At the beginning of World War II, Nazi Germany supplied Japan with military equipment and devices: radar installations, torpedoes, bomber sights. In return, the Germans received strategic raw materials from their Far Eastern ally: tungsten, tin, rubber for the military industry, as well as opium for the pharmaceutical industry.
These cargoes went through the USSR along the Trans-Siberian Railway with a length of more than 9,000 kilometers. But after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, only a long sea route - 22,000 kilometers - remained for these shipments.
The Germans disguised their caravans as foreign ones, supposedly belonging to neutral states. But this camouflage did not help, and by early 1944 Germany had lost half of its transport ships. The use of the submarine fleet turned out to be much more effective for long-distance transoceanic flights.
During the Second World War, Japanese shipbuilders launched the serial production of transport submarines, which were 30 meters longer than conventional combat submarines and covered a distance of 34,000 kilometers without refueling. These submarines became a link between the Axis countries, through which they intensively exchanged strategic materials and technologies.
In the midst of the war, Germany felt more and more acutely the shortage of certain types of industrial raw materials. In 1943, the situation was already almost disastrous. Japan needed the latest developments of German specialists like air.
Thanks to transport submarines, the Allies were able to establish mutually beneficial "barter": in exchange for German "know-how", the Japanese supplied raw materials to Germany, and above all, rubber and metals.
In March 1944, the submarine I-52 secretly left the Kure naval base (Honshu Island). After stopping in Singapore, where a cargo of rubber and tin was taken on board, the submarine crossed the Indian Ocean, circled the Cape of Good Hope and continued sailing in the Atlantic.
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On board the submarine was almost 300 tons of cargo (including 2.8 tons of opium and 54 tons of rubber), full ammunition, 95 personnel and 14 engineers - specialists in optical technology.
In the French port of Lorient, the Japanese submarine was awaited by a German submarine with "oncoming" cargo on board. The Germans prepared for their allies radar installations, vacuum devices, ball bearings and, possibly, uranium oxide for nuclear research.
American intelligence knew absolutely everything about this operation. Neither the Japanese nor the Germans had any idea that the Allies had long been able to decipher the secret codes, with the help of which all broadcasts were conducted, one way or another connected with "barter".
So when the I-52 embarked on a voyage, neither the route to follow, nor the contents of the cargo compartments of the Japanese boat were secret to the Allied command. Soon after leaving Kure, a tactical group of warships led by the aircraft carrier "Budge" left Norfolk, Virginia towards I-52.
The order received by the commander just before going to sea was more than brief: to intercept and destroy the boat. Since the Japanese called the I-52 boat trip as Operation Rising Sun, the Allies dubbed their counter-attack the Hunt for the Rising Sun.
On the night of June 23-24, the I-52, in full accordance with the planned plan, met in the middle of the Atlantic with the German submarine U-530. With the help of the Germans, the Japanese submariners had to replenish the fairly depleted supplies of water and food.
In addition, German specialists had to install and configure radars on board the Japanese boat, which would allow it to pass almost unhindered through the Bay of Biscay - one of the most dangerous sections of the route.
Three German sailors approached I-52 in a rowboat, transmitted radar, and returned. After that, the German submarine immediately began to dive. It is still unknown why the Japanese did not follow her example: the huge carcass of a Japanese submarine rose serenely above the shallow ripples of the ocean. This was a fatal mistake.
American ships arrived in that square two days earlier and were already waiting for their prey. Above the meeting point, four planes patrolled the submarines, which spotted the I-52 and dropped lighting flares with parachutes and a sonar buoy.
The alarm sounded on the boat, the command sounded: "Urgent dive", but it was already too late. “We spotted the boat, dropped a couple of bombs, recorded the hit and how it sank,” Captain Jesse Taylor, the commander of the American squadron, later said. The next day, an oil slick on the ocean surface showed the location of the submarine's death. The Americans fished 1,350 kilograms of rubber from the water.
In 1990, when many documents of the war years were declassified, American researcher Paul Tidwell found documents related to the fate of the I-52 submarine in the Washington Archives: intelligence reports, extracts from ship logs and decrypted radio intercepts.
It followed from the documents that on board the submarine there was, among other things, about two tons of gold - 146 bars packed in metal boxes. The precious metal was intended for the optical technologies that were being developed in Germany at that time.
Tydwell, a professional historian and no less professional diver, already had a modest experience in searching for underwater treasures: a few years earlier, he found several old Spanish gold coins off the coast of Florida. Interested in the history of the sunken submarine, over the next five years he painstakingly worked in the archives of different countries.
With the help of American, Japanese, German data, he was able to restore in great detail the route of the I-52 submarine, right up to the moment of its fatal meeting with an American bomber. And, having carefully weighed all the pros and cons, I came to the conclusion that the boat can be found.
I must say that before that, quite a few highly qualified experts, including people from the naval department, took up the search for I-52, but they never found anything. However, Tydwell's calculations looked very convincing. The enthusiast managed to raise about a million dollars to organize the expedition and enlist the support of several large companies.
The specialists of the firm "Meridian Science Inc." rendered invaluable assistance. Having carefully studied all the data obtained by Tidwell, they corrected the hypothetical course of the submarine I-52 and clarified exactly where the sunken submarine could be. The discrepancy with the coordinates that military experts showed at one time turned out to be very significant - 32 kilometers.
Tidwell rented a Russian oceanographic vessel from the Yuzhmorgeologiya trust to search for the submarine. In April 1995, the expedition set out to sea, heading for a point located approximately 1,600 kilometers from the Cape Verde Islands. The search area with a total area of 500 square kilometers was conventionally divided into squares.
The ship combed them one by one, probing the bottom with sonar. The equipment on board made it possible to simultaneously "capture" a thousand meters on either side of the ship. But day after day passed, and the boat remained inaccessible - each time a promising spot on the sonar screen turned out to be just another “uneven relief”.
The fifth week of the expedition was drawing to a close. The overrun of the originally planned budget was by that time $ 250,000. The fuel was running out. Tidwell was already inclined to think that it might be time to end the search. On the morning of May 2, he decided that he would give himself and the whole team another chance. And two hours later, it became apparent that the researchers had achieved their goal.
On another printout of sonar data, the recognizable outline of the I-52 appeared. Still not believing in their own luck, the researchers "probed" the found object in more detail, after which they lowered a remote-controlled camera to a depth of 5,100 meters.
It was I-52 sunk half a century ago, with more than clear marks of a precise hit. At the same time, the submarine stood completely straight. “It’s as if not at the bottom of the sea, but at a dock,” Tidwell said later.
Experts from "Meridian Science" did not disappoint: the boat was found less than a kilometer from the place they indicated. Such an error by sea standards is a mere trifle. However, as one of the company's specialists, David Wyatt, noted, it was not only their filigree work, but also incredible luck. “The boat landed on a more or less flat section of the bottom, not far from the slope. If she were somewhere else, it is possible that we would never have found anything."
Tidwell began to prepare to lift the valuable cargo. To carry out such a complex operation, he needed to get hold of the Russian ship "Academician Mstislav Keldysh", which successfully worked at the site of the sinking of the "Titanic".
On November 8, the ship, equipped with two Mir deep-diving vehicles, left Las Palmas, on the island of Gran Canaria. The equipment of the devices did not allow inspecting the boat from the inside, but Tidwell believed that the ingots lay around the hull, torn apart by the explosions.
On May 2, 1995, the Keldysh reached a point located 2,400 kilometers off the coast of Africa, and both Mir vehicles were launched from its side to a depth of 5,100 meters. Four hours after the start of the dive, Tidwell and his assistants made out at the bottom of the bizarrely piled metal debris and boxes.
The bow of the submarine was blown apart by an explosion, there was a huge hole behind the wheelhouse, but the open entrance hatch had no visible damage. The food survived and was not even covered with bottom sediments. With the help of robotic manipulators, the boxes were raised to the surface. Tidwell opened them in his cabin, without prying eyes, and later stated that all the boxes contained opium.
Most of the expedition members didn't believe the boss. Tydwell's men grumbled openly, but they did not quit their work and conscientiously searched a large section of the bottom around the boat. However, instead of gold, tin was raised every time.
Each dive of Mir cost the investors $ 25,000 and they began to lose patience. Finally Tydwell's team reached the metal ingots under the boat's bottom. They poured out of the cargo compartment, arranged on the outside of the hull to save space inside the boat. Underwater, these neat little blocks looked promising. But in fact it turned out that this is also tin.
It turned out to be impossible to get inside the case. As a result, the expedition ended in failure and brought only debts to its participants. But Tidwell is confident that two tons of gold still await adventurers in one of the cargo bays of I-52.
Used materials from the book by N. N. Nepomnyashchiy "100 great treasures"