Showing posts with label World War 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War 2. Show all posts
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Japanese WW2 Secret Weapon Found Off Pearl Harbor - A submarine aircraft carrier ...Whoa!!!
Only days before the 72nd anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, the secret weapon of the Japanese admiral who planned the "Day of Infamy" has been found and positively identified at 2,300 feet in waters off Oahu.
Research teams organized by the University of Hawaii at Manoa made the formal announcement Tuesday that the wreck on the Pacific bottom was the I-400, a submarine aircraft carrier that was the brainchild of Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese Marshal Admiral and commander-in chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II.
Yamamoto was the architect of the carrier attack that killed 2,300 and devastated the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.The attack began 1,351 days of war and triggered major innovations in military technology that included Yamamoto's vision of a fleet of super subs that would hit the Panama Canal and even New York to demoralize Americans and slow or even stop the U.S. advance across the Pacific."Had they been able to affect those strikes, it would have been a different war," said James Delgado, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Maritime Heritage Program.
Yamamoto wanted a fleet of 18 super subs but the I-400 and two sister ships were the only ones ever built, Delgado said. At 400 feet, the Sen-Toku class 1-400 dwarfed all other submarines of the age and its range of 37,500 miles was not matched until nuclear subs were developed in the 1960s.
The 1-400 and its sister ship the I-401 each had 150-foot hangars built into the hull to accommodate three folding-wing M6A1 Seiran bombers for hitting the U.S. mainland with a 1,800-pound bomb. The pontoon-equipped Seirans were to be launched by catapult from the sub's deck and then be hauled back aboard by crane.
However, the subs were never used as intended and were mainly consigned to hauling fuel to Japanese bases, Delgado said.
Terry Kerby, a veteran underseas explorer who piloted the research sub that found the I-400, said U.S. prize crews were stunned to come across the super subs when Japan surrendered to end the war.
"We never knew they existed," said Kerby, operations director of the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL).
The 1-400 was one of five Japanese subs brought back to Pearl Harbor at the end of World War II to be studied by the Navy, but they were soon caught up in the just-beginning Cold War with the Soviet Union.When the Soviets in 1946 demanded access to the subs under terms of the treaty that ended the war, the U.S. Navy sank the subs off the coast of Oahu and claimed to have no information on their precise location. Kerby has now found four of the five scuttled subs.
"The I-400 has been on our ‘to-find' list for some time," Kerby said. "It was the first of its kind of only three built, so it is a unique and very historic submarine. Finding it where we did was totally unexpected."
Delgade and NOAA archeologist Hans Van Tilburg joined Kerby on the Aug. 1 dive aboard one of HURL's Pisces deep-dive submersibles that found the I-400. The announcement of the find was delayed until this week while NOAA verified the identification with the State Department and the Japanese government.
"All our research pointed to it being further out to sea," Kerby said. "The multi-beam anomalies that appear on a bottom survey chart can be anything from wrecks to rocks—you don't know until you go there."
The I-400 was truly revolutionary, Delgado said.
"The innovation of air strike capability from long-range submarines represented a tactical change in submarine doctrine," he said. "The large I-400, with its extended range and ability to launch three M6A1 Seiran strike aircraft, was clearly an important step in the evolution of submarine design."
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Interesting Story: Greg Brooks of Sub Sea Research found shipwreck with £2 billion of platinum bars - British merchant ship SS Port Nicholson sunk during World War II
The platinum was a payment from the Soviet Union to the U.S. for war supplies in 1942
PORTLAND, Maine: A treasure hunter said on Wednesday he has located the wreck of a British merchant ship that was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Cape Cod during World War II while carrying what he claims was a load of platinum bars now worth more than $3 billion. If the claim proves true, it could be one of the richest sunken treasures ever discovered. But an attorney for the British government expressed doubt the vessel was carrying platinum. And if it was, in fact, laden with precious metals, who owns the hoard could become a matter of international dispute.
Treasure hunter Greg Brooks of Sub Sea Research in Gorham, Maine, announced that a wreck found sitting in 700 feet (213 meters) of water 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore is that of the S.S. Port Nicholson, sunk in 1942. He said he and his crew identified it via the hull number using an underwater camera, and he hopes to begin raising the treasure later this month or in early March with the help of a remotely operated underwater vessel. "I'm going to get it, one way or another, even if I have to lift the ship out of the water," Brooks said.
The claim should be viewed with skepticism, said Robert F. Marx, an underwater archaeologist, maritime historian and owner of Seven Seas Search and Salvage LLC in Florida. Both an American company and an English company previously went after the contents of the ship years ago and surely retrieved at least a portion, Marx said. The question is how much, if any, platinum is left, he said. "Every wreck that is lost is the richest wreck lost. Every wreck ever found is the biggest ever found. Every recovery is the biggest ever recovery," Marx said. Brooks said the Port Nicholson was headed for New York with 71 tons of platinum valued at the time at about $53 million when it was sunk in an attack that left six people dead.
The platinum was a payment from the Soviet Union to the U.S. for war supplies, Brooks said. The vessel was also carrying gold bullion and diamonds, he said.
Brooks said he located the wreck in 2008 using shipboard sonar but held off announcing the find while he and his business partners obtained salvage rights from a federal judge. Salvage rights are not the same as ownership rights, which are still unsettled. Britain will wait until salvage operations begin before deciding whether to file a claim on the cargo, said Anthony Shusta, an attorney in Tampa, Florida, who represents the British government. He said it is unclear if the ship was even carrying any platinum. "We're still researching what was on the vessel," he said. "Our initial research indicated it was mostly machinery and military stores." The U.S. government has not weighed in on the court case yet, and Brooks said he doubts that will happen, since the Soviets eventually reimbursed Washington for the lost payment.
A U.S. Treasury Department ledger shows that the platinum bars were on board, Brooks said, and his underwater video footage shows a platinum bar surrounded by 30 boxes that he believes hold four to five platinum ingots each. But he has yet to bring up any platinum, saying his underwater vessel needs to retrofitted to attach lines to the boxes, which would then be hoisted to the surface by winch. "Of course there are skeptics," he said. "There's skeptics on everything you do." Maritime law is complicated, and there could be multiple claims on the ship's contents. After the sinking of the HMS Edinburgh, an English warship carrying Soviet gold bullion as a payment to the allies during World War II, England, the U.S. and Russia made claims on the sunken treasure, Marx said. The salvage company was given 10 percent of the prize, while the three countries split the rest, he said. In other big finds, treasure hunter Mel Fisher made international headlines in 1985 when he discovered a $450 million mother lode of precious metals and gemstones from a Spanish galleon that went down off Florida in 1622. In another case, a Tampa exploration company has been ordered by the courts to return $500 million worth of treasure from a Spanish warship to Spain. The ship was sunk by the British navy during a battle off Portugal in 1804.
Treasure hunter Greg Brooks of Sub Sea Research in Gorham, Maine, announced that a wreck found sitting in 700 feet (213 meters) of water 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore is that of the S.S. Port Nicholson, sunk in 1942. He said he and his crew identified it via the hull number using an underwater camera, and he hopes to begin raising the treasure later this month or in early March with the help of a remotely operated underwater vessel. "I'm going to get it, one way or another, even if I have to lift the ship out of the water," Brooks said.
The claim should be viewed with skepticism, said Robert F. Marx, an underwater archaeologist, maritime historian and owner of Seven Seas Search and Salvage LLC in Florida. Both an American company and an English company previously went after the contents of the ship years ago and surely retrieved at least a portion, Marx said. The question is how much, if any, platinum is left, he said. "Every wreck that is lost is the richest wreck lost. Every wreck ever found is the biggest ever found. Every recovery is the biggest ever recovery," Marx said. Brooks said the Port Nicholson was headed for New York with 71 tons of platinum valued at the time at about $53 million when it was sunk in an attack that left six people dead.
The platinum was a payment from the Soviet Union to the U.S. for war supplies, Brooks said. The vessel was also carrying gold bullion and diamonds, he said.
Brooks said he located the wreck in 2008 using shipboard sonar but held off announcing the find while he and his business partners obtained salvage rights from a federal judge. Salvage rights are not the same as ownership rights, which are still unsettled. Britain will wait until salvage operations begin before deciding whether to file a claim on the cargo, said Anthony Shusta, an attorney in Tampa, Florida, who represents the British government. He said it is unclear if the ship was even carrying any platinum. "We're still researching what was on the vessel," he said. "Our initial research indicated it was mostly machinery and military stores." The U.S. government has not weighed in on the court case yet, and Brooks said he doubts that will happen, since the Soviets eventually reimbursed Washington for the lost payment.
A U.S. Treasury Department ledger shows that the platinum bars were on board, Brooks said, and his underwater video footage shows a platinum bar surrounded by 30 boxes that he believes hold four to five platinum ingots each. But he has yet to bring up any platinum, saying his underwater vessel needs to retrofitted to attach lines to the boxes, which would then be hoisted to the surface by winch. "Of course there are skeptics," he said. "There's skeptics on everything you do." Maritime law is complicated, and there could be multiple claims on the ship's contents. After the sinking of the HMS Edinburgh, an English warship carrying Soviet gold bullion as a payment to the allies during World War II, England, the U.S. and Russia made claims on the sunken treasure, Marx said. The salvage company was given 10 percent of the prize, while the three countries split the rest, he said. In other big finds, treasure hunter Mel Fisher made international headlines in 1985 when he discovered a $450 million mother lode of precious metals and gemstones from a Spanish galleon that went down off Florida in 1622. In another case, a Tampa exploration company has been ordered by the courts to return $500 million worth of treasure from a Spanish warship to Spain. The ship was sunk by the British navy during a battle off Portugal in 1804.
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