Aichi M6A1 'seiran' for briney by vkoontz
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Description
At smithsonian Dulles Udvar-Hazy annex. Looked through my photos and found the shots of the aircraft. I had to shrink the pics to fit so not the sharpest. This is the only example of its type remaining. Designed to be submarine borne specifically to attack the Panama Canal. The project was so secret the allies didn't know of it until after the war and they were never used. The subs to carry them were all scuttled when the Russians demanded to see an example.
Comments (5)
Katraz
Nice shots, the floats look to big for the plane
bmac62
Never have seen nor heard of this beauty...which is a good thing since it never got to be used for its intended purpose. Fascinating collage. Sounds like a mission impossible...one submarine bourne plane dropping high explosives on the Panama Canal...???
Tamarrion
I've heard of these... even had a model of the I-400 submarine built to carry it. Quite a clever idea! If memory serves, the Japanese had 3 or 4 subs in this class, and they were intended to launch a co-ordinated attack on the canal.
Briney
Thanks for that! I still scratching my head trying to work our how they expected to launch without the floats- since the catapault logically seems to attach to the floats rather than the fuselage... I'll have to go back and look at the web again. I also read somewhere they had a neat way of pre-warming the engines so that they could launch very soon after surfacing... thats before there were any Tomahawk missiles....
chuter
Nice shots. There were two land (retractable) versions built as conversion trainers. A common pic (cropped version in Wiki) of one of those shows it in front of a quonset hut style hangar. On the hangar gable a sign says "Smith Aviation Co." and in the background are Cessna 120/140s (found it - http://crimso.msk.ru/Images6/MM/MM-16/1007-32-1-1.jpg) ... since I was a kid I've wondered what it was doing "there" (not sold surplus, surely ...?) and where it ended up (scrap).