The Ohka, the Yasukuni Betty, and the Cherry Blossom Suicide Bomb Hanging in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

Hanging from the rafters at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles, Virginia, is a small, cherry-red aircraft barely twenty feet long. It is the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka, a rocket-powered Japanese suicide weapon from the end of World War II. Its name means “cherry blossom” in Japanese, and it was designed for a single purpose: to be flown by a living pilot directly into an American warship.

What Was the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka?

The Ohka was not a conventional airplane. It was a piloted, rocket-boosted bomb with stubby wings, a warhead in the nose, and no landing gear - because it was never meant to land.

By late 1944, Japan’s position in the Pacific had collapsed. The great carrier battles were lost, experienced pilots were mostly dead, and fuel and aluminum were both in critically short supply. As the American fleet closed in island by island, the Imperial Japanese Navy turned to kamikaze tactics: young men in ordinary aircraft ordered to trade their lives for a ship.

The problem was that an ordinary airplane carrying a bomb is slow and easy to shoot down. American gunners became highly effective at knocking kamikazes out of the sky before they reached their targets. The Ohka was the Navy’s answer to a cold engineering question: how do you make the pilot and the bomb arrive too fast to stop?

How Did the Ohka Work?

The Ohka could not take off on its own - it had no means of getting airborne. Instead, it was bolted to the belly of a Mitsubishi G4M bomber, the aircraft the Americans nicknamed the “Betty.”

The Betty carried the Ohka and its pilot up to roughly 20,000 feet and to within about 20 miles of the American fleet. There, the pilot climbed down into the tiny cockpit and was released. At that point, the Ohka became a heavy glider with a warhead in the nose, falling toward the sea.

Once the pilot lined up on a ship, he ignited three solid-fuel rockets in the tail. There was no throttle and no way to abort. In a shallow dive, the Ohka accelerated to more than 500 miles per hour - some accounts put it closer to 600 mph in the final plunge - faster than American gunners were accustomed to leading. In the nose sat more than 2,600 pounds of explosive, over a ton, guided by a human being who was never coming home.

Why Did the Ohka Fail as a Weapon?

The Ohka’s fatal flaw was the same as its reason for existing: it could not fly itself to the battle. It depended entirely on the Betty, and a Betty carrying a two-ton glider was slow, heavy, and nearly impossible to maneuver - a sitting duck.

The first major operation using the Ohka, in March 1945, was a catastrophe for Japan. A formation of Bettys carrying Ohkas was intercepted by American Hellcat fighters long before reaching the fleet. Weighed down by their cargo, the bombers could neither run nor maneuver, and the Hellcats shot every one of them down. The Ohkas plunged into the ocean still bolted to their motherships, their pilots dead without ever sighting a target.

American sailors who later faced the Ohka in combat gave it a mocking name. They called it the “Baka bomb.” Baka is a Japanese word meaning fool or idiot - the sailors’ verdict on the entire concept.

Measured coldly, the Ohka was a poor weapon. It sank very few ships, though it damaged some and killed sailors, including aboard the destroyer USS Mannert L. Abele. It demanded everything of its pilots and delivered very little in return.

Why the Name “Cherry Blossom”?

The choice of name was deliberate. In Japanese culture, the cherry blossom is treasured precisely because it falls so quickly - blooming brilliantly for only a few days before it is gone.

Japan named a suicide weapon after the most fragile and fleeting beautiful thing it knew, and meant it as a tribute to the young men who would die flying it. The pilots were often just eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old - boys who loved to fly, with families waiting at home, strapped into a machine built with no way to bring them back.

Why the Ohka Matters Today

Standing beneath the Ohka at Udvar-Hazy, surrounded by aircraft celebrated for bringing their crews home, you’re looking at the one machine built to do the opposite. Nearly every aircraft in the aviation tradition is designed around survival: fuel reserves, redundant systems, seatbelts, and a plan to return to the ramp alive. The entire safety culture of flight exists to bring the pilot back.

The Ohka is what aircraft look like when a nation abandons that idea. It stands as the shadow of everything pilots cherish about flight - which is exactly why it is worth seeing once, and standing quietly beneath.

Key Takeaways

• The Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (“cherry blossom”) was a rocket-powered Japanese suicide aircraft displayed at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.
• It could not take off alone; a Mitsubishi G4M “Betty” bomber carried it aloft before releasing it near the target.
• Powered by three solid-fuel rockets, it reached over 500 mph and carried more than 2,600 pounds of explosives.
• Its dependence on the slow, vulnerable Betty made it a poor weapon; American forces mockingly called it the “Baka bomb” (Japanese for “fool”).
• Its first major mission in March 1945 failed completely when Hellcat fighters destroyed the entire formation of loaded bombers.