The only submersible aircraft carrier ever built; was the biggest submarine in WWII!
In WWII we had a massive advantage in production ability. Some people seem to think that we were the only innovators in the war, because the World changing results of one of those weapons, the Atomic bomb. But all countries were using innovation to gain advantage.
The country of Japan had one such plan for an aircraft carrier like has never been made, before or since! They planned to build a strike force out of these, but were only able to make a few. To this date, no other country has made another of these. So this was the largest submarine in WWII, and the ONLY submarine aircraft carrier ever made! Her design was unique in that they made two smaller submarines, and tied them side by side; to get enough footprint to be stable with aircraft stored in a pressure tight hanger up on deck. Her planes were seaplanes with folding wings and tail surfaces.
They just took too long to finish, because they did not have our production capacity. They were forced by circumstance to change the intended missions several times. Originally, they were supposed to destroy the Panama Canal, but by the time they were ready; the ships they were intended to block, were already in the Pacific, and the Canal was no longer important. They were tasked with moving in to attack our ships in the rear area, to destroy our logistics; to delay our invasion of the home islands. Their attack was delayed by one of our special weapon projects, dropped on Nagasaki; that brought about the end of WWII.
We captured her, and the Russians wanted very badly to get on board her. We took a different route, we blew her to pieces in the Pacific, and left the ruined carcass on the bottom of the ocean. The Russians were Not happy, but they stopped asking to get on board her for an inspection.
She remains the only example of a submersible aircraft carrier that have ever been made. If she had been finished earlier, she would have had a negative effect on our war effort. We would have never had anything out of range of her aircraft!
Her final mission required the aircraft to be painted with US markings, because they were an unknown type, and they had so few, they needed to get in danger close before they were recognized as enemies. They were planning to suicide into US ships, to damage our logistics enough to protect the home islands!
:'(
This one I actually had heard about. Reminds of all the "secret weapons" that The Third Reich thought was going to pull them out of the hopper at the last minute, though none of them did.
This sub design was impressive, kind of an underwater catamaran, and if they had been able to make them sooner; they could have hurt us a great deal.
We were able to choke their economy down enough to slow the construction, to the point these dangerous super weapons would be a no show in WWII.
:ORight. Good thing.
We barely beat the Nazis to the bomb too, from what I've read...
Same thing actually, they had the theory, but not the production ability. We built an entire city to extract the Uranium we needed. Some of the Uranium in the little boy bomb, was from a captured German sub, at the end of the war. We ran it through the same plant city.
:OI saw the movie about our commando raid on their heavy water plant in Norway. Quite a good story....
Yes they sunk the ferry with some of their own people to stop that water! Sadly, they were killed in vain, because the Nazi did not have the ability to use the heavy water to make a bomb. The best they could have done was to make a fission reactor with this water.
:DYes. A very interesting study in ethics.
In hind sight only, we knew they were working on it, and had NO idea how far they were on the project. They could NOT take the risk, because if they managed it first, they could have won the war!
:Oha! sir smithlabs! whoa..I had no idea, I wonder why I never heard about this one. This is a great post and very educational, are there any pictures of it or drawings or anything?
The sub was top secret, so they didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are the capture footage:
Enjoy, it is only 4 minutes long.
:Dwow sir smithlabs that is so interesting! how did we capture it since the Japanese always fought to the death?
They were ordered by the Emperor to "endure the unendurable" and surrender. Some (including the commander of this sub) killed themselves to avoid the loss of face.
There was an attempt to take over the government before that announcement. They were killed.
:)sir smithlabs! yes I remember there was a coup attempt because they thought the emperor was going to get the whole country wiped off the map and that it failed but you would think that they would destroy the sub before letting it get into our hands!
There were several of them, and they did destroy the aircraft that were painted like USAF planes; but they were ordered by the emperor to surrender. He was a God to them.
So they were trapped, and so the suicides....:'(