On Thursday March 17th during a training exercise on a new navigation system, the Hawai‘i Undersea Research Lab (HURL) discovered the wreck of the Japanese World War II submarine I-401 sunk during target practice in 1946. The wreck of the I-401 was found using the new track Link 5000 HA navigation system provided by NOAA's Ocean Exploration Program. The wreck was found in 870m of water off Barbers Point, Oahu. The I-401 was one of 3 aircraft carrying submarine built in 1944. These were the largest diesel electric submarines ever built comparable in size to the largest present day nuclear submarines. They were 20 years ahead of their time. The wreck sits upright on the bottom 5 stories high and 400 feet long. The war ended before the I-401 could accomplish its mission of launching its 3 folding wing planes to attack and destroy the Panama Canal. The submarine was brought by a U.S. crew back to Hawai‘i (story at http://www.pacerfarm.org/i-400/ ). The I-401 was sunk by torpedoes in a target practice exercise in 1946 to prevent its technology being surrendered to the Russians under a war end agreement. The cold war was just beginning.

Pics of underwater wreck of I-401 and war time pics of I-400 here:

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/HURL/I-401.html

Crikey - what a beast that was!

Cheers for the article - fascinating stuff.

my god! Subs with aircraft on board!

Look at this

the sub goes 1+1/2 times around the world with its onboard diesel fuel

interesting story

S!..

Slechtvalk you may want to edit your post as no direct posting of images from another web site are allowed here at SimHQ for legal reasons. Since your new here you may have not known this.


Yes those subs had a range of 32,000 miles!

Saw a program on Discovery about those subs, they mentioned that only one Seiran survived the war and was being restored in the US if i remember corect.

The last surviving Seiran bomber is being restored at the National Air and Space Museum:

http://www.si.edu/opa/insideresearch/9995/seiran.htm

It's on display now at the new Udvar-Hazy Center. I'll post a picture of it when I can.

Sadly, there's even copyright notice at the right bottom of the pic...

By the way, even though its name is written as I-400, the "I" part is actually called (pronounced) as short "e".....in Japanese