Kamikaze Planes Crashing on the Deck of HMS Formidable in Japanese Waters, 1945, by Leonard Rosoman, watercolour and wax crayon on paper

Prior to his appointment as an Official War Artist, Rosoman had worked for the National Fire Service in London during the Blitz. As a ‘fireman artist’ he developed an artistic language that captured the immediacy and drama of events, with bright contrasting colours and expressive painterly markings.

He employed some of these techniques in his later Admiralty works which documented the war in the Far East. Attached to the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable in the Pacific Ocean, Rosoman witnessed a Japanese kamikaze pilot crashing into the ship’s flight deck – a dramatic subject he described in a letter to the Secretary of the War Artists' Advisory Committee as ‘just my cup of tea’. Copyright: the artist's estate / RAF Museum.