Two Sunken Japanese Submarines Found Off Hawaii 239
Ponca City, We love you writes "The NY Times reports that two World War II Japanese submarines, including one meant to carry aircraft for attacks on American cities, have been found in deep water off Hawaii where they were sunk in 1946. Specifically designed for a stealth attack on the US East Coast — perhaps targeting Washington, DC and New York City — the 'samurai subs' were fast, far-ranging, and some carried folding-wing aircraft. Five Japanese submarines were captured by American forces at the end of the war and taken to Pearl Harbor for study, then towed to sea and torpedoed, probably to avoid having to share any of their technology with the Russian military. One of the Japanese craft, the I-201, was covered with a rubberized coating on the hull, an innovation intended to make it less apparent to sonar or radar; it was capable of speeds of about 20 knots while submerged, making it among the fastest diesel submarines ever made. The other, the I-14, much larger and slower, was designed to carry two small planes, Aichi M6A Seirans that could be brought onto the deck and launched by a catapult. The submarines were meant to threaten the United States directly, but none of the attacks occurred because the subs were developed too late in the war, and American intelligence was too good. 'It's very moving to see objects like this underwater,' says Hans Van Tilburg of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 'because it's a very peaceful environment, but these subs were designed for aggression.'"
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Launched by catapult? (Score:3, Informative)
How does that work? See this [wikipedia.org].
Re:Launched by catapult? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:5, Informative)
Link [ussnautilus.org]
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:5, Informative)
U505 at Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It's Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] page, and it's Museum [msichicago.org] page.
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:3, Informative)
U-boat in Chicago.
Growler Submarine in New York City
Submarine Force Museum in Groton CT has the USS Nautilus
There are others.
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:3, Informative)
You can't go inside it, but the HA.19 [wikipedia.org], one of the Japanese midget submarines that participated (ineffectually) in the attack on Pearl Harbor, is on display at the National Museum of the Pacific War [wikipedia.org], in Fredericksburg, Texas.
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:5, Informative)
Article is wrong: Japanese DID attack US mainland (Score:5, Informative)
And yes the aircraft were recoverable by the sub crew: they were seaplanes, and would be picked up by a crane aboard the sub.
You can read a summary of US-mainland attacks here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_United_States_territory_in_North_America_during_World_War_II#Japanese_assaults [wikipedia.org]
The 25 Museum Submarines Located Across The USA (Score:4, Informative)
The 25 Museum Submarines Located Across The USA - Listed In Order Of Launch Date [submarinemuseums.org]
Re:Launched by catapult? (Score:4, Informative)
Currently steam for the launchers, though electromagentic rails are being designed as upgrades.
The hydralics are used to slow the arresting cables down. And for the big elevators.
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Launched by catapult? (Score:4, Informative)
wonder if aircraft recovery was even a possibility
It was. The aircraft were fitting for water landings and the subs had cranes to lift them back on deck.
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:1, Informative)
There's one parked next to the aircraft carrier Intrepid in NYC... The Growler [intrepidmuseum.org]... one of the first to carry nuclear tipped missiles
Re:In the year 2199... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:price of failure (Score:3, Informative)
Like Japan wasn't bombing civilians? Or Germany? Or Britain? Or Russia? Or _ANYONE ELSE_?
That's how wars were fought in those days. Get over it. We didn't have smart bombs, we couldn't take out a specific building, or even a specific city block. And their war industries were located right in the middle of their major cities. We had no other choices. The only way to stop their military was to carpet bomb their cities, or though a direct ground assault. And do you realize how many _more_ people would have died had we not dropped those bombs? We would have kept carpet-bombing their cities (killing civilians), we would have been stuck in war taking these tiny little islands for _months_, possibly _years_ (killing hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and plenty more civilians), and with the Japanese mindset at the time we likely would have had to march our troops right up to the emperor's palace before they would have surrendered. These are the same people who were using Kamikaze aircraft. Do you really think they would have surrendered, ever? Yes, it was a horrible act, but it was the best option we had at the time - though I will admit we should have waited before dropping the second bomb - from what I've heard they didn't even fully know what the first one did before we dropped the second. From what I've heard they basically ignored the initial reports because they didn't think such a thing was even possible.
Today, yes, killing civilians is a horrible thing to do. But that's pretty easy to say when you have the capability to fire a missile from hundreds of miles away and take out a single room of a building without harming anything around it. It's easy to criticize when you're 60 years away. But by your logic every single army in history, including those acting in defense, and civilian militias, are guilty of horrific and cowardly atrocities. In those days, when a nation went to war, _the entire nation_ went to war. There really were no civilians in the sense that there are today. Every single citizen was in some way involved in the war effort.
Re:Wha? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:3, Informative)
USS Drum (SS-228)
Gato-class submarine
1940-1967
Battleship Memorial Park
2703 Battleship Parkway
Mobile, Alabama, 36602
Google Maps satellite view [google.com]
This park also has a lot of other nice things to look at, such as the USS Alabama (BB-60), and A-12 (similar to the SR-71) #06938.
A good part of the Drum and Alabama are open for you to explore.
I was there to see the A-12, but spent hours exploring the Alabama, and probably 1/2 hour in the Drum.
Re:Wha? (Score:5, Informative)
The Allies also had plenty of leading edge technology. It is hard to have a consistent edge across the entire spectrum.
Of course the allies led in technology. That's why they won the war. There's a certain luxury to develop new technologies when you're fighting at arm's length (in the case of Britain post 1940 and the US) vs being right in the thick of things. The Soviets had already won the tank design part - as early as 1941 I believe it was von Rundstedt that commented, on inspecting a captured Soviet T-34: "If ever the Soviets can mass produce this tank, we've lost the war". Individually German tanks were far superior. However they were far more complex, resulting in engineering, maintenance and manufacturing difficulties. The Soviets had a good simple design that could take a beating and was easy to make and maintain.
Germany was, after the start of Barbarossa and the stall in the offensive, in a fight for her life. That leaves very little budget for R&D. And with 20-20 hind-sight too much of it went to tank and artillery development (a losing proposition because they were going to be beaten by sheer numbers anyway), and not enough of it to asymmetric warfare like U-Boats or aircraft. Imagine a Germany capable of sealing off the North Atlantic with hordes of type XXI U-boats, or bombing the Ural tank factories and the Norfolk shipyards with long range bombers (read about the Amerika Bomber project that got cancelled)/strategic rockets!
The Japanese were never going to win, period, unless Germany managed a complete victory in Europe and took on the US. Yamamoto even knew this before the war started. They were too small, and trying to grab too much of an empire.
Re:Wha? (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to read Arthur Clarke's old story "Superiority."
The wonder weapon often has significant hidden flaws or doesn't make it to the battlefield in time be decisive.
A downed Zero was recovered from the Aleutians in July 42, rebuilt and flown for testing:
"The Zero had superior maneuverability only at the lower speeds used in dogfighting, with short turning radius and excellent aileron control at very low speeds. However, immediately apparent was the fact that the ailerons froze up at speeds above two hundred knots, so that rolling maneuvers at those speeds were slow and required much force on the control stick. It rolled to the left much easier than to the right. Also, its engine cut out under negative acceleration [as when nosing into a dive] due to its float-type carburetor.
"We now had an answer for our pilots who were unable to escape a pursuing Zero. We told them to go into a vertical power dive, using negative acceleration, if possible, to open the range quickly and gain advantageous speed while the Zero's engine was stopped. At about two hundred knots, we instructed them to roll hard right before the Zero pilot could get his sights lined up."
Advanced U.S. fighters produced toward the war's end still couldn't turn with the Zero, but they were faster and could outclimb and outdive it.
Without self-sealing fuel tanks, the Zero was easily flamed when hit in any of its three wing and fuselage tanks or its droppable belly tank. And without protective armor, its pilot was vulnerable.
Koga's Zero [americanheritage.com]
Re:Wha? (Score:3, Informative)
A) Believing every rumor is NOT the opposite of arrogance.
B) In fact, they had good reason to disbelieve the reports. Their only problem was that they made certain assumptions about how much of a death-trap the Japanese military were willing to make their planes... Get rid of all armor, and a plane can climb much faster. Of course it dives MUCH SLOWER, so upon figuring this out this fact, future dogfights became immensely one-sided.
High tech for high tech's sake is usually a bad move. German jets were just slightly faster than the fastest prop aircraft, and really diverted resources away from better uses of that money.
Not really true. Things like radar were also highly advanced military technologies, which the US/Brits had, and the Germans/Japanese did not.
In short, the Axis were only slightly more advanced than the Allies. Where the level of military technology is more disparate, it certainly can and does become an overwhelming advantage.
Re:Tour a sub. (Score:4, Informative)
I spent a couple hours at the shrine to the Thresher and the Scorpion in Groton. Any loss at sea is - awe inspiring? But, the loss of a sub is somehow a little bit more than the loss of a surface ship. I got to tour one of the last diesel boats in San Diego, soon after I joined the Navy. A 3rd class petty officer spotted me wandering up and down the pier, examining every detail of the boats, and invited me aboard for a guided tour. Simply awesome.
Uncle Sam wouldn't allow me to serve aboard boats, for the same reason he wouldn't let me around his aircraft. Poor color vision kept me out of anything interesting. *sigh*
In '74 and '75, there was a captured WW2 U-boat at the Great Lakes training center as well. That was god-awful small and cramped, even compared to the boat I toured in San Diego.
Never did tour the Nautilus. I can't even remember why I missed it - it was certainly on my list of "things to do". It probably had something to do with chasing women.....
Re:Launched by catapult? (Score:2, Informative)
The Japanese managed to launch 2 attacks on the US mainland early in WW2 (Sept. 1942) dropping incendiary bombs near Bandon, Oregon in an attempt to start forest fires. See the Lookout Air Raids [wikipedia.org]. They were able to recover the airplanes without a problem and the pilot Nobuo Fujita [wikipedia.org] lived until 1997.
Re:Wha? (Score:3, Informative)
Like the other poster, I think you meant the F6F Hellcat. The F4F was slower than a Zero and couldn't come close to out-performing it. It had the advantage in the dives, and it was much tougher, which kept the carnage down to some extent, but performance-wise, no way.
You are right that the Zero greatly out-performed the Brewster Buffalo, but even at the start of the war a Spitfire would have been a very good match to the Zero head-to-head, and the later Marks of the Spitfire ran rings around the Zero. The only advantage the Zero had over the Spitfire was range, but that (as noted) was due to lack of armor, self-sealing tanks, etc. Not that they ever met much, head to head, but you certainly would prefer a Spitfire.
The Zero was pretty good in 1939 but not any better than other contemporary land-based fighters like the BF-109 or the Spitfire. It was better than almost all the carrier-based planes at the time, but not a lot in terms of kill ratio. The Wildcats held their own respectably well and the P-40 had a pretty good record, and they are both pretty doggy airplanes by later war standards. And the Zero never really got a lot better. By even 1941 was out-classed by most of the newer Allied airplanes and it's own stablemates. The Zero had a terrible record when it came up against the P-38 or later the F6F, Mustang, or Corsair. Although they didn't really meet, any model of the Zero would have been dead meat in 1943 against any front-line US, British, or Luftwaffe fighter.
Brett
Re:Wha? (Score:3, Informative)
Yet the countries with the advanced high-tech military hardware still fell to the swarming hordes that out-produced them materially.
It wasn't that simple.
If you look at Germany vs USSR, for example, it's a common myth that USSR won by "swarming hordes", human wave attacks, etc. The myth is also wrong. There are very few documented cases of human wave attacks by the USSR - it was well known by then that this simply doesn't work against machine guns (so what you've seen in e.g. "Enemy at the Gates" is pure bullshit).
Tech difference was also nowhere hear as great as some people make it out to be. To have a look at some points...
German tanks were generally better armored and had longer range guns, yes - but their mechanical complexity was such that they were much more likely to break down than Soviet counterparts; and, of course, sloped armor in T-34 was a major design and engineering breakthrough all of its own, and contributed towards making the cheap yet versatile killing machine that it become. IS-2 was a very successful design, too - capable of taking on German Tigers and Panthers on its own, and yet smaller than Tiger, and cheaper and more reliable than either Tiger or Panther.
In terms of infantry weapons, it was also not at all clear. German Mauser infantry rifles were slightly better than Mosin Nagant (knife bayo, non-rimmed ammunition, and often better construction), but not enough to make a difference. Soviets had semi-automatic rifles earlier than Germans (SVT), and they were of better quality, too (enough so to make sniper versions [madbird.com] of them), compared to German G43 (G41 was pretty much unusable from the get go). Soviet SMGs were somewhat better (PPSh in particular, but also the later PPS). German MGs were clearly superior overall, though Soviet DP was lighter and closer to a modern LMG than any of the German ones. Soviet hand grenades were significantly better designed than the German "potato masher" (even accounting for design differences in offensive vs defensive grenades). German AT infantry weapons were much better than Russian small-caliber and mostly useless AT rifles.
In terms of combat planes, it was also a draw. Early Soviet designs were generally worse, later designs were on par, and better in some conditions.
To conclude: WW2 Eastern Front was not an instance of a "horde of barbarians" overrunning a high-tech but resource-limited army. Resource limits did play a part in it, but high tech was used by both sides of the conflict, and it is very unlikely that USSR would've won if it went for quantity alone.