Submersible Photographs WW2 Japanese Sub's Long-Lost Airplane Hangar 75
Zothecula writes: Until the 1960s, Japan's three I-400-class subs were the largest submarines ever built. They were so large, in fact, that they could each carry and launch three Aichi M6A Seiran amphibious aircraft. The idea was that the submarines could stealthily bring the planes to within striking distance of US coastal cities, where they could then take off and conduct bombing runs. Now, for the first time since it was scuttled at the end of World War II, one of the sunken subs' aircraft hangars has been photographed. The M6A on display at the Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center is worth seeing, if you get a chance.
just an ad... (Score:4, Informative)
the link to gizmag pulls up a giant best buy ad whose (x) to close button doesn't work.
Re:just an ad... (Score:5, Informative)
it must suck to be you. I on the other hand use Firefox with Adblock, and reading the article right now with no ads bothering me.
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Their pop-up advertising their own damn newsletter, or something, still managed to get in my way after about 20 seconds. I then closed the tab as I don't like being accosted while browsing.
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Clearly Gizmag and Best Buy are depending on technology to defeat an enemy of far superior numbers and resources. These measures, while innovative, are clearly destined to end in defeat.
Subs as aircraft carriers (Score:4, Interesting)
The Japanese strategy of using their subs as highly ineffective aircraft carriers is one of the reasons they lost the war. While they were wasting their efforts on that, the American's were using their subs as commerce raiders, devastating the Japanese economy ... and the Japanese failed to stop that because they never developed effective anti-sub warfare. They should have consulted with their German allies, who could have told them a lot about the effective anti-sub tactics used against them in the Atlantic.
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This reminds me actually a lot of the Schwere Gustav, a huge huge gun the Germans made that needed two freakin' railway tracks side by side and fired 10,500lb shells. It was super powerful and got used, don't get me wrong.
But it required 2,000 men just to work, not to mention laying track, vulnerable to aircraft if air supremacy isn't established, etc etc etc. I think it shot less than 200 rounds in its life.
The germans had great engineering, but between this, the Bismarck, and the Tiger tanks (with engin
Re:Subs as aircraft carriers (Score:5, Interesting)
The germans had great engineering, but between this, the Bismarck, and the Tiger tanks (with engines/transmissions that broke down frequently and couldn't handle the load), they had major failings too in the economy department of bang for your buck [reichsmark]. Leadership was mostly to blame.
As the war dragged on, Hitler became increasingly convinced that technology would turn the tide for the Germans. The V-series rockets, the ME-262, the Tiger/King Tiger, all were intended to make up for the fact that they were increasingly sending young boys and old men onto the front lines. Numerous advisors and ranking members of teh military (at least claimed to have) attempted to persuade Hitler that these programs were a waste of resources but he was adamant in his support of them. I wonder if a lot of it was due to he increasingly deteriorated mental state as the combination of stress, drugs, and mental diseases (Parkinsons and possibly syphyllis if I am not mistaken ) took their toll.
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Re:Subs as aircraft carriers (Score:5, Interesting)
In the beginning, Barbarossa was launched with the assumption that the Soviet Union would collapse quickly. This did not happen, for various military, economic and political reasons.
Its easy to tell why it happened: HItler got distracted. Hitler pulled resources from the drive on Moscow and diverted them to the attack in the Caucasus for the oil fields. Had he continued the drive on Moscow they would have more than likely made it before winter, Stalin would have had to abandon the city, and most Soviet resistance would have collapsed. HIs insistance on personally controlling the war cost him the war and eventually his life.
I always found it interesting that, in the waning months of the war, many in the German high command clung to the hope that they would ally with the Americans and fight the Russians. Reading histories with 1st hand accounts and personal war diaries of the Wehrmacht can really change how you look at the war and really humanizes them.
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Re:Subs as aircraft carriers (Score:5, Insightful)
The germans had great engineering, but between this, the Bismarck, and the Tiger tanks (with engines/transmissions that broke down frequently and couldn't handle the load), they had major failings too in the economy department of bang for your buck [reichsmark]. Leadership was mostly to blame.
As the war dragged on, Hitler became increasingly convinced that technology would turn the tide for the Germans. The V-series rockets, the ME-262, the Tiger/King Tiger, all were intended to make up for the fact that they were increasingly sending young boys and old men onto the front lines. Numerous advisors and ranking members of teh military (at least claimed to have) attempted to persuade Hitler that these programs were a waste of resources but he was adamant in his support of them. I wonder if a lot of it was due to he increasingly deteriorated mental state as the combination of stress, drugs, and mental diseases (Parkinsons and possibly syphyllis if I am not mistaken ) took their toll.
I think part of it was that winning by tech was their only option: any rational analysis said they were outgunned and outproduced, so tech was their Hail Mary. They simply had to believe in it. Conveniently, it aligned with their sense of superiority.
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Yep. Very cool. And it would have ended up like the Yamato.
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You look at things like the Heinkel 162 and think "yeah, if they had 10,000 of those, they could really have made a difference" -- and they did have a lot of really amazing tech.
But the thing is, so did the Allies. The Vampire and the Shooting Star would have been comparable to any of the German jet fighters, and were actively being developed and tested.
I'm no expert, but it looks to me like the only way you can say "oh, man, German tech COULD have won the war" is if everything they tried worked and nothin
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"As the war dragged on, Hitler became increasingly convinced that technology would turn the tide for the Germans."
As if they had any other chance to start with. Germany did have neither the men nor the economy to win a total war so, really, their only hope was technology.
Don't take me wrong: the best strategy (and the good thing to do) was not going into war but if war was to be had -and it coudn't be avoided, given Nazi's ethos -or lack of it thereof, Nazi's general approach was the right one back in the
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Product of the military culture of Japan (Score:5, Insightful)
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a deeply entrenched belief that the fighting spirit of the Japanese soldier would allow him to overcome any hardship, any adversary.
Similar to the belief in the South ca. 1861 that the Confederate forces would win because they were gentlemen.
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"To the Japanese, machines of war--from the heavy machine guns to the tank--are only incidentals in warfare. We Americans realize that the infantry must perform the tasks of actually taking over the ground and holding it, but we use every available machine of war to prevent unnecessary losses. In contrast, the Japanese do not conceive of substituting the shock action of war machines for the shock action of infantry, and they merely strengthen the shock action of troops by the assistance of the machines. The
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Good post. I looked up "Japanese Warfare as Seen by U.S. Observers" and am sitting back with some popcorn for a good read. It reminds me of back when I had access to that sort of stuff. Fascinating reading.
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Interesting tidbits. On one hand...
The Japanese bayonet assaults have been reported as a terrifying attack--but all our units on Guadalcanal loved them. The Jap practice of singing his Banzai song for about 5 minutes prior to his assault has simply been a signal for our troops to load a fresh belt of ammunition in the machine guns, put new clips in rifles and BAR's, and to call for the Tommy gunners to get in position.
On the other hand...
It would be impossible to overstress the tenacity with which the Japan
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On the other hand...
It would be impossible to overstress the tenacity with which the Japanese clung to their prepared positions (in the Buna area). Ordinary grenades, gun, and mortar fire were completely ineffective. There were many instances where dugouts were grenaded inside, covered with gasoline and burned, and then sealed with dirt and sand, only to yield--two or three days later—Japanese, who came out fighting. One souvenir hunter, entering a dugout that had been sealed for 4 days, was chased out by a Japanese officer armed with a sword.
There were also numerous cases (I believe they were first encountered starting around Tarawa) where Japanese soldiers would kill themselves almost at the first sight of an American, blowing themselves up with grenades with a loaded rifle sitting next to them, not even trying to engage them. And don't forget, especially in the early days of the war, the officers usually got the soldiers drunk before banzai attacks too.
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In fact submarine aircraft carriers is a good idea
Why? Subs can lauch anti-ship missiles out of their torpedo tubes. They have vertical launchers for cruise missiles for land bombardment. A German firm is even developing sub-launched anti-air missiles similar to Sidewinders in capabilities. Aircraft carriers these days are more defensive weapons designed to protect fleets than they are offensive weapons, while subs are excellent offensive weapons.
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Range and stealth when you need to to launch an aircraft rather than a cruise missile, with the advantage of his enemy staying with little way to know where the aircraft came from.
Uh, cruise missiles have greater ranges than aircraft and, except for stealth aircraft, have lower radar signatures. Also, a sub would have to surface to launch aircraft but can launch missiles while submerged.
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As I said before, is a good idea if you need aircraft to the mission.
I could see it used more likely as a drone carrier, if one was to sink the bucks and bodies into the research.
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Also, fwiw, I think certain special ops forces do have in/extraction methods involving air/sea/undersea.
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Well, aircraft are more flexible than cruise missiles.
Are they flexible enough to be worth neutering the sub? What kind of speed, range, noise, and depth limitations do you suppose you'll get from including a hangar and a runway?
If I had to guess, the trade-offs are disastrous---as evidenced by the fact that the US has zero in service.
Every square inch of hull adds 400+ lb of pressure at typical test depths. That is the physical constraint that every "feature" must be weighed against. Things that take up a lot of space get very expensive very quickly.
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The only problem with the idea is that
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The purpose of a submarine like this is be able to deliver their aircraft close to the enemy without being seen, launch the attack (which will appear to have come out of nowhere, with little or no warning) and then leave again without being seen
This is exactly what is done today - Just with submarine-launched cruise missiles. Cruise missiles also have the advantage over human-piloted bombers of not needing to be recovered once the mission is complete.
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Some security strategists have proposed the florida-man-piloted-gyrocopter was allowed to land safely on the capitol lawn in order to give the North Koreans a false sense of confidence in their secret submarine-based gyrocopter assault project currently under development near PoonYang.
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The Japanese strategy of using their subs as highly ineffective aircraft carriers is one of the reasons they lost the war.
Ineffective depends on the mission. One mission contemplated for these subs was to deliver plague infected fleas to coastal cities. The technology and techniques were ready to go. Testing had been done on rural Chinese villages.
Re:Subs as aircraft carriers (Score:5, Interesting)
The Japanese strategy of using their subs as highly ineffective aircraft carriers is one of the reasons they lost the war. While they were wasting their efforts on that, the American's were using their subs as commerce raiders, devastating the Japanese economy ... and the Japanese failed to stop that because they never developed effective anti-sub warfare. They should have consulted with their German allies, who could have told them a lot about the effective anti-sub tactics used against them in the Atlantic.
True, but one tactic that the Germans didn't realize was we were reading their codes and thus able to better intercept U-Boots and wolf packs. I'm not sure if Japan had developed sonar to the point it could detect submerged submarines; although radar could detect them while surfaced, which was their normal mode of operation, but then that also warns the submarine you are there before you detect them. Finally, the Allies pretty much controlled the seas in the Atlantic and thus could conduct ASW without much concern that they would get into surface battles; Japan did not have that luxury and was trying to fight naval battles that took ships that could be used for ASW away from that role. Not disagreeing with you but the two theaters were different enough that many of the things that work din one might not in the other.
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True, we didn't have problems getting the raw resources. It was getting the cooked resources half way around the world that, if the Japanese had a different sub strategy, could have caused havoc with the prosecution of the war.
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There's more (a lot more) to the story than just the soundbite "the Allies could read the German codes", but that's a different topic.
The Japanese had decent enough sonars and useful radars - what they never really built
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(Though on reflection, we're probably saying much the same thing, just from different points of view.)
It's industrial capacity that was the real "secret weapon" that the Allies had in WWII - in both theatres.
True. You made a lot of good points. That's the problem with /.; things that have many books written explaining them are boiled down to a few sentences
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True. But a deeper problem is that there's a conceit on Slashdot that, by virtue of being nerds and geeks, they're experts on every topic under the sun. There are a lot of topics (and ASW is one of them) that come up on Slashdot that the average slashdotter has no grasp of beyond soundbites (at best), and they're blithely unaware of how shallow (and often incorrect) their understanding is.
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That's the problem with /.; things that have many books written explaining them are boiled down to a few sentences
True enough. But who has the time to re-write a book on /. when they're supposed to be at work?
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I think you're overplaying that; the Allies tried all sorts of crazy tricks too, including building an unsinkable aircraft carrier out of ice (see the Habukkuk Project). All the things you mention are the reasons the Japanese would lose tactically, on the battlefield
The main reason the Japanese lost the war was because they over extended their reach and their supply lines, and picked a a fight with an industrial power that dwarfed them. The US's ability to churn out guns and bullets and planes and ships a
Damned Cold War (Score:1)
Headline News (Score:1)
That headline has gotta be one of the hardest to parse ever. Probably would have been easier if the words had been put in alphabetical order.
Photos need banana . . . (Score:2, Funny)
. . . for scale.
Sneaking around airplanes (Score:1)
Some background (Score:2)
The US and UK looked at aircraft carrier submarines in the between WWI and WWII and eventually gave up on the idea because of the technical and operational problems.
- Seaplanes have some pretty sharp inherent performance limits. (Speed, range, and payload.) Miniaturizing the aircraft to fit on a reasonable submarine just made things worse.
- Getting around these limits by enlarging the submarine was no picnic... they were much harder to maneuver than more conventionally sized submarines, and were far more
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The US and UK looked at aircraft carrier submarines in the between WWI and WWII and eventually gave up on the idea because of the technical and operational problems.
If, by 'looked at', you mean 'built'. Can't vouch for America, but Britain's M2 was operational for a few years before it sank in the mid-20s.
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"Britain's M2 was operational for a few years before it sank in the mid-20s."
And there was the French boat Surcouf, which had a seaplane hanger and 2 8 inch guns. I think it was rammed by accident and sunk in WWII
Of course in both of those cases the seaplane was just for recon, not a strike weapon.
True, but largely irrelevant (Score:2)
Even without her loss, M2 was one-of-a-kind and there were no plans to repeat her. Nobody else, save the Japanese and the French, even completed one (and Surcouf was, like M2, a one-of-a-kind).
The carrier submarine (and it's close sibling the cruiser submarine) were simply impractical with the technology of the time. While the modern SSN closely approaches the cruiser submarine in concept, no carrier submarine has ever progressed past the drawing boards since WWII. (In a large part because cruise missle
Interservice anomosity (Score:2)
The Focke-Achgelis FA 330 (Score:5, Informative)
I always thought the most practical combination of aircraft and submarine was the FA 330 [wikipedia.org], a rotary-wing kite used by Nazi submariners to get their lookout higher to see farther. It was tethered and unpowered, but it was quick to set up, simple to use, and provided a great benefit to the sub in the last few days before radar.
the Air and Space museum, eh? (Score:2)
WHICH Air and Space museum? The one in San Diego? Wright-Patterson AFB? Any of the other hundred scattered about?
Why would I have to click on the link just to figure out wtf you're talking about?
Largest non-nuclear sub (Score:2)