing hit rates of 2% for conventional attacks. And the drone attacks were risk-free for the crews, because they stayed kilometers away from the targets. Zero casualties in all the test missions they flew.

But the Navy brass in their infinite wisdom killed the project because they felt they had enough conventional aircraft available to do the job, and losing five or ten aircrew on any particular target was perfectly fine as far as they were concerned.

So American drones may have been the inspiration for the Kamikaze.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/drone-strike-180964753/

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duglarri t1_jd1pjyp wrote

Reply to TIL: On January 5, 2002, Charles J. Bishop stole a Cessna 172 light aircraft and crashed it into the side of the bank of America tower. His mother filed a lawsuit against Roche Laboratories claiming that Accutane had side effects such as depression and suicidal actions. by deadflowers1

A skin doctor put my then-22-year-old son on Accutaine some years ago. His personality changed from bright and sunny to morbidly suicidal with fits of frantic head-banging despair.

He was only on it for eight months before I had him stop. It nearly killed him.

He has only slowly recovered now, more than a decade later.

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duglarri t1_jadskpt wrote

Reply to Emperor Hirohito at Disneyland, 1975 by Queasy_Monk

My Dad alway said that Hirohito should have been hung at the end of the war, for all the friends that he lost.

Hard to disagree. For all the intricacies of the Japanese government prior to WW2, it's blazingly obvious that if Hirohito had so much as raised an eyebrow, Pearl Harbor would never have happened.

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