Book Review: Second World War Stories

Dario Leone of The Aviation Geek Club reviews Second World War Stories.

The I-29, the WWII Japanese submarine sunk while on secret mission to bring. 

During the course of the Second World War Japan came into the possession of six German submarines. According to one account, Hitler, without informing the OKM (Oberkommando der Marine lit. ’Upper Command of the Navy,’ the high command and the highest administrative and command authority of the Kriegsmarine), had decided in January 1943 to present the Japanese Naval High Command with two submarines.

According to the bookazine Second World War Stories by Mortons Books, one of these, Type IXC U-511, given the German codename Marco Polo I (later named Satsuki No 1 and redesignated RO-500 in Japanese service), left the German-occupied Atlantic submarine base at Lorient in Brittany with its German crew and cargo of scientists and engineers, on May 10, 1943, eventually arriving safely at Kure Japan, on Aug. 7, 1943. The other U-boat, U-1224, codenamed Marco Polo II (by this time sailing under the Japanese pennant as RO-501/Satsuki No 2), left Kiel on Apr. 30, 1944, under the command of IJN Lt-Cdr Sadatoshi Narita and his crew, carrying precious metals, uncut optical glass and Type IX submarine and Me 163B blueprints.

I-29 WWII Japanese submarine

Back in December 1943 Japanese submarine I-29, codenamed Matsu (Pine) and carrying a cargo of rubber, tungsten quinine and opium, left Singapore for Lorient where it arrived on Mar. 11, 1944. On Apr. 16 I-29 set off for the return to Japan with technical drawings and samples of the BMW 003A, Jumo 004B and HWK 509A engines, blueprints for the Me 163B and Me 262, 20 Enigma code machines, documentation and drawings for the Italian Isotta-Fraschini torpedo-boat engine and its Campini-designed jet propulsion unit, acoustic mines and quantities of bauxite and mercury.

Submarine I-29 left for Japan with its important cargo under the charge of IJN Commander Kikkawa on Apr. 16, 1944 However, while I-29 and RO-501 were en route in the Atlantic, the latter was discovered by the American destroyer escort USS Francis M. Robinson (DE-220), part of the escort carrier CVE-9 Bogue hunter-killer group, and was sunk 400 miles (640km) south of the Azores between Recife Brazil, and Dakar, Senegal, on May 13, 1944, with the Joss of all its crew and- significantly- invaluable cargo.

More successful was I-29’s 87-day journey to Singapore, where it arrived on Jul. 14, 1944, with IJN Technical Commander Eichi Iwaya and his colleague Capt Haruo Yoshikawa in charge of the technical material. With as much material as he could carry, including handbooks layout copies and technical data on the BMW 003, HWK 509 and Me 163B, Iwaya flew on to Tokyo on Jul. 17, leaving the remainder of the material aboard the submarine, which was expected to arrive in Japan in due course after taking on replenishments.

I-29 WWII Japanese submarine sunk by USS Sawfish

Under Commander Takakazu Kinashi, one of the aces of the Imperial Japanese submarine fleet, I-29 left Singapore for Kure on Jul. 22. Four days later, however, the submarine was discovered and sunk by American submarine USS Sawfish (SS-276) south of Formosa and west of Manila, unknowingly betrayed through an Ultra intercept of a radioed message. Three crew members were thrown overboard, one of whom managed to swim to a small island in the Philippines to relate what had happened; Kinashi went down with his submarine, its crew and all of its remaining cargo.

Japan was therefore left with only the incomplete material Iwaya had saved, which clearly indicated that German development of the BMW 003 and Jumo 004 turbojets was far in advance of its own efforts, as were Germany’s developments of liquid-propellant rockets using T-Stoff (hydrogen peroxide) and C-Stoff (hydrazine hydrate, methanol and water), on which the Japanese had yet to start work. As a result, an extensive programme was initiated by the IJA and IJN to develop reliable axial-flow turbojets for aircraft and liquid-propellant manufacture and production for rocket interceptors and missiles. Owing to the shortage of normal aviation fuel, trials of pine-root oil for turbojets and pulsejets were undertaken, the latter two programmes having been accorded the highest priority in the last year of the war.

Acquiring as much information as possible

From late 1943 onwards, and particularly from April 1944 until the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, the secrets of German jet- and rocket-powered aircraft, powerplants, air-launched missiles, radar equipment, torpedoes, hydrogen-peroxide-driven Walter U-boats and samples of uranium oxide had been passed to the Japanese Military Missions in Berlin.

Japanese interest had centred on acquiring as much information as possible, not only about the aircraft and powerplants mentioned previously, but also on the Arado Ar 234B, He 162A, Fieseler Fi 103 (V1 flying-bomb) and its Argus As 014 pulsejet, HWA A4 (V2) rocket and rocket engine fuels. A portion of all this is known from Allied intercepts of transmissions from the Japanese Embassy in Berlin by radio to Tokyo in late 1944 and early 1945, which in some cases gave the Allies unexpected data on the latest German jet aircraft.

Second World War Stories is published by Mortons Books and is available to order here.

By | December 17th, 2024

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