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Good morning, today I come with a new article.

After Japan has entered to the Axis Powers (Signing the Tripartite Pact in 1940), already had a considerable expansion and being at war with China since 1937, he received some help from his most distant allies, the Europeans.

His first impressions being in 1939 when the German ace and parachute expert Ernst Udet visited Japan in 1939 to inspect the Japanese air forces, informing Hermann Göring that "the Japanese flyers, although brave and willing, are not beaters of the sky"


Ernst Udet

Then in January 1941 the famous Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita, arrived in Berlin for almost six months. He inspected the broken Maginot Line and the German fortifications on the French coast, observed the German planes in training, and even flew into a raid across Britain after the decoration of Hermann Göring, head of the German Luftwaffe, with the Japanese "Great Cord of the Rising Sun". General Yamashita also met and spoke with Hitler, of whom he commented:

I felt that in Hitler's mind there was much of the spiritual, beyond the material plans. When I met the Führer, he said that he had been attracted to Japan since childhood. He read carefully the reports of Japan's victory over Russia when he was only 17 years old and was impressed by the amazing strength of Japan.

Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita (1940)


Yamashita

According to Yamashita, Hitler promised to remember Japan in his will, instructing the Germans "to eternally unite themselves with the Japanese spirit." In fact, General Yamashita was so excited that he said: "In a short time, something big will happen, just watch and wait." Upon returning home, the Japanese delegation was accompanied by more than 250 German technicians, engineers and instructors. Soon, the Air Force of Japan was one of the most powerful in the world.

But I'm going to talk about:

Monsun Gruppe

What is it about?

Well, let's go first by parts, In December 1942 Japan proposed to Germany, to establish a base of submarines in Malaysia, to operate in the Indian Ocean, the third largest ocean on earth, which bathes the coasts of East Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asian and Australia. The antisubmarine measures of the allies at that time were scarce in this ocean.

At the start, Dönitz, head of the Kriegsmarine rejected the Japanese proposal outright. This was focused on the battle of the Atlantic and didn't want to divert resources to another scenario. However, as early as 1943 the U-boats were being decimated gradually in the Atlantic, and Dönitz changed his mind, sending some units to operate in a less hostile environment.

In February of 1943, Dönitz took to Hitler some naval proposals that had to do with Japan. Among them the construction of a naval base in the Malay Peninsula, this in order to attack the Allied merchant traffic in the Indian Ocean.

Within the proposal included the construction of transport submarines able to cross the transoceanic crossing and return with strategic raw materials of the Japanese domains (rubber, bauxite, tin, quinine, among others). Dönitz wanted to use type XX submersibles specially designed as transport, where they could carry up to 800 tons of cargo, in addition to supplying spare parts, torpedoes and material to the Malay base.

Hitler was proposed to build 200 of these submarines. Dönitz took the 10 largest Italian submarines that were in the French base of Bordeaux and subject them to six weeks for their transformation into the shipyards as transport submarines, Dönitz in return awarded to the Regia Marina 10 U-boats of type VIIC.

Hitler approved it and preparations for the operation began, its base would be located in Penang, on the Malay Peninsula.


Penang

The first ship sent to Asia in the framework of these operations was the U-178 on April 5, 1943, commanded by Wilhelm Dommes, who would lead the construction work of the submarine base in Penang, with the supposed Japanese collaboration and with whom he had a difficult relationship.

In this transcontinental route the U-boats had to refuel at least twice in the high seas, for that the Germans counted on the merchants Charlotte Schliemann in the South Atlantic, and the Brake, in the Indian Ocean.

The Italian submarines Commander Cappellini and Reginaldo Giuliani had arrived in Penang without incident two months later, their crew was composed of Italian sailors, as part of the operation "Aquila" (Transformation of Italian submarines)

It should be noted that the fate of these submarines was very variable, so much so that many of these submersibles did not even come out of the Atlantic Ocean. The main idea was to send to the Indian Ocean an attack force and another one of transport and logistics, the latter in the hands of the Italian submarines and that the Kriegsmarine high command would be replacing according to the casualties that were produced, in practice not It was like this. Dönitz sent the first wave of attack in June 1943, two months after the Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm Dommes set sail for the construction of the Penang base.

Some events of this operation


Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm Dommes (On the left), the person in charge of building the Penang base in Malaysia, together with Japanese officers.


Mother ship refueling a U-boat, this during the operation was vital.


Illustration of the moment, the U-862 managed to shot down a PBY Catalina during her journey.


Arriving at Penang naval base



Imagenes antes y despues

U-511: It was not precisely to Penang, she arrived at Kure on August 7, 1943, being renamed as "Ro-500", she would survive the war, but then she would be torpedoed in 1946 in the Gulf of Maizuru.




Maizuru

With this I'll ended my art, mi mas lindo saludo

~ KMS Bismarck

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