Ww2 amarican midget sub

Contributor: David Stubblebine. By definition, a midget submarine is less than tons, has a crew of no more than eight, has no on-board living accommodation, and operates in conjunction with a mother ship to provide the living accommodations and other support. The Japanese Navy built at least midgets in 7 classes, but only a fraction had any noticeable impact on the war. Their intended purpose initially was to be deployed in front of enemy fleets, but their actual use would be in harbor attacks and coastal defense. The Japanese kept no comprehensive shipbuilding records for their midget submarines.

A midget submarine also called a mini submarine is any submarine under tons, [1] typically operated by a crew of one or two but sometimes up to 6 or 9, with little or no on-board living accommodation. They normally work with mother ships, from which they are launched and recovered and which provide living accommodation for the crew and support staff. Both military and civilian midget submarines have been built. Military types work with surface ships and other submarines as mother ships. Civilian and non-combatant military types are generally called submersibles and normally work with surface ships. Midget submarines are best known for harbor penetration, although only two World War II boats, the British X-craft and the unsuccessful Welman submarine , were specifically designed with this in mind. Japan's Ko-hyoteki -class submarines were originally designed to take part in decisive fleet actions.

It was substantially larger than the original Chariot manned torpedo. Known individually as X-Craft , the vessels were designed to be towed to their intended area of operations by a full-size "mother" submarine — usually one of the T class or S class — with a passage crew on board, the operational crew being transferred from the towing submarine to the X-Craft by dinghy when the operational area was reached, and the passage crew returning with the dinghy to the towing submarine. Once the attack was over, the X-Craft would rendezvous with the towing submarine and then be towed home. The weapons on the "X-Craft" were two side-cargoes — explosive charges held on opposite sides of the hull with two tons of amatol in each.

As part of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, , the Imperial Japanese Navy sent an attack group of submarines to surround Oahu and sink ships attempting to flee. Five of the submarines carried top-secret "mini submarines. They were to surface and fire their torpedoes during the aerial attack. Then, they would dive and escape the harbor, and rendezvous with their "mother submarines," again under cover of darkness the night of December 7.