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Seiran on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center (Carolyn Russo/NASM)

Workers at the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory announced on November 12 that through the use of submersibles, they had located at 2,600 feet two Japanese submarines that the U.S. military had scuttled off Oahu in 1946 after post-war assessment. One, the I-14, was designed to carry two Aichi M6A Seirans (“storm from the clear sky”) intended to catapult from the sub after it surfaced and attack the U.S. naval fleet. Aichi built 28 Seirans; the sole survivor was restored in 2000 at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and put on display in 2003.

The Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory is financed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A documentary on the Laboratory’s find will air on the National Geographic Channel (check local listings).

Copyright the National World War II Museum.

Ready to experience World War II in “4-D”? Head over to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans for the opening of Tom Hanks’ latest production, Beyond All Boundaries.

The 35-minute film takes viewers from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day, and will be shown exclusively in the museum’s newly expanded Solomon Victory Theater. Featuring the voices of Kevin Bacon, Brad Pitt, Patricia Clarkson, and Gary Sinise, among others, the movie took five years to plan and complete.

Sensory effects allow audiences to feel the rumbling of tanks and the booming of anti-aircraft fire. “This is not just a widescreen movie,” Hanks told the Associated Press yesterday. “There’s actual things that pop up, actual elements that come into it that put you in the environment.”

Visit the National World War II Museum’s home page to see a clip from the film, and to learn more.

Photograph courtesy Jane's.

Remember the Dewoitine D 26, the single-seat, single-engine parasol fighter trainer? Wondering how many were ever built? Open your trusty Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, and you’ll learn that 11 were produced for the Swiss Air Force.

Jane’s will also tell you the first flight of the Douglas B-66 Destroyer (October 28, 1952); how many passengers the Sikorsky S-55/Westland Whirlwind can carry (10); and the maximum speed of Lockheed’s SR-71 (2,012 mph).

On November 1, 2009, Jane’s celebrated its 100^th anniversary as the world’s foremost aviation reference guide. Within its pages are the technical and production details of all known powered aircraft, currently in—or anticipating—commercial production.

The venerable guide was founded by John Frederick Thomas Jane, a somewhat indifferent student, as the publication’s Web site notes: “Jane was never top of his class but did show a keen interest in rugby and chemistry, although he was banned from the chemistry lab when his teachers discovered that his only real interest in the subject was furthering his knowledge of making explosives.”

Current editor in chief Paul Jackson. Photograph courtesy of Jane's.

The reluctant student eventually became an authority on naval matters, publishing the first edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships in February 1898. But after Louis Blériot flew across the English Channel in 1909, Jane turned his attention to aircraft. The first edition of Jane’s All the World’s Airships was published in 1909.

The current, and sixth editor, Paul Jackson, joined Jane’s compiling team in 1987, becoming editor in chief in 1995. He’s well aware of the reverence inspired by his publication. In a company press release he recalled, “At air shows, I will always carry a tape measure. One time I was checking the dimensions of an aircraft and a small boy asked his father, ‘What is that man doing?’ His father replied, having noticed my name badge, ‘That, son, is the man from Jane’s.’”

Remote-controlled drones are commonplace over today’s battlefields, playing an important role in U.S. air superiority. But one of the first military uses of a robot is almost completely forgotten—the story of “Boilerplate,” part of the U.S. Army’s 1^st Aero Squadron.

Photo courtesy Paul Guinan, Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel, Abrams Image, 2009.

Wait—you’ve never heard of Boilerplate, the Victorian-era mechanical man who fought alongside Teddy Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia, and who (controversially, considering his orders) actually saved Pancho Villa’s life?

That’s because Boilerplate is the invention of husband-and-wife graphic novel team Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, who this month published the complete adventures of Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel in a lavishly illustrated book that retells American history through the eyes of the imaginary robot.

Ordinary history books show that when Francisco “Pancho” Villa led a surprise attack on Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, he was hoping to provoke a U.S. military response that would help rally peasant support against the U.S.-backed Mexican president Venstiano Carranza. His tactic worked. The 93 U.S. soldiers deployed in the “Punitive Expedition” had at their disposal various motorcycles, trucks and cars—and eight Curtiss JN-3 biplanes, the U.S. Army’s entire air force.

But in Guinan and Bennett’s revised history, the Aero Squadron’s reconnaissance mission—the airplanes were used strictly for observation and communication—was aided by the world’s first robot, shown here helping a “Jenny” ready for takeoff. (Boilerplate’s previous flying experience consisted of fleeing the 1900 Boxer uprising in Peking via an airship.)

The fictional robot even duped comedian and author Chris Elliott, who used Boilerplate—which he considered historical, public domain material—in his 2005 novel The Shroud of the Thwacker. An abashed Elliot told Publishers Weekly in 2005, “People think because of my comedy career I must be smart, but the truth is I am a total moron.”

Frederick Humphreys (NY State Military Museum)

A hundred years ago today, the U.S. military got its first pilot. On October 26, 1909, Frederick E. Humphreys, a 26-year-old Lieutenant with the Army Signal Corps, soloed for the first time in a Wright Flyer at College Park, Maryland, under the watchful eye of no less an instructor than Wilbur Wright. That same day Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm also soloed, winning Pilot Certificate No. 2 from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

Both had been in training since October 8, only weeks after the Army purchased its flying machine from the Wrights. By November 5, the airplane was out of commission, its wing damaged during a low-altitude turn, which left the country’s fledgling air force temporarily without a vehicle.