The Sen Toku I-400-class (伊四〇〇型潜水艦) submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy were the largest submarines of World War II, and remained the largest ever built prior to the development of nuclear ballistic missile submarines in the 1960s. They were submarine aircraft carriers able to carry three Aichi M6A Seiran aircraft underwater to their destinations. They were designed to surface, launch the planes then dive again quickly before they were disco...
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The Sen Toku I-400-class (伊四〇〇型潜水艦) submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy were the largest submarines of World War II, and remained the largest ever built prior to the development of nuclear ballistic missile submarines in the 1960s. They were submarine aircraft carriers able to carry three Aichi M6A Seiran aircraft underwater to their destinations. They were designed to surface, launch the planes then dive again quickly before they were discovered. They also carried torpedoes for close range combat.
The I-400 class was designed with the range to travel anywhere in the world and return. A fleet of 18 boats was planned in 1942, and work started on the first in January 1943 at the Kure, Hiroshima arsenal. Within a year the plan was scaled back to five, of which only three (I-400 at Kure, and I-401 and I-402 at Sasebo) were completed.
Each submarine had four 3,000 horsepower (2.2 MW) engines and carried enough fuel to go around the world one-and-a-half times—more than enough to reach...
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