Diesel submarines Oyashio

Key TTX DPL type Oyashio

Length: 82 m
Width: 8,9 m
Draft: 7,9 m
Displacement: 2,700 above-water, underwater 3000 m
EC: single-shaft, diesel-electric, 2 diesel generators, 2 x 2380 hp
Speed: surfaced 12 submerged 20 knots
Armament: 6 533 mm torpedo - 20 torpedoes, ammunition Type 89, Type 80 and anti-ship missiles "Harpoon", mines
CEO: CEO ZQQ-5B, towed passive CEO ZQR-1
Crew: 69 people (10 officers)
Series:
SS590 "Oyashio" (1998) SS590 "Oyashio" (1998)
SS591 "Michishio" (1999) SS591 "Michishio" (1999)
SS592 "Uzushio" (2000) SS592 "Uzushio" (2000)
SS593 "Makishio" (2001) SS593 "Makishio" (2001)
SS594 "Isoshio" (2004) SS594 "Isoshio" (2004)
SS595 "Narushio" (2005) SS595 "Narushio" (2005)
SS596 construction, scheduled for commissioning in 2005
SS597 construction, scheduled for commissioning in 2005
SS598 construction, scheduled for commissioning in 2006
SS599 construction, scheduled for commissioning in 2007

Oyashio. Since 1998, the completion of the new Japanese Navy submarines at the expense of commissioning Submarine Oyashio.

These boats surpass all operated by the Japanese navy boat on a number of critical parameters, particularly on reserve, diving depth, the ability of weapons systems and radio equipment.

Home Submarine SS590 Oyashio in a series of 10 units was laid on the shipyard company Kawasaki 26 January 1994, putting it into operation took place on March 16, 1998 The building of all the other ships scheduled to be held at the same shipyard.

Japanese Budget Thrown Into Disorder

The election of the new more liberal government in Japan this year has led to major proposed changes in their overall budget and defense spending. The decision to delay spending on the PATRIOT PAC-3 air and missile defense system has already been discussed. The new budget is reflecting a proposed shift to more social spending and less on the military. This may disrupt plans for purchases of equipment and contracts with U.S. and other defense contractors.

 

PAC-3 Missile Elements Photo : defense.gov

PAC-3 Guidance Approach Photo : defense.gov

Japanese Submarine Typ I-401 Sen Toku

Japanese submarine aircraft carriers (Japanese Submarine Typ I-401 Sen Toku)

Introduction.
During WW2, Japan laid down the I-400 class of Submarine, they were huge boats, 400 feet long, of 3,530 tons, on deck a large 115 foot long by 12 feet in diameter hangar, designed to carry three aircraft with folding wings and tail. An 85 foot long pneumatic catapult launched these aircraft, and a deck crane was available to retrieve them.

The huge hangar door open on the deck of an I-400 class Japanese Submarine, probably this is I-401.

I-401, has just been found off Hawaii. University of Hawaii team finds sunken wartime submarine.
 
On Sunday the 20th. of March 2005 details of a research team from the University of Hawaii finding the wreck of WW2 Japanese Submarine I-401 were released. On St Patrick's day, the 17th. of March, during test dives off Oahu, a wreck was found, to quote the pilot of the research vessel Terry Kirby:

" We thought it was rocks at first, it was so huge, but the sides of it went up, and up, and up, three or four stories tall. It is a levithian down there, a monster."

Kirby went on to say, the main hull is in good shape, the numbers I-401, clearly visible on the sides, and her AA guns in almost perfect condition.

Japanese float plane on her launch catapult on the deck of I-14

Shipbuilders to compete for MSDF submarine contract for first time

In this December, 2007 file photo, the MSDF submarine Soryu is seen at its launching ceremony at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Kobe Shipyard. (Mainichi)

It is increasingly likely that in fiscal 2010, defense contractors will have to compete to build a Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) submarine for the first time ever. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corp. are the only two companies in Japan able to build military submarines, and a possible clash between the two companies over the fiscal 2010 submarine contract is attracting widespread industry attention. "Both companies are in a tough situation with the recession," said one source with a major shipbuilding firm. "To maintain their shipbuilding facilities, certainly both companies would want the order."

According to the Defense Ministry and other sources, under the 1976 National Defense Program Outline, the MSDF retires the oldest of its 16 submarines every year and replaces it with a new one -- with Mitsubishi and Kawasaki taking the order for the new sub in alternating years from fiscal 1977 on. In fiscal 2009, however, the Defense Ministry declared that no submarine would be retired that year and no new vessel would be needed.

Pearl Harbor mini-submarine mystery solved?

Japanese warplanes hit, from left, the USS West Virginia, USS Tennessee and USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. (Associated Press / December 7, 2009)

The remains of a Japanese mini-submarine that participated in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor have been discovered, researchers are to report today, offering strong evidence that the sub fired its torpedoes at Battleship Row.

That could settle a long-standing argument among historians.

Five mini-subs were to participate in the strike, but four were scuttled, destroyed or run aground without being a factor in the attack. The fate of the fifth has remained a mystery. But a variety of new evidence suggests that the fifth fired its two 800-pound torpedoes, most likely at the battleships West Virginia and Oklahoma, capsizing the latter. A day later, researchers think, the mini-sub's crew scuttled it in nearby West Loch.

The loch was also the site of a 1944 disaster in which six tank landing ships preparing for the secret invasion of Saipan were destroyed in an ammunition explosion that killed 200 sailors and wounded hundreds more.

When the Navy scooped up the remains of the so-called LSTs and dumped them outside the harbor to protect the secrecy of the invasion, it apparently also dumped the mini-sub's remains, which were mingled with the damaged U.S. ships.

"It's not often that a historian gets a chance to rewrite history," said marine historian and former Navy submariner Parks Stephenson, who pieced together the evidence for the television program "Nova." "The capsizing of the Oklahoma is the second most iconic event of the attack. If one submarine could get in in 1941 and hit a battleship, who knows what a midget sub could do today. Iran and North Korea are both building them. It's very worrying."

Stephenson and his colleagues have put together a convincing chain of circumstantial evidence, but it is just circumstantial, said Burl Burlingame, a journalist at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and author of "Advance Force: Pearl Harbor."

"There is a good chance that this is the Pearl Harbor midget, but I don't think the case is closed on it," Burlingame said. "At this point, it is not hard evidence."

The two-man, 80-foot-long sub in question does not have a name of its own. Each of the five subs in the attack was carried by a conventional submarine and took its name from the mother boat. It is thus called the I-16-tou -- tou being Japanese for boat. Powered by a 600-horsepower electric motor, the sub could reach underwater speeds of 19 knots, twice as fast as many of the U.S. subs of the day.

The three pieces of the sub were found during routine test dives between 1994 and 2001 by Terry Kerby, chief pilot of the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's submersibles Pisces IV and Pisces V. But Kerby and others assumed they were a part of a war trophy that had been captured by allied forces at Guadalcanal or elsewhere, towed back to Hawaii and scuttled.

Stephenson got involved in 2007 because he was looking for the fifth Japanese mini-sub.

In 1941, a crewman on the I-16 had received a radio call from the I-16-tou at 10:41 p.m. on Dec. 8 reporting the success of its mission. That indicated to Stephenson that the mini-sub had found a calm place in the harbor and hidden until the next night before surfacing and sending the call.

The crew members would have then scuttled the craft because they could not get it out of the harbor. The West Loch would have been a good location to hide, but researchers could find no trace of the boat there.

A diver who had been looking for the mini-sub suggested that Stephenson talk to Kerby, who sent him pictures of his find.

"As soon as I saw the bow section with the distinctive net cutter, I knew that we had found the fifth midget sub," Stephenson said. The Japanese navy modified net cutters on the subs for specific missions, and the one on the wreck was identical to those on the other mini-subs.

No torpedoes were found on the wreck, and evidence suggests that they were not present when the boat was sunk. A newly declassified photograph taken by a Japanese plane during the attack appeared to show a mini-sub firing a torpedo into Battleship Row. A report to Congress in 1942 by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz describes an unexploded 800-pound torpedo recovered after the battle. That's twice the size carried by the torpedo bombers.

That torpedo was apparently a dud that missed the West Virginia.

But an examination of the remains of the Oklahoma shows that it apparently had underwater damage much larger than that associated with aerial torpedoes. An underwater blast would have caused it to capsize, Stephenson said. "Otherwise it would have settled to the bottom upright," like the other sunken ships.

The 1944 disaster at West Loch occurred on May 21 as the Navy was preparing to invade the Mariana Islands in Operation Forager. The Navy clamped a top-secret classification on the incident to keep it from the Japanese, and few records are now available. What is known is that it was crucial to clear out the debris because the loch was by then the site of an ammunition dump.

Records from the salvage ship Valve showed that it was brought into the loch during the cleanup and its 250-ton crane was used for an undisclosed reason. Stephenson thinks it lifted the I-16-tou, but there are no records to confirm that.

The remains of the mini-sub were then dumped three miles south of Pearl Harbor along with those of the LSTs, to be found by Kerby 50 years later.

Bulkheads on the wreck are sealed, so researchers don't know whether the mini-sub crew was trapped. But a map taken from one of the other mini-subs showed the location of a safe house in Pearl City, Hawaii, suggesting the crew might have scuttled the boat and escaped.

The "Nova" episode describing the search for the I-16-tou will air Jan. 5.(Original News)

PICTURES: The Hunt for Lost WWII 'Samurai Subs'

With more time, military experts say, a fleet of revolutionary Japanese super-submarines could have changed the course of World War II.

Some were designed to launch bombers on kamikaze missions against New York City, Washington, D.C., and the Panama Canal. Others were thought to be twice as fast any other submarine used in the war.

None had the chance to execute their stealth missions against the U.S. mainland or critical targets in the Pacific during the war.

But after the war ended and the U.S. Navy seized and surveyed the vessels, it made a drastic decision: Each submarine was taken off the coast of Hawaii in 1946 and shot down to the ocean floor to keep the

 technology from falling into Soviet hands.

For years since, divers have scanned the depths of the Pacific to recover the subs and their technological secrets but to no avail.
Until now.

A National Geographic Program premiering Tuesday documents a team of researchers' successful hunt for the super-submarines, which have not been seen by human eyes for more than 60 years (ABCNews).

Note : 

In this image, the I-401 submarine is shown. 

The I-401 aircraft-carrying submarine could travel one and a half times around the world without refueling.

(Wild Life Productions, National Geographic Channel)

JAPAN'S SUBMERSIBLE AIRCRAFT CARRIERS

In many ways H.I.J.M.S. I-400 was decades ahead of her time.  She was the world's largest submarine, with a length of 400 feet and a surfaced displacement of 3,530 tons.  Above her main deck rose a 115 foot long, 12 foot diameter, hangar housing three torpedo-bombers.  These floatplanes were rolled out through a massive hydraulic door onto an 85 foot pneumatic catapult, where they were rigged for flight, fueled, armed, launched, and, after landing alongside, lifted back aboard with a powerful hydraulic crane.  The I-400 was equipped with a snorkel, radar, radar detectors, and capacious fuel tanks that gave her a range of 37,500 miles: one and a half times around the world.  She was armed with eight torpedo tubes, a 5.5 inch 50 caliber deck gun, a bridge 25mm antiaircraft gun, and three triple 25mm A/A mounts atop her hangar.  The advent of guided missiles and atomic bombs transformed her from an overspecialized undersea dinosaur to a menacing strategic threat.  Like Germany's Type XXI U-boat she was too late to influence World War II.

Two well-illustrated articles on these giant submarines have appeared in Maru Special, a Tokyo nautical magazine: Japanese Naval Vessels, No. 13: I-400 & I-13, 1977,² and Japanese Navy Warships of World War II, No. 16: Submarines, 1975.³  A first-hand contemporary description by a naval constructor who helped build them is Lt. Cmdr. Shizuo Fukui, I.J.N.: The Japanese Navy at the End of World War II, 1947.⁴  Other good references are Erminio Bagnasco: Submarines of World War Two,⁵ and Commander Richard Compton-Hall, RN: Submarine Warfare: Monsters & Midgets.⁶

Figure 1 shows the unique asymmetrical cross section of the I-400 class boats

Note that the bridge and conning tower were offset seven feet to port of the centerline, and the huge hangar offset two feet to starboard to compensate.  A Japanese quartermaster told me that he had to use a seven degree starboard helm to steer a straight course at 2 knots submerged.  In conducting a torpedo attack the skipper had to take into account his larger turning circle to starboard than to port.  If the offset conning tower were flooded, the diving officer would have to blow a port tank quickly to provide lateral compensation -- I wouldn't like to face this emergency.

The twin athwartships pressure hulls did not extend the entire length of her double hull; the crew compartment aft reverted to a single pressure hull, while forward the twin torpedo rooms were stacked vertically.  This design permitted a sea-kindly external hull shape with good surface stability and a draft of 23 feet.  Each torpedo compartment had four 21 inch tubes with ten torpedoes.  The test depth of her pressure hull was 328 feet (82% of her 400 foot length).

Another of I-400's noteworthy design features was the long vertical trunk leading down from the conning tower outside the hangar to the control room.  With a diving time of 56 seconds, the bridge watch leaped into spectacular action on the command Clear the Bridge!  The lookouts had to jump down the conning tower hatch, then hurtle through this long tube to man their diving stations in the control room 25 feet below (Figure 3).  To cushion the landing impact a three foot thick canvas hassock was positioned in the control room at the foot of the conning tower ladder.  The padding was effective, but so filthy and odorous that we heaved it overboard.  Afterwards an unfortunate Japanese sailor who hadn't got the word dropped down from the conning tower with his usual elan and struck the steel deck with a resounding crash.  Although clearly distressed he staggered off without comment . . . no weakness would be shown in front of the Americans.

Figure 2 shows I-400's aircraft storage and catapult for her three M6A1 Seiran (Storm from a Clear Sky) torpedo-bombers.²

These specially-designed floatplanes had a length of 35 feet, a wingspread of 40 feet, a range of 654 miles, and a munitions payload of 1800 pounds.  Additional fuel and bombs could be carried by jettisoning the floats on one-way missions where the pilots and planes were to be expended.  The sleek Seiran bombers, built by Aichi Kokuki at Nagoya, were stowed in the hangar compartment with floats detached and wings and tails folded.  A trained team could rig a floatplane for launch with fuel and armament in as short a time as seven minutes.

Accommodations for a crew of 145 were designed into the capacious twin hulls, but her complement when she was intercepted was 213.  A Japanese officer told me that she'd actually carried as many as 220 men to facilitate speedy submarine and aviation operations at sea.  Within 45 minutes of surfacing her skilled personnel could break out, assemble, fuel, arm and catapult all three aircraft.  The I-400's great cruising range enabled her to launch her three bombers within striking distance of targets as far from Japan as San Francisco, the Panama Canal, Washington or New York.  All of these missions were considered by the Tokyo naval strategists.

Below the hangar in the starboard twin hull was a special compartment equipped to conduct aircraft engine overhaul and test.  An adjacent magazine stored four aircraft torpedoes, fifteen bombs, and gun ammunition; more shells were stored topside in pressure-proof, ready-use lockers handy to the guns.  Each of the two engine rooms housed a pair of 1900 horsepower diesels linked through Vulcan hydraulic couplings to drive the twin propeller shafts as shown in Figure 3.

A 1200 horsepower electric motor-generator on each shaft drew electricity from her storage batteries to drive her submerged.  With a clean bottom this propulsion plant gave her a top speed of 18.7 knots on the surface and 6.5 knots below snorkel depth.

Figure 4 shows I-400's primitive but effective snorkel, fitted as an afterthought abaft the periscope shears; you can see the exhaust piping branching over the hangar to reach the starboard engine room.

 

Also visible are the horn-shaped surface search radar, radar detector antennas, and Radio Direction Finder.  Note the massive pressure proof binoculars at the forward end of the bridge covering arcs to port and starboard; these were an attempt to compensate with oversized optics for the inadequate performance of Japanese radar.

Meals for her oversize crew were prepared in a galley in the starboard hull, where large steam kettles turned out great quantities of rice.  As in all long-range submarines, a four month supply of food was stowed in every cranny, including a layer of crates laid out on deck which the crew walked on until they'd eaten their way through.  Supernumeraries slept on the deck wherever they could find a nook, being used to a floor and tatami mat.  The oriental style heads were just holes in the decks above sanitary tanks . . . excretory inaccuracy, inevitable in a seaway, guaranteed that no one lingered there.  While inspecting the giant I-boats boats Admiral Lockwood, our wartime ComSubsPac, expressed horror at these odiferous "sanitary" arrangements.

Source : pacerfarm
More Video please visit : marinelog

World War II "samurai submarines" discovered off Hawaii

research documentary team Thursday reports the discovery of two Japanese "samurai submarines" scuttled after the end of World War II.

The "I-14" carried two planes while submerged, while the "I-201" was a diesel-powered attack submarine with a range of 37,500 miles.

"These submarines are 60-year-old time capsules offering firsthand insight into a military technology that was far ahead of its time -- so much so that if introduced earlier and in greater numbers, the submarines had the potential to turn the tide of war," said Dr. Hans Van Tilburg of NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, in a statement.

The subs, sitting at a depth of 3,000 feet, were discovered by a NOAA Undersea Research Lab at the University of Hawaii at Manoa team along with National Geographic Channel filmmakers.

In the NGC documentary, "Hunt for the Samurai Subs," (Tuesday, November 17, 9:00 p.m. ET/PT), Navy officers involved in scuttling the subs, captured after World War II, say the U.S.A. sank them to evade sharing their technology with the Soviet Union as promised by treaty. About 400 feet long, the "Sen-Toku" class subs were intended to carry out missions against the U.S. mainland, including 1,800 pound bomb drops by kamikaze planes launched from the I-14.

 

Photos: One of the submarines, photographed under water; a drawing of the I-14; the view from the research boat.

Source : usatoday