Description
+7 Combat Strength when defending vs. air attacks.
Historical Context
Some 2800 kamikaze planes sank 34 Allied warships and damaged 368 others during the final, desperate days of the Pacific war … thus about 14 percent of kamikaze pilots got through to score a hit. Given this, little wonder that naval gunners developed their own methods of dealing with diving kamikazes. While light, rapid-fire AA guns such as the Bofors and Oerlikon autocannons could, and did, throw up a lot of metal in the path of the oncoming plane, it was fire of the heavier AA (such as the 38-caliber) that had the punch to knock one out of the sky if they could hit it. But in early 1945, radio frequency proximity fuses – seven times more effective than previous ones – finally became available and turned the tide.