interesting: Japanese subs at end of WWII

[BigWill]

check this out
The Link

 

[The Bandit]

that's very interesting. I never knew the Japanese had anything like this. Looking at the picture, it seemed like the planes were connected to the sub underwater.

 

[NEWDOC2002]

If they were able to get to the US coast and launch these, I wonder how that would have changed the face of the war. Adds a wrinkle to the justification of nuclear attacks on Japan.

 

[Longhorny630]

It wouldn't have done anything. 1-2 planes? You'd need 30 of these subs launching a coordinated attack to do anything of importance. Any small amount of boats or protected harbor would've been able to flak down 1-2 planes before they got close to the boat pretty easily. These were nothing more than the german equivalent of V1 or V2 weapons. Scare the populace a little bit, but have no real importance on the war outcome.

 

[washparkhorn]

Weren't the planes for biological attacks?
The Link

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[Statalyzer]

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[wolfman]

They had a special on these subs on the National Geographic channel yesterday. Yamamoto ran this program and it was his plan to have over 20 of the subs capable of carrying 3 small bombers each to put together a wave of 60 planes to attack a big name US target. When Yamamoto was killed the idea of the large scale attachk on a US mainland target was abandoned. The idea of attacking the Panama canal became the focus but that plan was not carried out.

At the end of the war Japan had 4 or 5 of these subs and also a fast attack sub. The US Navy wanted to keep that technology away from the Soviets at all costs, so they scuttled the remaining subs off Hawaii in 1946.