Japanese Aircraft-Carrying Super Submarine From WWII Located Off Hawaii 123
Freshly Exhumed sends this story from Reuters:
"Scientists plumbing the Pacific Ocean off the Hawaii coast have discovered a Second World War era Japanese submarine, a technological marvel that had been preparing to attack the Panama Canal before being scuttled by U.S. forces. The 122-meter 'Sen-Toku' class vessel — among the largest pre-nuclear submarines ever built — was found in August off the southwest coast of Oahu and had been missing since 1946, scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa said. The I-400 and its sister ship, the I-401, which was found off Oahu in 2005, were able to travel one and a half times around the world without refueling and could hold up to three folding-wing bombers that could be launched minutes after resurfacing, the scientists said."
I for one (Score:5, Funny)
welcome our new Japanese over...oh, wait...
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This will really come in handy after the big meltdown, when we have to re-engineer these vessels to set off for Iscandar [wikipedia.org].
Dude - you need a battleship for that. [wikipedia.org] All of the starships in the Yamato/StarBlazers series were based on battleship designs, not submarines.
(otherwise, where the hell do you think you're gonna put the cool gun turrets? *Think*, man!)
Re: Japanese, your Lord ! (Score:2)
Re: Japanese, your Lord ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly buying from companies like Ford, the huge multinational corporation with a vaguely English sounding name primarily owned by international banks that makes cars in the US from mostly foreign parts is far more patriotic than buying from companies like Honda, the huge multinational corporation with a vaguely Japanese sounding name primarily owned by international banks that makes cars in the US from mostly foreign parts.
Toyota and Honda are NOT owned by banks ! (Score:4, Informative)
Unlike Ford or GM, Toyota and Honda are definitely NOT owned by banks !
Toyota is owned by the group of inter-connected companies that is controlled by the Toyoda clan of Japan.
Same with Honda - owned by the group of inter-connected companies that is controlled by the Honda clan of Japan.
Re:Toyota and Honda are NOT owned by banks ! (Score:5, Interesting)
The clan owned zbaitsu did not last past WWII, having failed to survive the twin blows of Japanese nationalization and the US occupation. Like most big Japanese enterprises, the Toyota Group is a keiretsu, a group of interlocking business built around a bank and a trading company. In the case of the Toyota Group, the bank controlling everything is the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
Which in turned is owned by companies like Mellon Bank, State Street Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank, etc.
Re: Toyota and Honda are NOT owned by banks ! (Score:5, Informative)
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That said the head of Toyota is still from the Toyoda family.
While that is true, IIRC that is only because the Japanese have a tradition of adult adoption [economist.com]. In short, the most promising executive gets adopted into the family of the current head of the company.
Re: Toyota and Honda are NOT owned by banks ! (Score:2)
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Yes, the current CEO is a Toyoda. But the previous 3 were not. The current and past two presidents have not been Toyodas. The current and past two Chairmen have not been Toyodas.
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BTW, after a little Googling, it was the Suzuki family and company that I was thinking of originally.
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In the case of the Toyota Group, the bank controlling everything is the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
Wrong !
The stake of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group in the Toyota Group is small.
The vast majority of the Toyota Group, as has outlined by user Jeeeb, is under the control of the Mitsui Group and the Marubeni Group.
Incidentally, neither Mitsui Group nor Marubeni Group, NOR the Mitsubishi Financial group, is under the control of foreigners (either foreign banks and/or foreign individuals).
Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Marubeni, and Yamaha are among the most vital clans in Japan. The clans can be traced far back to th
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"The more Toyota / Nissan / Nexus / Mazda / Honda on your neighborhood, the more you guys are asking them to lord over you !"
Not to mention Hello Kitty.
Re:I for one (Score:5, Interesting)
welcome our new Japanese over...oh, wait...
Actually I thank you guys in the USA (well your grandparents) since if you had not fought that war I would not have been born. My mother had the "pleasure" of actually having Japanese overlords, and while my dad didn't it was only because the US occupied the country before the Japanese could do more than lob a few shells at it.
For that matter my inlaws were in a country run by the Nazis and would likely not have met either...and the US really didn't have to enter that war at all. Nor did they need to spend the money rebuilding the place.
So every time I see some boneheaded american thing (and it's a big place so there's no shortage of stupidity, shitheads and whatever) I remember that they are capable of greatness.
(apologies for the serious response to the flippant remark)
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Also remember, Invading Iraq was to save the Kurds, they just forgot to tell us at the time.
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Well, Hitler actually declared war on the United States first, not the other way round, so I don't think they could really ignore that at the time.
Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
Well, Hitler actually declared war on the United States first, not the other way round,
The US was well involved in the war against Germany already. They just don't like _declaring_ war. At least not on countries, just abstract nouns.
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For that matter my inlaws were in a country run by the Nazis and would likely not have met either...and the US really didn't have to enter that war at all. Nor did they need to spend the money rebuilding the place.
The US did not decide to enter WW2. There was no "moral" decision to help "freedom", or fight the Nazis. The US stood by while Western Europe was overrun by the Nazis. The US was attacked by Japan, a couple of years after the war started. A couple of years after much of Europe had been invad
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Poland?
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The US did, in general, think Nazis were a bad idea. The US started serious rearming after the fall of France, and quickly started disregarding international laws of neutrality. Whether stopping the Nazis was the job of the US was a matter of debate, and wasn't fully agreed on by the Brits until Churchill took over. When the US should enter the war was also a matter of debate, and I can make a case that the war effort would have gone better with a somewhat later entry date.
Moreover, the USN was on a w
Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Interesting)
This is really cool because it's a piece of history and an engineering accomplishment but the only reason it was 'lost' was because the US sank it and then pretended that they forgot where they sank it so that they didn't have to give it back and have the Soviets study it.
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Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:4, Funny)
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Ehh, not really since it would just be better to use periods.
This is really cool because it's a piece of history and an engineering accomplishment. The only reason it was 'lost' was because the US sank it. They then pretended they forgot where they sank it so that they didn't have to give it back and have the Soviets study it.
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Informative)
Had nothing to do with "giving it back".
The USA and USSR had an agreement during the War that they would share in the spoils of war (like this submarine), and the USA didn't want to turn two of them over to the USSR (because the USSR didn't enter the war against Japan until after the Nagasaki bombing, but more importantly because we didn't want the USSR to get any "free" technology transfers). The USSR was a land power and not a sea power, we wanted to keep things that way....
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Had nothing to do with "giving it back".
The USA and USSR had an agreement during the War that they would share in the spoils of war (like this submarine), and the USA didn't want to turn two of them over to the USSR (because the USSR didn't enter the war against Japan until after the Nagasaki bombing, but more importantly because we didn't want the USSR to get any "free" technology transfers). The USSR was a land power and not a sea power, we wanted to keep things that way....
Which is all a bunch of diplomatic nonsense on top of diplomatic nonsense. The Soviets were suppose to do all sorts of things that they never followed through on, that is how Poland ended up enslaved by them and North Korea too.
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North Korea was enslabed by ... a north korean dictator, or by China, but certainly not by Russia!
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Informative)
Kim Jong Il was born in the Soviet Union, where Kim Il Sung commanded a Soviet military unit. Those two countries had a very strong relationship for many decades.
Wrong, Capitalist Pig! (Score:2)
Kim Jong Un was the first of his line, born twixt the cosmic joining of a unicorn and a space dragon.
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Informative)
North Korea was enslabed by ... a north korean dictator, or by China, but certainly not by Russia!
Are you serious? Are you familiar with the history of Korea post WW2 and leading up to the Korean War? Japan occupied Korea until the end of WW2. After their surrender, the US and Soviets split occupation at the 38th parallel (much like how Germany, whose history I hope you are familiar with, was divided). In brief, the Soviet Union installed the Communist system and Kim Il-sung in power.
North Korea could not have been more directly enslaved by the Soviet Union.
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North Korea was enslabed by ... a north korean dictator, or by China, but certainly not by Russia!
Are you serious? Are you familiar with the history of Korea post WW2 and leading up to the Korean War? Japan occupied Korea until the end of WW2. After their surrender, the US and Soviets split occupation at the 38th parallel (much like how Germany, whose history I hope you are familiar with, was divided). In brief, the Soviet Union installed the Communist system and Kim Il-sung in power.
North Korea could not have been more directly enslaved by the Soviet Union.
With Soviet planes being flown by Soviet pilots in the Korean war. This is why the MIGs never left North Korean airspace, they didn't want the Americans finding out it wasn't Chinese or Korean pilots shooting down their bombers.
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North Korea was enslabed by ... a north korean dictator, or by China, but certainly not by Russia!
In 1945, who took the surrender of the Japanese in North Korea? Stalin's Soviets. Who was busy resuming a civil war in China? Mao.
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a very interesting take on the Soviets entering the war against Japan. They did it very very late, and were actually still fighting the Japanese for a few days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The details on these engagements, from the Soviet perspective, can be found here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAAb8Plf20I [youtube.com]
That whole series on the Soviet perspective is amazing.
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The last US bombing raid on Japan was carried out on the 14th or 15th of August, several days after the second nuclear bombing since up till then there had been no official notice of surrender by the Japanese government. There had been a reduction in operations for a day or two after the Nagasaki attack but no complete cessation.
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:4, Interesting)
The book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Richard Rhodes) has a lot of interesting information, and different perspectives, on the atomic bombings. There's the traditional "we would have so many causalities" argument that's always made. But there were some other possible motivations that are very interesting, and the cynic in me tends to give them a lot of credence.
(Oh, and the book is fascinating, I think, a very good "geek" read. Things like the Nagasaki bomb having never been tested- there was so little Plutonium available they didn't want to waste any on a test, and they were *that* confident in the design they didn't feel a test was necessary. They just did the math.)
First, the development of "The Bomb" had been horrendously expensive, and mostly a "black" project. It was all going to come to light after the war. People involved in it needed a win- you couldn't have spent all that money for no reason and not expect to be crucified when it became known. So- "Bomb something, do it quick, we have to use it to justify having developed it!" Political CYA.
Also, there was a huge amount of concern about the Soviets. They had developed this huge army, and we didn't like how they thought- they were becoming the enemy. We needed to demonstrate that we had the ultimate big-stick so there wouldn't be any mistaking who the toughest kid on the block really was. Chest-thumping on a massive scale.
And also, there was concern about having to share the control of Japan after they surrendered. Things weren't going so well in Germany and we simply didn't want to have to include the Soviets in the process. If the war went on the Soviets involvement would necessitate including them... if we ended it quickly though, before they were really involved, we could leave them out. Like not sharing these subs :)
Personally I suspect all of these issues (and more) played into it. I think the "too many american lives would be lost" argument isn't really sufficient on it's own. But second-guessing secrets from 60-some years ago... who knows?
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I think as in many decisions of this importance many things come into play. Of course when making a decision about whether or not to drop the bomb, Truman probably had some sort of mental list of "benefits" and "drawbacks", and all of the things you mentioned would have made that list.
But at the end of the day, he made that decision primarily because he wanted to "win" the war, and the fastest way to do that with the least amount of US casualties was to drop the bombs.
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Interesting)
Whole lot of wrong there but "American chest-beating" after the war fed into the history books which took a very parochial view of the entire affair -- for example the Germans took 90% of their casualties in the East, the Allied landings at Normandy and liberation of Western Europe were a sideshow as far as they were concerned. So it is with the Japanese theatre of the war and latterly the use of nukes there. BTW the Nagasaki plutonium implosion bomb design was the one actually tested at Trinity, it was the Hiroshima uranium bomb that was considered simple enough it didn't need a test shot.
The nukes were a new wonder-weapon in a war filled with wonder-weapons, they were ready for use and they were used, that's all. The Allies already had city-killers, they were thousand-bomber raids causing firestorms that killed more people in a night in places like Tokyo than the Hiroshima bomb ever did. Sure the nukes were super-effective at the hypocentre, melting concrete and glass with the heat flash but the effects died away with distance whereas mattress-bombing with ten thousand tonnes of conventional explosives and 4lb incendiaries destroyed a much wider area. Here's an interesting thought -- bomber losses over Japan were tiny compared to the German campaign and in September the Boeing plant in Seattle built 300 B-29s and that's after the Japanese surrendered. It took them months to stop the production lines. All those bombers would have been available to continue conventional attacks on Japan even without the nukes.
As for scaring the Soviets, they had been fucked over by experts and in the end it was the hammer-and-sickle that flew over what was left of the Reichstag, not the swastika over Red Square. Nukes didn't scare them; if you want to play that game try getting a map of the Soviet Union at the end of 1945 and draw a few dozen two-mile-diameter circles, the effective damage area of a 20 kilotonne nuke on it and then look at what's left. That's assuming the US could actually make that number of nukes and deliver them to target -- Moscow was out of range from western Europe using B-29s and the greater-range B-36 was still getting debugged by the time 1946 rolled around.
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The high number of eastern front casualties had more to do with the ruskies refusal to take prisoners than size or scale of commitments. The first encirclement at Stalingrad resulted in the surrender of 250K German soldiers. Not one survived to return to Germany. On the western front prisoners were taken and were returned to Germany after the war. This also made the eastern front far more bloody because later on the Germans fought to the last man because surrender meant death.
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The Germans had most of their military forces in the East because that's where most of the actual fighting was taking place especially after the withdrawal from North Africa. Stalin wanted the Allies to invade Western Europe to take some pressure off his forces and the Normandy landings in June 1944 did so, but not to any great extent. By the end of 1944 the majority of German military forces in were still concentrated on fighting the Russians in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to keep them from B
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Your revisionism is just as bad. The Soviets were never a party to the Geneva convention. This results in a major shift in how the eastern front developed. At the most basic level, it meant that Germans were not going to surrender (regardless of whatever insane order Hitler may have issued) because they would not have been offered the protections provided by the Geneva convention. This also created a bad feedback loop as the Germans would fight tooth and nail until the end over surrender which would necessi
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"The Bomb" was a mind-bendingly cheap and awesomely rapidly developed piece of world-changing technology. Anecdotally, it has been known for a long time that the total cost of the project during WW 2 was about $2 billion in contemporary dollars.
A detailed audit [brookings.edu] of nuclear weapons costs was completed in 1998, and the part from pre-Manhattan-Project research beginning in 1940, after 1939's Einstein-Szilard letter, through FDR's formal approva
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Yes, I thought of including the B-29 program in the cost, but judged it not proper to do so.
1) The B-29 was developed independent of the Manhattan Project, It was started before the Manhattan Project and before anyone knew whether a nuclear weapon was even possible.
2) At the time it was needed whether or not nuclear weapons were ever employed.
3) If it was an essential part of the nuclear program, which is seriously in question, certainly 3970 were not needed.
4) The widespread idea that no other airplane cou
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A few notes: the maximum combat load of a B-17, AFAIK, was 17,600 pounds: eight 1600-pound bombs in the bomb bay, and a 4000-pound bomb under each wing. It couldn't carry that load very far, and takeoff was probably hair-raising, but it was possible and done on at least one occasion.
The long range of the B-29 was needed through most of the war. Okinawa was taken in 1945, and not particularly early, and it needed work when we had it. The Marianas were captured in early Summer 1944, and we had a lot o
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:4, Insightful)
Read up on the Okinawa campaign and how costly that was. There was no indication that the Japanese would have surrendered without the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the invasion of Japan would create a much higher potential loss of military and civilians on both sides. Morally there is no difference between a nuclear bomb and conventional bombing. Dead is dead.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had the effect of saving the Japanese from themselves. They were preparing to have civilians attack the invaders with pitchforks, spears and machetes. Imagine how that would have gone. The "they would have surrendered without the bomb" argument is a more recent one. The U.S. expected to be fighting into 1946 and so did the Japanese. The loss due to starvation would probably have exceeded military losses.
The moral issues on the bomb came up after the war. Particularly when we realised there were enough bombs to wipe out humanity, and still are. Also, there has been a lot of whitewashing of the Japanese since the war. If you read up on their actions in China and the Pacific you will probably feel a lot less sorry for them. Their humanity was severely lacking. Luckily it is a different story today. But the Japanese do not fully acknowledge what they did in the war and a lot of the history is not taught to the young. This contrasts with Germany which basically acknowledged what was done and set about purging it from society. That is not the Japanese way, though.
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Often overlooked is that the Hiroshima bomb pretty much did destroy an army. Japan's Second General Army was headquartered and based out of Hiroshima. Most of the military units, logistical units, and the majority of the command staff were destroyed by the bomb.
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The end result is the same. Germany had a fanatical idealogy focused on Hitler, ethnic purity and the Fatherland. When he was out of the picture and the country clearly was never going to win, it became relatively easy to convince everyone to throw out all the old flags and ma
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"They had developed this huge army, and we didn't like how they thought"
The U.S. and allies couldn't have reinforced Europe or delivered troops to Japan fast enough to hold back the Soviet army. It seems to me that dropping the bomb was to protect the armies of Western Europe and Japan from having to fight a losing battle against the Soviets.
If the Soviets would have taken the coast of Japan and the coast of France, it would have been a very different world. Japan was practically defeated when the bom
the Nagasaki bomb having never been tested (Score:2)
The Trinity test was a test of a plutonium implosion device. It was the Little Boy type uranium device that didn't need to be tested.
That's the type of device you make with enriched Uranium, which is what gets people so freaked out about the Iranian program.
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>Things like the Nagasaki bomb having never been tested- there was so little Plutonium available they didn't want to waste any on a test, and they were *that* confident in the design they didn't feel a test was necessary. They just did the math.)
I believe it was the other way around. The Hiroshima bomb was a uranium gun-barrel design ("Little Boy"), and was not tested. The Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium implosion design ("Fat Man"), and was tested at Alamagordo.
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There's a very interesting take on the Soviets entering the war against Japan. They did it very very late, and were actually still fighting the Japanese for a few days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The details on these engagements, from the Soviet perspective, can be found here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAAb8Plf20I [youtube.com]
That whole series on the Soviet perspective is amazing.
The Soviets were late entering the war against Japan because their entire war economy was geared towards defeating the Germans in Europe. It's the Soviets that liberated the continent of Europe, the Americans/English only came for the ride. And even fighting only one enemy and what an enemy, that ended up costing the USSR a whole lot more than what the US lost in the war fighting on theaters.
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Well, most of Western Europe was liberated by the Western Allies. The Soviets were well on their way to Berlin by the time we landed on D-Day, but the Soviet job at that point was made infinitely easier by the fact we were keeping the Nazis quite busy in the West, and much of the Soviet ability to transport supplies to the front was helped immeasurably by vehicles provided by the Americans. yes, the Soviets did bear the brunt of the figthing.
The Soviets started fighting Japan as fast as they could...but it
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Informative)
No.
Stalin stalled as long as he could about attacking Japan (we started nagging about it right after VE Day), but suddenly changed his plans when Hiroshima was destroyed. He ordered an attack with whatever was available as soon as possible so he'd have some justification for an occupation role in Japan (Uncle Joe wanted to divide Japan the way Germany wa divided).
Then the Nagasaki bomb was dropped. Shortly after, the Russians crossed the border into Manchuria to beat up on already beaten Japanese troops.
Then Japan surrendered.
And when Stalin said he wanted to station troops in Japan, MacArthur (who was effectively Shogun at the time) told him to pound sand....
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Interesting)
It took the Soviets months to position over a million troops around Manchuria, moving them from the Western front after V-E Day along the Trans-Siberian railroad along with tens of thousands of artillery pieces, tanks etc. Marshal Vasilevsky who planned and organised the operation is regarded by some as the greatest general in history for just this achievement. The attack took place exactly 90 days after Germany surrendered as Stalin had promised at Potsdam, the timing was in no way related to the US using its first nuclear bombs.
The Japanese and Manchurian troops the Russians faced had never actually been in combat, they were quite well supplied with equipment from local factories and fuel was abundant and they were well dug-in having had months to prepare for an attack they knew was coming. Unfortunately for them they were up against the soldiers who had taken Berlin, the toughest bastards in uniform that walked the earth at that time.
As for MacArthur neither he nor the Japanese forces positioned there could stop the Russians taking the Kuril and Sakhalin islands, the only opposed landing of foreign troops on Japanese soil apart from Okinawa. They also grabbed off a large chunk of Korea into the bargain and many historians claim that only running out of supplies stopped them taking the rest of the peninsula.
Revisionism much? (Score:2)
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The agreements to split Korea and Germany were made well in advance. The zones were planned. In Germany the allies had to evacuate certain areas as they were in the Soviet zone. The only reason the frontline resembled the final zones was because Eisenhower did not want to waste energy taking areas that they would not be administering later on. This is why he had no interest in taking Berlin, though Churchill saw it as a potential bargaining chip.
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Pathetic.
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I stand corrected on Korea. According to various sources including http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Division_of_Korea [newworldencyclopedia.org] it was
> On August 10, 1945 two young colonels, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, supervised by Brigadier General George Lincoln, working on extremely short notice, proposed the 38th parallel as the administrative line for the two armies.
So 5 days before the end of the war. The soviets had troops in Korea and the U.S. did not. While the detail of Korea's split was not done at Y
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Of course you do - it's the entire reason why there is a North and South Korea after all. Thank you you being honest.
A poster above, "CrimsonAvenger", was pretending that the entire Korea thing didn't happen. I objected.
To be a bit more clear (Score:2)
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That's correct. A lot of people make a mistake of looking at the battle in Europe and ignoring the political aspects that had taken place regarding how the Western front shaped up. The EAC zones of control had been established before the Yalta conference, I believe, and we definitely established before the Allies even entered Germany. Since the Combined Chiefs of Staff failed to give Eisenhower any orders or guidance on how to handle entering the Soviet zone (which contained Berlin) Eisenhower was basically
Russia only triumphed due to US assistance (Score:3)
It's the Soviets that liberated the continent of Europe ...
The people or eastern Europe who were "liberated" by the Soviets don't seem to agree. They seem to feel they merely exchanged one brutal repressive dictator for another. Keep in mind that Stalin was initially Hitler's partner. The war formally started in Europe when Hitler invaded Poland, what it conveniently not mentioned is that Hitler only took half of Poland. Hitler and Stalin had a pre-arranged deal, Hitler would take the the western half and Stalin would take the eastern half of Poland. Stalin invaded
Re: Captured at the end of the War (Score:2)
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Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Interesting)
Which has more to do with postwar paranoia than anything else. Even the USN had given up on these boats after less than a year of studying them, as they were complete turkeys.* Despite their huge size, they weren't particularly advanced technologically and the aircraft carried were fairly short ranged with unimpressive payloads. They were extraordinarily vulnerable due to their poor handling characteristics and the need for extended periods on the surface to launch or recover their aircraft. Even minor flooding in the hangar could lead to a severe list and loss-of-control.
I got to spend an afternoon once with one of the guys who brought the I-400 to Hawaii from Japan. According to him, they were scared for their lives the entire trip due to it's poor performance and handling characteristics.
Though aircraft carrying submarines have been briefly examined from time to time since WWII, nobody has tried to build one. The submarine simply imposes too many restrictions on the aircraft and vice versa. Cruise missiles and soon drones are the exception that proves the rule - they're encapsulated and fit into standard torpedo tubes and thus do not impose notable restrictions on the boat.
*By comparison, some of the German boats taken over at the end of the war were in service for trials well into the 1950's.
Biological attacks were considered ... (Score:2)
Despite their huge size, they weren't particularly advanced technologically and the aircraft carried were fairly short ranged with unimpressive payloads.
That doesn't quite matter when the attack is biological in nature. Imperial Japan developed a system for aerial dispersal of plague infected flees. They "successfully" tested this system on Chinese villagers in territory they occupied. One planned mission for these subs was to disperse plague infected fleas over major U.S. coastal cities like San Francisco and San Diego. They decided not to carry out this biological attack once they decided they needed a negotiated end to the war.
"Bacteriological weapons
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Cruise missiles and soon drones are the exception that proves the rule - they're encapsulated and fit into standard torpedo tubes and thus do not impose notable restrictions on the boat.
Actually, they're usually launched out of vertical launch tubes, similarly to ballistic missiles.
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Here's a more complete article from the NYT Here.. [nytimes.com]
Re:Captured at the end of the War (Score:5, Informative)
The US actually sank three of these subs to keep them out of Soviet hands.
Only four where ever started, one was bombed in the ship yard and abandoned before it was finished and the other three where scuttled by US forces in various locations to keep the Soviet's from inspecting them. The end of WW2 was an interesting time to say the least.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine [wikipedia.org]
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I saw a pretty cool show about these subs. They tooled around to multiple targets, only to be called to the next just as the current target was removed from their objectives. Not a single attack was launched from these amazing machines. If the timing had been a little different, history would include at least a few very interesting twists.
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I'm betting the 'losing' end of the situation didn't discuss this with the 'finding' end.
Former OSS: "Shh, we don't know about that. YOU don't know about that. It doesn't exist."
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indeed, it is an engineering marvel: a submersible aircraft carrier! If that's not cool, I don't know what is.
This wasn't the only aircraft-carrying sub. (Score:2)
The Japanese did try repeatedly to stage an effective attack on the US mainland. Some, like the balloon bombs [wikipedia.org] were pretty inventive, but none of them amounted to much in the end.
Scientists said? (Score:2)
Calling All Arpeggio of Blue Steel fans: (Score:4)
I-401?
They've found Iona! (If she was on the bottom, this doesn't bode well for the ending of the latest episode.)
But I thought she was still closer to Iwo Jima.
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They found I-401 in 2005 off of Oahu.
This is what was left after Takao and Hyuuga got their vengeance on I-400 for what happened in that extra scene after the credits in this weeks episode. ;)
Now they just have to hunt down her twin sister, I-402.
We've improved on it. (Score:2)
The current versions allow for a lot more bombers, but they are one-time use drones.
DAYUM! (Score:5, Funny)
"able to travel one and a half times around the world without refueling"
Even their SUBMARINES get great mileage!
The sub based planes could be equipped with floats (Score:2)
I don't understand where the planes land on it after their missions.
They don't land on the sub, the land in the water near the sub. Much like the scout planes for battleships. The sub based planes could be equipped with floats. They were removed when the aircraft went into the hangar and there was a clever system for rapidly attaching them while preparing for launch. Also, some missions were planned to be one way. Pilot survivability was not a major concern for Imperial Japan.
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They'd have launched seaplanes - they could use the ocean as their runway.
However, according to WP they later decided to just launch kamikaze attacks instead. That certainly would make the submarine (which was far more expensive than the planes) less vulnerable to attack. Those bombers could fly for hours - if you're going to launch your attack close to the enemy mainland you're probably not going to want to linger that long. If the bombers were tailed on the return trip it would be impossible to recover
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They'd have launched seaplanes - they could use the ocean as their runway.
The submarines were fitted with a catapult. You can carry much more payload if you're not trying to take off from water.
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Good point, though nothing would stop you from landing on it, assuming you bothered to return.
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The I-400 series used a catapult to launch the plane. It was fastoned with pontoons so it would land on the water. It would taxi up to the submarine where a crane would lift it back onto the submarine and have its wings folded up and pontoons removed for storage.
HuffPost has video (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/02/japanese-submarine-world-war-ii_n_4375090.html [huffingtonpost.com]
True story re: these subs ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Several years ago, my dad saw one of the would-have-been (not exactly "would be") pilots of one of those folding wing planes (on a different mission that never got started, as I understand it) speak at the Air & Space Museum Annex at Dulles. The pilot, he said, expressed great gratitude for the nuclear bombs that ended the war, saying that they probably also saved his life in so doing. You can see one of the folding wing bombers there, as well as a space shuttle and many, many other things.
Tim
What are the odds? (Score:2)
Doesn't it seem a bit strange that this story should come out within a few weeks of both the ISON comet and the 60th anniversary of the Philadelphia Experiment? Does anyone really believe that thing inside the Japanese aircraft is a "submarine"?
Am I saying this out loud?
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Or a TARDIS
Engineering the I-400 SuperSub (Score:5, Informative)
PBS has a great documentary [pbs.org] about its design and construction. You can even watch it online for free. (Cookies probably required.)
Secrets of the Dead on PBS (Score:2)
Japanese SuperSub [pbs.org]
Good documentary.
Space Submarine Sentoku... (Score:2)
...Hashin!!!! :-)