SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Midget submarine

Quote:

Originally Posted by Torplexed

...Midget subs never attacked US subs that I know of. Given their limited range (they had electric motors only) they were usually used in harbour raids and not on the open sea. Rather an ineffective weapon given their dismal war record. Kaitens did a little better.

I'm reading 'Thunder Below' by Eugene Fluckey (Commander of USS Barb in 1944-1945). In that he refers to a number of occasions of when he and other wolfpack subs were attacked by Japanese midget submarines.

To quote one instance relating to the USS Queenfish during a patrol in the Luzon Strait / South China Sea in 1944:

"With his alert peripheral vision he spotted the impulse bubble from a firing submarine and took split-second action to avoid the oncoming torpedo, Speeding up to 19 knots and deftly paralleling the churning torpedo, he watched it scrape past at about 50 yards, with all hands on the bridge holdeing their breath - or something.

Simultaneously radar picked up a new contact 1000 yards ahead. Elliott (skipper of the Queenfish) instinctively reacted in the third dimension and dived, passing under the midget submarine at 200 feet.

Ed (the wolfpack Commodore) decided that there were too many midget submarines in this area and plucked us out of the fire. We moved west, away from the proximity of close-to-shore bases"

Re: operational use of midget subs, Japanese midget subs penetrated Sydney Harbour during WWII. This summary is taken from the Australian War Memorial website www.awm.gov.au

On the night of 31 May – 1 June 1942, three Japanese midget submarines, launched from larger "mother" submarines lying off the coast, entered Sydney Harbour to attack Allied shipping. Two of the midgets were destroyed, but not before one of them sank the depot ship HMAS Kuttabul (a converted ferry), killing 21 naval ratings. [The intended target was the cruiser USS Chicago]

There is a full midget submarine on display at the War Memorial. It is assembled from sections of two of the three submarines that raided Sydney. The centre and aft sections are from the submarine that set off its demolition charge after it became entangled in the harbour defence boom net. The bow section is from the submarine that was depth-charged in Taylors Bay - its crew shot themselves to avoid capture.

The third midget submarine vanished, its fate a complete mystery until it was discovered by a group of amateur divers off Sydney's northern beaches in November 2006. It was this submarine that had sunk the Kuttabul during the raid.

A more detailed account is found here:

http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/midgetsub/doc.htm

Cheers

Mark