Posted on 08/29/2002 11:13:48 AM PDT by Asmodeus
HONOLULU, Aug. 28 — Researchers said Wednesday they found a Japanese midget submarine sunk more than an hour before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Discovery of the 78-foot vessel could provide the first physical evidence to back U.S. military assertions that it fired first against Japan in World War II and inflicted the first casualties.>p>
THE SUB was sunk by a Navy destroyer on Dec. 7, 1941. Two Japanese crewmen are believed still inside the submarine.
“It’s the shot that started World War II between the Americans and the Japanese,” said John Wiltshire, associate director of the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory, which found the sub. The two-man submarine was discovered unexpectedly at a depth of 1,200 feet and a few miles from Pearl Harbor by research craft making test dives, he said.
The sub led four other Japanese midget submarines to Pearl Harbor to take part in the attack. The newly discovered sub was believed to be the one sunk by the destroyer USS Ward before the attack began. Wiltshire said the crew is certain that this sub was sunk by the Ward because of a bullet hole in the conning tower and because it still has both torpedoes. Three of the subs have been previously accounted for; the remaining sub had fired both of its weapons.
Until the submarine was found, historian Daniel Martinez said eyewitness accounts were unconfirmed. Martinez, a historian for the USS Arizona Memorial, has interviewed the crew who fired the first shot, and a pilot who saw the submarine sink. “What they saw and what they felt was their recollection, now the proof has been found,” he said.
The submarines’ entry into the harbor was followed by the Sunday morning attack by Japanese planes that lasted two hours and left 21 U.S. ships heavily damaged, 323 aircraft damaged or destroyed, 2,390 people dead and 1,178 other wounded.
Terry Kerby, chief pilot of the deep-diving submersible that found the submarine, said it was covered in growth but was in excellent condition. “To actually come across it was a sobering moment, realizing that was the shot that started the Pacific war,” he said.
This is one of the two University of Hawaii deep diving submersibles that discovered a sunken Japanese midget submarine a few miles from Pearl Harbor.
Kerby and other researchers have been conducting dives in the area since the 1980s, and have always known the sub was somewhere out there. Wiltshire described the area as an underwater military junkyard. ‘To actually come across it was a sobering moment, realizing that was the shot that started the Pacific war.’ “The thing is quite difficult to find because of all the massive amounts of junk out in the area, and we were simply fortunate because we’ve run our test and training dives through here and know where a lot of the junk is,” Wiltshire said.
The submarine was the focus of a National Geographic expedition in 2000. A team of deep-water researchers led by undersea explorer Robert Ballard spent 10 days searching for the Japanese sub, using remotely operated imaging vehicles. Ballard is best known for finding the remains of the Titanic, Bismarck and Yorktown, along with the recent discovery of PT-109, the torpedo boat commanded by John F. Kennedy during World War II and sunk near the Solomon Islands.
--erik
How insensitive! Shouldn't that be "dimensionally challenged"? You're welcome...
LOL! Yes, of course Willie. Americans are bad according to the ACLU and the leftist professors who run the universities. I think reparations for Japan are in order...
Not according to this post. I'll paste some of it here.
At 6 am USS Enterprise launched Scouting Six
Also at 6 am the Japanese lanch there aircraft for the attach on Pearl Harbor
At some point one of Scouting Six came in contact with the Japanese before the attack
Pilot Ensign Manuel Gonzales, of Scouting Six, was heard on the radio to say
"Please don't shoot! Don't shoot! This is an American plane."
Moments later, he was heard ordering his Gunner aircrewman Leonard J. Kozelek to bail out: neither man was ever heard from again.
Puleeeze.
I just finished an excellent book, Paul Revere's Ride, 1994, by David Hackett Fischer. Using all available sources, including depositions -- of both American and British soldiers in the battle -- taken days after the atttacks on Lexington and Concord, he concludes that it is impossible to say who (on which side) actually fired the first shot. It seems that the first shot was fired by someone other than those in the ranks of British Regulars or the Minutemen, who were facing each other about 50 yards apart on Lexington Green as dawn broke on 19 April, 1775.
It is only clear that the first volley was fired by the Regulars at the Minutemen, without any orders to fire from the British commander of that unit. Applying that analogy to the attack on Pearl Harbor, whoever fired the "first shot" is irrelevant. It was the first volley that committed both nations to war. And the first "volley" at Pearl Harbor was the first wave of Yamamoto's Zeros which attacked the American warships.
Congressman Billybob
No kidding. This includes their wording of the damage to the newly discovered wreck. The Ward's after action report is posted in this thread; it notes that the shell which was observed to strike the submarine was observed not to have exploded. A photograph of the Ward is also posted in this thread. That forward deck gun may be a 3" piece. In any case I wouldn't call a through hit from even a 3" shell a "bullet hole", but this is the AP talking, here. They're complete, unadulterated idiots.
AB
I was trying to think of a way to say what I thought about the title but would've gotten banned for my thoughts. lol
You all nailed it.
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