Japanese suicide scuba divers...

[Trommelfeuer]

...and other japanese suicide units...weird stuff...

Okinawa: April 1 to mid-June, 1945.
Suicide bombers were everywhere. Kamikazes ("The Divine Wind") dove unexpectedly from cloud cover; eventually they would fly almost 2,000 sorties and sink 34 American ships. They hit another 368 craft. The Japanese unleashed previously unknown and quite bizarre new weapons to terrify Americans, such as the human guided rocket (ohka), the crash boat (Shinto), the suicide midget submarines (koryu and kairyu), and the fukuryu or human mines.

The fukuryu "crouching dragons," were divers armed with lunge mines, each capable of sinking a landing craft up to 950 tons.
These divers could stay submerged for up to 10 hours, and were to thrust their explosive charges into the bottom of landing craft and, in effect serve as human mines.

8 Jan 1945. Infantry landing craft (gunboat) LCI(G)-404 is damaged by suicide swimmers, Yoo Passage, Palaus.

10 Feb 1945. Japanese suicide swimmers attempt attack upon surveying ship Hydrographer (AGS-2) in Schonian Harbor, Palaus.
(Does anyone know of other fukuryu - combat actions ?)

There is a fukuryu - model at the Yasukuni-jinja Yushukan War Museum in Tokyo.

(The souls of 2.4 million Japanese soldiers killed in the service of their emperor since the beginning of the modern era in 1867 are said to rest within Yasukuni Shrine, the Yasukuni-jinja Yushukan War Museum is next to it...)

Has anyone a photo of a war-time fukuryu ? Would be great!

With friendly greetings, Sven

P.S. If US forces had launched "Operation Downfall", the invasion of Japan, they would have encountered thousands of fukuryu...
http://home.att.net/~sallyann4/invasion3.html

[Takao]

Well, there were no "Fukuryu" attacks that I have heard of. As mentioned in your post the attacks were by suicide swimmers, these units were known as "Kaiyu" units, and not the "Fukuryu" frogmen. IIRC, the "Fukuryu" were never deployed outside of the home islands. By war's end some 1,200 frogmen had graduated training school and some 2,000 more were still undergoing training.

[Trommelfeuer]

Thank you very much for this information Takao !
( I misunderstood this source: http://www.ww2pacific.com/suicide.html )

With friendly greetings, Sven

[daveh]

Suicide Squads by R O'Neill ISBN 0 861 1098 1

A japanese prisoner captured on Peleliu stated that a Kaiyu swimmer unit was 22 men strong each equipped with 3 grenades a knife and a wooden box c 160 cu inches ( 2620 cu. cm) filled with the explosive Lyddite. These were surface swimmers and such swimmers had been used earlier in the war eg to clear mines in Hong Kong.

1200 Fukuryu graduated from Kawatana and Yokosuka Mine School with 2800 still under training, They had a "clumsy helmet", and were equipped with bulky air circulation and purification tanks. If this worked a man could stay at 50 ft down for 10 hours sustained by a supply of liquid food.
They were to use a 22lb (10kg) impact fuzed charge on the end of a stout pole, rather like the anti tank "lunge mine". Underwater pill boxes were to be constructed to provide shelter. These were arranged so each Fukuryu could cover an area of 390 sq, m.
A Captain K. Shintani commanded the Fukuryu.

[ChristopherPerrien]

Interesting stuff.

p.s. Have you ever notice the extraordinary number of times the words Japanese and suicide are together!

[Trommelfeuer]

Great information daveh, especially the part about underwater pillboxes !

Thanks for sharing them!

With friendly greetings, Sven.