#OnThisDay, 20 November 1944, The 1st Japanese suicide submarine attack occurs at Ulithi Atoll, Carolines, and scores a direct hit, sinking the USS Mississinewa, a US naval tanker.
The Kaiten was aptly described by Theodore Cook, a history professor at William Patterson University, as ânot so much a ship as [it was] an insertion of a human being into a very large torpedo.â The guts of the beast were a standard Type-93 24â³ torpedo, with the mid-section elongated to create the pilotâs space. He sat in a canvas chair practically on the deck of the Kaiten, a crude periscope directly in front of him, and the necessary controls close to hand in the cockpit.
Access to the Kaiten was through hatches leading up from the sub and into the belly of the weapon. The nose assembly was packed with 3000+ pounds of high explosive; the tail section contained the propulsion unit. The Kaiten kamikaze torpedoes were launched from a traditional submarine and only had limited access.
The Imperial Japanese Navy employed kamikaze-style attacks like this until the end of the war. By war’s end, the IJN had sacrificed 88 souls, not including 15 lost during training, for Kaiten attacks with around eight submarines and 600 crew of said submarines being sunk by their enemy during Kaiten operations. The Japanese war-time records boast that 40-50 enemy ships were destroyed by the Kaiten, yet U.S. Military records only attribute three losses of vessels to the Kaiten with two being tankers and one being a merchant ship.
#MHSR #MilitaryHistorySocietyofRochester #WW2 #Kamikaze #USNavy #IJN
ð¸ð: RochesterMilitary.com | archive.navalsubleague.org
âRochesterMilitary.comâ
