Although Yamamoto’s plan envisioned two planes per submarine to attack America’s shoreline cities, in actuality each I-400 was designed to ferry three Aichi M6A Seiran “Mountain Haze” planes.Ĭonstruction on the Sen Toku behemoths began on April 25, 1943, one week after Yamamoto was shot down and killed by American P-38s over Bougainville in the Solomons. From that he envisioned 18 huge submarines––basically underwater aircraft carriers––that could ferry attack bombers to their targets. In mid-1942, Yamamoto foresaw two things: how susceptible Japan would become to American aerial bombing and how Japan could reciprocate against American soil. Loosely translated as “Secret Attack Submarine,” Sensuikan was shortened to Sen Toku. Those submarines, the Sensuika, or I-400 Series, would be the largest submarines the world would see for decades to come. The plans called for an aerial bombing by specially designed attack planes launched from surfaced submarines. The plan to disable the canal––through which the United States was funneling military resources from the Atlantic to the Pacific without the long voyage around the southern tip of South America––had been the brainchild of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. as targets, the IJN chiefs settled on America’s vital Panama Canal. After considering, then ruling out San Francisco, San Diego, New York City, and Washington, D.C. It was not until early 1945 that the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was ready to strike America even further than it already had on December 7, 1941. As soon as Colonel James Doolittle’s B-25 raid struck Japan in April 1942, Japan sought to wreak revenge on the United States, but by 1944 devastating aerial bombings on Japan by the Americans had become all too regular.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |