Thank you for wonderful content!
Scott
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As part of the Yanagi Missions, Japanese submarines sailed to the Atlantic Ocean to exchange technology, skills, and materials with Germany. The Germans also sent U-boats for reciprocal voyages. One mission was where U-180 met I-29 in the Mozambique Channel.
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UK shared radar technology and convoy protection, but did that mean that US learned the lessons? Nope
But I guess the u-boat hunting techniques was developed in cooperation. Hobarts funnies was offered to US before D-day but only few things were accepted. So sharing is one thing, implementation quite another
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There are three main technological transfers between the Japanese and the Germans in World War 2. The first occurred in January, 1940 when the Kawasaki Corporation bought the production rights to manufacture the Daimler-Benz DB 601A engine. Complete engines, blueprints, manufacturing equipment for the 601 engine, and two BF-109E fighters were delivered to Japan by Italian merchant ships. The second occurred in March 1942 when a German U-Boat delivered a small group of technicians and engineers to assemble two crated BF-109E fighters along with updated blueprints to the Imperial Japanese Army. The third occurred in August 1943 when the Type IXC U-Boat 511 (known as “Gift of the Führer”) along with blueprints were delivered to the Imperial Japanese Navy for production and the sub was commissioned as RO-501. A second U-Boat (U-1224) with a Japanese crew would be sunk by American destroyers off the Cape Verde Islands.
Throughout the war, the Germans, Italians, and Japanese exchanged blueprints and examples on torpedoes, anti-aircraft guns, aircraft engines, radar systems, enigma machines, jet engines, and rocket designs. The trouble the Axis nations faced was that due to the pressure of the Allies, none of the nations could implement and produce what they were receiving in the technology transfers with the exception of the Kawasaki KA-61 “Hien (Swallow)” fighter and the Macchi C-202 “Folgore” fighter.
The main purpose of the mission that Indiana Jones is referring to was the transfer of the leader of “India Independence Movement”, Mr. Netaji Subash Chandra Bose and his personal assistant from Germany to Japan.
The Duetsches U-Boot Museum and several Monsun (Monsoon) U-Boot websites go into full detail on the technology transfers.
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The technology exchange between the Americans, Australians, British, Canadians, New Zealanders, and South Africans is on a massive scale. If every technology exchange is listed out, it would come out to roughly 30 web pages. I will list three of them.
The greatest one is the MAUD Committee report created by the British Research Committee on nuclear weapons. The report recommended that all British research be turned over to the United States for experimentation and development. The American S-1 committee evaluated the report and confirmed the findings thus setting the stage for the creation of the United States Army Manhattan Engineering District (Manhattan Project) comprising of American, British, and Canadian scientists and engineers.
Another example is the cooperation between North American and Rolls-Royce Aviation engineers that led to the creation of the P-51 Mustang fighter.
A third example is between Australia and the United States. Engineers of the Australian Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation worked with the US 5th Army Air Force team led by Captain Paul “Pappy” Gunn. This combined team will produce field modified A-20 Havoc ground strafers, B-25 Mitchell ground strafers, B-26 Marauder ground strafers, as well as modifying Australian Beaufighters first with parachute fragmentation bomb racks and later replacing the .303 light machine guns with .50-calibur heavy machine guns. These Aussie-Yank field modifications will be studied by Aviation engineers from Douglas (A-20), North American (B-25), and Martin (B-26) who then will then create the factory production models that were then shipped out to the European, Mediterranean, Chinese-Burma-India, and Pacific theatres.
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Canada produced most of its major and heavy weapons under licence from the UK and to a much lesser extent the US.
Entire factories were built from scratch, particularly around Toronto to build British designs under licence. The Inglis factory in New Toronto (Etobicoke) and Victory Aircraft Ltd. in Malton are but two examples.
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