~ A Welcome War ~

by

Kev Richardson

Sirius Cove is on the harbour’s North Shore, directly opposite the Garden Island Naval base. I was sound asleep on a glassed-in veranda that overlooked the harbour while Mum slept with Lou deep in the house, where I’d been warned not to explore.

Air raid sirens suddenly blared through the still night—doubly loud, they seemed, than any drill alerts ever heard, so all the house was awake. Mum and Lou arrived on to the veranda in dressing gowns as searchlights galore, ten or twelve, of them began sweeping the harbour surface. First report to reach my ears was a great boom! from far off. What was happening was that three Japanese midget submarines, each carrying two men and two torpedoes, sneaked through the shipping boom built across the mouth of the main harbour; they sneaked through in the wake of a visiting ship for which the boom had been opened. The third sub got itself tangled in the net as the boom closed and couldn’t free itself. Its presence became known when it was realised the boom hadn’t properly closed and an investigating team of divers discovered the sub. When its occupants realised they were found, they blew themselves up, torpedoes and all. Meanwhile down-harbour where the heavy cruiser USS Chicago was moored, ratings on watch saw a torpedo miss it by ‘inches,’ they later claimed, to explode when hitting a moored ferryboat, the Kuttabul, a barracks for Aussie Navy personnel. Twenty died.

All this was directly opposite our windows. It was like being in the flicks and sitting in the front row!

The flash from that torpedo explosion nearly blinded me! And its ‘boom’ seemed to echo and re-echo through my very ears. Wow—had the war ever come close!

Now, of course, all the defence people knew there was at least one more sub in the raiding party. But how many more?

Searchlights played right into our veranda, blinding the three of us—and flares were being fired skywards, lighting up the entire scene. I’ve never seen my Mum looking so scared. Not only were all the naval base guns brought into play, but depth charges began exploding—not just a few, but dozens! Just a few hundred yards from us!

So the searchlights and flares had obviously picked out something.

Other torpedoes hit the dockyard wharves and exploded. Many naval ships were in port, yet none were hit—mainly because, the wireless told us next morning, the searchlights found one sub, and helicopters also with searchlights followed it into Taylor Bay, where it tried to hide. It was despatched by an absolute barrage of depth charges. We found out a week later that the sub, disabled by depth charges in Taylor Bay, the very next bay from where we were, had been raised. Its occupants had suicided.

Oh what a lovely war this is!

What a great and exciting cocktail for a lad with an adventurous heart to take to bed with him every night for the next several weeks, to colour his dreams!

The third sub had been sighted by searchlights when it surfaced for a matter of a minute or two, maybe to get its bearings, but it submerged again before more shots could be fired. It was thought that it had either been hit by depth charges in the deep centre of the harbour or blown itself up underwater. North Shore residents were warned, however, to keep a lookout should either of the personnel aboard have made it ashore.