Name I-177 Class and type Kaidai type, KD7-class Construction started 10 March 1941 | Commissioned 28 December 1942 Complement 86 | |
Fate Sunk by USS Samuel S. Miles (DE-183) on 3 October 1944 | ||
Japanese Submarine I-177 was a Kaidai type of cruiser submarine that saw service during World War II in the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). I-177 was a KD7 sub-class boat, commissioned on 28 December 1942 and sunk by USS Samuel S. Miles (DE-183) on 3 October 1944, with no survivors.
War crimes
Following the end of the Pacific War, Australian war crimes investigators investigated if the I-177 and its Commander Nakagawa were responsible for sinking the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur. The Centaur was torpedoed off the Australian east coast on 14 May 1943. The torpedo ignited a fuel tank setting the ship ablaze. It rolled to port and sank within three minutes. Of the 332 crew, patients, medical staff and passengers on board, 268 died – only 64 were rescued.
Commander Nakagawa survived the war because he had been transferred from the I-177 before it was sunk. Several of the investigators suspected that Nakagawa and I-177 were most likely responsible, but they were unable to establish this beyond reasonable doubt. However, Nakagawa was charged with ordering the machine-gunning of survivors from torpedoed ships on three different dates in February, 1944. He was convicted and sentenced to four years imprisonment at Sugamo Prison as a Class B war criminal. Nakagawa refused to ever speak on the subject of the sinking of the Centaur, even to defend himself, until his death in 1991.