CHAPTER TEN
SYDNEY’S WILDEST NIGHT
The story that the only casualty inflicted by Chicago’s gunfire was a lion in the famous Sydney Zoo, and that Captain Bode was requested to provide a new one out of lend-lease is the invention of an Australian humorist.
Rear-Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, USN,
Pulitzer prize winning author.
At 9:48 pm, Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban and Petty Officer Mamoru Ashibe, in midget I-24, crossed the 7 fathom inner loop at the harbour entrance. As with Chuma’s craft, a signature was recorded at the Loop Station but went unreported.
Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould’s records in his official report that: “There was a regrettable failure on the part of the Loop Station watchkeepers to identify the unusual crossings at 8:01 pm and 9:48 pm. Crossings at these times were noticed by watchkeepers but disregarded.”
The following morning, when the loop signatures were examined by Muirhead-Gould, he reported that the crossing at 9:48 pm was caused by a tug and barge crossing the inner loop area and, therefore, the Loop Station “fully justified itself, though, naturally I must deplore the fact that the human element failed”.
Acting-Captain H. M. Newcombe, responsible for the Loop Station, recounted after the war that personnel were lacking in concentration caused by the long hours they were forced to spend looking at the loop equipment that constantly fluctuated with the frequent shipping movements.
After crossing the inner loop, Ban and Ashibe successfully made their way down the harbour, undetected, towards Man-of-War Anchorage, while Lieutenant Matsuo and Petty Officer Tsuzuku remained lurking at the harbour entrance. At 10:52 pm, HMAS Lauriana, one of four naval auxiliary boats patrolling the harbour entrance, noticed a “whip” or “flurry” on the water ahead. Flotilla Leader, L. H. Winkworth thought it may have been a paravane wire running across troughs of waves. A few minutes earlier he had observed a blackened vessel coming into the harbour and the silhouette was similar to a minesweeper. Winkworth instructed Skipper Harold Arnott and the lookout on the bridge to watch for the wire and minesweeper in case it changed course, and he ran forward to the searchlight on the bow. Winkworth recorded the object “seemed to be on the same course, but heading towards the eastern channel”.
In his report of the incident, Winkworth recorded that the searchlight picked up an object 60 to 80 feet away, about two points on the port bow. The searchlight operator switched the light off momentarily then on again and the conning tower was clearly seen. The submarine appeared to be almost stationary as the seas washed over the conning tower. The searchlight remained on the submarine as Lauriana’s speed carried her past. When the angle made it impossible, the operator turned the searchlight towards the Port War Signal Station to raise the alarm, but he failed to elicit a response.
Immediately on sighting the sub, I called to the skipper “sub” and flashed “L’s” and “A’s” to Port Waugh [Port War Signal Station] and the direction of channel boats at the boom net… Skipper meanwhile had made the turn to starboard, and came back over the ground, but our searchlight did not pick up any other sign of the sub. Mr Kent [bridge lookout] states that the sub submerged immediately our searchlight was flashed on the conning tower on the second occasion. No replies were received from our signals, but concluded that our signals must have been noticed.
Winkworth recorded that he was at a loss to understand why the Port War Signal Station and the Army battery near Hornby Light did not pick up Lauriana’s visual signals.
Had we had Verey lights or rockets we could have immediately illuminated the area for the batteries to open fire when we first sighted the sub, and had we had our promised depth charges, we could have certainly sent the sub to the bottom, or rammed him had we been given an alert earlier in the evening. When coming up on the sub, we were not sure whether it was a wire from a paravane which we were approaching, or something flapping on the top of the water. The sub’s course was apparently towards the eastern channel, and on our approach he slackened speed and submerged. One of our crew states that he was moving out again when he went below [the surface].
Matsuo’s craft was not seen again until 10:54 pm when it was sighted 400 yards ahead of the anti-submarine vessel, HMAS Yandra, and steering the same course at five to six knots. Three cables [one cable equals one-tenth of a nautical mile] from Hornby Light at Inner South Head, Matsuo altered course to port to make another attempt to proceed down the eastern channel. Yandra altered course to intercept in an attempt to ram the submarine because of “insufficient freedom of action to use full speed in order to carry out a depth charge attack”, limited by the number of other surface craft in the vicinity.
At 10.58, the submarine appeared to submerge a little and was hidden from the bridge by Yandra’s bow. The ship’s commanding officer, Lieutenant J. A. Taplin, felt a slight impact on the bridge and the submarine was seen to break the surface on the starboard side aft, alongside the hull. As Yandra continued on course, the submarine was seen to list to starboard about 15 degrees with the bow out of the water at about the same angle. It was then seen to submerge while turning to starboard when about 100 yards astern of Yandra.
At 11:03 pm Yandra again sighted a conning tower 600 yards away. Taplin altered course to bring the submarine on an ahead bearing. Yandra’s report of the incident records the “submarine was not seen by the gun’s crew at this range, and when eventually it was seen, the gun would not depress sufficiently to fire”.
One minute later, Yandra obtained an anti-submarine ASDIC contact 400 yards away. The anti-submarine vessel went to maximum speed and commenced her run in to attack. Six depth charges were set to detonate at 100 feet. Two minutes later, the submarine was seen to submerge but the ASDIC equipment returned instant echoes at a range of 150 yards. At 11:07 pm, Yandra fired a pattern of six depth charges. The force of the explosions resulted in the instantaneous failure of Yandra’s steering gear, ASDIC equipment, degaussing gear, and phone communications aft where the switchboard had fractured. Using hand steering gear from aft, Yandra steered to seaward until the primary steering gear and ASDIC equipment had been restored.
The force of the depth charge explosions lifted the nearby 60-ton Lauriana clear out of the water. Winkworth later recounted that they actually felt the launch airborne for a moment before landing with a tremendous thud.
At 11.32, Yandra re-entered harbour and carried out an anti-submarine sweep in the vicinity of her depth charge attack, but there were no further sightings of the midget submarine. It was presumed that Yandra’s depth charge attack had been successful. Matsuo’s craft was not seen again until 5:00 am the next morning.
According to records obtained after the war, the midget submarines had a wide turning circle. In the event of an attack, their commanders were expected to flood the forward ballast tanks and submerge to at least 200 feet or deeper, and then to proceed on a course at right angles to their previous course. Ordinarily, the forward ballast tank was flooded to stabilise the craft after the torpedoes had been fired, but in the frantic moments after its discovery at the harbour entrance, it seems possible the submarine may have collided with the sea bottom during its rapid descent, damaging the craft’s nose guard. It seems more than likely Matsuo and Tsuzuku waited patiently on the seabed before making their belated entry into the harbour at 3:01 am the next morning.
At the same time as Matsuo’s craft was first detected at the harbour entrance by Lauriana, Lieutenant Ban’s craft was sighted near Man-of-War Anchorage. At 10:52 pm, Ensign B. Simonds aboard Chicago sighted a conning tower “close aboard to starboard” and emptied his .45 automatic weapon at the conning tower. When about 500 yards off the starboard bow, lookouts on the heavy cruiser illuminated the conning tower with searchlights, and Lieutenant-Commander H. J. Mecklenberg, the senior officer aboard, ordered the ship to General Quarters. Guns from Chicago and the Australian corvette, HMAS Whyalla, were trained on the object. However, the order to open fire from Whyalla was not given for fear of hitting the Manly ferry and other small craft in the vicinity. Chicago was not so reticent and Mecklenberg gave the order to commence firing.
In an interview with the author in 1982, Chicago’s Gunnery officer, Lieutenant William Floyd, said the ship’s gun crews were already on alert following a reconnaissance of the naval anchorage area by an unidentified aircraft a few days earlier. When he learnt no action had been taken by his anti-aircraft personnel, he “laid down the law”.
I directed that for the next 24 hours, everyone was to remain on their feet, alert and ready to take action immediately. Fortunately, this degree of alertness was attained during the day and the rest of the ensuing evening… The ship received a report that something had crossed the sonic range … This report was relayed by the Officer-of-the-Deck to the officer in sky-control. The sky-control personnel [who operated the searchlights] began searching to see if they could pick up anything in the harbour and some little time later, they saw what they believed to be the conning tower of a submarine.
Lieutenant George Kittredge, a junior-grade gunnery officer, remembers sighting the conning tower aft of Chicago’s beam, between the heavy cruiser and Bradley’s Head. He had the impression the hatch was open with a Japanese officer wearing a white hat looking out with a large pair of binoculars, an image he says haunted him for many years after the war.
On sighting the submarine conning tower, Kittredge jumped into the “pointer seat” of the new rapid fire anti-aircraft gun on the starboard wing of the bridge and commenced firing. About the same time, the two 5” guns starboard side aft began to fire, but they couldn’t depress far enough and the shells ricocheted to the other side of the harbour.
When Chicago opened fire, pandemonium broke loose on the harbour. Newspaper accounts after the attack reported the Manly ferry had left Circular Quay with 27 passengers aboard when large calibre bullets threw spouts of water high into the air around her. The captain of the ferry said he saw a conning tower directly in front and immediately went hard astern. His passengers, lining the railings, were given a front row seat of the battle with red tracer bullets seemingly hurling straight towards them. The naval firing was so intense that the captain of the ferry reportedly spent a few anxious moments trying to determine the direction of the shells. The passengers thought a naval exercise using blank shells was in progress. Miraculously, no one was injured.
Launchmaster I. J. Warren, employed by Stannard Brothers, was proceeding down harbour in the dockyard boat Nester when four red balls of fire appeared to be heading straight toward him. They passed over and disappeared into the water beyond his launch.
On hearing the air raid siren, hotels and restaurants quickly emptied, while citizens wearing pyjamas rushed to parks, headlands, and vantage points to get a better view. The main reaction was one of curiosity rather than alarm. Unable to hear or see any aircraft, many thought it was just another military exercise.
Marie Kuliffay lived in a first floor apartment in Pitt Street with her Hungarian refugee husband who had already experienced the terror of air raids in war-torn Europe. She recalled how her husband was asleep when the air raid alarm sounded while she sat reading in an armchair. Her husband leapt out of bed and into his trousers then dragged her out of the building. Outside, the street lights were extinguished and the road filled with people looking up into the sky. No one seemed alarmed and they all calmly proceeded to the Wynyard underground railway station, the nearest bomb shelter, grumbling and cursing the defence authorities for initiating another air raid exercise. Some people had become so used to air raid exercises that they merely rolled over in their beds, annoyed their sleep was interrupted, while others who lived on the harbour foreshores went to higher ground so they could get a better view.
Although most residents did not believe Sydney was being attacked, the defence authorities clearly knew otherwise. At 11:10 pm, the Australian corvette, HMAS Geelong, berthed inside Whyalla on the north-west corner of Garden Island, fired at a suspicious object in the direction of Bradley’s Head. Four minutes later, Muirhead-Gould ordered: “All ships to be darkened.”
Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould records in his report that some comments had been made that ferries were allowed to continue to move about the harbour unrestricted and that he had instructed all naval vessels to display normal lights, in the hope of confusing the enemy. He wrote that he felt the more vessels moving about the harbour, the better the chances of keeping the submarine submerged until daylight; but at 11:14 pm he ordered all ships to be darkened. However, the floodlights at Garden Island remained on for more than an hour before they were eventually extinguished.
At 11:36 pm, Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould and his Chief Staff Officer proceeded down the harbour in a speed boat. With the congestion of signal traffic through the Port War Signal Station, and non-existent or inadequate radio communications with harbour defence vessels, he decided to interview officers “on the spot” to ascertain exactly what was happening. He boarded Lolita patrolling the East Gate at midnight. An account of Muirhead-Gould’s interview with the crew is given by Lolita’s coxswain, Leading Seaman J. Nelson:
Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould addressed the skipper on boarding Lolita with the words, “What are you fellows playing at? What’s all this nonsense about a submarine?” He interrogated the skipper and myself about the signal we sent to the Port War Signal Station. Gould seemed rather sceptical and treated the whole matter in a light-hearted manner. He then asked the skipper why he had thought it was a submarine that was caught in the net. He told him that myself and Crowe knew what submarines looked like. Gould asked me what I based my judgment on. I told him that I had sighted submarines when I was in the Mediterranean. I also told him that Able-Seaman Crowe was a World War I submariner who knew about submarines and had identified this one as a small one. Gould then asked the skipper: “Did you see the Japanese captain of the submarine? Did he have a black beard?”… As he proceeded to leave Lolita, he quipped: If you see another submarine, see if the captain has a beard as I would be most anxious to know.” At that stage the echo of a tremendous explosion and gunfire reached us and all hell broke loose up harbour. The Admiral said: “What the hell was that!” Anderson replied: “If you proceed up harbour, sir, you might find your Japanese captain with a black beard.”
Shortly before 12:30 am on 1 June, Lieutenant Ban surfaced again off Bradley’s head, and fired two torpedoes at Chicago. The first passed narrowly ahead of the heavy cruiser moored at No 2 Buoy in Man-of-War Anchorage, continuing on to pass under the Dutch submarine K-9 and HMAS Kuttabul, permanently moored alongside the wharf on the south-eastern side of Garden island, before detonating against the sea retaining wall. The resulting explosion deflected upwards and outwards, ripping through the wooden barracks vessel as if she were a matchbox. The explosion also splintered the Navy dive boat and severely damaged the Dutch submarine, which had been berthed outside of the former ferry vessel and sheltered to some extent from the main blast.The explosion sank Kuttabul, killing 21 Australian and British naval ratings and injuring another 10.
The second torpedo passed astern of Chicago and ran aground on Garden Island below the high water mark, but it failed to detonate. The torpedo was discovered later that morning at low tide. Lieutenant-Commander L. E. C. Hinchliffe, the Officer-in-Charge of maintenance on Muirhead-Gould’s staff, examined the torpedo and found the warhead completely broken off and the yellow entrails of explosives clearly visible.
Meanwhile, at Man-of-War Anchorage, Captain Bode had returned to Chicago shortly before all ships were ordered to be darkened. Lieutenant-Commander Mecklenburg recounted after the war that Bode doubted that a submarine had been seen by the ship’s crew and ordered the ship to secure from General Quarters and preparations to get underway. At the same time, USS Perkins, which had been screening the heavy cruiser, was ordered back to her buoy in Man-of-War Anchorage by Captain Bode.
The captain went to his quarters and Lt Varviorsky [Officer-of-the-Deck] and I went up to the ship’s bridge and waited. In approximately an hour we spotted two torpedo wakes approaching the ship. The Perkins also reported the wakes. Both torpedoes missed Chicago and Perkins, but destroyed the Kuttabul. The captain reached the bridge at the time Kuttabul exploded. He immediately commenced operations to get underway and ordered the Perkins underway. He sent me to Garden Island in the captain’s gig to request instructions from the admiral. The admiral was well aware that there were submarines in the harbour and suggested that I should tell my commanding officer to take US forces to sea. When I returned to the mooring, the Chicago was underway and proceeding out of the harbour. The ship stopped and picked up the gig and I went to the bridge and informed the captain of the admiral’s orders.
Commander George Chipley, the senior Engineering Department officer on Chicago, best described the heavy cruiser’s reaction to the midget submarine attack and the urgency of putting to sea. Following a late inspection of the machinery spaces he stopped in the officers’ mess for a cup of coffee when he heard shouts on the quarterdeck above him, then pistol shots, followed by the general alarm and disjointed words on the public address system about a submarine. He ran to the main engine control room and soon reported both engine rooms and all four fire rooms manned and ready.
Ours was a veteran crew, many with years of service on Chicago, and all tested by six months war cruising and combat. The senior officer on board was Lt-Commander H. J. Mecklenberg, ship’s communications officer … He gave me the order to do what we were doing already, preparing to get underway. Fires were lit under the seven cold boilers and the fire room crews used high rates of oil and air flow to raise steam pressure rapidly. I went up on deck to look at the stacks and I could see large volumes of persistent white smoke pouring from both stacks.
Chipley gives credit to the engineers for saving Chicago by producing a mass of visible white smoke that streamed astern of the ship in the moderate south-westerly wind, contrasting vividly with the low, dark clouds, giving the illusion that the heavy cruiser was underway and moving towards the Harbour Bridge.
The Japanese midget sub commander knew that we had sighted him, that we would want to get under way and be prepared to manoeuvre, and the appearance of our smoke in the wind must have deceived him as to our speed, which was zero. The sub aimed its torpedoes as though we were moving and passed under our bow, meaning close ahead and not under the hull.
Muirhead-Gould’s chronological narrative records the floodlights on Garden Island, where work was being carried out on a new dry-dock, were extinguished at 12:25 am, around the same time Lieutenant Ban fired his two torpedoes at the silhouetted Chicago.
Lieutenant Wilson, the duty officer at Garden Island, gives an account of the difficulties he had in extinguishing the dockyard lights in G. Hermon Gill’s official history, Royal Australian Navy 1942-1945:
… the admiral ordered me to get the dockyard lights out. They were on tall masts lighting the whole area. I could not raise the dockyard by telephone so the admiral sent me off on foot. Paul Revere had a more comfortable trip than I did. I ran at full speed across a rough and rocky dockyard road into the dock and through the work sheds. As I went through I shouted to all and sundry, “Get out fast, the port is under attack”. Some delay occurred finding the engineer responsible, and with authority to put the lights out. When I found him, he found it hard to believe, and spoke of the difficulty with hundreds of men in the dock, many below sea-level. I left him in no doubt of the admiral’s requirements, and he sent word to evacuate the dock and prepared to turn off the main switches. I ran back and it was only a few minutes after I had reported that the torpedo exploded under Kuttabul…
After firing his torpedoes, Lieutenant Ban’s midget submarine was not seen again. This period was the height of Sydney’s wildest night. 