by Quentin Cockburn

Midget submarines

I was the research scientist who came up with the idea of a midget submarine attack upon the German Battleship Tirpitz.  I first came upon the concept in the company of Lady Cockburn when we were playing “torpedoes”, a parlour game we devised for the bathroom to while away the idle hours of winter at Cockburn House.  I hit upon the idea after the unsuccessful Submarine attack on Sydney Harbour.  What surprised me and I think the Prime Minister made mentioned upon the ‘heroic and noble’ Japanese officers who perished there, our own little Scapa Flow could’ve been much more serious if they’d succeeded.  But shortsightedness on behalf of the Japanese High Command was their undoing.  Though brilliantly executed they had no capacity to identify a preferred target from the mass of general shipping, and had no back up plan.  As an attack it was symbolic, but offensively of no consequence

It seemed to me to be too single minded and consequently if any one thing went wrong the audacious plan would come to nought.

What surprised me at the time was the height of the Japanese submariners. From the body parts gathered from the scene it was calculated that Commander Ito measured three feet four inches, his colleague Lieutenant Iwaki, Commander of Suey 1, (for that is the naval code to describe the class of submarine) deduced from the femur and fragments of verterbrae was measured at three feet two inches.  But what we didn’t know then, and subsequently postwar we discovered, there were in actual fact fifteen crewmen assigned to the midget sub operation.  What we thought was an elongated crankshaft was in actual fact the main propulsion mechanism.  It seems that upon depth charging  the impact of force exerted upon the “grinders’ manning the propellor shaft as we should call them was such that it exerted massive force upon the propellor which rotated the mechanism, and macerated if you like the crewmen to smithereens.  The Japanese have a term for this which though difficult to translate is nonetheless epithetic, number 14 or more colloquially  given the identification  of the class of submarine, as “chop suey” .

Artist’s impression. Cutaway Mini Sub

Description 1
These are the salient features of the Japanese Midget Submarine, Suey 1.
As you can see the crew consist of the officers, Commander Ito, Lieutenant Iwaki. The internal guidance system; a Shinto Priest.  A primitive but effective asdic echo chamber, these two crewmen with coconuts.  The propulsion unit’ as you see here the eight crewmen working the propellor.  And the ballast and weight distribution system here; the two sumo wrestlers Honda and Suzuki.  Notice the underslung type 21 torpedo and the auxillary 12 horsepower Hitachi electric engine, colloquially known as the ‘Sawawy worker.’  Primitive but effective.