Following a stay of a little more than a month, the Japanese submariners departed Brest on October 5. Their cargo included machine guns, bombsights, a Daimler-Benz torpedo boat engine, naval chronometers, radars, sonar equipment, anti-aircraft gunsights, electric torpedoes, naval chronometers and penicillin. In addition, Uchino welcomed aboard now Rear Adm. Yokoi, naval attaché to Berlin since September 1940, and Captain Sukeyoshi Hosoya, naval attaché to France since December 1939. The sub also carried three German naval officers, an army officer and four radar and hydrophone technicians.

After crossing the equator, Uchino sent a position report to the Germans, but the signal was intercepted by the Allies. The next day I-8 was attacked by an antisubmarine aircraft, but managed to crash-dive and escape. On November 13, 1943, the submarine passed Cape Town, South Africa. That same day, I-34, which had just begun its own mission to France, was torpedoed by the British submarine Taurus south of Penang and earned the unfortunate distinction of being the first IJN submarine sunk by a British submarine. In view of the danger now posed by Allied subs, Uchino was ordered to head directly for Singapore, where he arrived on December 5.

Uchino anchored near Commander Takakazu Kinashi’s I-29, which had just arrived from Kure and was about to set out on its own mission to France. The two commanders met and Uchino warned his counterpart of the many radar-equipped Allied air patrols he had encountered. He also praised the Metox radar detector that he had received from U-161.

After a short rest at Singapore, I-8 began the last leg of its long journey home and finally arrived safely at Kure on December 21, completing a voyage of 30,000 miles. Uchino proceeded to Tokyo and presented his report to Admiral Osami Nagano, chief of the naval general staff, and navy minister Admiral Shigetaro Shimada.

Meanwhile, Kinashi had set out on his own trip to the Atlantic. The veteran submarine captain had not taken part in any previous Yanagi missions when he met with Uchino, but as I-19’s skipper he had become Japan’s leading underwater ace, credited with sinking the U.S. Navy carrier Wasp off Guadalcanal on September 15, 1942, and damaging the battleship North Carolina and the destroyer O’Brien, which eventually broke in two and sank. I-29 was Kinashi’s seventh command.

While Kinashi was new to the Yanagi missions, his boat and much of his crew were not. On April 5, 1943, I-29 had left Penang on a secret operation. It carried 11 tons of cargo, including one Type 89 torpedo, two Type 2 aerial torpedoes and two tons of gold bars for the Japanese embassy in Berlin. I-29 also carried drawings and blueprints of a Type A midget submarine and of carrier Akagi, which the Germans wanted to study as they constructed their own carrier Graf Zeppelin. On April 25, about 450 miles southeast of Madagascar, I-29 arrived at a predesignated point where it planned to meet Captain Werner Musenberg and U-180. Musenberg’s boat was the first to make the eastward journey to rendezvous with the Japanese. The German sub had left Kiel on February 9 carrying blueprints for a Type IXC/40 U-boat, a sample of a German hollow charge, a quinine sample for future Japanese shipments, gun barrels and ammunition, three cases of sonar decoys, and documents and mail for the German embassy in Tokyo. The U-boat also carried Subhas Chandra Bose, the head of the anti-British Indian National Army of Liberation and his Muslim aide Major Habib Hassan, a former Oxford student. The two boats met, as scheduled, on April 26.

After the transfer of a German officer and a signalman, the two submarines continued together on a northeasterly course waiting for the seas to calm enough for the two to exchange their cargos. The next day, Bose and his group rode a rubber raft from U-180 to I-29 and two Japanese officers transferred to the U-boat. The 11 tons of cargo was then moved in three inflatable rafts while both submarines had their torpedo hatches open. After the passenger and cargo exchanges were completed, I-29 turned eastward and U-180 turned toward the Cape of Good Hope for the Atlantic and its base at Bordeaux, France.

This experience was helpful to Kinashi when he finally set out for France on December 16. In addition to his crew, he carried rubber, tungsten, tin, zinc, quinine, opium and coffee. He also had 16 IJN officers, specialists and engineers on board. Most had originally been scheduled to depart with the ill-fated I-34. After a week at sea, I-29 was refueled from the small German supply ship Bogota. The entire operation took almost six hours, after which the Japanese sub proceeded on its way. On January 8, 1944, the submarine passed south of Madagascar.

In early February Kinashi received a signal from Germany to rendezvous with a U-boat that would supply him with a newer radar detector. On the 12th, he met Lieutenant Hans-Werner Offermann’s U-518 southwest of the Azores. The Japanese submarine took aboard three technicians who removed the Metox radar detector that had been taken from Uchino’s boat and installed a new FuMB 7 Naxos detector on the bridge.

Kinashi had a chance to try out his new equipment on March 4 while running on the surface off Cape Finisterre. That evening, an RAF patrol plane carrying a 22-million candlepower, 24-inch searchlight suddenly illuminated the water around I-29. Reacting with the speed and efficiency gained from long experience, Kinashi and his crew managed to crash-dive their submarine and escaped unharmed. Five days later, I-29 entered the Bay of Biscay, but Kinashi had arrived ahead of his escort and had to spend the night on the bottom. The next morning I-29 rendezvoused with five Junkers Ju-88C fighters. That afternoon, two German destroyers and two torpedo boats joined him and escorted the Japanese submarine toward Lorient. Kinashi was not safe yet, though.

Allied code-breakers had intercepted transmissions that indicated I-29’s likely position and schedule. They had dispatched two specially equipped de Havilland Mosquitoes armed with 57mm cannons and four other Mosquitoes from No. 248 Squadron RAF to attack the submarine and its escorts. The British found the ships off Cape Peas, Spain, being circled by eight Ju-88Cs. The Mosquito fighters tried to draw the German aircraft away so that the cannon-armed Mosquitoes could attack the sub and its escorts. The British succeeded in downing one Ju-88, but I-29 was undamaged in the action. Later that day, the submarine and its escorts were attacked by more than 10 Allied aircraft, including Bristol Beaufighters and Consolidated B-24 Liberators. Fortunately for Kinashi and his crew, all the bombs missed.

Finally, on March 11, I-29 arrived safely at Lorient and anchored next to Lt. Cmdr. Max Wintermeyer’s U-190. Later, I-29 was berthed in one of the port’s massive Keroman sub pens. Lorient was the home of two U-boat flotillas, and the large number of veteran submariners around the base ensured that some memorable social events occured. On one occasion, German officers entertained their Japanese counterparts at a dockside bar. The bar’s low ceiling rafters were covered with signatures of U-boat officers. Not to be outdone, I-29’s chief engineering officer Lieutenant Hiroshi Taguchi, chief navigation officer Lieutenant Hideo Otani and several other officers added their carved signatures to the bar’s rafters.

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