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>> john go hagen recalls the failed japanese attempt to bomb new york city and washington, dc after pearl harbor. >> i'm john go hagen and i'd like to start the presentation with a question. does anybody in the audience tonight know who this is? say that again? >> yamamoto. the commander-in-chief of the japanese nave, and thard miller was a fascinating guy for those who don't know him. he lived in the united states twice during his naval career. he spoke pretty good english. he attended harvard university

briefly. >> could you elevate the microphone slightly? it's very uneven. >> sure. is that better? this way? [inaudible conversations] >> so, as i said, he attended harvard briefly. he even read life magazine. so, yamamoto had a good understanding of america and new what japan was in for if it declared war on the united states, and he told the prime minister, i can guarantee a tough fight for the first six months but i have no confidence as to what will happen after that. it's important to understand that yamamoto was a gambler. he loved to play games of chance. he played billiards, roulette, bridge, soji, ma jong.

he often threatened to resign from the navy to become a fulltime professional gambler. that's how good he was. and though i don't think they took his threat seriously, it's important to understand that yamamotos love of gambling influenced his military strategic thinking, and that's why he has a mixed record as a naval tactician. he was a fascinating character, nonetheless. in 1905, when he was young ensign, serving aboard japan's naval flag ship, themy kass, the deck blew up and yamamoto what severely injured by the explosion, and in fact if you look at this photograph here you can see the scars peppering his

face from shrapnel. he was self-conscious about his facial scars which is why they are often air brushed out of the official practices. he also last two fingers, he index finger and middle finger. the price of a manicure in japan at the time was 100 yen but the geisha called him eight man, because he shouldn't have to pay full price for a manicure. yamamoto thought the this was very funny, which is what i liked about him. you don't think of humor. but he is most famous for being the architect of japan's surprise attack on pearl harbor. the attack has hugely innovative

for its day, which many people don't realize. the dominant naval strategy at the time was the decisive naval battle. you were supposed to good out find your enemy's fleet far out at sea and destroy them. but yamato turn that thinking on its head with his attack on the u.s. pacific fleet. it was the first time in naval history that so many aircraft had ever been launched from the sea to attack a navy's fleet in its own home port. so as the attack shows, yamamoto could be a very daring and unconventional thinker, but he had a problem after pearl harbor. he had no second act, and that's why in january 1942, yamamoto gathered his senior naval officers on his flag ship to discuss what could the imperial japanese navy do as a followup to pearl harbor.

he needed to do something as equally bold as pearl harbor, that would somehow convince the u.s. to sue for an early peace, thereby allowing japan to keep her recently conquered territories. now, yamamoto's followup punch to pearl harbor was characteristically audacious. he was a daring and unconventional thick thinker. he knew he would never slip another care area task force past the americans. so what he did was he decided to build 18 gigantic submarines, specifically designed to attack the united states. now, i'm not talking about another attack against the hawaiian islands or midway or guam. i'm talking about an attack againsten mainland america. now, that is something that hadn't occurred since the british bombarded new orleans in the war of 1812. these e-4 on class of subs, they

were pretty remarkable achievement for their day. they are far bigger than any submarine that had ever been built up until then. in fact they were so big we initially mistook them for surface ships. now to give you some idea just how big these subs were. that's the e-401 at the top. that's the squadron's flag ship and it was over 400 feet long. that's longer than a football field. its conning tower, the sail structure, this structure on top, was three stories tall, and the subitself carried 204 officers and crew. now, if you compared that to a u.s. combat sub, they carried less than 80 men. so gives you an idea how huge the e-400 class subs are, and the e-401 submarine is comparable in size to a fletcher

class destroyer. that's a surface ship intended to hunt submarines. given that the e-401 is longer, it's not clear who is going to be hunting who. the sunday war so hawk they could travel one and a half times reasons the world without refueling. something no other sub in the 1940s could come close to doing, and they also incorporated some of the earliest stealth technologies. the conning tower, sail structure, was -- painted a huge radar signature normally, they indented it at the base and reflect the radar waves back into the ocean, and they had a coding to dampen noise but to absorb radar with as as well. the truly amazing thing about the e-400s they were underwater aircraft carriers.

each sub carried three 6a1 attack planes and a water tight deck hangar they launched by catapult off the bow. an e-400 subcould surface, say september bell three of these planes and launch in under 30 minutes. the japanese weren't the first to experiment with submarine carrying -- aircraft carrying sub ma rans. the british, the americans, italy, with mixed results. but japan was the only nation to perfect them and there were 11 plane-carrying submarines surrounding oahu on december 7, 1941, and the imperial japanese navy had three times that number the construction pipeline. so this would a strategic weapon they very much believed in. now, this is the only known

photograph of one of yamamoto's subs, and you can see would of its planes here on the bow, getting ready to be launched. now, historians often dismiss these plane-carrying subs as white elephant technology, but japan has a logical recent for tee employing them. they sended the ability of the sixth fleet to scout out our navy. sub marines, as you may or may not know. sit relatively low in the water and can only see six or seven miles towards the horizon. that limits their scouting ability, particularly in the days before they had radar, and when these subs were conceived there was no radar. but a subwith an airplane can easily expend its range -- extend its range by 2 or 300 miles. so that meant the farther away japan could discover our fleet, the better and sooner it would

be able to destroy our fleet before it reached japan. so, the incredible thing about these sunday -- these subs wasn't their size or the fact they were underwater aircraft carry 'ers. it's the audacious mission yamamoto dreams up for them. he built the e-400 subbecause he wanted to change the course of world war ii, and the way he ended to do -- intended to do this was to send these sunday more than halfway around the world, surface them off the east coast of america, and launch their planes in a surprise aerial attack against new york city and washington, dc. now, clearly yamamoto was thinking big, which you would expect of a daring and unconventional thinker. but he knew the 44 aircraft he intended these subs to carry wouldn't be enough to destroy two of america's biggest cities. however, he did believe that the psychological blow of the attack

would be enough to force the u.s. to the negotiation table and sue for an early peace. now, remember, doolittle only fielded six bombers over tokyo. yamamoto was talking about 44 bombers. so it's magnitude greater. okay. so, one of the remarkable things about these e-400 subs is they marked the first time any submarine had been designed to launch an offensive attack against an enemy city. up until 1945, subs had been used either for scouting or to sink capital ships or merchant ships. nobody dreamed that a submarine could be used to attack a city. that's one reason why the e-400 subs were so revolutionary, and it's also why they're still relevant today. aside from being an amazing story, the e-400 subs their hoe

historical predecessor office the u.s. missile carrying subs from then 1950s shown here. now those missile subs surfaced, they launched a nuclear missile out of a water tithe deck hangar, similar to the e-400 subs, so our sunday are the direct descendents of the e-400 subs. there's also no dekneing the e- 400 subs foreshadow red today's ballistic carrying submarines. the boomers. the boomer's mission is to destroy our enemy's lan-based targets, including their cities. same mission as the e-400s. so the story of the e-400 sub is not only an incredible story of overcoming insurmountable obstacles to launch a hail mary mission in the final days of the war. ing their strategic legacy is very much alive with us today.

now, this is the plane -- one of the planes the sunday launched off their bow. it's an m61 attack plane. 2009 most technologically sophisticated aircraft built by the jap imperial navy and they were nicknamed storm from a clear sky, because that's exactly how they were intended to appear over new york city and washington, dc. now, the planes were designed to be versatile that could i be to speed dough bombers, dive bomber little conventional bombers, but one of the most versatile qualities was that they're wings and herossal and vertical tail stabilizers could fold up so the plane made a mall enough package to fit in a deck hang area 11 feet. this is not a small plane.

if a man was standing next to the plane his head would just about reach the top have bottom pontoon. sew these were -- so these were pretty large aircraft. perhaps the most shocking aspect of these aircraft was that they were painted to look like u.s. military aircraft. and this was done to make it easier for them to slip past u.s. air defenses. the japanese believed that by disguising these planes they could buy them enough time to reach their targets before they were discovered. so, all in all, it's a pretty hollywood type mission. not something you would actually expect somebody to dream up in the course of a war. pardon me? >> to the right of the photo, that's a hangar? >> that's the deck hangar. the plane could fold its wings and its tail so it could slide

in there and they all sat on trolleys and the trolleys were lowered so the plane could back end. okay, so this ya is commander arazuma, the squadron commander of the e-400 subs' and aircraft. the was descendent from samurai, came from a naval family, attended the japanese naval academy just like our annapolis and attended the elite naval war college. he spent his entire career involved with submarines. either staff officer or line officer. he was a patriot, warrior. he subdescribed to the bushito code. his was as hard core as they came and he was pretty nasty piece of work. he was the brains behind the midget sub attack at pearl

harbor. as well has some of the worst atrocities committed by the command elm he has straight hair, a tiny little moustache and skin that more than one person described as being oily. saying he had an oily sheen. i came across that several times from people i interviewed. so, he is definitely the villain of our piece. he was martinet, and a heavy, heavy drinker, which i really saying something. he didn't hesitate to discipline his men by slapping or kicking them. in fact the crew of the e-401, his flagship, called him gangster because of his ruthlessness, and they used the term gangsta in japanese, pronounced very similar to the japanese pronunciation of our word. they knew what gangster was. he believed that to die on behalf of the emperor was

flowerrous, -- glorious, and the crew knew he would not hesitate to sacrifice them on behalf of the cause. so surrender was not in his vocabulary. in other words, this guy was the boss from hell. now, this is lieutenant commander nombu. he was captain of the flagship. so, in other words, he was in a reporting relationship to azumai who was aboard the flagship. nambu was different from his boss. he was over six feet tall and rail thin. he was so handsome, his crew used to gossip behind his back that he looked like this particular famous japanese movie star. and as you'll see, he has quite a full moustache, which was considered very stylish in the day. now, nambus crew trusted him.

they knew he had their best interests at heart. where is commanded respect through fear and intimidation. manbu earned his men's respect. i could see what his crew liked about him. i interviewed manbu several times for operation storm. he is still alive today. i think about 101 at this point. he was very charming, very are articulate, very internationally minded, and 70 years after the fact, a number of his former officers and crew sought me out to tell me they felt they owed their lives to the way namb u-conn ducted himself at the enof the war. the other amazing thing about nam bu, he was wound of the few subcaptains to survive the war in the japanese navy. >> and that's remarkable considering he serve aboard a

submarine at pearl harbor and he looked through his pair scope -- periscope to sink ships. he was the executive officer aboard the submarine that shelled the storage facility north of santa barbara in february 1942. so this guy got around. i think he was in the war for something like 1800 days. a long time. so, it was a miracle he survived the war given the casualty rate of japan's sixth fleet, their subin reinforce, and also a miracle he survived again the fact he served under arazumi. you may not know the e-400 subs were on their way to complete the mission when the war ended. when the emperor accepted the allies' surrender terms, arazumi was so outraged he refused to tell crew of the surrender.

in fact, he refused to surrender. and instead he decided to go rogue and continue with the mission. now, this was an unprecedented situation, of course, and nothing had prepared arazumi for defeat or surrender. but the situation aboard the submarine was about to get very, very bad. because these guys, u.s. combat sub, the uss segun segundo was breathing down her neck. they were having their own commanding and control problems. but the encounter between the e-401 and segue begundo is the escape i'd like to read and then i'll take questions. everybody still with me? okay.

this is chapter one, faceoff. and i promise not to read you the whole chapter. the usssegundo was five days oft midway, heads towards japan, when her crew received news the japanese government accepted peace terms. as the submarines executive officer, lieutenant john baldwin noted in the boat's war patrol report, heard the good word of the surrender and in 11 languages, too. baldwin was second in command hoff the sub, one of the newest u.s. fleet boats. nicknamed silent joe for his reticent manner he was responsible for ensuring the captain's orders were carried out in a correct and timely manner. he had been with the segundo since before her commissioning and had serve in all five of her war patrols. 28 years old.

and already balding, baldwin was man of sly wit, of few words. his all-cap entry was an uncharacteristic display emotion for him. then again, the war with japan was finally over. the segundo had been patrolling the pearl islands when the screes fires was announced. she had not seen a lot of activity. now it was august 4, 1945, and the segundo was ordered to tokyo bay to represent the u.s. submarine force at the upcoming surrender ceremony. the invitation was an honor for the crew but they weren't ready to relax yet. they were still in enemy territory and though the cease fire agreement specified the japanese military were to lay down arms, some units had not gotten the message. wait two weeksons the japanese

subjects to endure the uneven durable, and the segundo was heading to tokyo to wipe up the remnants of the once formidable japanese fleet. not much was left of the imperial japanese nave and what was wasn't expected this far north. there was isolated resistance so the segundo continued on a war-time fighting. it had a diminishing number of enemy targets. her first skipper, james phelps, had been assigned to the sub while she was still under construction the forthsmith navyyard in new hampshire. he put an indelible stamp on the crew. during that time, he had sunk two japanese war ships, eight merchants, and seven sampans and earned the segundo a total of four battle stars. these results weren't surprising given the fact that he was an experienced sub captain.

tall, athletic, and matinee idol handsome, he radiated the kind of confidence his men respect. he was 34, which is old for a subcaptain, and quiet by nature but that only contributed to his command presence. folk prosecuted the war wisconsin justifies the bright balance of aggressiveness and caution. his crew knew he was somebody they could count on to sink a combatant ship and get them home safely. though he could be remote that wasn't uncial for a c.o. it was better for thought to be distance than overly familiar since the crews' lives depended on hips objectivity. in other words the first skipper had everything a crew liked in a subcaptain. he was mature, steady, and reliable. all this had changed, however, before the segundo departed on her fifth and final war patrol.

the sub was still in midway undergoing refit when folk received orderers transferring him to pearl harbor. he had eight war patrols under his belt and was due for rotation but he had built the segundo into a formidable fighting summon and if it's true that a combat submarine operates like a fanly, then his departure was like depriving the crew of their father. unfortunately, the boat's new skipper, lieutenant commander steven johnson, was a different breed of captain. he was younger than folk and brash, with a cockiness that bus his crew on edge. the first time saw him, his new skipper was shooting dice with the men to binkley, johnson did not make a good impression, acted more like a crew member than an officer. not the kind of captain he was

used to serving understand. lieutenant victor organ also had concerns. he had johnson tell his officers, win gift this patrol, they will be throwing medals down our hatch. is this the kind of guy you can respect in the wasn't shire. in fact, the more the crew saw of johnson, the more they worried he was a hollywood skipper. he may have had other capabilities but he was massing in gravitas. he almost seemed as if it was his first command. it wasn't. it was his third. but if his officers had known that it would have worried them all the more. lieutenant baldwin remained as the executive officer after folk left. he recognized their new captain was different. johnson was a smooth talker. highly polished and well-dressed. even his nickname was slick. which wasn't always a

compliment. but balled win knew a change of command was nothing to worry about. he had seen his share of sub captains and no two are alike. given time most crews adjusted to a new skipper. if not the u.s. sub force was 100% volunteer. you can always ask off the boat. the biggest issue captain johnson faced, though, was the segundos tightknit crew. most of the men had been aboard since the boat's commissioning 15 months earlier and had been shaped by folk's command style. importantly, folk had gotten them out of some pretty tight spots would their new skipper be as talented? of course, captain johnson's presumed impetusness was less an issue. the one thing the men didn't want to see is for something stupid to happen. sailors are a superstitious lot and now that a crease fire was in place they didn't want in the last-minute screwup sending them to the bottom.

home was the preferred direction. in the meantime, anything could happen. it was 15 minutes before midnight on august 28, 1945, when lieutenant rod johnson, no relation to captain johnson, relieved lieutenant mclaughlin as officer of the deck. the segundo was on the surface 100 miles off honchu, heading south toward tokyo. wait the 14th day of the crease fire and not one enemy warship had been sighted since the principal began. it was a cold night and visibility wag poor, but the ocean was calm and lieutenant johnson decided to take advantage of what little moonlight there was to scan the horizon. when he first spotted an object south of the sub, johnson thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. but the more he looked, the more certain he became that something was out there.

meanwhile, alex leach was sipping coffee in the conning tower when a blip appeared on his radar screen. leach was surprised how large the on was, something that size should have been picked up at 15,000 yards, yet it had not until it was within a third of that distance. leaving the few steps to get under the bridge cap, leach shouted, radar contact 5500 yards. at first nobody was sure what they were dealing with. no u.s. ships were reported in the area and it up likely to be an enemy vessel this far north. there was no mistaking the blip which was sizable and doing 15 knots. ifs was american, fine. if it was japanese, they had a problem. captain johnson flew into the conning tower, demanding the target's range and bearing. determined to take a closer look he called for tracking stations when they closed within

3,000-yards the dark silhouette materialized into the shape of a gigantic submarine. the sub was so big it easily dwarfed the segundo. since the allies had nothing remotely close in size, the sub had to be japanese. before johnson could declare battle stations sparks began flying out of the sub's diesel exhaust. clearly they'd had been spotted. the japanese sub rabbited into the night at flank speed. lieutenant h quirken new fighting was going on in the pacific but couldn't understand why a jap sub would run away. the war had been over for 14 days. nevertheless the situation seemed dangerous as hell. as the chase extended into the early morning hours, johnson pushed the segundo to 20 knots.

everytime he tried drawing near the japanese sub, he pulled away. johnson didn't trust the enemy not not to fire so the settledded a a distance of 4,000-yard asks made sure his torpedo tubes were loaded and ready. if the jap subtried anything funny, he would sink her. first one hour passed, then another, as the pursuit dragged on the crew began worrying. but as dawn approached, something unusual happened. johnson wasn't sure what she was up to but the enemy sub suddenly began to slow. maybe she was ready to surrender or getting into firing position. shortly after 4:00 in the morning, of august 29, johnson called quarter master third class carlos car lucci to the birch. it was carlucci's first patrol. a tough kid from the bronx whose accents was a punch in the face. he ha been sleeping when the sub was spotted. he was wide awake now, though,

as he horsed the cast iron signal lamp to the bridge. rapidly flickering its shutters, he pounded out the international codes for stop. the enemy sub failed to acknowledge the message, even though it was impossible to miss understand his meaning. the sub may have slowed but showed no signs of stopping. finally, after a few minutes, caralong of lucci received an affirmative reply. two minutes later, the enemy sub lay dead in the water. as dawn slowly illuminated the japanese boat johnson and his men were in for a big surprise. they weren't facing a typical submarine. it was in fact the largest submarine the segundos crew had ever seen. he thought she was huge, twice as big. carlucci thought she was three times as large and carnes thought she was four times

bigger. whatever her actual size, the japanese sub loomed over the vallejo class boat. johnson knew they stumbled across something unusual. what he didn't realize the faced the largest submarine in the world, a sub so huge should we remain the largest until the us tritan was commission it in 1959. joneses men had every reason to feel small. it wasn't the size. she also bristled with weaponry. with the five and a half inch begun or her aft academic, three trim barrel 25-millimeter antiaircraft guns and a single 25-millimeter mount on the bridge, the japanese sub was all business. there were also eight torpedo tubes in her bow, two more than the segundo had, and it was reasonable to a assume she carried the deadliest torpedoes of the war, the long lance, which packed way more punch than

the segund0ss torpedoes and had nearly three times the range and were faster to boot. if captain johnson felt alarm at the enemy's sub's contradictory behavior, he didn't show it. you could never underestimate the for rossty of the japanese military, even in defeat. i johnson misjudged the situation even slightly, the gundo would be are in to trouble. to ensure that didn't happen, he brought his bow torpedo tubes to bear on his adversary and ordered his helmsman to slowly close the distance bump all rights the japanese sub should surrender, but her decision to flee and her reluctance to stop, especially after being chased, suggested they didn't intend to give up easily. after all, she still flew her naval ensign, with the red and white rays of the rising sun. one thing was for sure, nobody

in the united states navy had ever seen a sublike this, for the submarine the segundo now cob fronted wars the e-401, the largest, most powerful class of submarine built by japan in world war ii. designedded for a mission so secretive that the u.s. military didn't know anything about it. a mission thats a miller yamamoto, the architect of the attack on pearl harbor, had planned himself. a mission so audacious that the imperial japanese navy saw it as a way to change the course of the war in their favor. what captain johnson also didn't appreciate was just how reluck opportunity the sub was to surrender, not only was is part of a top secret squadron, it was the flagship that cared the squadron commander arazumi. the commander had been involved with the development of the

e-400 sunday almost from their beginning, and given her pedigree, the shoe was not going to surrender without a fight. in fact, surrendering to the enemy would be more than unacceptable to commander arazumi. it was woo be an embarrassment and a disgrace. it went against all his years of training at a loyal subject of the emporer and a commander in the imperial japanese navy. and so, much to their surprise, the men of the u.s. sgundo were about to learn that world war ii wasn't over just yet because along with their unproven skipper the crew founds themselves in the middle of what promised to be the last great shooting match of the pacific war. okay. so, before -- [applause] >> you're too kind. okay.

so, before we open the floor to questions. i wanted to acknowledge that one of the segundos plank owner -- a plank owner is somebody who serve on all the ship's war patrols so the segundo had five war patrols and the family of one of its plank holders, carl, was is alive and was a chief petty officer, is here tonight. in fact three generations of the family, and i want to thank you guys for coming out and i want to particularly thank you for your father's support in the research of my book. so, if you have any questions, we ask that you come up to the mic, which is right behind the projector here. otherwise, you won't get on c-span tv which is filming this, and i won't be able to hear you because i'm deaf as a post. so, any questions, just take them up to the mic so i can hear you.

don't be shy. excellent. >> i don't have a equipment have a comment. i read the first quarter of the book, and it's just a great book. i can't wait to get through the entire thing. but what i wanted to comment and ask you to maybe share with the audience, i thought it fascinating for those of us on the pacific coast, the west coast here, your very, very elaborate and detailed chronology of exactly how people responded to the very limited but highly effective attacks of the japanese submarines on the west coast. the reaction seems to me would lead one to believe that yamamoto's projection that perhaps this attack that he had foreseen and planned for against washington and new york might have had the psychological

impact and might have resulted in what he anticipated and hoped for. so, thought that evidence that you put in the first half of the book about how we reactioned on the pacific coast went to validate yamamoto's theory. >> thank you for that. you're absolutely right. few people realize the west coast was lousy with japanese sub marines between december 1941, right up to september, october, 194 2. they were sinking our coastal shipping. they actually did launch the first attack on he mainland united states since the war of 1812. and at the time there was a tremendous invasion fear. people didn't quite understand what they were dealing with. they thought japan was preparing for an invasion of the united states. in retrospeck that is ridiculous. but that part of yamamoto's strategy was quite effective for the first six months of the war,

up until june of 1942. but there were a number of merchant ships that were sunk off the coast of california, actually from vancouver right down to san diego. and as i said, nambu, who i had interviewed for the book, described to me what it was like in february 1942 to surface in the waters off san diego and to be so close he could hear people talking on shore. i remember when i initially was interviewing him for the book, just to understand what was going on with the e- 01 sunday, when the interview was over i asked him -- he was telling me about this trip at the he made to new york city and i said in passing, that's interesting. was that your first visit to the united states? he said, oh no i'd been before. i said, when was the first sometime and that's when he looked at me and said, pearl harbor.

>> i haven't read the book but i wondered, did you include the bombing that occurred in oregon, the two -- the plane that took off from a submarine, and beened -- i'm not sure whether it was brookings -- >> right. there was fujita. i have a chapter in the book about that. he bombed oregon and northern california. made two flights off of his sub, and this is another one of the things that, when i started to do the research -- i kept asking the question, why would the japanese want to bomb the forest, redwood forests in northern california and oregon. just sounded crazy. all the western accounts account dismiss it. when i started to interview the japanese and listener to their logic, they had quite a clever idea which was they knew that in

september, the forests in scorn northern california are usually tinder dry, and they expected the weather, the dryness to be a force multiplier for these insend area bombs they dropped. they anticipated set only fire good part of northern california and southern oregon. now, what happened there, lucky for us, it was the most unseasonably rainy september in 100 years and when they dropped these insend areas, they went off but didn't have the effect that the japanese intended. so we tended to just kind of dismiss that, crazy plan, but the truth of the matter was they got unlucky and we got tremendously lucky. >> win one other question. pbs had a show on the subs a year ago two ago. the first time i ever heard of them. but i think they mentioned that yamamoto was a proponent of this, and after he was killed

early in the war in 1942 -- >> '43, actually. >> the development of these subs really slowed, and when they were finally developed, it was so late in the war they really didn't have a chance to do much. >> right. you're talking about the documentary, japanese supersub, which appeared on pbs, and that dish was actually the producer and at the technical writer on that show, based on an article i had written. so, yeah, when yamamoto was kill -- it's lining nick other bureaucracy. as far as pearl harbor, the imperial japanese navy did not want to do it. they wanted to stop it. they thought it was crazy. the only reason it happened is yamamoto was the commander in chief, said you don't accept this plan i will resign. so he forced them to do pearl harbor.

when pearl harbor succeeded. he was a god. he would do whatever he wanted. when he came up with this idea of 18 gigantic underwater air craft care expwrers 44 planes, nobody was going to stand in his way but there were factions in the naval general staff who did not want this plan. they did not think -- they were very conservative and thought this was just a bridge too far, so to speak. so once the died, they came out of the woodwork with the long knives and almost killed the plan. at one point hate to had it scaled back and another point the other faction went out and got back the 18 subs again. so there was this tug of war, mass any bureaucracy, but they stayed with the plan, right through the war, even though there were so many men involved in the construction and manning of the submarines. it was like a battalion size number of mean. 2,000, 3,000 number of people