FUN and AMAZING FACTS
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
The Sen Toku I-400-class Imperial Japanese Navy submarines...
....were the largest submarines of World War II and remained the largest ever built until the construction of nuclear ballistic missile submarines in the 1960s. They were submarine aircraft carriers able to carry three Aichi M6A Seiran aircraft underwater to their destinations. They were designed to surface, launch their planes, then quickly dive again before they were discovered. They also carried torpedoes for close-range combat.
The I-400-class was designed with the range to travel anywhere in the world and return. A fleet of 18 boats was planned in 1942, and work started on the first in January 1943 at the Kure, Hiroshima arsenal. Within a year the plan was scaled back to five, of which only three (I-400 at Kure, and I-401 and I-402 at Sasebo) were completed. You can watch a fascinating 51 minute Youtube video on this submarine HERE.
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That's a picture of the French Submarine-Cruiser Surcouf, not the Sentoku
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction. Surcouf was the largest French submarine cruiser having served during the Second World War. The boat was sunk by accident or misunderstanding during the night of February 19 1942 in the Caribbean Sea. In tonnage, the boat was also the largest military submarine in the world and was the largest submarine ever built until surpassed by the first Japanese I-400-class submarine in 1943.
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