Midget Sub

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This midget sub find has been described as the most significant modern marine archeological find ever in the Pacific, second only to the finding of the Titanic in the Atlantic. The Japanese midget sub was one of five attached to five I-class mother submarines and brought from Japan to be launched 5-6 hours before the aerial attack, within a few miles of Pearl Harbor. Each had a crew of two. The subs were battery powered , 78 feet long , 6 feet in diameter and weighed 46 tons. They carried two torpedoes and a scuttling charge to avoid capture. Although experimental in design, they were very advanced for the time. For short periods, they could run at 20 knots. These midget submarines were completed only months before the attack allowing little time for the crews to train. All of the five submarines comprising the advanced attack force were sunk or captured. The type A midget submarines had a series of basic design problems including trim and ballast control and problems both with battery life and battery monitoring. Later redesign, as five man midget submarines of the Koryu class, addressed but did not solve these problems. The Japanese midget submarines although believed at the time to be a potent secret weapon, in actual fact, were never highly effective. So far four of the five original midget submarines attacking Pearl Harbor have been found

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posted by gatemate

The problem is, as you mentioned, the Japanese midget submarines were utterly ineffective.

The Italians were far more effective in developing and deploying midget submarines.

*In 1918, two Italian seamen rode a manned torpedo into Pola Harbor and sank the Autro-Hungarian battleship Viribus Unitis. While not a true submarine (due to a lack of breathing apparatus, the two crewmen had to ride with their heads above water), it was certainly a precursor and, in any event, more successful than the Japanese 23 years later.

*In 1942, three Italian midget submarines ("Maiale") entered Alexandria Harbor and sunk two British battleships (and a tanker). Due to the shallow depth of the harbor, the ships were later able to be raised (as were the battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor)

*The British launched an unssuccessful midget sub attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in 1943 (the subs were detected) but, in

*1944, British midget subs enetered La Spezia harbor and sunk the cruiser Bolazano while a German midget submarine damaged a Polish light cruiser off Normandy

An Italian Maiale

In other words, the Japanese were neither the first nor the most successful employer of midget submarines. For all their gadgets, they were essentially unusable (poor or non-existant periscopes, for example)

posted by RockyRoccoco
over 2 years ago

Reading your post I remembered something about the Revoltionary War. Here the story:::::::::During the Revoltionary War a sub named Turtle (1775) operated by Sgt Ezra Lee tried and failed to sink the HMS Eagle the flagship of the blockade in New York City Harbor on Sept 7, 1776. Interesting????????