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The Vanished Golden Submarine’s Final Journey and Fate

Khalid Elhassan December 8, 2024 14 min

I-52 - Underwater wreckage of the Golden Submarine — Underwater wreckage of the Golden Submarine. National Geographic

6. The American Tracking of the I-52’s Journey

Colorized photo of Japanese submarine I-30, being escorted into Lorient, France, by German mine sweepers and other warships, August, 1942. Pinterest

Unbeknownst to either the Germans or Japanese, Allied code breakers had cracked both the Axis partners’ secret communications. They did that so thoroughly that the Allies were often able to intercept, decode, and read Axis secret messages as fast as, or even faster than, their intended recipients. As a result, American intelligence had been decoding the I-52’s traffic signals ever since she had left Kure, and was able to track her throughout her long voyage. On June 6^th, 1944, the Japanese naval attache in Berlin signaled the submarine that the Allies had landed in France, and advised her to make plans to head for German-occupied Norway, instead. En route, she was to meet up with a German submarine, the U-530, on June 22^nd. The I-52 acknowledged receipt of the message, fatally including her position in the reply.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.