Battleground Atlantic
How the Sinking of a Single Japanese Submarine Assured the Outcome of WW II
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The true story of a German-Japanese scheme to turn much of America into a radioactive wasteland.
In the early hours of June 24, 1944, U.S. Navy warplanes patrolling the Atlantic attacked a Japanese submarine known as the I-52. But this was more than the sinking of one more enemy warship. It was an event of enormous strategic importance. For the I-52’s mission was to return to Japan with the lethal ingredients of a doomsday weapon—the radiological bomb—which remained a government secret for years.
The I-52’s resting place—18,000 feet below the surface of the mid-Atlantic—became public in 1995, when discovered by ship salvager Paul Tidwell. Author Richard N. Billings has worked with Tidwell—whose attempts to salvage the I-52’s precious gold cargo continue—in bringing her secret mission to light. This is also the story of how the I-52 mission may have influenced President Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby saving the United States from a similar fate.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Billings promises more than he delivers in this scattershot account of the Japanese submarine I-52, which American warplanes sank in June 1944 off the Cape Verde Islands. The author claims the I-52 was transporting two tons of gold bullion to Germany as payment for Nazi weapons and 500 kilograms of uranium oxide. Billings asserts that the purchase was part of a Japanese plan to drop a radiological (dirty) bomb on Los Angeles or San Francisco in a desperate attempt to stave off defeat. The Germans finally shipped the uranium oxide in April 1945 on board the submarine U-234, which surrendered to the USS Sutton on May 15 in the south Atlantic. This makes for an intriguing tale, but the evidence to support it is thin the I-52's gold was never found and Japanese atomic bomb experimentation is unconfirmed. Billings compensates by eking drama out of salvager Paul Tidwell's unsuccessful efforts to recover the gold after he discovered the I-52 in 1995, and by padding the account with extraneous details of WWII military history. Billings, a former Life magazine editor and author (Schirra's Space), raises important questions, but doesn't provide convincing answers.
