I-400; Japan's Secret aircraft-carrying Strike Submarine Objective: Panama Canal
Manchester: Crecy Publishing Limited, 2010. First Edition this publisher [stated]. Presumed first printing. Trade paperback. Format is approximately 7.75 inches and 10.5 inches. 112 pages. Illustrations (some with color). Bibliography. Index. Foreword by Kazuo Takahashi. Foreword by Joseph M. McDowell. The I-400 class was the brainchild of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in- Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he conceived the idea of taking the war to the United States mainland by making aerial attacks against cities along the U.S. western and eastern seaboards using submarine-launched naval aircraft. He commissioned Captain Kameto Kuroshima to make a feasibility study. Construction of I-400 commenced at Kure Dock Yards on 18 January 1943. Following an inspection of Rabaul in August 1943, Captain Chikao Yamamoto and Commander Yasuo Fujimori conceived the idea of using the sen toku (secret submarine attack) to destroy the locks of the Panama Canal in an attempt to cut American supply lines to the Pacific Ocean and hamper the transfer of U.S. ships. Intelligence gathering on the proposed target began later that year. The Japanese conceived of an attack on the United States through the use of biological weapons specifically directed at the civilian population in San Diego, California. Dubbed "Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night", the plan was to launch aircraft from five I-400 submarines at night, who would then drop "infected flea" bombs on the intended target, in the hope that the resulting infection would spread to the entire Western seaboard and kill tens of thousands of people. Japan surrendered before the operation was carried out. More