claims kamikaze pilots were not overly effective. Wikipedia states that there was no noticeable increase in number of ships lost even as kamikaze pilots became more common, and in total it seems they only sunk somewhere between 34 and 57 ships. So it sounds, to my unprofessional ears, like they weren't devastatingly effective.
However, I've also read that they were often poorly trained pilots flying outdated aircraft. That means they likely wouldn't have been all that effective if those pilots instead stuck to traditional fighter or bomber roles. Thus I'm wondering, given the resources spent on arming and training kamikaze pilots did those pilots prove cost effective, as opposed to training traditional pilots? If so by what margin?
edit:
Since you're asking for sources here is the first reliable source I found in 3 minutes of googling which claimed pilots were not overly effective. Wikipedia also claims that 14 percent of Kamikazes survived to score a hit on a ship; and less then 8.5% of ships hit by kamikazes sunk, which if true would mean at best they had only a 1.19% success rate at sinking ships; and that's only if you assume that every pilot hit a different ship every ship that sunk sank entirely do the kamikazes, so the actual success rate is presumably much lower.