I-400 class submarine aircraft carrier Colour photograph mock-up (postwork: wake- Painter 8, noise and filtering- Photoshop CS2) of a Bryce 6.1 render of a low poly I-400 model (created in Shade 7LE) posed in a water "terrain." If secret weapons are the stuff of adventure, then the "Sen Toku" submarines are the "Red Oktobers" of World War Two. They were the biggest submarines in the world until the Cold War, when nations started building ballistic missile submarines. These "pop-up" carriers could catapault off a trio of high performance float-planes and then promptly submerge. The I-400 class were originally expected to sail around the world to strike against targets in the Americas, like the Doolittle Raid in reverse, but by the time they were operational the rest of the world had come to Japan. The only examples completed in time were at sea, intending to strike at the gathering invasion forces, when the surrender was announced. The United States later scuttled them rather than risk having their particulars known by the Soviet Union.