Reading a book about USS WARD (4 piper destroyer that sunk the midget sub a couple hours before the air raid on Dec 7) and it mentioned two items that seem significant;
1. A full size Japanese I boat sub patrolling 4 miles outside the harbor was lucky to avoid detection - "several times" in two days she lost trim and broached. Either something wrong with the sub or something wrong with the crew, a disaster waiting to happen.
2. On Dec 10th, a US dive bomber from ENTERPRISE sighted another Japanese I boat on the surface in the daytime near Hawaii, sank it with the loss of the entire 127 man crew.
Off to a bad start, my theory on Japanese sub losses and mediocre success (despite having superior torpedoes) is that they apparently weren't very good at submarine warfare.
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