What if Japan began mass kamikaze attacks against the British Eastern Fleet in 1943?
Short answerJapan would expend valuable trained aircrew against a dispersed fleet whose armored carriers and Mediterranean-tested defenses limited the payoff.
NotesBy 1943 the Eastern Fleet did not present the concentrated carrier target that Japan had faced in its 1942 Indian Ocean raid. Converting carrier aircraft and prewar-trained pilots into suicide weapons would therefore destroy scarce Japanese expertise for limited strategic effect. British armored flight decks would reduce the damage from individual impacts, while naval air defenses had been refined during repeated land-based attacks in the Mediterranean. That theater provided valuable preparation because its ships endured regenerated strikes for days rather than the shorter bursts typical of carrier battles.