Suicide Squads E-Book

Richard O'Neill

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 527

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In a detailed exploration of the hazardous 'Special Attack' weapons and forces of World War II, Suicide Squads examines the role of explosive motorboats, midget submarines, human torpedoes and kamikaze aircraft. In addition to weapon development, Richard O'Neil describes the actions themselves including Pearl Harbour, the raid on Sydney Harbour and special forces mission at Guadalcanal, Midway and Okinawa. The bravery of the men from all sides who went to war in suicidal or near-suicidal weapons cannot be overestimated. The story of these special attack forces remains a testimony to ingenuity, desperation and courage.

Leseprobe

CLASSIC CONFLICTS

SUICIDE SQUADS

CLASSIC CONFLICTS

SUICIDE SQUADS

THE MEN AND MACHINES OF WORLD WAR II SPECIAL OPERATIONS

RICHARD O’NEILL

CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THE SAMURAI SPIRIT

THE MIDGET INTRUDERS

OCEAN SHAKERS

DIVINE WIND

HUMAN TORPEDOES

BANZAI

GLOSSARY

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

PREFACE

In this study of suicidal missions during World War II, I have concentrated upon those operations in which purpose-designed suicidal or semi-suicidal weapons were employed. Thus, although I attempt a comprehensive account of the development and deployment of such weapons as midget submarines, human torpedoes, explosive motorboats and kamikaze aircraft, I do not describe the hazardous missions of such special forces as the various Allied and Axis Commando, Ranger and Assault Pioneer units. Although dangerous in the extreme, their missions were not truly suicidal; in that they were not undertaken with the expectation, or the intention, of certain death. For this reason, I have not included details of such near-suicidal missions as the USAAF’s “Doolittle Raid” on Tokyo; the raid of 617 Squadron, RAF, on the Möhne and Eder dams; the “Jaywick” and “Rimau” operations of Lt Col Ivan Lyon’s commandos in the Far East; or the exploits of pro- and anti-Soviet commandos on the Russian Front. For obvious reasons, I have made exceptions to this rule by describing in some detail the development and operations of British, Italian and German small submersibles, explosive boats and experimental aircraft having obvious affinities with similar weapons deployed suicidally by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army.

Inevitably, Japanese weapons and operations occupy a major part of this book. I have followed the usage of all but the most specialized western sources in giving the names of Japanese individuals in western style, with given name preceding family name.

In the case of warships, I have included the designations “HMS”, “HMAS”, “USS”, etc, only where the context makes such identification desirable. Similarly, I give the identification numbers of US Navy warships only when the context makes it necessary to establish the type of vessel – eg, CVE, escort carrier; DE, destroyer escort – or where more than one ship of the same name served during World War II; eg, USS Laffey (DD 459) and USS Laffey (DD 724).

In all cases, except where the context would render the practice otiose, imperial measurements are followed, in parentheses, by their metric equivalents. I have attempted always to indicate whether distances are given in nautical miles (nm) or statute miles: apologies are made for any inconsistencies caused by the necessity of reference to sources which fail to specify whether nautical or statute miles are quoted when dealing with naval subjects.

Richard O’Neill

London, 1981

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book could not have been written without the initial help and encouragement of Mr Ryohachi Ikeda, Deputy Chief Priest of Yasukuni Shrine, Kudan, Tokyo. In thanks to him, and in full accordance with my own belief, I respectfully urge the Government of Japan to restore state support to Yasukuni Shrine, where the men to whom Japan owes so great a debt are honoured.

Invaluable help was given by Mr Hideo Aita (former Lieutenant, Imperial Japanese Navy), who generously made available to me his operational history of Shinyo Squadron No 6. Among other veterans of the “Special Attack” units who provided information were several officers now serving with the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force. In accordance with naval custom, they prefer not to be named here. I make an exception, with his permission, of Commander Yoshio Masuda (former Lieutenant, IJN) of the Marine Science and Technology Centre, Yokosuka. For more than two years, in a correspondence that made great demands on his time and patience, Commander Masuda provided information based on his own experience and that of other veterans, as well as commenting on material I had gathered from other sources. His all too brief visit to me in London was a source of both pleasure and inspiration: I hope that one day we may together bow our heads at Yasukuni Shrine to honour the spirits of his fallen comrades.

Grateful acknowledgement is also made to the following individuals and organizations:

Mr Andrew Adams, Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Tokyo; Captain Alfredo Civetta and Commander S. Peroni, Italian Embassy, London; Mr N. J. Flanagan, Director, and the staff of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; Miss Kyoko Funabashi; Mr Peter Hazelhurst; Herr H. Holzer, Deutsches Museum, Munich; Dr S. M. Instone; Captain Masayuki Koyama, JMSDF; Mr Bill Leary, US National Archives, Washington DC; Mr J. S. Lucas and the staff of the Department of Photographs, Imperial War Museum, London; the staff of the State Papers Room and Reading Room, British Library, London; Miss Phyllis Throssell and Captain E. J. Throssell; Ufficio Storico Della Marina Militare, Rome; the Librarian and staff of the War Studies Library, King’s College, London; Colonel John Weeks.

I received invaluable help and encouragement from all at Salamander Books; especial thanks are due to Mark Holt for his patient and expert design work and to Malcolm Little and Ray Bonds.

The views expressed in this book are not necessarily shared by the individuals and organizations whose help is acknowledged here. Any mistakes or misinterpretations of fact are the responsibility of the author alone.

In conclusion, my gratitude and my love go to my wife, Doreen Ehrlich O’Neill, for her unfailing belief and support; and, for the pleasure of their company at all times, to my daughter Bekah and my son Danny.

THE SAMURAI SPIRIT

Because much of this book deals with the operations during World War II of the “Special Attack” forces of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy and their respective air arms, commonly known in the West as the kamikaze, it is necessary here to examine the ideals and beliefs that inspired the suicidal determination displayed by Japanese of all arms and ranks. It is possible to give only the briefest and most generalized account of the development of Japanese culture; yet such an account must be attempted if the reader is to have some answer to the questions most often asked concerning the kamikaze: “Why did they do it? How could they do it?”

The answer most frequently given by those Western writers who do not simply vilify the kamikaze as “fanatics”, “barbarians” or even “sub-humans” is that the suicide squads were inspired by bushido (“the way of the warrior”), the code that governed the behaviour of the samurai (originally called bushi-dan, “warriors”; samurai means literally “one who is a servant”; ie, the retainer of a feudal lord) of traditional Japan. This answer is, indeed, substantially correct – but only if certain historical factors are taken into account. It must be realized that the 20th-century “samurai” and the “bushido” they followed differed significantly – and not only in point of time – from those of the formative, classical period of the warrior tradition.

■ Japan: the People and the Emperor

The long-preserved ethnic purity and intense national pride of the Japanese were a vital element in their maintenance of morale, of Yamato-damashii (“Japanese fighting spirit”), in the most adverse circumstances during World War II. Yet the racial origins of the Japanese people remain unresolved. Recent studies suggest that the Neolithic peoples of the Japanese islands, the Jomon (of whom the Ainu, now surviving in small communities in the extreme north, may be descendants), were largely supplanted by immigrants from northern China. These, from around the 3rd century BC, formed the basis of the Yayoi culture and thus of historic Japan, to which migratory Polynesian peoples may also have contributed. A true and indigenous civilization was certainly extant in Japan by the 6th century AD, when the Buddhist faith was imported from China. The first Imperial capital was established in southern Honshu in 710; first at Nara and then, from 794, at Heiankyo (modern Kyoto).

But the traditional Japanese version of these events – long accepted, and especially encouraged by the nationalistic State Shinto creed of the 20th century – is very different, and has a most important bearing on the main theme of this book. It is that Japan was the first-born of all the nations of Earth, the offspring of divine copulation. Dominion was granted to the storm god Susanowo, ancestor of the Japanese people. But because of his misbehaviour, Susanowo was replaced by Ninigi, grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu, whose great grandson, Jimmu Tenno (Tenno, “Emperor”) became the first mortal yet still divine ruler of Japan, establishing his capital in the Kyoto region in 660 BC. The former Emperor Hirohito, who was forced to renounce his god-head in January 1946 by the occupation authority (SCAP), is 124th in the direct line of descent from Emperor Jimmu.

Thus, while both Japanese people and Emperor are traditionally of divine descent, the Emperor’s line is by far the greater. Nevertheless, for some 700 years – from around the beginning of the Heian Period (AD 1156) to the Meiji Restoration (1867–68) – the God-Emperor was virtually powerless. The bakafu, the central authority of the shogun (“great general”; a military overlord acting theoretically in the Imperial name), ruled Japan with the aid, or sometimes the opposition, of the daimyo (“great names”; the chiefs of the feudal clans) and their retainers, the samurai. Various clans sought to dominate the bakufu, frequently indulging in civil strife, while the Emperor remained a remote, unseen although always acknowledged presence, far removed from the ken of his people – and thus all the more convincingly credited with divine status in spite of his lack of “political” power.

■ The Samurai and the Bushido Code

A central government having been established by the 8th century, a system of provincial administration was necessary. Provincial officials enrolled mercenary war bands to help control their territories and thus, gradually, evolved the feudal pattern of daimyo and samurai (as in Europe, baron and man-at-arms). By the 11th–12th centuries, when the Taira and Minamoto clans waged a power struggle that ended in triumph for the Minamoto at the sea battle of Dannoura in 1185, and the subsequent installation as shogun of Yoritomo Minamoto, the samurai were an hereditary warrior caste (never constituting more than c.5–8 per cent of the total population) socially inferior only to the nobility – whose power, in any case, depended upon the loyalty of their samurai.

Loyalty to the Emperor, to the feudal lord, to the nation, and to oneself, was the cardinal virtue of bushido which, although not properly codified until the, 17th–18th centuries in such works as the Hagakure (“Hidden Among the Leaves”) of the samurai-monk Jocho Yamamoto, governed the conduct of samurai from the 13th century onward. The single most important influence on the development of bushido was Zen Buddhism (although another Chinese-derived system, Confucianism, exerted significant influence through its insistence on respect for traditional authority). First reaching Japan around the 8th century, Zen did not flourish until the Kamakura Period (c.1199–1333). The indigenous Japanese creed, Shinto, a somewhat amorphous, animistic system, contributed to bushido an insistence on “purity”, on cleanliness of body and mind, and, in this and in its Manichaeanistic denial of the possibility of defining “good” and “evil” as absolutes – a denial, in effect, of the concept of “sin” – reinforced certain vital aspects of Zen.

It is impossible concisely to define Zen; especially because it has recently become tainted in the West by association with eccentric and libertarian cults and individuals. Very briefly: Zen teaches that satori, transcendental wisdom, may be attained through rigorous self-discipline; through meditation, asceticism, complete indifference to physical needs. The Zen adept is “right thinking”: without ratiocination, by intuition alone, he acts immediately, decisively and correctly in all circumstances. Neither life nor death concern him: thus, the samurai “lives so that he is always prepared to die”; or, in the words of Hagakure, “the way of the samurai is death”.

The spiritual and practical appeal to a dedicated warrior of such a philosophy, with its emphasis on immediate action which is inevitably correct, is obvious. Let us remember that the professional fighting man who “lives by the book” is a type by no means limited to Japan.

■ Seppuku: the Origin and Practice of Ritual Suicide

The form of ritual suicide known as seppuku (a more dignified rendering of the term hara-kiri, “belly- slitting”) was for centuries a privilege reserved by law for samurai. Traditionally, the first Japanese warrior to die by his own hand was Yorozu, a retainer of Moriya Mononobe. After the Mononobe clan’s defeat by the Soga in AD 587, Yorozu, surrounded by enemies and having killed at least 30 of his adversaries, broke his bow, cast his sword into a river and stabbed himself in the throat with his dagger.

The first record of seppuku proper, however, is probably that in the 12th-century chronicle which tells how Tametomo Minamoto, defeated in an insurrection of 1170, ripped open his belly with his sword rather than face capture. Thus he set free his spirit; for in Japanese belief the abdomen is the source of the will and residence of the deepest emotions. When Yoshitsune Minamoto, foremost hero of Japanese chivalry, disembowelled himself to escape capture in 1189, seppuku was firmly established as the honourable end for a defeated warrior. (It was sometimes called kusun-gobu, “nine-and-one-half-inches”, in reference to the short sword used in the act.) Other forms of suicide than disembowelment were regarded as far less honourable, although still preferable to surrender. “Don’t survive shamefully as a prisoner; die, and thus escape ignominy”, wrote General Hideki Tojo (who himself failed in an attempt at teppo-bara, suicide with a gun, at the war’s end) in his Instructions for the Military during World War II.

Seppuku to avoid the disgrace of capture, called setsujoku, was not the only case in which suicide was the duty of the samurai. Junshi was suicide as a mark of respect on the death of one’s lord: in 1912, General Maresuke Nogi, victor at Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War, died thus (with his wife) on the death of Emperor Meiji. Kanshi was suicide in protest against the action of a superior: in 1933, LtCdr Kusuhara of the Imperial Japanese Navy disembowelled himself when the government refused to grant funds for new battlecruisers. And seppuku might be a punishment, ji-jin: in 1867, xenophobic samurai who had attacked French sailors were ordered to perform ji-jin in the presence of the French Ambassador – who begged a pardon for the survivors after seeing 11 men die.

Samurai were instructed from childhood in the etiquette of seppuku. If circumstances permitted, it was to be performed in a specially prepared enclosure before an invited audience. The samurai knelt on a white hassock on a white-edged tatami (reed mat), facing a small white table on which lay a short sword with its blade wrapped in white paper. Taking the blade by its middle in his right hand, the samurai made an incision in the left side of his abdomen, drew the blade to the right, and then made an upward cut. It was meritorious then to make another incision in the chest and a downward cut, allowing the entrails to spill out. Dying might take several hours, but it was usual for a close friend, the kaishaku-nin, to stand behind the victim and terminate his agony by decapitation at a given signal. In later times, it was permissible for the samurai to make only a token incision before decapitation. His wife might choose to die with him by jigai, stabbing herself in the throat with the dagger traditionally given as a wedding-present for this purpose.

Ritual suicide (committed by a number of senior officers in August 1945, as described in Chapter 6) persists in modern Japan. The most notable example in recent years was the seppuku of the great novelist Yukio Mishima who, on 25 November 1970, after haranguing men of the Army Self-Defence Force on modern Japan’s decadence, slit his stomach and was beheaded (on the third attempt) by a fellow member of his ultra-nationalistic Shield Society. In March 1976, a light aircraft piloted by the actor Mitsuyasa Saeno made a kamikaze dive on the Tokyo residence of the industrialist Yoshio Kodama, in protest against the millionaire’s alleged involvement in the “Lockheed scandal”.

■ The Meiji Restoration and the “New Samurai”

From 1636 onward, by decree of the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan was closed to all foreigners (with the exception of a few Chinese and Dutch traders with concessions at Nagasaki) and the Japanese themselves were forbidden to travel abroad. The Christian religion, which had made considerable headway, was ruthlessly extirpated. For more than 200 years thereafter, the medieval society remained virtually unchanged. It was rigidly stratified: in order of precedence came the God-Emperor, the shogun, the daimyo and samurai, the peasants, the artisans, and, significantly in the lowest place as an expression of Japan’s anti-materialism, the merchants.

Then, in 1853, the arrival of Commodore Perry’s “black ships” of the US Navy brought the realization that Japan must either compete with the Western powers or face the political-economic colonization that was afflicting China and other Asian states. There began an amazingly swift, revolutionary period of development which, within some 50 years, transformed Japan into a modern industrialized nation, an emergent world power. The traumatic effect of this change, of its pace alone, cannot be overestimated.

The collapse of the old order was signalled in 1867–68 with the downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of the Emperor (although then, and subsequently, theoretically without “political” status) as the now apparent source of supreme power and focus of national loyalty and aspirations. Under Emperor Meiji (1852–1912), whose authority was exercised through the genro (a council of “elder statesmen”), Shinto became the national religion in 1868 – and by the 20th century State Shinto would become the vehicle of ultra-nationalism, until its disestablishment by SCAP in December 1945. The major tenet of State Shinto, like that of bushido, was absolute loyalty. Loyalty to the Emperor, divine head of the national family, at one with and indivisible from the concept of Dai Nippon (“Greater Japan”).

We are concerned here only with the effect of the Meiji Restoration on Japan’s so-called “militarism”, culminating in the kamikaze. Paradoxically, one of Emperor Meiji’s earlier acts, in 1873–76, was to abolish the samurai caste – and thus to make the greatest single contribution to the nationwide spread of the bushido ethic! For although some daimyo and samurai were to evolve into industrial magnates (the Mitsubishi company, for example, may be seen as a “clan” in much the same sense as the Minamoto of old), others would not lay aside their swords without protest.

The key event was the “Satsuma Rebellion” of 1887, led by Field Marshal Takamori Saigo, former commander of the Imperial Guard. Angered by what he saw as the excessive materialism of the new order and its insufficient emphasis on Imperial expansion (notably in Korea), Saigo led some 15,000 samurai into revolt against the conscript army, trained and organized in Western style, of the central government. At the Battle of Shiroyama, on 24 September 1877, the conscripts decisively defeated the samurai: Saigo, with his surviving followers, committed seppuku on the battlefield. But the result of Saigo’s rebellion, defeat and death was not to discredit the conservative, traditional element in Japan – but to imbue with the samurai spirit the new conscript forces of all ranks and classes. In defeat, Saigo won a great victory for those virtues of which he had feared the loss and which he had sought to defend.

■ The Imperial Rescripts and Ultra-Nationalism

The feeling throughout Japan’s fighting forces that “we are all samurai now” was even more firmly established by the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of 1882 and further reinforced by the Rescript on Education of 1890. The Rescript of 1882 embodies the famous precept that “duty is more weighty than a mountain; death is no heavier than a feather”. The whole of modern Japan’s military philosophy may be said to reside in that single statement.

Many parts of the Rescript would not seem out of place in a Western manual of military conduct, enjoining cleanliness, sobriety, deference to superiors, and so on. Its true importance lies in its implications, in the fact that, throughout, the concept of chu, the loyalty owed to the Emperor, is emphasized above that of giri, the duty to fulfil all other moral obligations. No man reading the Rescript, which all ranks were required to learn by heart and meditate upon daily, could doubt that duty to the Emperor and Japan (one and indivisible) outweighed all else. No act could be wrong if sincerely performed for the good of the Emperor and the Nation. The unfortunate, and to some Westerners inexcusable, excesses committed by Japanese troops during World War II must be considered in the light of this teaching, and of the similar teachings disseminated among the populace as a whole by the Rescript on Education.

The 20th century opened with proof, in the Russo-Japanese War, that Yamato-damashii could bring victory against an apparently more powerful Western nation. Now nationalism grew apace, fostered by State Shinto and by numerous ultra-nationalistic “secret societies” and, more importantly, military factions. Of the latter, the most influential was probably the Kodo-ha (“Imperial Way”) group of senior officers (mostly Army) dedicated to the preservation of bushido virtues and to the establishment of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”: Japanese hegemony in the European-dominated and -exploited areas of the Far East. But I disagree with those historians who cite Japan’s greed for conquest and military glory as a major cause of the Pacific War; in my opinion, American policy from 1905 onward was aimed at a show-down with the United States’ great Pacific rival, until, because of both racial provocation and economic warfare, Japan had no choice but to seem the aggressor.

Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the rate of covert American aggression was matched by that of the increase of Japanese nationalism. From the earliest age, all Japanese were taught to go to any lengths to defend and preserve the kokutai; ie, the “national polity”, the essential elements, from the Emperor to the most minor traditional usage, that made Japan unique among nations. It was for kokutai that the suicide squads, the kamikaze, fought and died.

In ending this brief attempt to explain the motivation of the kamikaze, I can do no better than to quote the statement concerning kokutai made by the irredentist LtCol Masahiko Takeshita to US interrogators after the war. He was asked why, when even the Allied terms for “unconditional surrender” tacitly agreed that Japan’s “national polity” would not be drastically altered, he and others had wished to fight on to the death. Takeshita said (the italics are mine throughout):

“Although preservation of the national polity had been made [by Japan] the sole condition for surrender, disbandment of the armed forces and the occupation by foreign troops would mean that we would be compelled to change the national polity in whatever way the occupation forces desired. Since such a unique national polity as we enjoyed was beyond the understanding of foreign nations, there was little doubt that the occupation forces would eventually compel us to transform it as they wished... It would be useless for the people to survive the war if the structure of the State itself were to be destroyed. “We did not believe that the entire people would be completely annihilated... [but] even if the whole race were all but wiped out, its determination to preserve the national polity would be forever recorded in the annals of history, whereas a people who sacrificed will on the altar of physical existence could never rise again as a nation.”

THE MIDGET INTRUDERS

With the exception of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Kairyu (“Sea Dragon”), no midget submarine used in World War II was specifically designed as a suicide craft. However, the very nature of the midget submarine dictated its use in operations so hazardous as to be properly described as suicidal. It was a short-ranged, shock weapon, relying on the determination of its crew, from whom it demanded the acceptance of probable death as the price of operational efficiency. Unlike the fleet submarine, which made its attacks in the open sea, it was most often committed against defended anchorages whence, having revealed its presence at the moment of attack, it had small chance of escape. Although it offered the prospect of spectacular gain at small cost, its moral effect was equally important: throughout its history, the small submersible was often deployed – as in the American War of Independence; the War Between the States; and by the British Pacific Fleet in 1945 – when politico-military considerations demanded a show of aggression from an under-strength force. Thus, from its inception, the function of the midget submarine was to carry out what the Japanese in World War II termed tokko (“special attack” operations) – a euphemism for suicidal attack. A brief historical survey will serve to confirm this.

■ The American “Turtle”

The father of the “special attack” submersible was an American, David Bushnell (1742–1824). During the War of Independence, Bushnell designed and built the 2 ton (2.03 tonne) Turtle, a one-man craft in which screw propellers hand-cranked by the operator provided power for vertical and horizontal movement. Its wooden hull, some 6ft (1.8m) long and 4.5ft (1.3m) in beam, was provided with a turret-shaped conning tower with glass ports and contained enough air for about 30 minutes’ submerged endurance. Instrumentation comprised a simple depth-gauge and a compass. With this frail but surprisingly efficient craft, Sgt Ezra Lee of Washington’s army volunteered to attack British blockading warships anchored in the East River above Staten Island, New York.

On the night of 5 September 1776, rowing boats towed the submersible upstream of the warships. Cast loose, Lee cranked furiously, reaching an estimated 3kt (3.45mph, 5.5kmh), to prevent the tide carrying him past his objective. At 0100, he came alongside the 64-gun ship-of-the-line HMS Eagle, secured Turtle’s hatches, depressed a foot-operated lever that admitted water ballast, and submerged. Lee now attempted to screw into the warship’s hull an externally-mounted auger from which a stout rope ran to a magazine containing 150lb (68kg) of gunpowder, mounted on Turtle’s back. With the auger firmly seated, Lee would slip the magazine and crank Turtle away, with 30 minutes’ grace before a clockwork time-fuze exploded the charge.

Failing to seat the auger in Eagle’s copper sheathing, and manoeuvring to find an unprotected area, Lee inadvertently surfaced and was discovered. Cranking away, he was pursued by redcoats in a “twelve-oared barge” and, according to his own account, decided to make a truly suicidal end by “letting loose the magazine in hopes that if they should take me, they would likewise pick up the magazine and then we should all be blown up together”. But the redcoats gave up the chase when the freed magazine exploded prematurely, and Lee was towed home by his compatriots.

Two more unsuccessful attempts on British warships were made by Turtle during the War of Independence, and it is believed that a second model of Bushnell’s submersible was constructed for possible employment during the War of 1812, when semi-submersible rowing boats armed with spar-torpedoes also made an appearance in the American armoury. The US Navy had by this time turned down what might have been a more potent “special attack” weapon: Robert Fulton’s 19 ton (19.3 tonne), copper-hulled, three-man submersible Nautilus, propelled by a hand-cranked screw and with a compressed air supply giving a submerged endurance of up to four hours. Finally constructed for Napoleon’s navy, Nautilus ran fairly successful trials but never saw action.

■ The Confederate Submersibles

In 1863, hard-pressed by the Federal blockade, the Confederate States Navy began to make use of “special attack” submersibles. The first to see action were semi-submersibles called Davids to emphasize their giant-killing role. The David was a small, cigar-shaped steam-boat with a four-man crew. It was armed with a spar-torpedo – a 20ft (6m) pole projecting from the bow and ending in a copper canister containing 134lb (61kg) of gunpowder, fired by a chemical impact fuze. Intended for night operations, the David could be trimmed down for attack until only her funnel and superstructure were above water. On the night of 5 October 1863, a David commanded by Cdr W. T. Glassell, CSN, survived an attack in which she severely damaged the Federal ironclad New Ironsides off Charleston.

The Confederate States Army now took a hand with a true submersible – the fifth in a series built at Mobile, Alabama, by Horace A. Hunley. This 19 ton (19.3 tonne) craft was an iron tube some 30ft (9m) long and 5ft (1.5m) in beam, propelled by a stern-mounted screw cranked by eight men. It had a squat conning tower at either end as the commander’s station, with hydroplane and rudder controls, and was armed first with a towed explosive charge and then with a 134lb (61 kg) spar-torpedo with a barbed end. The craft normally ran awash but was theoretically capable of submerging for up to two hours. Simply to crew this submersible was suicidal: it was totally unstable and sank four times during trials, killing 33 men – including Hunley himself. The inventor was posthumously honoured by having the first operational model bear his name.

CSS Hunley slipped out of Charleston on the evening of 17 February 1864 to strike at the patrolling USS Housatonic. Lt George E. Dixon. CSA, Hunley’s commander. intended to drive home the barb of his spar-torpedo below the waterline of the 20-gun sloop. He would then back water, unreeling a lanyard that would fire the charge when Hunley was at a safe distance. The ramming attack succeeded and Housatonicswiftly sank, taking down with her five of her crew – and the nine men of Hunley, which was dragged down with her victim. In spite of the obviously suicidal nature of such weapons it was found, when the South’s shipyards fell to Federal troops, that the Confederacy had implemented an extensive building programme for “special attack” craft.

■ Russian Midgets – and the “Fenian Ram”

The value of the small submersible in anti-blockade operations had been demonstrated in Europe as early as 1850–51, when the mere rumour of Wilhelm Bauer’s Brandtaucher was sufficient to cause a temporary relaxation of the Danish blockade of Kiel. Brandtaucher, a slab-sided iron coffin some 26ft (7.9m) long, displacing 38.5 tons (39.1 tonnes), and hand-cranked by two men, was armed with crude “limpet” charges which the crew were to fix to enemy hulls with leather “gloves” protruding from the craft’s hull.

Brandtaucher sank on trials and Bauer moved to Russia, where his later designs may have influenced the inventor Alexandrowski, whose submersible of 1868 utilized an engine driven by compressed air. Stepan Drzewiecki’s Podascophe, built at St Petersburg in 1876, returned to man-power for propulsion; but this 16ft (4.9m), two-man boat incorporated such notable features as a periscope, an adjustable screw and a caustic-soda air purifier.

Podascophe was armed with mines which were to be carried on the casing and released when the submersible lay beneath enemy ships. The Tsar’s navy ordered 52 boats of Drzewiecki’s design, but their fate is obscure. However, in September 1904 the Russian Navy is said to have contemplated a suicidal attack on Japanese warships blockading Port Arthur, with a two-man submersible in which an automobile engine replaced the bicycle-type pedals of Drzewiecki’s midgets. In 1902–03 the Russians had bought five examples of the American inventor Simon Lake’s Protector (which cannot be classified as a midget) and were experimenting with a Spanish-designed, German-built, 17 ton (17.3 tonne) midget called Forelj, which they planned to use against an anticipated Japanese attack on Vladivostock.

One other abortive design for an early “special attack” midget deserves mention, since it was the work of the chief begetter of the modern fleet submarine, John Philip Holland (1840–1914). Holland, Irish-born and a violent Anglophobe, built his early submersibles with private backing after his designs had been rejected by the US Navy. His third model was built for operations against the Royal Navy: the Fenian Society, an organisation of Irish-American patriots, financed the Fenian Ram, a 19 ton (19.3 tonne), 33ft (10m) submersible powered by a 15hp internal combustion engine with a compressed-air unit for submerged running. It mounted a 9in (229mm) compressed-air underwater cannon, an impractical weapon which the Fenians hoped to use against British warships; possibly in “special attacks” in Canadian waters.

Fenian Ram was launched in 1881; but in 1884, losing patience with Holland’s insistence on exhaustive trials, the Fenians hijacked the submersible in the Hudson River. Holland thereupon washed his hands of the project and, plagued by mechanical failures in the hands of amateurs, Fenian Ram ended as a derelict on the beach at New Haven, Connecticut. But Holland went on to design successful submarines which, around the turn of the century, entered service with the navies of the USA, Britain, Russia – and Japan.

■ Japanese Midget Submarines

The Imperial Japanese Navy purchased its first submarines, five Holland Xs, from the Electric Boat Company, Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1904–05; at the same time laying down two similar boats at the Kawasaki yard, Kobe. Although the latter were diminutive craft – of 57 tons (58 tonnes) and 78 tons (79.2 tonnes) – Japan thereafter manifested little interest in midget designs until the 1930s; development in midget submersibles being left largely to the Italian and British navies.

The genesis of the IJN’s midget submarines of World War II is somewhat obscure; some accounts ascribe the seminal designs to private individuals. Credit is sometimes given to a retired naval officer, Captain Noriyoshi Yokou, a Russo-Japanese War veteran, who followed up a plan for “human torpedoes” dating from that conflict. Yokou’s design, it is said, was refused by the Naval General Staff in 1933 because of its obviously suicidal nature. One Japanese naval historian credits a civilian called Nishimura with an influential role.

Nishimura’s boat was built by Mitsubishi in the mid-1930s and was a one- or two-man craft displacing c.20 tons (20.3 tonnes), propelled at a maximum submerged speed of c.4.5kts (5.2mph, 8.3kmh) by a 16hp electric motor. It was unarmed and seems to have been intended primarily for underwater exploration: in February 1939, when the fleet submarine I-63was sunk in collision in Bungo Strait, Nishimura-type submersibles were employed to locate the wreck.

While the designs of Yokou and Nishimura may have exerted some influence, it is probable that the greatest credit should be given to a team of naval officers under the overall direction of Capt Kaneharu Kishimoto. This officer put forward a plan for the development of what was to become the Type A midget in 1933, and work was approved by the Naval General Staff – on the understanding that the submarine was not to be a suicide weapon. This raises the interesting question of whether Capt Kishimoto’s original proposal was for what he regarded as a suicide boat. Work began at Kure Naval Yard in 1934.

From the first, the project was shrouded in secrecy: at various stages of their development the midgets were code named A-Hyoteki (“A-Target”); H- or A-Kanamono (“Type H or A Metal Fittings”); Maru-Ichi; Go-Sen; and Bakugeki-Hyoteki (“Anti-submarine Bombing Target”). In 1938, after several design stages, there emerged a production model designated Ko-Gata (“Type A”).

■ The Type A Midget Submarine

The 1934 prototypes had had no conning tower and no armament, being purely experimental vehicles. Two improved models, Ha 1 and Ha 2, were launched in 1936; these had small conning towers and two superimposed 17.7in (450mm) bow torpedo tubes. A major fault of these boats, as of later Type As, was the limited range and endurance concomitant with having a single-shaft 600hp electric motor, without self-charging capacity, as the sole means of propulsion.

Although capable of a surfaced speed of 23kt (26.5mph, 42.5kmh), the two-man Type A had a surface combat radius of only 80nm (92 miles, 148km) at no more than 2kt (2.3mph, 3.7kmh). The high submerged speed of 19kt (22mph, 35kmh) could be maintained over a combat radius of only 20nm (23 miles, 37km). However, at this time Japanese doctrine envisaged a “decisive battle” fought in home waters, where Japan would have the necessary surface and air superiority to allow midget submarines to operate efficiently when launched close to their targets from surface ships or fleet submarines. Forty-two Type As (numbered Ha 3 to Ha 44) were ordered in 1939–40 and built at a specially-established branch of Kure NY at Ourazaki. A further 15 units (Ha 46 to Ha 52; Ha 54 to Ha 61) were built at Ourazaki in 1941–42. These later Type As incorporated several improvements: the torpedo tubes, open to the sea in earlier models, were capped; and jumping-wires, propeller-guards and serrated steel net-cutters were fitted, slightly reducing the maximum submerged speed of the submarines thus equipped.

■ Mother Ships for Midgets

Notwithstanding the role they would eventually play, the Type As were not at first intended to be used against enemy bases. It was planned that in the “decisive battle” they would be carried on mother ships with the main battle fleet and released to make surprise attacks during a general engagement.

To this end, the seaplane tenders (really “seaplane carriers”, since they were equipped to carry and catapult-launch up to 24 aircraft) Chitose and Chiyoda, completed in 1938, were constructed so that they could be easily converted to carry and launch midget submarines. Mizuho, completed in 1939, although classified as a seaplane tender, was designed primarily as a midget submarine carrier. Nisshin, designed as a combination of seaplane tender and minelayer, was stripped of her minelaying gear soon after completion in 1942 and refitted to carry and launch 12 midgets; and the supply and repair ship Chogei probably underwent a similar refit in 1943.

For trials in 1939, Chitose’s aircraft-handling capacity was reduced to 12 seaplanes and a number of Type A midget submarines were housed in her lower-deck storage hangar. The hangar deck had been converted to give a fore-to-aft incline towards the hinged steel doors of a large stern hatch, through which the Type As, moved along the rails normally used for handling aircraft, were launched. Chiyoda was similarly converted in 1941. Both ships could carry up to 12 Type As which, in favourable seas and with skilled handlers, could all be launched, two at a time, inside 17 minutes.

By 1940, however, there had been a significant change in the IJN’s doctrine concerning midget submarines. Instead of operations with the main battle fleet, increasing emphasis was placed on the midget’s ability to penetrate defended anchorages. But the Type As were short-ranged – and a mother ship would obviously be at great risk when approaching an enemy base. Therefore, the five 2,554/3,561 ton (2595/3618 tonne) Type C1 submarines of the I-16 class – I-16, I-18, I-20, I-22 and I-24 – completed between March 1940 and October 1941, were each equipped to carry a Type A in chocks situated on the casing aft the conning tower. These large submarines had an action radius of 14,000nm (16,100 miles, 25,900km) at 16kt (18.4mph, 29.6kmh) surfaced and 60nm (69 miles, 111km) at 3kt (3.45mph, 5.5kmh) submerged. By early 1942, two Type B1 boats (of similar dimensions to the Type C1, but with a submerged radius one-third greater) – I-27 and I-28 – originally designed to carry and launch a reconnaissance seaplane, had been refitted to carry Type As. At the same time, Chitose and Chiyoda were reconverted to become small, conventional aircraft carriers.

■ Type B and Type C Midgets

As will be seen, the major operations in which the Type A midgets were deployed were truly suicidal. A major factor militating against their chance of survival was their limited range – and the experimental Type B design aimed to remedy this deficiency. Completed in February 1943, Ha 45, the only Type B (Otsu-Gata) boat, was a little larger than the Type A. As well as a 600shp electric motor it had a single-shaft 40bhp/25kw diesel which would both propel the submarine on the surface (at a much reduced speed) and recharge the batteries of the electric motor. It carried a third crewman as engineer.

Trials of Ha 45 resulted, later in 1943, in an order for 15 Type C (Hei-Gata) midgets – Ha 62 to Ha 76 – to be built at Ourazaki. These three-man boats differed from the Type B only in that they carried a slightly larger fuel supply and that the time needed to recharge batteries (18 hours in the Type B) was a little reduced. Armed with two 17.7in (450mm) bow torpedo tubes, the Type C had a maximum surface speed of 6.5kt (7.5mph, 12kmh) and an action radius of 300–350nm (345–402 miles, 555–647km); submerged, its action radius was 120nm (138 miles, 185km) at 4kt (4.6mph, 7.4kmh) or c.18nm (21 miles, 33km) at a maximum 18.5kt (21.3mph, 34kmh). A few Type Cs were constructed with a conning tower extension and two periscopes for training duties.

■ The Type D Koryu

The Type A midget, although not designed as a suicide weapon, was used as such. The Type C, used mainly for local defence at bases in the Philippines, where eight were lost in action in 1944–45, was never used suicidally; although it was deployed, with other midgets, for the final, suicidal defence of the home islands in mid-1945. However, with the Type D (Tei-Gata), usually called the Koryu (“Scaly Dragon”), the IJN moved towards a purpose-designed suicide submarine. Plans for this submarine were completed early in 1944, when the kaiten manned torpedo (see Chapter 5) was also accepted by the IJN.

Although not very much larger than the Type C, the koryu carried a crew of five. Its diesel unit was uprated to 150bhp/l00kw to give a slightly higher surface speed and, more important, cut the time needed for recharging batteries to eight hours. However, the extra crew space necessitated a reduction in the size of the electric motor, cutting the maximum submerged speed to around 15kt (17.25mph, 28kmh). The original design was modified so that the koryu could be prefabricated in five sections; builders in a number of yards set up workshops for the mass production of parts which could be transported in trucks for assembly at the dockside. It was planned to produce 540 koryu by September 1945 and some 180 every month thereafter, but US bombing and material shortages so disrupted the programme that only 115 had been completed (with 496 under construction) by the war’s end.

With a maximum surface action radius of l,000nm (1150 miles, 1850km) at 8kt (9.2mph, 14.8kmh) and a submerged radius of 320nm (368 miles, 592km) at a maximum 16kt (18.4mph, 29.6kmh), the koryu might have proved extremely effective if deployed, as was planned, in large numbers at bases throughout the Philippines and at Okinawa. But by the time the first of the series, Ha 77, was completed in January 1945, it was obvious that its major function would be home defence. The koryu could be deployed aboard the 21 “Type 1” fast transports/landing ships completed in 1944–45, which had launching rails for two Type Cs, two koryu or six kaiten manned-torpedoes – but for home defence they would be launched from the shore, on rails or by crane. In this role, some koryu had their two 17.7in (450mm) bow torpedo tubes replaced by an explosive charge for suicidal ramming attacks. Some koryu, fitted with a long conning tower and two periscopes, were used in the training programme for kaiten pilots.

■ The Kairyu Suicide Submarine

The design of the Kairyu (“Sea Dragon”) stemmed from modifications made to a Type A midget in late 1943. In this experimental boat, code-named S-Kanamono (“S-type Metal Fittings”), lateral fins with diving rudders inset into their trailing edges were fitted to the hull below the conning tower and aft to increase stability. A second model, again a modified Type A, was produced in 1944 and served as a basis for the production at Yokosuka Naval Repair Yard of a much smaller, “winged” submarine which had affinities both with the kaiten manned-torpedo and the German Biber.

Like the koryu, the two-man kairyu was originally intended for local defence in the Philippines and at Okinawa and was eventually seen as a suicide weapon for the defence of the home islands. It was, as built, something of an improvization, intended to be mass-produced in three sections and assembled at the dockside. It was driven on the surface by a single-shaft, 85hp Isuzu automobile engine, giving a surface radius of 450nm (517 miles, 832km) at 5kt (5.75mph, 9.25kmh), with a maximum speed of 7.5kt (8.6mph, 13.9kmh). An 80hp electric motor gave a maximum submerged speed of 10kt (11.5mph, 18.5kmh) and a radius of 36nm (41 miles, 67km) at 3kt (3.45mph, 5.5kmh).

Completed kairyu varied slightly in dimensions and performance, since non-standard automobile engines were sometimes fitted, and in armament. The midget was originally intended to carry two 17.7in (450mm) torpedoes underslung in dropping gear, but a torpedo shortage – added to Japan’s increasing determination to make a suicidal stand – meant that most completed kairyu carried a 1,320lb (600kg) explosive warhead for ramming attack. Its low speed suggests that its success in this role would have been limited. In fact, it is probable that no kairyu became operational: the construction programme called for some 760 units by September 1945, but by the war’s end only about 215 had been completed (almost all at Yokosuka NY, where they were found after the surrender).

■ Experimental Midget Submarines

Besides the midget submarines described above, Japanese designers produced a number of experimental models which did not achieve operational status. Had they done so, they would have been deployed for the final defence of Japan – as suicidal weapons.

The only model to go into production – about 14 were said to be on hand at Kure in August 1945 – was the boat known only by the codename of U-Kanamono (“U-Type Metal Fittings”). This crude weapon was strongly reminiscent of the Confederate semi-submersibles of the War Between the States: it was an awash-boat controlled by a two-man crew housed in a squat turret on a cigar-shaped hull, some 46ft (14m) long and 6.5ft (1.98m) in beam. Displacing c.15 tons (15.24 tonnes), it was powered by a single-shaft compressed-air torpedo motor, giving a maximum speed of only c.3kt (3.45mph, 5.5kmh) and a very limited action radius. Its armament consisted of one 17.7in (450mm) bow torpedo tube.

The smallest of Japan’s midgets, the two-man, 11.5 ton (11.7 tonne) Shinkai (“Sea Vibrator”), was intended for suicidal expeditions into Allied anchorages in operations somewhat resembling those of the Italian “Pig” and British “Chariot” (see Chapter 5). It was a shallow-draught (3.9ft, 1.2m) submersible armed with a detachable, magnetic, 2,000lb (907kg) warhead, to be affixed to the hull of an enemy ship. The only unit built, codenamed 9-Kanamono (“Type 9 Metal Fittings”) and completed at Ourazaki in August 1944, was powered by a 20shp electric motor giving a maximum 9kt (10.3mph, 16.6kmh) submerged. The 41ft (12.5m) craft was both unstable and plagued by mechanical failure.

Also intended for attacks on Allied anchorages was the Type C variant known as M-Kanamono (“Type M Metal Fittings”), built at Ourazaki in late 1944. Very little larger than the Type C, and with the same engines, it had no torpedo tubes and instead carried four mines. The single unit completed is said to have been equipped with tracks for crawling along the sea bottom.

The last of the experimental midgets was the Maru-Se (“SE boat”), of which one prototype was built by Kawasaki in 1944 for the Imperial Japanese Army. This craft, of which few details survive, was powered by a Walter high-test peroxide motor, a German-developed unit similar to the hydrogen- peroxide/hydrazine engine used in the experimental Kaiten II (see Chapter 5). This gave a submerged speed of c.15–20kt (17–23mph, 28–37kmh). It was to be armed with two electrically-driven torpedoes, then under development.

■ Japanese Midget Submarine Operations

At 0645 (Honolulu Time) on 7 December 1941, Boatswain’s Mate A. Art fired No 1 gun of the old destroyer USS Ward (DD 139). His target was the conning tower of a Japanese midget submarine. The shot, which missed, was the first fired by the US Navy in the Pacific War.

The Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet’s base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, has often been described; and this account is concerned only with the part played in it by Type A midget submarines. However, since many Japanese writers deny that the midgets were sent on a suicide mission, a little must be said of the preliminary planning for the attack.

A surprise attack on Pearl Harbor had featured in both Japanese and American naval thinking for some years: US fleet exercises in the 1930s had taken into account the possibility of such an attack; and a Japanese historian has claimed that detailed planning in Japan, incorporating a scale model of Pearl Harbor, was begun as early as 1928. However, it is generally accepted that the Japanese plan dated from 1940–41 and that its main architects were Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, C-in-C Combined Fleet, and Rear-Admiral Takijiro Onishi, then Chief of Staff of the 11th (Naval) Air Force (and later the “father” of the kamikaze air squadrons).

In mid-1941, a group of junior officers headed by Lt Naoji Iwasa, who had been chief test pilot during the development of the Type A, began to press for the employment of the midget submarines in the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were strongly supported by Capt Kaku Harada who, as commander of Chiyoda, had formed a favourable estimate of the Type A’s capabilities, and by LtCdr Ryunosuke Arizumi, a submarine officer on the Naval General Staff. It was assumed that, following the air strikes on Pearl Harbor, the surviving units of the US Pacific Fleet would make a run for the open sea. To intercept the fleeing warships, an “Advance Force” of some 25 fleet submarines was to be deployed – and Iwasa and his group suggested that some of these fleet submarines should carry Type A midgets. These would be launched off Pearl Harbor before the attack, penetrate the anchorage, and attack in the aftermath of the air strikes – if possible, sinking warships in such a position as to block the harbour entrance. (This is the Japanese version: the US Navy’s historian believes that midget submarines figured in the Pearl Harbor plan from the beginning, and that crews were specifically trained for the operation for at least one year beforehand.)

Admiral Yamamoto most certainly considered that such a mission would be suicidal. His recorded comment was: “If they enter the anchorage, it is certain that they cannot return”. Yet he was persuaded to agree to the plan: and it may be supposed, in view of his later wholehearted espousal of suicide tactics, that Onishi was largely responsible for this. Capt Masayuki Koyama, an instructor at the Kure base of the IJN’s Midget Submarine Unit from October 1943 to August 1945, told the author that the midget submarine was not (in 1941) regarded as a suicide weapon, and that “Yamamoto gave permission for these midget submarine operations only on condition that the midgets could be recovered”. But, Capt Koyama added, “for all practical purposes, I suppose that the crews of the midget submarines suspected that they could not make their escape”. It is notable, in view of the accounts given elsewhere in this book of the selection of personnel for suicidal missions, that none of the Type A crewmen – with the exception of Lt Iwasa – was a volunteer. All had been carefully screened for physical and emotional suitability and then posted to midget submarine duty early in 1941. However, it is possible to see the naval command’s tacit acceptance of the suicidal nature of their duties in the fact that, as was the case with later volunteers for kamikaze missions, only men without major family responsibilities were thus posted.

The recorded behaviour of the midgets’ crews makes it obvious that, whatever the “official” view, the men concerned regarded their mission as suicidal. The official name given to the midget submarine force is also significant: it was the “Special Naval Attack Unit” – and “special attack” (tokko or toku, an abbreviated form of Tokubetsu Kogekitai, “Special Attack Force”) was the most frequent Japanese euphemism for suicide attack.

Date: 7 December 1941

Place: Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii

Attack by: Japanese Type A midget submarines

Target: US Pacific Fleet

The Special Naval Attack Unit sailed from Kure on the evening of 18 November 1941. Each of its five Type C1 submarines – I-16, I-18, I-20, I-22 and I-24 – carried a Type A midget secured to the casing aft the conning tower with four large clamps. In overall command was Capt Hanku Sasaki. The full roll of the Type A crews was: I-16: SubLt Masaharu Yokoyama and PO Teiji Ueda; I-18: SubLt Shigemi Haruno and PO Harunori Yokoyama; I-20: Ens Akira Hiroo and PO Yoshio Katayama; I-22: Lt Naoji Iwasa and PO Naoharu Sasaki; I-24: Ens Kazuo Sakamaki and PO Kiyoji Inagaki.

Usually running submerged by day, especially when within range of US air patrols from Wake Island, and surfacing in the evening so that the midgets’ crews could check their weapons, the submarines maintained a loose formation about 20nm (23 miles, 37km) apart.

By 5 December, the IJN had thrown a submarine cordon around Pearl Harbor. The main force of some 20 fleet submarines, sailing a few days earlier than the midget carriers, had taken up patrol positions between 9 and 100nm (10–115 miles, 17–185km) from the US base. The five submarines of the Special Attack Unit made landfall off Oahu on the evening of 6 December and surfaced at c.2300 some 8nm (9 miles, 15km) west of Pearl Harbor, close enough to see the neon lights of Waikiki Beach. The midgets’ crews made neat packages of their personal effects for return to their families (including fingernail parings and a lock of hair for the family altar), wrote farewell letters, and put on their uniforms – a leather jerkin, a cotton fundoshi (breech-clout) and a white hachimaki (head-band). Some followed an ancient custom of the samurai when facing death and anointed their bodies with perfumed oil.

The midgets were to be launched at c.0300 and were ordered to penetrate Pearl Harbor and attack at will at any time after the first air strike (timed for c.0800, immediately after the war declaration was delivered by Japan’s representatives in Washington). While final checks were being made on the Type As, the aircraft carriers of Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s task force were approaching the position some 230nm (264 miles, 425km) north of Oahu from which the first strike of 183 aircraft would be launched at 0600. Final intelligence reports had told Nagumo that the prime targets, the US Pacific Fleet’s three aircraft carriers, were not in Pearl Harbor. Present, however, were eight of the fleet’s nine battleships, 12 cruisers, 41 destroyers, five submarines and 40 minor warships.

At c.0300 the midgets’ mother boats submerged, the clamps were released, and the Type As moved away under the power of their electric motors. Aboard I-24 (LtCdr Hiroshi Hanabusa) there was trouble: the final check by the Type A’s commander, Ens Kazuo Sakamaki, had revealed that the midget’s gyrocompass was unserviceable. His crewman, PO Kyoji Inagaki, and a technician worked frantically on the defective equipment – but when Sakamaki’s Type A was at last launched, at c.0530, the gyrocompass was still not working. By this time, the other midgets were approaching the nets guarding the Pearl Harbor channel entrance. The mother boats took station some 10nm (11 miles, 18km) off the entrance, hoping to torpedo any US warships running from the harbour.

■ The Unattainable Rendezvous

Official provision had been made for the mother boats to surface after dusk on 7 December to pick up the crews of the surviving midgets and scuttle their boats. The rendezvous was some 7nm (8 miles, 13km) west of Lanai Island. A glance at a map will show that this order reflected the truly suicidal nature of the mission: Lanai lies some 70nm (80 miles, 129km) ESE of Pearl Harbor. Thus, there was no chance of the Type As, with their maximum surfaced radius of only 80nm (92 miles, 148km), making the rendezvous after the expenditure of battery power in the attack itself – and no chance of the midgets’ crews reaching the rendezvous after abandoning their craft. Even if the mother boats intended to meet off Lanai and then stand in towards Pearl Harbor, it is unlikely that they could have hoped for a successful rendezvous with the midgets at sea in the face of enemy air activity to be expected in the aftermath of the attack.

The narrow Pearl Harbor entrance channel was protected by a double gate of anti-submarine netting, and the midgets’ best chance of passing this was to follow submerged in the wake of a US ship. The Japanese had good intelligence of the Pacific Fleet’s routine, and knew that an early-morning sweep outside the gate was made by coastal minesweepers, which then returned through the gate under the eyes of a patrolling destroyer.

At 0342, the minesweeper Condor sighted the periscope of a submarine about 1,000yds (914m) from the channel entrance. Knowing that no US submarines should be in the area, Condor signalled the estimated course and speed of the intruder to the. destroyer Ward, patrolling the entrance. Ward went to general quarters for about one hour, searching without result for the minesweeper’s contact. Meanwhile Condor returned to harbour: the gate was opened for her at 0458, and at 0508 she was followed in by the minesweeper Crossbill. The gate should now have been closed, but because the transport Antares and the tug Keosanqua were shortly to meet there to bring in a barge, it was left open. It was probably at this time that at least two Type As gained entrance.

■ The First Shots

A third Type A, thought to have been that of Lt Iwasa, was less fortunate. At 0630, as Antares approached the gate, Ward’s lookouts, alert from their earlier search, spotted a dark object in the water between the transport and the towed barge. Ward’s OOD at first identified it as a buoy, but soon decided that it was a small conning tower. A patrolling PBY Catalina flying-boat dropped smoke markers on the suspicious contact and Ward’s commander, Lt William W. Outerbridge, ordered his guns manned. At 0645 Ward opened fire at 100yds (91m) range. The first round missed, but as Ward closed to 50yds (46m) a shell from No 3 gun struck home. Moments later, the destroyer had overrun the target, leaving the semi-submerged midget wallowing in her wake. Four depth charges rolled from Ward’s stern racks; more depth bombs were delivered by the PBY.

The IJN’s first loss of the Pacific War sank in 1200ft (365m) of water – and at 0654 Outerbridge (who had not reported Ward’s earlier search) signalled to 14th Naval District HQ:

WE HAVE ATTACKED FIRED UPON AND DROPPED DEPTH CHARGES UPON SUBMARINE OPERATING IN DEFENSIVE SEA AREA

It was typical of the American reaction to the first indications of the surprise attack that no earlier report was made; that Ward’s message was not decoded for the duty officer until 0715; that a similar report from the PBY was not decoded until 0741; and that the ready duty destroyer Monaghan was not ordered to investigate Ward’s contact until 0751 – only four minutes before the first bombs from Japanese carrier aircraft fell on the Naval Air Station at Ford Island.

From this point in the action, it is difficult to trace in detail the movements of the Type As that penetrated either the entrance channel or Pearl Harbor itself. Only one, the late starter crewed by Ens Sakamaki and PO Inagaki, can be followed with any certainty.

■ The Fate of Sakamaki

Sakamaki had managed to bring his Type A to the entrance channel but, without a compass, was unable to make a submerged approach. At c.0815, surfacing to take bearings, he was sighted by a destroyer, made an emergency dive, and piled up on Tripod Reef, exposing his conning tower. The destroyer – USS Helm, first vessel underway from Pearl Harbor following the initial air strike – opened fire on the half-submerged midget as she passed it at flank speed. Near-missed, the Type A slid from the reef and disappeared. Helm had not made a kill: with one torpedo tube buckled and choking gas seeping from his batteries, Sakamaki took his midget south and east in a painful voyage around Oahu. All morning, the two Japanese sailors fought to bring their craft under control and return to the battle area; but by 1400, having wrecked his second torpedo tube on a reef, Sakamaki decided to head for the rendezvous point at Lanai. This was a faint hope: that evening the Type A grounded irrevocably some 200yds (183m) offshore on the northern coast of Oahu. Attempting to swim ashore, PO Inagaki was drowned; Sakamaki reached the beach and collapsed – recovering to find himself the first Japanese POW of the war, the only Type A crewman to survive Pearl Harbor.