Why did Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

Oxogen is very thin at high altitudes. Their "helmets" carried the nessesary breathing appartus that enabled them to fly at high altitudes. If they did not wear them, they would die before they could direct their plane to the target.

Kamikaze pilots left on suicide missions. They were the suicide bombers of Japan as they did not plan on returning. It was not, as stated above, a last minute decision.

The helmet did a lot of things but one of the most important was it helped drown out the noise of the engine! Fighter planes of that time were made with no sound insulation and without a helmet you ended up deaf. It is extremely hard to concentrate when your ears were in pain from noise.

They didn't fly very high so it wasn't for the oxygen. I imagine the helmet also contained the headset for the radio communications in the airplane. If nothing else it may have protected them in the final moments they were taking fire to guide their plane into the target.

cuz they look sooo cool

no. for protection, from intense cold from flying at altitude and from noise.

also earphones for their radios were in the helmets.

They knew they were going to die, that was the intention, better to die honorably for the emporer than be defeated and lose face.

They were trained with one mission, to crash their planes into a target, they were given only enough fuel to get there, no more. It was a one way trip and they willingly took it. For many of them it truly was their one and only flight, they trained in wooden mockups to learn to fly just enough to be a kamikaze. By that stage of the war, fuel was a horribly scarce commodity, they had warships sitting in harbor with not enough fuel to go to sea. They were not going to waste it on training.

Kamikaze mean "God Wind", they were joining their god by becoming a saving wind.

Please read "Flyboys" by James Bradley.

Kamikaze pilots did not set out on missions with the intent on crashing their planes into targets. The suicide dive was an honourable way to serve defeat when their aircraft were damaged or out of fuel instead of ejecting or crash landing and being captured by the enemy. The Japanese were raised with honour as the building block of their lives, but the kamikaze dive was not limited to their race, other pilots also did this, just not as well known or as common a practice. The helmets were just part of the flight gear.

They wore them while training, and back then, they weren't really helmets, just extra protection against the cold. usually they wore headbands with prayers sewn on them during their final missions.

They wore leather pull on covers lokked alot like the old american flight suit head covers.

For communication between planes.

I've answered this question too many times, so just go to this link and read:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_193.html

Good question. Now answer why we

drive on the parkway

AND

park on the driveway?