Resumo de The Long Forgotten Secret Weapon Of Imperial Japan

For nearly 60 years, despite photographic and eye-witness accounts, the truth about the 'secret weapon' used by the Imperial government of Japan in their attack on Pearl Harbor had been debated, argued, ignored, but never confirmed. While it is well known that the Japanese carrier fleet dispatched was underway more than a week before the attack took place, the role of the super secret submarine corps of the Empire of Japan has never been fully revealed or appreciated until now.
The first engagement of the second World War between U.S. military and attacking japanese forces occurred at approximately 6:30AM, local time, near the mouth of Pearl Harbor when a US ship named the WARD, an old four-stack destroyer, fired on the exposed conning tower of one of Japan's secret weapons: a midget submarine. They had been patroling the harbor mouth in search of an earlier reported submarine sighting when the exposed conning tower in the wake of another USS ship, the ANTARES, came into view. The WARD raced up to the spot, marked with smoke by the circling PBY patroling over head, and veered sharply to starboard leaving the deck mounted guns ineffective. One marksman put a four-inch diameter shell through the exposed structure, the shell's fuse unable to arm due to the proximity to the target. The sub began to take on water quickly and the seventy-eight feet by six feet displacement of the small craft allowed no hope of saving the ship from sinking to the bottom 1200 feet below. Both crew men aboard died. Seventy odd minutes later a second midget sub was detected just inside the the sub net at the harbor's mouth and the USS destroyer MONAGHAN headed for it's location just as the first wave of Zeros began to drop their ordinance on the ships within the harbor. After firing one torpedo at the USS CURTISS which had already been hit by a crashing enemy aircraft the sub was repeatedly hit by gunfire the Curtiss's crew. The MONAGHAN opened fire on the submarine next then rammed and sent it to the bottom crushing the sub's fantail. Japanese military records suggest attests 5 midget submarines were dispatched with orders to penetrate Pearl Harbor and sink as many vessels as their individual compliment of just two Type 97 (18 inch dia.) torpedos each would allow. Though never termed a suicide mission, it was commonly held that none of the short ranged subs were expected to return to their mother submarines. Ultimately that was the case. Officially the sub rammed by the MONAGHAN was the only one of the five to have actually penetrated the harbor defenses and fired her pay-load; neither of her torpedos struck any U.S. shipping.
A third sub was actually captured intact along with her commanding officer when his attempt to scuttle the vessel proved unsuccessful early the next morning on August 8th. The sub, a 46 ton displacement craft, was literally dragged to shore from where it had become grounded on an outlying coral reef just off shore from Bellows field on the southeastern edge of Oahu, due south of Kaneohe. The sub, SPS (Special Purpose Submarine) I-24 TOU, and her commanding officer, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, became the first naval prizes of a war that the president and congress had yet to announce the U.S.had entered.
Remnants of two of the four destroyed midget subs were found in 1960 and 2004 respectively, the later being the reported sub fired on and sunk by the USS WARD. But why did it take 70 years for the United States military to acknowledge the presence of and subsequent heroic service of those who attacked and destroyed an as yet undeclared enemy? The obvious answer is that is wasn't nearly as noteworthy as the attack from the air due to the fact that no known damage to ships within the harbor had been inflicted by the subs. A second consideration rests with the propaganda aspects of admitting that a sub had actually penetrated the enses at the harbor mouth; America was de-moralized enough as it was in the wake of such a catastrophic underestimation of a hostile government. A third consideration was the fact that the US had actually captured one of Japan's 'secret' weapons and admition of that would have compromised its value in determining the technological abilities of the Japanese. But separately or taken as a group these considerations cannot account for the 70+ years delay in extending credit for the role of the USS WARD.
Sadly, some consideration must be given to the fact that the USS WARD was manned not by serving Naval personnel by by a crew of Reservists; a distinction that plays into the politics within the military community. Despite the fact that the captured mini-sub is on display in the Maritime Museum in Fredricksburg, Texas, the efforts and success of the crew of the USS WARD have gone unnoticed and uncredited until now.
Thanks to Oliver North and Joe Musser in publishing the facts in their book "War Stories II - Heroism In The Pacific", credit may now be given for this forgotten, and repudiated, page that signaled the first shot of America's war.

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