Qualla: Japanese Submarine I-64

Japanese Submarine I-64: Introduction

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Three days before the Imperial Japanese Navy quietly renumbered her I-164, the submarine they were renaming had already been lying on the Pacific seabed for seventy-two hours. No one in Tokyo knew. On 17 May 1942, the American submarine USS Triton spotted I-64 cruising on the surface 250 nautical miles south-southeast of Cape Ashizuri, Japan. Triton fired the last Mark 14 torpedo in her forward room. The explosion blew wreckage a hundred feet into the air, and I-64 sank by the stern in two minutes. An estimated thirty sailors clung to floating debris in the water afterward. None were rescued.

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Japanese Submarine I-64: Born at Kure

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I-64 was a KD4 sub-class cruiser submarine, laid down on 28 March 1927 at the Kure Naval Arsenal and launched on 5 October 1929. Commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Navy on 30 August 1930, she joined Submarine Division 29 alongside her sister boat I-62. For nearly a decade sh...

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Japanese Submarine I-64: Hunting Across the Indian Ocean

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I-64's second war patrol, beginning in January 1942 from Cam Ranh Bay, revealed the submarine at her most lethal. Operating from the newly captured base at Penang, she ranged across the Indian Ocean hunting Allied merchant shipping. On 22 January, west of Sibolga, Sumatra, she fi...

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Japanese Submarine I-64: The Coromandel Coast Patrol

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Her third patrol, launched from Penang on 6 March 1942, took her back to familiar hunting grounds off India's Coromandel Coast. While she was at sea, Submarine Division 29 was disbanded and I-64 was reassigned to Division 30 -- an administrative reshuffling that made no differenc...

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Japanese Submarine I-64: Two Minutes South of Shikoku

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In April 1942, I-64 sailed from Penang to Sasebo for refit. On 16 May she departed again, heading for Kwajalein to support Operation MI -- the planned invasion of Midway Atoll that would become one of the Pacific War's decisive turning points. She never arrived. At 18:03 on 17 Ma...

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Japanese Submarine I-64: A Name Without a Ship

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Three days after I-64 sank, the Imperial Japanese Navy -- unaware of her fate -- officially renumbered her I-164 as part of a fleet-wide reorganization. For eight days, the navy carried a ghost on its rolls, issuing orders to a submarine that existed only as scattered debris on t...

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