J1 type submarine

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Class overview

Operators:	Imperial Japanese Navy
Succeeded by:	J1M type submarine
In service:	1926 - 1944
Completed:	I-1, I-2, I-3, I-4
General characteristics
Displacement:	2135 tons (surfaced) 2,791 tons(submerged)
Length:	320 ft (98 m)
Beam:	30 ft (9.1 m)
Draught:	16.5 ft (5.0 m)
Propulsion:	twin shaft MAN 10 cylinder 4 stroke diesels giving 6000 bhp two electric motors of 2600 ehp
Speed:	18 knots (surface) 8 knots (submerged)
Range:	24,400 nm at 10 knots
Test depth:	80 m (260 feet)
Complement:	68 officers and men
Armament:	two 140 mm (5.5 inch) guns fore and aft 6x533mm torpedo tubes 20xtype 95 oxygen-driven torpedos

J1 type submarines were large cruiser submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Four boats were built between 1926 and 1929. These boats, based on the KD2 and U-139 designs, were of a junsen, or cruiser, type with an impressive range of 24,000 nm. Elderly by 1941 they were among the first Japanese submarines converted to supply duty.

I-1 was present during the attack on Pearl Harbor and witnessed the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, before patrolling the Aleutians. Her aft 14cm gun was then removed to make room for a 46-foot daihatsu cargo barge and she started shifting supplies in the Solomon Islands. On 29 Jan 1943, in an epic dual, the New Zealand naval trawlers, Kiwi and Moa, rammed and wrecked her in shallow water at Kamimbo Bay, Guadalcanal. Critical codes remained on board and the Japanese command tried unsuccessfully to destroy the boat with submarine and air attacks. The US Navy salvaged 200,000 pages of intelligence: code books, charts, manuals, and the ship's log.^[1]