DEEP SECRET: Is there a sunken Japanese sub from WWII off the coast?

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 09/26/2002 | Carl Nolte

[Pokey78]

It was a great morning for sea stories Wednesday, and Bill Anderson, a World War II veteran with an eye toward history and an obsession with sunken submarines, had a good one.

"We think we found a Japanese submarine," he said, standing on the deck of his weathered sub hunting boat, the Echo Hunter, at the Pillar Point Marina in Half Moon Bay.

[BlueLancer]

Do you remember the thread some months back which had the premise that, at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese were only months away from perfecting an atomic bomb? One of the main arguments against the idea that the Japanese could have used it against the US mainland was the delivery system.

It would be quite interesting if they were using a suicide submarine as a delivery system for a crude nuclear device in San Francisco Bay.

All sorts of alternate history stories could be written from this point.

[Scruffy]

interesting read bump.

[weikel]

The Japanese weren't anywhere close the Germans would have gotten one before us if A) Hitler had not driven all the Jewish scientist away B) there wasn't all the "Jewish Physics BS" C) and A might not have mattered if Heisenberg had not miscalculated the critical mass. Japan did not have the resources for the expensive seperation of U-235 from U-238.

[BlueLancer]

I know ... I know ... I made the same general arguments in the previous thread that I mentioned ... but still ...

... alternate history/science fiction is a favorite of mine, and it's an interesting coincidence, that's all.

[weikel]

Email it to Harry Turtledove.

[Redbob]

"All sorts of alternate history stories could be written from this point."

True, but in none of them would we have lost the war.
There was a courage and determination in America at that time that seems rather lacking now, and far from demoralizing us, a nuclear attack on San Francisco would most likely have spelled the end of the Japanese race.

I don't think we would have stopped at dropping only two of the big bombs on them.
I don't think we would have stopped until we ran out of uranium.

[SandfleaCSC]

Just to carry your scenario a little farther, Japan did operate a sub that was capable of launching a seaplane. It was to be used late in the war to attack the Panama Canal.

On a side note, the diver in the article better be sure to toss a grenade in there if that is in fact a Jap sub. Those suckers never give up. :)

[BlueLancer]

Also true ... I don't think that, in our real history, that we should have stopped when we did. Particularly, one of the initial targets should have been Tokyo.

The second, Moscow ...

Ooops ... wrong history.
8')

[steve-b]

I seem to recall reading that the three bombs detonated by the US were the entire supply, and it took a few months to build any additional ones. In a sense, dropping the last nuke only a couple days after the previous one was a bluff.

[sneakypete]

Give me a ping if he finds anything. Or even if he doesn't.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The third bomb after Nagasaki was produced but made it as far as the West Coast when Japan surrendered. (or so I'm told)

[weikel]

Tokyo had already been firebomed to absolute destruction ala Dresden. You wouldn't have been destroying anything of value.

[swarthyguy]

There was a great thriller a while back. The theme was the third plane carrying the last bomb crashed in the ocean.
In current times, a japanese clique was going to raise it and use the bomb for their own purposes.

[BlueLancer]

Japan, 1945: Two U.S. bombers take off with atomic bombs. Only one gets through.

The Pacific, 1993: A Japanese cargo ship bound for the United States is instantly, thunderously vaporized, taking with it a Norwegian vessel. Japanese fanatics have developed a chilling plan to devastate and destroy the Western powers. From the ocean depths to the discovery of a cache of lost Nazi loot, Dirk Pitt is untangling a savage conspiracy and igniting a daring counterattack. While Washington bureaucrats scramble, a vrutal industrialist commands his blackmail scheme from a secret control center.And Dirk Pitt, the dauntless hero of Treasure and Cyclops, is taking on death-dealing robots and a human-hunting descendant of samurai warriors. Pitt alone controls the West's secret ace in the hole: a tidal wave of destruction waiting to be triggered on the ocean floor!

[Lael]

Japan did not have the resources for the expensive seperation of U-235 from U-238.

Actually, the factory which Japan was using to enrich Uranium was located in North Korea, where there was abundant Hydroelectric power. Our troops came across it during our drive to the Yalu River after the Inchon landings.

[archy]

It would be quite interesting if they were using a suicide submarine as a delivery system for a crude nuclear device in San Francisco Bay.

The nuclear weapon aspect would certainly explain the secrecy lid clamped on the sub's presence. And the Germans had a design for an A-bomb that didn't require a great deal of refined plutonium, just the more common U-235/U-238.

Hmmm, wasn't there a German U-boat shipment of German uranium *yellowcake* intercepted en route to Japan....?

[archy]

Tokyo had already been firebomed to absolute destruction ala Dresden. You wouldn't have been destroying anything of value.

Their emporer was still alive. I believe turning Hirohito and the Koyko imperial palace grounds of Edo to radioactive Trinitite would have gotten their attention.

[archy]

All sorts of alternate history stories could be written from this point.

One in which they manage to eliminate President Truman, as well as Soviet foreign Minister Molotov, and forestall the creation of the United Nations, might be worthy of a particularly hot *Divine Wind* sub-borne Kamikaze attack:

Springtime target in San Francisco

[archy]

Hmmm, wasn't there a German U-boat shipment of German uranium *yellowcake* intercepted en route to Japan....?

Yep. Found the info. it was U-234

Additional U-234 info *here*. The Japanese officers aboard committed suicide rather than undergo interrogation by the US Navy.