WOW697 Yoksuka E14Y Glen

Description

WOW697 Yokosuka E14Y (Glen)

The Yokosuka E14Y (Glen) was an Imperial Japanese Navy reconnaissance seaplane transported aboard and launched from Japanese submarine aircraft carriers.  The Japanese Navy designation was “Type 0 Small Reconnaissance Seaplane”.

The E14Y carried out recon flights over Pearl Harbour (nine days after the main attack), Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and the Aleutians. Its most famous mission was an expanded one on September 9, 1942, when Chief Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita, a pilot in the Japanese Imperial Navy, and his crewman, Petty Officer Shoji Okuda, surfaced in submarine I-25 off the coast of Oregon near Brookings.
His tiny seaplane had folding wings and was transported in a small hangar attached to the deck of the submarine.
Fujita dropped two 168-pound incendiary bombs into Oregon’s Klamath Mountains in the hope it would ignite both a forest fire and widespread panic. It did neither.

The E14Y is the only Japanese aircraft to overfly New Zealand during World War II (and only the second enemy aircraft after the German Friedrichshafen FF.33 ‘Wölfchen’ during World War I). On 8 March 1942, Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita photographed the Allied build-up in Wellington harbour in a “Glen” launched from the Japanese submarine I-25.
On 13 March, he flew over Auckland, before the I-25 proceeded to Australia. On the night of 24/25 May, Warrant Officer Susumo Ito flew a “Glen” over Auckland from the Japanese submarine I-21. Just days later, in the same aircraft, Ito flew the reconnaissance flight preceding the sole Japanese attack on Sydney Harbour in which twenty-one seamen were killed when HMAS Kuttabul sank on 1 June 1942.
After October 1944 all E14Y1 aircraft operated from the Fukuyama Naval Air Station, because the Type B1/B2 submarines were now being equipped with manned torpedoes called ‘kalten’.

The Japanese built 126 Yokosuka E14Ys from 1941-43. As the number of host subs in Japan’s fleet dwindled through wartime attrition, so did the E14Y’s opportunities.

Our 1/30 scale Glen was part of the 2nd Sensui Sentai [Submarine Squadron] based on a I-7 Submarine during 1941. We have 2 models available priced at $799 plus postage.

All the TG/K&C figures/accessories displayed in this newsletter are shown for scale comparison purposes only and are not included.