Suicide weapon

Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka, a weapon especially designed for a suicide attack

A suicide vest with ball bearings

A suicide weapon is a weapon or object that is used in a suicide attack, typically based on explosives.

History

Suicide weapons have been used both in conventional warfare, as well as in terrorism.

Moro Muslims who performed suicide attacks were called mag-sabil, and the suicide attacks were known as Parang-sabil. The Spanish called them juramentado. The idea of the juramentado was considered part of Jihad in the Moro's Islamic religion. During an attack, a Juramentado would throw themselves at their targets and kill them with bladed weapons such as Barongs and Kris until they themselves were killed. The Moros performed juramentado suicide attacks against the Spanish in the Spanish–Moro conflict, the Americans in the Moro Rebellion, and against the Japanese in World War II. The Moro Juramentados aimed their attacks specifically against their enemies, and not non-Muslims in general. They launched suicide attacks on the Japanese, Spanish, Americans and Filipinos, but did not attack the non-Muslim Chinese since the Chinese were not considered enemies of the Moro people. The Japanese responded to these suicide attacks by massacring all the relatives of the attacker.

File:Chinese infantry soldier preparing a suicide vest of Model 24 hand grenades at the Battle of Taierzhuang against Japanese Tanks.jpg

Chinese suicide bomber putting on an explosive vest made out of Model 24 hand grenades to use in an attack on Japanese tanks at the Battle of Taierzhuang.

In the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese used suicide bombing against the Japanese with explosive vests. A Chinese soldier detonated a grenade vest and killed 20 Japanese at Sihang Warehouse. Chinese troops strapped explosives like grenade packs or dynamite to their bodies and threw themselves under Japanese tanks to blow them up. This tactic was used during the Battle of Shanghai, where a Chinese suicide bomber stopped a Japanese tank column by exploding himself beneath the lead tank, and at the Battle of Taierzhuang where dynamite and grenades were strapped on by Chinese troops who rushed at Japanese tanks and blew themselves up. During one incident at Taierzhuang, Chinese suicide bombers obliterated four Japanese tanks with grenade bundles. The Pacific War of World War II bore witness to the Japanese Kamikaze suicide attack pilots. Late in the war, as the tide turned against Japan, Kamikaze pilots were deployed to attempt to crash their aircraft into American ships in the Pacific. The Japanese even developed specialized aircraft for the tactic, such as the Yokosuka Ohka flying bomb. A successful Kamikaze attack would both kill the plane's pilot and sink the target ship. Related tactics included the Kaiten suicide minisub, a human torpedo which a single Japanese pilot would steer into an Allied ship.

North Korean tanks were attacked by South Koreans with suicide tactics during the North Korean conquest of the South.

American tanks at Seoul were attacked by North Korean suicide squads, who used satchel charges. A North Korean soldier named Li Su-Bok, who exploded an American tank with a suicide bomb, is hailed as a hero in North Korean propaganda.

Certain aircraft built or projected for the Luftwaffe during the time of the Allied bombing before the surrender of Nazi Germany in World War II, such as the Bachem Ba 349, Fliegende Panzerfaust, Sombold So 344, Zeppelin Rammer or the Blohm & Voss BV 40 are sometimes listed as suicide weapons. However, they were not intended as such, even though the chances of survival would have been very limited for the pilots of such dangerous artifacts. In those dire years Nazi authorities even considered to use selbstopfer (suicide) planes such as the Messerschmitt Me 328 and the Fieseler 103.

During the Cold War, it was argued that the doctrine of mutual assured destruction turned nuclear weapons into suicide weapons. The idea of a Doomsday weapon took this to its logical extreme.

Political groups using suicide weapons in the post-Cold War era include mainly outfits affiliated to Islamic terrorism, among which even children have been used in order to escape detection when carrying out suicide attacks. However, non-Islamic groups, such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also have been prone to use suicide weapons. Today, the most common suicide weapons used to carry out terrorist attacks are car bombs or truck bombs, as well as antipersonnel bombs carried by a single person. Suicide bombers strap explosives, often covered with nails, screws, or other items intended to act as fragments, to their bodies or otherwise carry them into populated areas and detonate them. The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka are known for having made high-profile use of this method in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Similar methods have been also used by Palestinian terrorist groups in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among others.

Kamikaze attacks were mimicked in the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which a group of mostly Saudi terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon by flying hijacked civilian aircraft into them. It was the first time in history that civilian airliners filled with fuel were used as a weapon against targets of such magnitude.

Examples

• Suicide bombs
  • Explosive belt
• Kamikaze air attacks by Japan in WWII
  • Kaiten human-steered torpedo, used by Japan in WWII

See also

• Suicide attack tactics
• Japanese Special Attack Units
• Indoctrination
• Religious terrorism

External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
• Japanese suicide weapon：Human　torpedo　Kaiten　and　Human Bomb　Ohoka(Japanese)