Quote:
Originally Posted by redcard15
I know it's from a japanese submarine, built in Oct 1943. I think it's Ha-232 but not sure of the entire inscription. ... I'd like to know what it says so I can be sure which boat it came off of.
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Based on masaegu's very helpful translation of the plate, I can make some comments.
The plate doesn't seem to provide any direct indication even of what class of submarine it came from, let alone the specific vessel. It seems to come from a standardized model of bow torpedo tube for submarines. Based on the "Type 95" in the name, I would guess the tube was designed for the
Type 95 submarine-launched torpedo.
Also I found
another page describing the Type 95 torpedo which happens to have this photo in the middle of the page:
This shows the forward torpedo room of the Japanese submarine I-58, which was awaiting disposal after the war. Note the torpedo tube doors; each appears to have a plate just below its center which looks quite similar to the one you posted. So I'd guess all such tubes carried a similar plate, and yours may have come from a submarine waiting to be scrapped.
Of course, the manufacture date of October 1943 is for the tube, not the submarine in which it was installed. If it was installed in a submarine soon after its manufacture, then it could not have been from the Ha-232 you suggested. According to the
English Wikipedia, construction on that boat didn't even begin until July 1945, and it was never more than 40% completed before being scrapped. The tube could have been in storage for a while before being installed in a boat, but it's hard to imagine that a valuable weapon would have sat in inventory for almost two years while Japan was struggling for all the war resources it could find. Anyway, there's no real reason to believe that the plate's central number "232" should be associated with a boat's identification. More likely it's simply a production number.