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Huge WW2 Japanese Submarine I-400 Class Found Off Hawaii

Dammit! The attack plans are foiled! We were hoping that a 72nd Anniversary attack on Pearl Harbour would be the last thing you would expect.
 
Very cool! Remarkable vessels, they were. One of the American sailors who sailed aboard one with the Japanese crew after the surrender said he was saddened when he heard that it was sent to the bottom.
 
Reading about the I-400, apparently they were planning an attack on the Panama canal right at the end of the war, after a US POW stated security had become very lax. Pretty damned audacious considering the distances involved and the state Japan was by summer 1945. Japan had some interesting submarine tech. Its a good thing they made boneheaded decisions on their usage. It saved a lot of American and allied lives.
 
The Germans built a blockade-running merchant submarine in 1916, the Deutschland. Its first voyage to the still neutral USA was a financial success of a high order, paying for the craft several times over.
She stayed at Baltimore until 2 August, when she sailed for Bremerhaven, arriving on 24 August with a cargo of 341 tons of nickel, 93 tons of tin, and 348 tons of crude rubber (257 tons of which were carried outside the pressure hull). Her cargo was valued at $17.5 million, several times the submarine's construction costs.
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On her outward voyage she carried dyestuffs, in which Germany was world leader at that time, and medicines, including Salvarsan (which I believe was one of the first drugs effective against syphilis), worth a total of $1.5m. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_Deutschland.
 
lobosrul said:
Reading about the I-400, apparently they were planning an attack on the Panama canal right at the end of the war, after a US POW stated security had become very lax. Pretty damned audacious considering the distances involved and the state Japan was by summer 1945. Japan had some interesting submarine tech. Its a good thing they made boneheaded decisions on their usage. It saved a lot of American and allied lives.
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After how the Yamato ended its days, the decisions were boneheaded but predictable.
 
Senex said:
Those fellows running the show in Japan wouldn't be above using the sea plane to disperse chemical or biological agents. I'd be careful poking around on that sub.
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The boat was sunk by the US after it was captured at the end of the war. I'm fairly confident it was stripped of just about anything dangerous/useful.
 
Senex said:
Those fellows running the show in Japan wouldn't be above using the sea plane to disperse chemical or biological agents. I'd be careful poking around on that sub.
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It was scuttled by the US Navy in 1946 - I think that's already been sorted out.

ETA - Ninja'd.
 
Polaris said:
It was scuttled by the US Navy in 1946 - I think that's already been sorted out.

ETA - Ninja'd.
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Well those people were crafty at hiding things. They hid an entire fleet and snuck up on us at Pearl Harbor -- it would be easy for them to have hidden a few vials of plague behind one of the shelves in the little kitchen area on the sub. Those vials might still be floating around.

Just saying it never hurts to be careful.
 
3point14 said:
How useful is a plane on a submarine? in 1940something? And now?
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It could have been quite useful in a variety of roles, providing air operations capability at extreme range. By mid 1942 Japan had lost the capability to operate surface ships in the eastern Pacific.

The submarine born floatplane could be used for specific target airstrikes (like the Panama Canal plan), reconnaissance operations, agent insertion and extraction, or delivery of special weapons.
 
3point14 said:
How useful is a plane on a submarine? in 1940something? And now?
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In 1940s? Very. For example, the Japanese scouted Pearl Harbor in march 1942 and planned to do so again in late april, just before the battle Midway, to verify presence of US carriers in port. A timely presence of US ships in the shoals where they were to launch from prevented that and ensured the US achieved a strategic surprise at Midway. We all know how important that was, I believe?

McHrozni
 
McHrozni said:
In 1940s? Very. For example, the Japanese scouted Pearl Harbor in march 1942 and planned to do so again in late april, just before the battle Midway, to verify presence of US carriers in port. A timely presence of US ships in the shoals where they were to launch from prevented that and ensured the US achieved a strategic surprise at Midway. We all know how important that was, I believe?
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To be fair, the U.S. was aided in that battle by some poor decisions on the part of the Japanese commander and some good luck.
 
Corsair 115 said:
To be fair, the U.S. was aided in that battle by some poor decisions on the part of the Japanese commander and some good luck.
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Exactly. Had the Japanese expected US carriers in battle, they wouldn't commit many (most? any?) of the grave errors they eventually made.

McHrozni
 
3point14 said:
How useful is a plane on a submarine? in 1940something? And now?
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Very. There was a lot of interest in the idea back then, both to scout for the sub in it's anti-shipping role (e.g. the Surcouf or M2) and as a strike capability in their own right. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come discusses the idea, with several countries having aircraft-carrying subs armed with chemical or biological weapon.

The I-400 class carried three small seaplanes, launched by catapult on the surface, each able to carry about 800kg of bombs.
The proposed Panama Canal lock attack (on Gatun in '45) was interesting; it would have used ten aircraft launched from four subs, either a bomb/torpedo attack or a Kamikaze attack, but was canceled after Okinawa fell.

These subs are something of a trope in alternate histories either attacking the canal early in the war or attacking California with biological weapons.

Today there are no submarines capable of carrying crewed aircraft (though the idea of using them for SOF delivery with helicopters is brought up occasionally) but some subs (e.g. the German 212's) can operate UAVs.
One of the problems with drones is the inability to push a conventional radio signal through salt water, so a relay buoy is needed.
IIRC, there was a proposal to rebuild some of the Soviet/Russian Typhoons to operate helicopters a few years ago, but like the submarine transport idea, it went nowhere.
 
3point14 said:
How useful is a plane on a submarine? in 1940something? And now?
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I think that it could have been useful.

After all, the Germans had a sort of of gyrocopter that they would tow behind their U-Boats in order to help spot enemy ships.

Also, at that time, one of the things most feared by submarine commanders was enemy aircraft. Therefore, if a submarine commander had an airplane in is hip pocket (as-it-were), then they may have been able to develop a good countermeasure.

By the way, here is the device the Germans developed for their U-Boats during World War II:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Achgelis_Fa_330
 
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