Combat aircraft. The only one who bombed the USA

2024 Author: Matthew Elmers | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 21:49

I must say right away: do not judge by appearance! The plane is both wonderful and remarkable. And in some way - and unique.

Not only is it a Japanese naval submarine aircraft, but it also owns the honor of being the only aircraft to bomb US territory during World War II.

Yes, there were balloons with explosives, there were. But the attack on the United States with the help of aviation - this was only twice in total, with one crew.

But let's start in order.

The E14Y1 seaplane appeared as part of the 1937 Japanese submarine fleet improvement program. According to this program, new and more modern aircraft were to appear on new and old submarine cruisers of the Imperial Navy.

The companies Kugisho and Watanabe Tekkosho took part in the competition for the creation of a new reconnaissance aircraft. Despite the fact that it was “Watanabe Tekkosho” who was the author of the reconnaissance model already in service, the more promising project of the company “Kugisho” won the competition.

Let no one be confused that the planes were created by not very well-known firms, in fact, the designers of both firms were more than competent people who did not save themselves before such a task. Building a seaplane aircraft for use on a submarine is even more difficult than designing and building a carrier-based aircraft from scratch.

A submarine hangar is not an internal deck of an aircraft carrier, as it were. But Mitsuo Yamada coped with the task. And the task was, I repeat, not the easiest one: to build a monoplane, which should not only have good flight qualities, but also fit into the sub's hangar!

Yamada opted for a low-wing monoplane design with two supporting floats. When the machine was placed in a hangar of limited dimensions, the wing consoles were folded along the fuselage, and the stabilizer was turned down.

At the end of 1938, the assembly of the first two prototypes of the seaplane was completed, which received the designation "Marine experimental boat seaplane E14Y1", and at the beginning of 1939 flight tests of seaplanes began.

The seaplane was nothing new at that time, it was a mixed-design aircraft with a 9-cylinder Hitachi GK2 Tempu 12 engine, air-cooled, equipped with a wooden two-bladed constant-pitch propeller.

Floats are all-metal, single-ribbed.

The armament was minimal: one 7.7 mm machine gun mounted on a pivot mount in the observer's cockpit to defend the rear hemisphere. And two bombs of 30 kg each, which could be hung under the wings.

But this is a scout, so, in principle, everything is clear with weapons.

However, the tests revealed a very unpleasant thing. The plane turned out to be overweight, the weight exceeded the calculated one by 180 kg. This, naturally, entailed a decrease in the payload, that is, the fuel reserve.

In general, it turned out somehow frivolous, the plane could take only about 200 liters of gasoline, which provided a flight range of 480 km. The General Staff of the Fleet considered that it was simply not serious, and gave the seaplane for revision to the "Watanabe Tekkosho" company, as it had more experience with this type of aircraft.

Watanabe Tekkosho didn’t perform a miracle, but reduced the weight by 80 kg. Not God knows what, but already something, as they say.

In general, the plane flew and flew well. He turned out to be not capricious, easy to control, coped with the wave, and in general caused only positive emotions among the testers.

And in December 1940, after the changes made to the design, the seaplane was, as expected, accepted into service under the designation E14Y1.

Although the E14Y1 was intended for armament of submarines, the order was increased and the aircraft got to the coastal military bases, where it was used to patrol the coast of the Japanese islands, taking off from the seaplane bases of the Japanese fleet.

On the submarine, the E14Y1 was placed folded in a waterproof oval hangar with a height of 1.4 m, a width of 2.4 m and a length of 8.5 m, which was located on the deck in front of the conning tower.

For storage in the hangar of the submarine, the plane was thoroughly disassembled. The floats were undocked from the wing and fuselage, the wings were also undocked and laid along the fuselage. The tail unit folded, the stabilizer with the elevator turned up, and part of the keel turned down.

However, assembling the aircraft did not take long. It took 15 minutes to get the plane ready for takeoff. And as the crew improved their skills, the assembly and installation time on the catapult was reduced to six and a half minutes.

The aircraft was launched using a pneumatic catapult powered by the submarine's pneumatic system, and after landing, the aircraft was lifted aboard with a crane, disassembled and sent to the hangar.

From the moment the submarine surfaced to the launch of the E14Y1 from the pneumatic catapult, 15 minutes passed. Later, after the technical staff gained experience, this time was reduced to 6 minutes 23 seconds. After the completion of the flight, the aircraft landed near the boat, climbed aboard with a crane, disassembled and placed in the hangar.

The E14Y1 seaplane made its first combat mission to reconnoitre the Pearl Harbor base on December 17, 1941. The purpose of the flight was to photograph the results of the attack of the carrier-based aircraft of Admiral Nagumo, made on December 7, 1941.

The seaplane was launched from the catapult of submarine I-7 and disappeared.

The next flight E14Y1 took place on January 1, 1942 in the Oahu area. This time the flight was successful, and the car returned to the side of the boat. By the way, it was noted that the Americans could not detect this small car with radar. And the E14Y1 could do its job in peace.

In early January 1942, the submarine I-25 was successfully operating in Australian waters, with an E14Y1 on board. On February 17, 1942, he made a reconnaissance flight over Sydney Harbor, and on February 26, E14Y1 photographed the water area of the Australian port of Melbourne. On March 1, a seaplane made reconnaissance flights over Hobart, Tasmania. On March 8, the same submarine approached Wellington in New Zealand and four days later E14Y1 flew to reconnoitre and photograph Auckland. Returning back to Japan, submarine I-25 carried out reconnaissance for Suva in Fiji.

The rich intelligence information gathered by the I-25 with the E14Y1 seaplane was later used by the Japanese naval command in planning submarine attacks.

In general, the work of the E14Y1 reconnaissance was so successful that, inspired by the results, the command of the Japanese fleet formed the 8th submarine squadron under the command of Admiral Sazaki specifically for operations in the waters of Australia and New Zealand.

The squadron included boats I-21, I-22, I-24, I-27 and I-29. True, the role of the reconnaissance was to be played by the I-21 boat with a seaplane on board, and all the others had on board two-seater small submarines.

At the end of May 1942, the E14Y1 seaplane again found itself over Sydney Harbor, and again the detection system slipped through it. E14Y1 calmly photographed the harbor and set about searching for ships with the aim of guiding small submarines at them. This is not to say that the plane and boats operated successfully, because the Americans sank all four small boats without suffering any losses.

Meanwhile, the 4th submarine squadron was operating in the Indian Ocean, which included submarines I-10 and I-30 with seaplanes on board. On May 2, 1942, E14Y1 from I-10 made a reconnaissance flight over Durban, and a few days later over Port Elizabeth. Meanwhile, E14Y1 from I-30 performed similar flights over the ports of Zanzibar, Aden, Djibouti and French Somalia.

But the greatest success can be considered the actions of boats in Madagascar, which the Allies began to "liberate" from the protectorate of France, more precisely, Vichy. E14Y1 surveyed the entire coast of Madagascar and, according to their data, the same small submarines that sank a tanker in the harbor of Tuamasina port and treated the battleship Ramilles with two torpedoes, which had to be dragged to Durban for repairs, went into action.

But, of course, the most epic operation was the bombing of the United States.

On August 15, 1942, I-25, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Meiji Tagami, left the port of Yokosuku with an E14Y1 on board and arrived on the US West Coast near Cape Blanco, Oregon, by the beginning of September.

The mission of the E14Y1 crew, consisting of pilot Fujita and observer Okuda, was to drop 76-kg incendiary bombs on the forested areas of Oregon.

Pilot Nabuo Fujita

The incendiary bombs were filled with a special mixture that, when ignited, gave a temperature of more than 1500 degrees over an area of 100 square meters. For four days, bad weather prevented the flight. Only on September 9, the sky brightened, and Fujita and his partner began to prepare for takeoff. The submarine turned against the wind, and the catapult lifted a seaplane into the air, which headed for Cape Blanco.

The plane went 11-15 km deeper from the coastline, focusing on Mount Emily, where the crew dropped bombs on the forest.

On the way back, the Japanese pilots found two transport ships, which had to be bypassed to avoid detection. Commander Tagami decided to attack the ships, but the boat was discovered by a coastal defense patrol aircraft and now the Japanese had to flee at depth.

The next flight was decided to be carried out on the night of September 29. This time the attack targeted the area east of Port Or Ford. Fujita flew normally and threw off the "lighters", but upon returning, the crew found it difficult to locate their submarine. After a dramatic search for the boat along the oil trail, the pilots were able to locate the submarine when the last drops of fuel remained in the tanks.

These two raids caused very little damage. The fact is that before these events in Oregon there were torrential rains for two weeks, and the forests simply did not want to burn.

But the Fujita flights had some historical significance, since they were the only bombing of the territory of the United States by an enemy combat aircraft in the entire Second World War.

And considering that on the way back on October 4, 1942, the I-25 was torpedoed by the American tanker Camden, and on October 6 by the Lam Dohery, then we can safely say that the operation was successful.

On September 3, 1943, the history of I-25 ended in the Solomon Islands region when it was sunk by an American warship. Observer Okuda died in October 1944 in the Formosa area during an attack on an American aircraft carrier. The only participant in the attack on the US coast who survived the war was the pilot Fujita.

In general, the career of the E14Y1 ended in about the same way as that of many carrier-based reconnaissance: they were simply replaced by radars. And the use of reconnaissance hydroplanes by submarines has become generally impossible, since the risk of detection has increased many times over.