Yesterday's Weapons Forums

that is tight , i think id get stuck

They would have to split me in two and then it would still be iffy!

Here's another interior shot, this one of the helm. I can't imagine the claustrophopic feeling that a crewman must have encountered when they 'buttoned `er up' with two men inside. More intestinal fortitude than I possess.

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Here's a photo of the business end once they got it back to Pearl (they disassembled it into it's 3 main sections and trucked it). Note the warheads have been de-fused.

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This shot was taken at Mare Island in late `42, getting it ready for the bond tour. Note that while a 'midget'. she still had a respectable size for a two-man crew to operate.
JohnB/

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When I was stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1961, there was one of these boats ashore on blocks over at the Sub Base across from Tin Can Alley. It had recently been brought up from the bottom of the harbor. It still had the warheads intact. The entire rusty hull was encrusted with shellfish and barnacles.

Later, in 1962 while on a Far East Cruise, I saw this boat or perhaps another barnacle encrusted boat like it ashore on blocks in Yokusuka. This boat had the bow section housing the two torpedos completely cut off.

Richard

Not on a truckbed but I remember this one @ Groton

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It's 5 o'clock and it's watermelon time.....................
because you can't drink beer & load rockets - TXPete

the one you saw in yokosuka may have been a kaiten. they were suicide torpedoes, basically. the big warehouse on base, J39 was full of them when the U.S. navy took the base over in 45.
It was also a 2 man minisub looking thing, but the entire nose section was a warhead.

y'all have a good day, Keith

My closest friend acquired the negatives from the collection of a small town pharmacist who had been on one of the first US ships into Japan after the war. Among the remarkable photos was one of suicide subs - I don't know the type.

One was in the air hanging from a crane, and you could see how the two man crew entered from a hatch on the bottom... which was bolted shut behind them!!! Dang!!

I would a darn site rather participate in a banzai charge against machineguns than be bolted into a submarine like that!!!

After the heroin or sake or whatever they tookd beforehand wore off... then what? SW

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Slava Ukraini!!

might want to catch this ..............

WWII Japanese subs found in Pacific near Hawaii
Posted 11/12/2009 6:51 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print

HONOLULU (AP) - Two captured Japanese submarines scuttled by the U.S. Navy just after World War II have been discovered in the Pacific Ocean south of Pearl Harbor.
The subs were found in February in 3,000 feet of water by the pilots of two Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory submersibles, according to an announcement made Thursday by the lab and the National Geographic Channel, which partly funded and documented the mission.

One of the subs was 400 feet long and carried planes as well as enough fuel to travel around the world, said Hans Van Tilburg, maritime heritage coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Sanctuaries in the Pacific Islands.

The second sub had a streamlined body, conning tower and retractable guns, making it look more like a Cold War-era submarine, he said.

National Geographic Channel is set to broadcast the special Hunt for the Samurai Subs on Nov. 17.

The two were among five Japanese submarines brought to Pearl Harbor after the war for inspection. They were sunk by the U.S. Navy in 1946 when Russian scientists began demanding access to the technology under terms of the treaty that ended the war.

The submersibles, piloted by Terry Kerby, the lab's operations director, and Max Cremer, came upon the subs while conducting test and trial dives.

The ocean bottom south of Oahu "is like a giant underwater museum," Kerby said, who explained his team uses the dives to look for maritime artifacts. "We've been pretty successful."

Kerby began using test dives in 1992 to look for a Japanese midget sub that sank during Japan's Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. The midget sub was found in 2002.

In 2005, lab scientists found the wreckage of a Japanese submarine that carried three aircraft.