Dear Manfred,

Many thanks for your welcome and interesting reply.

It makes it clear to me that I should have asked my questions several years ago if I was ever to find an eye witness - but ce la vie!

In fact, its not the dates and places of the sinkings that is in doubt - I even found them out way back in the 1960s. Its just that for completeness I would like to have found out the detailed circumstances, ie. the US Navy ships involved, the means of movement (presumably they were towed) and the method of disposal (demolition or gunfire).

The only clues that I have so far are that the overall responsibility was with COMNAVJAP, and that US Navy Task Force TF96.5 was probably involved.

In theory there ought to be some official US Navy records somewhere, but how and where to find them in the NARA database (or elsewhere) is the unanswered $64,000 question.

Also there is a possible complication in that in April 1946 there was a huge flurry of submarine disposal activity going on in Japan. This included not only the 50 or so submarines that has formally surrendered (afloat), but also another 100 or so that were u/s, incomplete, wrecked, abandoned, etc in the various Japanese ports, navy bases and dockyards.

Thus the disposal of (what I call) these two separate elements overlapped, and so when the 3 ex-U-Boats went to their end, it was also in the company of other captured submarines.

That said, if you (or anyone else either in the US or Japan) can point me in the direction of any formal 1946 records which might contain the details that I seek, I should be most grateful.

Yours aye

Derek