And commenters quickly pointed out that i-400 series carry seaplane that can land on water instead of flight deck.
It was an almost-certainly-suicide run, anyway. Their mission was to sail all the way to California, launch some Doolittle-esque purely symbolic raid, and then almost certainly die as a thousand vengeful ships and aircraft converged on wherever they took off from. The reason the I-400 series had that much fuel was because nothing was out there to support them. The odds that any plane could take off, pull off a mission, find its submarine again (without radar, it wouldn't fit), land on open waters, be safely stowed again in an operation that basically would involve folding the plane back up and shoving it back into the sub by hand, and get out of town without anyone following that plane back to the sub and blowing it out of the water (or the sub abandoning its pilot and submerging) are fairly slim.
Considering that the I-17, the only sub that ever even tried to attack the US mainland, couldn't even manage to land a shot on its targets on land, maybe they figured that a kamikaze was a better choice, anyway.
Plus, late-war, the Japanese were basically completely out of good aircraft fuel, and were resorting to burning trees into charcoal, and making an extremely low-grade fuel from that. which would kill an engine in one flight. Kamikazes made sense in the sense that if you can only make an engine that can fly once...
It was an almost-certainly-suicide run, anyway. Their mission was to sail all the way to California, launch some Doolittle-esque purely symbolic raid, and then almost certainly die as a thousand vengeful ships and aircraft converged on wherever they took off from. The reason the I-400 series had that much fuel was because nothing was out there to support them. The odds that any plane could take off, pull off a mission, find its submarine again (without radar, it wouldn't fit), land on open waters, be safely stowed again in an operation that basically would involve folding the plane back up and shoving it back into the sub by hand, and get out of town without anyone following that plane back to the sub and blowing it out of the water (or the sub abandoning its pilot and submerging) are fairly slim.
Considering that the I-17, the only sub that ever even tried to attack the US mainland, couldn't even manage to land a shot on its targets on land, maybe they figured that a kamikaze was a better choice, anyway.
Plus, late-war, the Japanese were basically completely out of good aircraft fuel, and were resorting to burning trees into charcoal, and making an extremely low-grade fuel from that. which would kill an engine in one flight. Kamikazes made sense in the sense that if you can only make an engine that can fly once...
I thought the 1-400 missions were to damage the Panama Canal so that no more American ships can travel through it thus reducing the amount of supplies the American soldiers had to fight the Japanese with as they had to wait longer as their supplies had to travel around the South American continent to get to the Pacific
I thought the 1-400 missions were to damage the Panama Canal so that no more American ships can travel through it thus reducing the amount of supplies the American soldiers had to fight the Japanese with as they had to wait longer as their supplies had to travel around the South American continent to get to the Pacific
If that happens, the U-boats will probably notice that and start camping there as well.
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