April 19, 2010
Doug McIntosh
© SteveQuayle.com
I am a reader and have been since I was very little. I like books; I like the feel of books. I also think book reading is a dying art as the computer, television and video age changes the way people under 30 gather information. Personally, I believe people's brains are being changed as they absorb information visually from computer screens, versus getting it from a book. We are rewiring our brains and the information access as we go to a more visual information gathering society.
I am a fossil in a lot of ways, especially in the fact I regularly read science fiction books for instance. One of the most interesting non fiction books I have ever read in my life was "Battleground Atlantic" "How the Sinking of A Single Japanese Submarine Assured the Outcome of World War Two." It is by Richard N. Billings, who was a Life Magazine Pentagon correspondent and has written six other nonfiction books. Mr. Billings was also the editorial director of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, so I guess that means he was in on the cover-up of JFK's. However, I do not doubt his research on this book. It is detailed and gives the reader a sense of what really happened. It was written in 2006 and was published by New American Library, which is part of the Penguin Group.
I would divide the book into three parts. The first would be the attempt to locate the I-52 on the Atlantic sea floor several miles down. This describes Mr. Tidwell's attempt to find the sub and all the politics, infighting and personality clashes involved in that. It was interesting, but I will focus on the two other parts. The second part would be Mr. Billing's tracing of the relationship between Hitler's Germany and Tojo's Japan, especially regarding submarine transport between them. Mr. Billing's has extensive documentation about that, as well as a fairly detailed explanation of Allied code breaking efforts. It was these efforts which led to the sinking of the I-52, as well as numerous other German U-boats and Japanese I-boats trying to make the trip. The subs tried to go from Lorient, France, a German U-boat base, to Penang on the Indian Ocean side of Malaysia. The book also has extensive coded messages between Japan and Germany. It seems Japan's naval attach≠' in Berlin Abe, nicknamed "Honest Abe" by Allied Intelligence. had a very bad habit of sending numerous and highly detailed coded radio messages back to Tokyo. Since the Allies had broken Japan's codes they read Abe's messages in almost real time; in many cases were, in my opinion, better informed than either the Germans or Japanese were. Like I said, this is fascinating stuff and well worth reading the book simply for this.
However, it is the third part which leads me to write this book review as I feel it is important to get this information out. The third part deals with the German nuclear program, what it was, what it did and how Japan planned to use the results. America had its own "Manhattan Project" which led to the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. What is less well known is Hitler's Germany also had a nuclear program underway to do the same thing. Again, the story about Germany's program being "derailed" into heavy water is not quite the whole truth. The book points out that in 1940, about the same time our "Manhattan Project" was getting underway, the Germans were winning and saw no need for an Atomic Bomb. Instead, Germany focused her attention on creating small nuclear reactors, which she did. Again, the book is quite detailed about this: names, dates and places. While you cannot make an Atomic Bomb from these small reactors, research reactors really, what you can do is separate the U-235 isotope. If you then mix that with dust or ash, and then stick it in a bomb with conventional explosives you have got yourself a dirty nuke. The Germans had separated hundreds of kilos of U-235, about one to three tons of it. We know this since a later German U-boat, the 234 surrendered in May, 1945 with 560 kilograms, 1230 pounds, of "uranium oxide consigned to the Japanese Army." It was on its way to Japan. The two Japanese on board committed suicide when the U-boat skipper decided to surrender. The U-234 also had a crated ME-262 jet fighter which was taken to Wright Airfield in Ohio. All this is documented in the book.
It is from this Mr. Billing's gets his title about how sinking the 1-52 assured Allied victory. The reason is simple. The 1-52 was inbound from Asia to France in order to pick up a load of radioactive material that Japan intended to use in a dirty nuke attack on the United States. The fact the I-52 was sunk on June 24th, 1944, by aircraft from the US escort carrier Bogue, ensured Allied victory. The I-52 was carrying several tons of gold bars to pay for the radioactive material. Japan had been sending subs, carrying gold, rubber and opium amongst other things, to Germany and getting advanced German technology, radar and weapons for instance in return. Another Japanese sub had almost made it back to Japan carrying radar equipment before it was sunk by a US submarine. Again, the sinking was due to Allied intelligence knowing exactly where the returning Japanese sub would be and when it would be there. It was this level of real time knowledge which insured the Allied victory over the Axis, Germany, Japan and Italy.
The reason I have gone into such detail is it was needed to lay the frame work for my next comments. It is clear that Germany had separated the U-235 isotope. It is clear that Germany understood the savage reaction it would bring if it used a dirty nuke on London via a V-2 rocket. The result was Germany was quite willing to sell the U-235, for gold, to Japan which would use it as a dirty nuke against the USA. I can make these statements since the book documents very well Japan's attempt both to get the U-235 and the efforts Japan made to use it to attack the USA. The book gives detailed listings of Japanese naval forces involved in these efforts. Japan had created a submarine which was large enough to launch small airplanes. They had deployed these naval assets in expectation that either the 1-52 or the U-234 would bring them the radioactive materials needed to make a dirty bomb. It is all in the book. It is all very well researched and documented. The plan was for these submarine aircraft carriers to surface 300 miles off the California coast, fly to both Los Angeles and San Francisco and drop a dirty nuke on them. The only reason Japan didn't do this was the I-52 was sunk and the U-234 was too late. The military government of Tojo would not have hesitated to drop them at all.
The book also suggests one of the reasons Truman dropped the A bombs on Japan was the fact he most certainly had been briefed on Japan's attempts to create a dirty nuke. This information puts Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a new context of not being offensive actions, but of being in response to Japan's attempts to nuke the USA. In my opinion, Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be viewed as efforts to end the war before Japan created its own U-235 and dropped a dirty nuke on the USA.
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