#fukuryu

JAPAN’S FORGOTTEN KAMIKAZE DIVER UNIT »

The Fukuryu, or “crouching dragons,” were first conceived in late 1944 by Captain Kiichi Shintani at the Yokosuka Naval Base Anti-submarine School. With an American invasion expected within a year, Shintani feared that the Navy’s plan to use suicide torpedoes and motor boats to sink incoming landing craft would be inadequate given the critically low supply of men and materials needed to construct such craft. Instead, he proposed using an army of divers who would live underwater for weeks at the expected landing sites and emerge at night to attack incoming ships directly. While the Japanese Navy had used surface swimmers or Kaiyu to attack ships around the island of Peleliu, Shintani’s scheme would require far more sophisticated equipment and tactics. But as with the aerial Kamikaze, the doctrine of “one man – one ship” proved extremely attractive to the Japanese High Command, and in November 1944 feasibility studies and training began at Yokoska and Kawatana under the direction of Lieutenant Masayuki Sasano.

The Fukuryu were equipped with a specialized diving suit made of rubberized canvas with a steel helmet and a simple rebreather system. 3.5 litres of oxygen were stored in two tanks on the diver’s back, the carbon dioxide from their breath being scrubbed out by a canister of Sodium Hydroxide. With 9 kg of lead for ballast, the suit allowed a diver to walk along the ocean floor at a depth of around 5-7 metres for up to 8 hours, a special liquid food even being developed to sustain them underwater. In the lead-up to an invasion the Fukuryu would live in special underwater bunkers from which they could emerge undetected to attack enemy ships. Either cast from concrete or built into the hull of decommissioned merchant ships, these bunkers were to be sunk at strategic locations offshore and equipped with an underwater airlock and enough beds, food, and oxygen to sustain 40-50 men for up to ten days. Some were also equipped with torpedo launchers and a hydrophone to detect incoming ships and allow the bunkers to communicate with one another.

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