World War II-era Japanese submarine found off Hawaii coast

U.S. forces sank the submarines and claimed to have no information on their precise location, in an apparent bid to prevent their technology falling into the hands of the Soviet Union.

One in the submarine class remains missing.

Sounds like good fodder for some a novel / film. I'd never heard of these aircraft-carrying mega subs. Wow.

taj

I'd never heard of these aircraft-carrying mega subs.

That's mostly because they never actually saw combat or played a significant role in any campaign/operation. They're technological marvels but there was never a practical use for them.

Taj - this story was already made into a movie long ago - TOHO's 1963 epic kaiju masterpiece - Kaiteigunkan aka Atragon.

A timely reminder that Japan cannot be trusted.

Thanks, Shinhiyata. I'm not big on the kaiju genre, but I'll look for that.

That's pretty awesome, I'd love to see one of those subs up close but I imagine the costs the excavate a sub that size is tremendous.

They were remarkable ships and very advanced for that time and for any time for that matter. And yes they WERE operational and did see action and were fully armed at the time of surrender. They were a total surprise to the USN who had no idea they existed. They were very efficient and well designed and showed the Japanese mastery of ship buildings and military design very well. Once they surfaced the planes they carried could be moved out of the waterrtight hangar on deck and launched via a catapault in about 3 minutes. The planes could carry a normal bomb load and the ships were designed for long range missions of that era.

Perhaps it can be refurbished and reused. What an amazing machine.

Reminder of the not too distant pass when America was not so supportive of Japan.

CrisGerSan

Once they surfaced the planes they carried could be moved out of the waterrtight hangar on deck and launched via a catapault in about 3 minutes.

More like 10-15 minutes with a well trained crew, but probably took longer because the aircraft engines needed to be warmed up before they could launch and that takes time.

And yes they WERE operational and did see action and were fully armed at the time of surrender.

Operational they were but they certainly never saw action. Of the three actually built, I400 and I401 were the only two that put to sea as I402 was completed but never left port prior to the surrender. Neither I400 nor I401 ever saw combat, fired one of its weapons at the enemy, or launched any of their aircraft to attack a target. They conducted plenty of training to prepare for their intended missions of attacking American cities on the mainland, the Panama Canal, and the American carriers in the Caroline Islands staged for the impending attack on the Japanese mainland, but both subs were surrendered to the US Navy before they could carry out any of these missions. So no, as potentially effective as these subs may have been, there never saw action.

Pic here for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I400_2.jpg

Would be great to see some original film footage of one of these launching its bomber.

Dive, dive!

This is another example why Japan lost the pacific war. The cost of those subs and the cost of the Yamato could've been use for building 5 fully equipped carriers. Just bad luck.

This is another example why Japan lost the pacific war. The cost of those subs and the cost of the Yamato could've been use for building 5 fully equipped carriers. Just bad luck.

The cost of the ships was not why Japan lost the war. Building five carriers (and the squadrons of planes the carriers would need) would have been futile. Carriers are useless if they remain tied-up at the pier because you don't have any fuel to put in them. The lack of fuel to RUN those ships (and planes, and tanks, and trucks) was why Japan lost the war. You can't fight a war if you don't have the basic supplies necessary to wage war.

Fadamor. Fuel was cheap in contrast with those ships. Lets put it this way then. 4 carriers and 2 tankers. Like it?

Fadamor, fuel isn't cheap if it cannot be found at any price.

The war was lost for lots of reasons. Another is that the Japanese code was broken shortly after Pearl Harbor attack and the US could read all their secret radio messages for the rest of the war. Japan also neglected to destroy the fuel tanks adjacent to Pearl Harbor during the attack. That allowed the US to keep Hawaii and take the war to the Japanese. Without that fuel, they likely would have had to retreat to the West Coast.

There are lots of reasons both Germany and Japan lost the war but it all comes down to attrition. The US, Britain and USSR could soak up punishment (heck, the US was pretty much untouched except for sub warfare) and still have resources to put into the war. But even then there was rationing of food and fuel, etc. in the US. Japan and Germany ran out of just about everything, from fuel to food to fighter pilots. There was no one thing that did the trick. It was just a long, nasty grind.

Japan STARTED the war with the United States over resources. They were having problems getting enough rubber and petroleum products to keep up operations in China. They started pushing into Indo-China to acquire needed resources and the United States told Japan to stop or the U.S. would enact a blockade. Japan felt they couldn't stop and instead decided a preemptive strike against U.S. Pacific forces would delay any military blockade action by the U.S. long enough for Japan to solidify gains made in Indo-China. They gambled that the U.S. would just say "shoganai" and treat the entire operation as a fait acompli. Not really sure why they thought that. You don't attack an American territory and expect Americans to just say, "Oh well".

The survival of the oil tanks at Pearl was a tactical blunder on Japan's part, but certainly would have only disrupted things for the two or three months it would take to rebuild them. As it was, even with the tanks intact the U.S. didn't really have a response until Doolittle's raid over four months later. The submarines using the fuel from those tanks at the beginning of the war were pretty much ineffective because of faulty torpedo designs. It wasn't until the middle of the war - when enough complaints about "dud" torpedoes from sub captains finally caused the Navy to determine the cause and come up with a fix - that the U.S. submarines became a lethal factor.

With the country starved for fuel, there was no way Japan could continue to wage war on any appreciable scale. The Yamato's last cruise was a one-way trip even IF they hadn't been intercepted and sunk on the way to Okinawa. The ship only had enough fuel to get to Okinawa, where it was supposed to be scuttled in shallow water and used as a stationary gun platform defending the island. Japan was in such bad shape by the Summer of 1945 that the war was already won by the allies, but the allies didn't know it because Japan did such a good job pretending to still be the tiger it once was. Many historians have pointed out that even without the atomic bombs and the threat of the Soviet Union entering the fray on August 15, Japan would not have been able to mount a serious defense of the islands due to the logistical mess that the country was in. Due to the war in China, the people of Japan had been on rations since before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent aerial bombings by the U.S. Bomber Command made scarce rations even scarcer. Malnutrition was rampant by the end of the war (and the occupying forces turned a blind eye to the problem for at least a couple of years after the war).

Yes, there were many contributors to Japan losing the war, but having submarines built instead of carriers was NOT one of the reasons.

My last post should have been addressed to overchan, not Fadamor. Sorry. :-) (I would have posted this earlier but the system doesn't allow two postings in a row. And where the heck is the "edit" button?")