Japanese Suicide boats...Chevrolet Powered?
R. Peters
were powered by Chevrolet engines. Anyone know more about that?
All of them? What was the source? Were these engines scavengered
from the Philippines?
bob
Charles Wain
Japan before the war and I believe Ford still owns the land in Yokohama where
its pre-war factory was located. Nissan bought the factory tooling from
Graham-Paige when that company went bankrupt during the depression.
The straight six engine in early postwar Toyota vehicles such as the Land
Cruiser seemed to be identical to the venerable Chevy six cylinder engine
introduced in the 1920s and a mainstay of Chevrolet vehicles until the '55
Chevy small black V-8 debuted. This was brought to my attention by a German
gent who worked for Opel, which apparently also used the Chevy straight six in
some vehicles. I don't have any other verification for it.
Who supplied the engines for Japanese "suicide boats" I don't know.
Mitsubishi built the kaiten manned torpedos. I'll look into it and see if I
can find out. Michael Cusamano of MIT is *the* western expert on pre-war
Japanese motor vehicle production. I'll ask if he knows and post the reply on
the NG.
Charles Wain
Alex Feinberg
I am not sure if they were indeed scanvegered, but there could be a
posibility that they have been exported prior to the war. Unfortunately
United States had maintained business relations with Japan, despite its
rampage of atrocities in Manchuria: The DC-3 (C-47 Dakota in the war) airplane
was exported and manufactured under license in Japan, despite the obvious
application of this plane as miliatary transport.
--
Alex "strlen" Feinberg
str...@fix.no
Bill Shatzer
> I just read a section in a book that said the Japanese sucide boats
> were powered by Chevrolet engines. Anyone know more about that?
> All of them? What was the source? Were these engines scavengered
> from the Philippines?
Anything (or at least almost anything) is possible. Without knowing
anything specific about these boats however, let me suggest the following
as a possible basis for this story.
Up until 1939, all the "Big Three" US automakers (Ford,
Chyrsler, and GM) maintained automobile manufacturing plants in Japan.
Prior to the plants closing in 1939, they produced over 200,000
automobiles in Japan - well over 90% of the total Japanese
auto production to that date. These automobiles were essentially
identical to the vehicles produced in the US and, indeed, used many
imported US parts - including engines.
Thus the Japanese had a large number of US built engines available. More
importantly, perhaps, they had a large variety of US designed auto engines
available if they wished to copy them for Japanese domestic production.
As there is no particular reason that they would have wished to re-invent
the wheel, it seems entirely likely that they would have copied one or
more suitable US engines for domestic production for a variety of Japanese
military uses - including suicide boats.
-posted and mailed-
Cheers and all,
REstey9690
Richard O'Neill the suicide boats - Shinyo
(Navy) or Maru-ni (Army) were powered
by 67hp automobile engines. Many were
reconditioned and somewhat unreliable.
It doesn't say anything about Chevrolet.
Could be that they were license built or
pre war imports.
tom adkins
to...@nwrain.net (R. Peters) wrote:
> I just read a section in a book that said the Japanese sucide boats
> were powered by Chevrolet engines. Anyone know more about that?
Having pulled out my "Suicide Weapon" book to make some points against
one of those "US evil to nuke beaten Japan" types, I can tell you some
info, though not much:
boat you refer to is the Shinyo
weighed between 1.25 and 2 tons, with large explosive charge in bow.
powered by "one or two automobile engines" they were capable of between
25 and 30 knots. 6000 were built to defend Okinawa and Japan.
No mention of the source of engines - I suspect that _some_ were
powered by american engines, probably a simple fact that fuel was
nonexistant in Japan, so engines were donated to the military, and
wound up on some shinyo. surely there were some chevy's in Japan,or
perhaps there was a licensing deal?
tom
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