Just one quick note before we start today's episode, this story contains details of suicide.

April 6, 1945, more than 60,000 soldiers stormed ashore here in Okinawa,

now an armada of Allied ships waits offshore,

supporting the invasion with firepower and supplies.

The terrain for the men is tangled and rugged. and Island. Today, as the soldiers trudge onward, they hear a deep and distant

from of plane engines, intensifying, then howling closer. These are soldiers

who know the sounds of aerial attack too well.

They spot a formation of Japanese flyers flying towards them

and duck for cover, anticipating the impending rain of bullets.

But it never comes. No bullets, no attack. The planes fly on.

Confused, relieved, the soldiers re-emerge, only to gaze out to see and witness the unthinkable.

Japanese planes diving straight at Allied ships and crashing into them.

Boom, boom, boom, It is a horrific sight. The Plains, all manned by Japanese pilots,

slam into one ship, then another, bursting into tremendous flames, twisted metal.

It is the first wave of ten such attacks to come throughout the day.

In the end, 355 Kamikazes, part of an entirely new and desperate effort to shock the Allies into retreat.

It won't work, but in the meantime, it is a new level of horror in what has been a years long campaign rife with revulsion and terror.

To hear more about Okinawa, our friend and colleague Dan Snow was joined by historian Saul David. It's all good to have you on the show you've been on once before but I'm never in person.

I know it's good to talk to you in person. So monster campaign iconic in the

states not at all known about in the UK why do you decide to write Okinawa?

For that reason I mean I knew very little about the Pacific War.

I had worked on a book that was published in America recently about Special Forces, and they

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