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Clive Cussler: Call Your Office!

This is the Imperial Japanese Navy Submarine I-400 as it sits beside submarine tender USS Proteus after the end of World War II. Note the large hangar and forward catapult. This hangar held three Seiran bombers. When this Sub and its newly discovered sister ship the I-401 surrendered, according to one source they were enroute to firebomb San Francisco...

Why is this news today? Because today, the sister ship of the submarine was found off the coast of Hawaii. How big was this beast? Well, take a look at the men on the deck for a sense of scale. Until the early 1960's, This was the biggest thing in submersible craft. Why didnt we keep it? Well, since the Russians declared war on the Japanese, the peace treaty allowed for war trophys to be taken by both sides. The last thing in the world we wanted was for the Russians to get their hands on was really big Japanese submarines, so after getting a good look at them, the Navy had them sunk before they could be turned over.

I've always been interested in the big I-400 class subs, as much for the engineering as the interest I've always had in their last mission in the chaotic days at the end of the war in the Pacific. For those with an interest in Weapons of Mass Distruction, the Japanese were much further ahead than the Germans in all of the NBC ( Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) areas. They even had an effective method to deploy them, one method was by the use of these submarines and their aircraft and the other was with the Fugu balloons.

Would these subs and their potentially deadly cargo really have "won the war" for the Japanese? No, but that wasnt really the goal. The goal was the same as the Kamakaze; simply to give the Japanese something to negotiate with, to help ensure better terms at the peace table.

Here's a detailed report on the I-400, just to give you some background on this fascinating ship and a period of history that is often over looked. The reports is from the memoirs of the last captain of the I-400, Thomas O. Paine, who died in 1992.

A surviving example of the Seiran Bomber that were carried by the I-400 Class Submarine is currently undergoing restoration at the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

Posted @ March 20, 2005 10:33 PM | History file