That is quite a historic set of photos of the crew of I-29 on their arrival at Lorient, France and stay there from 11 March-15 April 1944. The Commander and his crew were fetetd by Kriegsmarine officers including Admiral Karl Dönitz and Cdr Kinashi was presented with the Iron Cross 2nd class by Adolf Hitler himself. Returning home, on July 26th 1944, in the Luzon Straight, the Philippines, I-29 while travelling on the surface was sunk by 3 torpedoes from USS Sawfish (SS-276). All the crew bar one were lost along with the Junkers Jumo 004 and BMW 003 turbojets that powered the Me 262 and the Walter HWK 109-509 rocket engine of the Me 163 which delayed Japanese development of these advanced engines. However, blueprints of these engines were flown back to Japan and the Japanese soon had their version of the German jet and rocket engines under development. The Japanese version of the Jumo turbojet, the Ne-20 was used to power the Nakajima 'Kikka' jet fighter the only jet powered Japanese fighter to reach test flight status before the end of the war.
The Kriegsmarine it seems were very impressed by the size of the IJN I class submarines but they gave then some help to ensure they could travel back home safely by ftting them out with the latest AAA flak canon. Somewhat ironic, in that the I-29 was ultimately sunk by another submarine and not enemy aircraft.
Moky