the Mystery Subs at Pearl

4 Pages·2021·0.11 MB·English

Myths Surrounding the Midget Subs

False submarine sightings in Pearl Harbor continue 60 years after the Japanese attack.

By Ken Hackler for World War II Magazine The raid on Pearl Harbor was a short episode in a very long war. But it is
fair to say that rumor and speculation surround the Japanese attack more than any other battle in recent history.
Mines in the channel, amphibious landings, enemy paratroopers and Japanese aircraft carriers south of Oahu were all
reported by nervous Americans that morning. Crewmen from USS Phoenix even stated in the ship’s after-action
report that the attacking planes had German, Japanese and American markings. Primarily focused on an air assault,
the Japanese force also included more than a dozen fleet submarines positioned around Oahu that were intended to
sink ships leaving Pearl Harbor once the air attack began. The original plans for the raid did not include midget
submarines for fear that one would be discovered in advance and alert the Americans, but Japanese submarine
commanders lobbied for inclusion of their new weapon despite those concerns. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto finally
consented after strategies to recover the midget crews were developed, and five Type-A midget submarines were
assigned to the strike force. The subs, 78l¼2 feet long and 6 feet wide, carried a crew of two, one of whom served
as the pilot and the other as the engineer.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES. Midget Japanese submarine beached at Bellows Field, Hawaii, after the attack on Pearl Harbor of Dec. 7, 1941.

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The midgets would have to enter Pearl Harbor’s narrow main channel in the dark without being detected, make their
attacks and then escape back through the channel, with American forces fully alerted to their presence. As a final
challenge, the midgets had to cross 50 miles of open ocean to rendezvous with their mother submarines near Lanai
Island. Today, viewed from the comfortable distance of 60 years, the plan seems foolishly risky. The Japanese
planners’ fears were well justified. As it happened, however, American forces failed to recognize the significance of
three or four separate midget submarine contacts in the hours before the air attack. Only one contact was
reported, and skeptical senior officers requested confirmation of differing reports from Ward and a Catalina PBY
reconnaissance plane, losing valuable time before responding. The air raid caused serious damage to Hawaii’s
airfields and 18 ships in Pearl Harbor, but the Japanese fleet submarines near Oahu failed to torpedo any of the 30
or so American warships that left port that day. One midget sub did enter Pearl Harbor and fire its torpedoes (both
missed) before being sunk by U.S. ships. What is known today about the five midget submarines? They were
launched the night before the attack from 7 to 10 miles south of Oahu by the Type-C1 fleet submarines I-16, I-18,
I-20, I-22 and I-24. Given the geography, the navigation problems and the finicky nature of the small boats, the
midget submarine crews faced a task requiring real courage, skill and luck if they hoped to succeed. The low-lying
entrance to Pearl Harbor would have been difficult to locate at night against the black background of the island,
particularly when viewed from sea level through a small periscope. The only realistic way for a submarine crew with
such limited vision to find the channel entrance in the dark was by following a ship. There were two opportunities to
do that before sunrise on December 7, when Crossbill and Condor entered the channel separately between 5 and

5:30 a.m. No other ships came in until the Coast Guard cutter Tiger did so shortly before 8 a.m., although the fleet
tug Keosangua left the channel shortly after 6:30 a.m. to meet the cargo ship Antares and take a barge in tow.
The channel would have been easier for the midgets to locate after sunrise (about 6 a.m.), but crewmen aboard
the 10 American vessels at or near the channel entrance could easily have sighted a periscope at that point. Of
course, once the air attack began, a submarine could not have entered because of the likelihood that ships would
be leaving the harbor through the narrow channel. One midget submarine—designated “Midget B” by Lt. Cmdr. A.J.
Stewart in a 1974 U.S. Navy Proceedings article—did manage to enter Pearl Harbor in the darkness, probably by
following Crossbill or Condor, and speculation that a second midget also entered has been rampant since 1941. The
most recent version of the story stems from the manipulation of an old photograph using sophisticated computer
software. Amid all the speculation, a careful consideration of the facts and some common sense can help us to
accurately trace the fate of most, if not all, of the midget subs that were involved. Moored near the entrance to
Middle Loch, the minesweeper Breese reported sighting two submarine conning towers at about 8:30 a.m., not long
after the final wave of Japanese planes had attacked the harbor. The other nine ships near Breese reported sighting
only one submarine. Five ships fired at the midget, and Curtiss hit it once before Monaghan rammed and depth-
charged it. The crew of Breese mistook driftwood or debris for another submarine, or perhaps a buoy. That is
understandable given the smoke, fear, adrenaline levels and confusion of the morning. After ramming the submarine,
Monaghan was moving too fast to make the turn around the southwest end of Ford Island, and she hit a barge at
Beckoning Point before stopping. As Monaghan backed away from the barge and turned toward Hospital Point,
crewmen on board thought they saw another submarine conning tower, but it was a black cage buoy.

BReese got underway at 9:17 a.m., and one of her lookouts reported a periscope at 9:30 near the coaling docks in
the narrow main channel. No one else on Breese saw it, and she had no sound contact. No one on the four
minesweepers at the coaling docks (Vireo, Rail, Bobolink and Turkey) at that point saw the periscope. Destroyers
passing just ahead of and immediately behind Breese did not report anything, either. The men on Breese had just
seen Monaghan sink a submarine, and they were justifiably keyed up by the time their ship stood down the channel.
Excited by what they had witnessed, they were expecting to discover more submarines. Clearly, what the lookout
actually saw was just another piece of driftwood or debris. Shortly before 5 p.m., Curtiss and Monaghan directed
Case to depth-charge the midget submarine that had been sunk that morning. Ensign Fred Bertsch was sent out in
a motor whaleboat to mark the spot where air bubbles were still rising. Case steamed down from East Loch toward
the whaleboat and gave a blast on the ship’s whistle when she had the spot in sight, and Bertsch, in the small
boat, headed for Ford Island as fast as possible to get out of the way. Case dropped one depth charge on the
already sunken midget at 5:15, showering Bertsch and the boat crew with mud and water. That attack further
damaged Midget B as well as fueled rumors that another midget submarine was present in the harbor that
afternoon. And when Midget B was raised one week later, additional rumors circulated that she was yet another
new midget submarine discovered in Pearl Harbor long after the attack. Shortly after 9 on December 7, the
Japanese fleet submarine I-69 watched the dark skies above Pearl Harbor light up like a fireworks display from her
position several miles southwest of Oahu. The midget submarine from I-16 sent two radio messages, one of which
said “successful surprise attack.” The Japanese navy interpreted the message to mean that the midget had waited
until night to attack and the fireworks display was the result of a ship exploding after the midget’s torpedo hits.
Based on vague evidence (explosions seen from a distance and unclear radio messages), the Japanese concluded
that several midgets had penetrated Pearl Harbor and one of them attacked a battleship. They identified Arizona as
the ship attacked by the midget sub. However, the fireworks that I-69’s crew saw over Pearl Harbor that night were
actually the product of nervous crews on various American ships in the harbor, startled when planes from Enterprise
tried to land at Ford Island. Some of those planes went down in flames, adding to the display. A captured Japanese
chart accounts for another myth. Submarine I-24 launched her midget, Ha-19 (“Midget C”), later than the others
because the midget had a faulty gyroscope. Her young skipper, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, chose to go anyway.
Unfortunately for Sakamaki, his submarine had handling and navigation problems from the start of the mission. After
a day of being lost, depth-charged and grounded on reefs, Midget C drifted through the night, finally washing
ashore near Bellows Field, on the eastern side of Oahu. The dazed Sakamaki was captured after he tried
unsuccessfully to destroy his boat, becoming the first Japanese prisoner captured by Americans during the war. The
chart recovered from Midget C shows a track around Ford Island, complete with headings and times marking turns.
However, the track and notes on the chart indicate that it was a planning tool for the midget submarine portion of
the attack rather than a record of what one of the midgets actually did. The chart shows the midgets rounding
Hospital Point at 4:30 a.m. Tokyo time (9 a.m. in Hawaii) and traveling counterclockwise around Ford Island. That
plan meant that the torpedo bombers would have finished their attacks before the midget submarines approached
Battleship Row, lessening the chance of one being hit by a torpedo intended for an American battleship. Thus, the
chart led to mistaken assumptions. Historian Walter Karig incorrectly assumed that Midget C entered Pearl Harbor
for reconnaissance some days before the air attack, as did the Army Pearl Harbor Board. Karig put that account in
his 1944 book, Battle Report-Volume 1. Sakamaki finally admitted in his 1949 book, I Attacked Pearl Harbor, that
Midget C never made it into Pearl Harbor. However, with Karig’s account in circulation as well as the Army Pearl

Harbor Board’s report, the rumor had by then taken on a life of its own. A submarine periscope was reported near
the hospital ship Solace the day after the Japanese attack. Ships in East Loch sounded the alarm, and tugs pulled
Solace several hundred yards away, after which PT-boats dropped depth charges where she had been anchored.
Lieutenant John Harlee, the executive officer of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 1, later stated that this turned out
to be another false sighting. An officer from Aylwin, on Solace at the time, also said the “periscope” was finally
identified as a tin can. That mistake fed a rumor that one or two midget submarines were hiding beneath Solace.
Russ Hamacheck’s book, Hot, Straight, and True, contains the humorous story of another false submarine report
two weeks after the Japanese attack, when PT-28 and another PT-boat were notified about a sound contact in
Pearl Harbor. The PT-boat crews dropped a lot of depth charges on the spot, only to find out later that it was a
cast iron sewer pipe running under the harbor from the Navy hospital. Water running through the pipe when toilets
were flushed had caused the noise reported as a sound contact by the yard boat. Ensign Bob Williamson, skipper of
PT-28, reported that the sewer pipe was destroyed. A photograph taken from a Japanese plane during the attack is
responsible for the current—and highly controversial—theory that a second midget submarine entered Pearl Harbor
that morning. It allegedly shows a midget submarine on the surface just after launching her torpedoes at Battleship
Row. The theory was discussed extensively in the article “Attack From Below,” by John Rodgaard, Peter K. Hsu,
Carroll L. Lucas, and Andrew Biache, Jr., which appeared in the December 1999 issue of Naval History magazine.

The article contends that the submarine broached after firing her torpedoes, and her contra-rotating propellers
kicked up rooster tails when she surfaced. If that is true, the conning tower should have left a wake as the
submarine moved forward from the first (smallest) rooster tail to where the submarine is in the photograph. Yet
there is no wake. The white-water disturbance apparently ends just behind the object identified as a sub. The
article contradicts itself in another paragraph by saying that torpedo wakes attributed to the submarine converge in
front of it, but how can that be if the submarine broached after firing her torpedoes? A more plausible explanation is
that an aerial torpedo, which also had contra-rotating propellers, made the rooster tails. Moving the rooster tails to
the left to account for the stiff breeze, they line up almost perfectly with an aerial torpedo wake. The authors
interpreted the lack of tall waterspouts beside the ships and the fact that no Japanese torpedo planes were visible
in the photograph to mean that the attacking aircraft had completed their runs. That supported their hypothesis
that a submarine launched the torpedoes shown in the photo. However, other photographs show that West Virginia,
Oklahoma and Nevada all took aerial torpedo hits after the controversial photograph was taken. In reality, the
presence or lack of aircraft is irrelevant, since a plane moving at over 130 knots had ample time to clear the area
being photographed before a torpedo running at 40 knots reached its target. The water in front of Battleship Row
was the most intensely scrutinized piece of real estate on earth that morning. Hundreds of men on the ships at the
Navy Yard and on Battleship Row watched in horror as several dozen torpedoes ran toward the battleships. Despite
that, the article’s hypothesis is that no one saw a submarine broach and make rooster tails, one of which was at
least 20 feet tall. This astonishing suggestion is even more amazing when we consider that there is a small boat in
the photograph near the alleged submarine. Although that vessel was only 30 to 50 yards away, her crew did not
report sighting any submarine. John Rodgaard, a co-author of the article, acknowledged the presence of that boat
in a letter published by Naval History (April 2000), but he did not explain why the article had ignored the vessel.
The argument that everyone was watching the attacking planes and failed to see the submarine is not credible.
There were more than 40 reported submarine sightings and contacts, at least 11 of which were inside the harbor,
by crewmen aboard 25 ships and three PBYs, as well as by two medical corpsmen at Hospital Point. When a midget
submarine actually did appear in the harbor, eight ships sighted it immediately and five ships opened fire before
Monaghan sank it. Obviously, not everyone was looking at the sky. The alleged submarine conning tower may be
nothing more than a flaw in the photograph. The prints available in this country are copies that have been taken
from newspapers and magazines obtained from neutral countries during the war. Newspaper stock is low-quality,
with irregularities on the surface, and copies made from those pictures would incorporate the flaws into the new
prints. An enlargement of the photograph from the U.S. Naval Historical Center has what appears to be a fiber or
piece of lint at the exact spot where the “submarine conning tower” appears. Although the photograph seems to
show an object in the water, there are too many facts that contradict the submarine theory for it to be taken
seriously. This is yet another myth, the result of imagination and new technology being applied to analyze an old
picture rather than the product of responsible scholarship or logic. Any object can be isolated as a dark or light
shape of a given size, and manipulated by computer software. But a computer cannot identify an object. Objective
people must do that using known historical fact, logic and common sense. It is unfortunate that a dubious and
imaginative theory such as this will likely be accepted by unsuspecting readers simply because it has appeared in
print several times, or because of the creden-tials cited by its authors. Those who would write or revise history
should be more careful.