Everyone Mocked This Engine. It Ended Up Strangling Japan !

In 1933, the U.S. Navy handed submarine diesel engine contracts to a car company and a scale manufacturer, outsiders that the marine engineering establishment openly mocked, while a prestigious German-licensed design was expected to dominate. This video traces how General Motors' Winton diesel and Fairbanks Morse's opposed-piston engine, both dismissed as toys unfit for warships, were rigorously tested, refined, and proven in combat, while the "aristocratic" Hooven Owens Rentschler engine was quietly purged from the entire submarine fleet by 1944.

Once standardized on the ridiculed engines, American fleet submarines used their reliability and extraordinary range to wage a systematic campaign against Japanese shipping, sinking over 5.3 million tons of merchant tonnage and cutting Japan's oil imports to zero by 1945, a blockade that Japan's own postwar naval analysis credited as the principal cause of its defeat.

The story follows the engineering rivalry from the Pioneer Zephyr's record-breaking 1934 rail run to the diesel-electric propulsion system that powered America's WWII submarine force, and closes aboard the USS Barb under Commander Eugene Fluckey, culminating in the only ground combat operation conducted on Japanese home soil during the war.

This video covers World War 2 naval engineering, submarine warfare history, the Pacific War, and the untold story of American industrial innovation that helped decide the outcome of the war beneath the waves.

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