CHAPTER ONE
NO CAUSE FOR ALARM
Ito’s seaplane was seen and heard, but still no one suspected the presence of a Japanese force so close to Australia’s largest city.
Ports of N.S.W. June 1978,
Volume 2, No.1.
On Friday 29 May 1942, in the early hours of the morning before dawn, Able-Seaman Leslie Bland was on sentry duty alongside HMAS Kuttabul. The Kuttabul, a passenger ferry before the war, had been requisitioned by the navy and converted to a barracks ship to accommodate naval ratings in transit. She was now permanently moored on the south-eastern side of Garden Island Naval Base.
Bland was looking out over the harbour, trying to keep warm from the winter chill when he heard and saw an aircraft flying down the harbour at low altitude. He knew this was an unusual occurrence at that time of the morning but, as no one else on the harbour seemed alarmed, he regarded the aircraft as a welcome relief to an otherwise tedious watch. The thought that it could be a Japanese aircraft on a reconnaissance mission never occurred to him. A short time later it reappeared over Man-of-War Anchorage. Suddenly, searchlights pencilled the sky looking for the aircraft, which had now disappeared into the dense cloud lingering over the harbour.
The unidentified aircraft was piloted by 27-year-old Flying Warrant Officer Susumu Ito who had been specially chosen to fly the reconnaissance aircraft from an I-class submarine, the largest type of submarine in the Japanese navy. This quietly spoken man was one of Japan’s crack night fliers. He and a team of mechanics had succeeded in assembling the float plane with collapsible wings just before moonrise. After servicing it, Ito and his observer, Seaman Iwasaki, were catapulted off the forward deck at 3:47 am from a point 30 miles north-east of North Head. Because the plane had no identification marks or guns, Ito was hoping to fly low enough and long enough with his navigation lights on and still escape any ground guns or enemy aircraft.
The thick cloud level was at about 600 metres and Ito flew low over North Head at about 400 metres; he descended to 300 metres then 200 metres to allow his navigator to sketch the position of the anti-submarine net at the harbour entrance and to locate its opening. He then flew down the harbour, but with the moonlight obscured by clouds, he couldn’t see clearly. The plane passed over the Harbour Bridge and Cockatoo Island dockyard beyond where he saw flashes from welding plants on the ground. Ito was using an Admiralty map to navigate the aircraft but was unable to understand some of the markings and became lost. He tried to find Mascot aerodrome so he could get his bearings and was soon rewarded when the aerodrome switched on its landing lights. He later recounted on a visit to Sydney in 1950 that he “did not know whether they expected a friendly plane or mistook me for one but it was helpful”.
Ito headed back towards the harbour and circled Garden Island and Man-of-War Anchorage where he saw a cluster of large warships. He later recounted that he circled Man-of-War Anchorage twice, descending to 30 metres, below the height of ship mastheads, to allow his observer to sketch the position of the warships. When the searchlights came on, he climbed into the clouds and headed back towards North Head and out to sea to rendezvous with his submarine; but it wasn’t there. Ito searched the area for a few minutes before returning to North Head to start another approach. As he turned again, he flashed on his lights while he counted to five. The submarine waiting on the surface responded by switching on its searchlight for a few seconds to show Ito where to land. However, while he was reconnoitring Sydney Harbour, the wind had strengthened and the sea had become rough. As the aircraft touched the sea, it overturned. Ito and his navigator managed to scramble clear unharmed and swam through the cold sea to the submarine. A short time later the plane’s floats were punctured so it would sink.
The first sighting of the aircraft was made by the army artillery battery at George’s Heights, near Middle Head, the majestic cliff that guards the harbour entrance. The battery commander reported the plane to the duty intelligence officer at Garden Island, Lieutenant P. F. Wilson, informing him that there was no cause for alarm as it was an American Curtiss Falcon float plane (a remarkable deduction considering it was dark and the plane had no distinguishing markings).
Wilson later told Australian historian, G. Hermon Gill, that he “was quite aware that Chicago’s planes were on its deck and that no other American cruiser was anywhere in the vicinity”. Wilson sought permission from the security officer, Lieutenant Commander C. F. Mills, who had also heard and seen the aircraft from Garden Island, to proceed to the USS Chicago to inquire if they knew anything about it.
The officer-of-the-deck on Chicago, Ensign E. Jarman, an aviator, was the only person on the heavy cruiser to see the aircraft and he identified it as an enemy plane. Immediately after returning to Garden Island, Wilson telephoned fighter sector headquarters at Astor Flats in the city to report that an unidentified aircraft had been sighted at low altitude over the naval anchorage area. At 5:07 am fighter headquarters issued an official alert and dispatched Wirraway fighters from Richmond airbase to investigate. By this time the aircraft had escaped to sea. Based on the army battery report, Ito’s plane was officially identified as friendly and the fighter aircraft returned to their airfield.
Although it was prohibited for aircraft to fly over Sydney Harbour, the sighting failed to inspire any apprehension in the Naval Officer-in-Charge (NOIC) of Sydney Harbour’s defences, Rear-Admiral Gerald Charles Muirhead-Gould, who had been posted to the Australian Station from the Royal Navy. He did not raise the alarm or initiate any precautionary defence measures. He conceded in his report some days later that: “The attack was probably preceded by aerial reconnaissance, which may have been carried out on 29, 30 and 31May.”
Over the previous two weeks the Australian authorities had received several more warnings of Japanese units operating close to Sydney; but they failed to draw any conclusion from these as possibly presaging an attack on the harbour.
On 16 May the Russian ship Wellen was attacked by a submarine 40 miles east of Newcastle. The Japanese submarine surfaced almost alongside Wellen and commenced firing with her deck gun. After firing off seven rounds, the submarine submerged, the sound of hissing air clearly audible on Wellen’s bridge. Wellen’s captain sent off a distress call to the naval authorities in Sydney and Newcastle announcing he was being attacked. Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould closed Sydney and Newcastle ports to outward-bound merchant shipping, but re-opened them 24 hours later following a fruitless search of the area by the Dutch cruiser Tromp, the Australian Tribal-class destroyer Arunta, and the American destroyer Perkins.
Other warnings of Japanese submarines close to Sydney were ignored when on 26 May, and again on 29 May, the New Zealand naval authorities intercepted Japanese radio transmissions east of Sydney. The New Zealand Naval Board notified the authorities in Australia of an enemy unit, probably a submarine, operating approximately 700 miles, then 40 miles, east of Sydney Harbour. However, these warnings were also ignored.
Yet another warning came when Japanese radio chatter was heard aboard USS Chicago over several nights preceding the Sydney raid. The ship’s communications officer, Lieutenant-Commander H. J. Mecklenburg, reported the chatter to the Garden Island Operations Room, but his report went no further.
After the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, both civilian and military personnel in Australia developed a profound complacency, a feeling that “it can’t happen here” – even as they followed accounts of the rapid southward advance of the Japanese forces. They avoided the unpleasant issues and faced reality only when confronted with it. That the Japanese might actually attack Sydney was unthinkable.
In general, Australians objected to the disruption of their lives and blamed the government for the beer shortage and food rationing. Black marketing and racketeering became common practice amongst military personnel as well as the civilian population. Further, people were irritated by frequent air raid drills being imposed on them. According to newspapers of the day, the National Emergency Service (NES), a “dad’s army” style organisation, held an air raid test on 30 May involving 20,000 NES personnel in 10 suburban municipalities. Simulated bomb casualties were treated for shocking injuries and fire brigades fought imaginary fires. The test lasted for two hours after which the NES announced that a similar test would be held in the Eastern Suburbs the following week.
The next morning the Daily Telegraph headlines announced “British Counter in Libya”. Many Sydney residents had formed the habit of scanning the newspapers daily, anxious for news of the battle areas overseas where their loved ones and friends might be. After this ritual had been completed, the reader studied the rest of the news. On that morning, it was revealed actor John Barrymore had died from pneumonia at the age of 60 years and Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi butcher of Czechoslovakia, was hanging between life and death after an assassination attempt. The main news item that caught readers attention, however, was the announcement that the beer ration for June would be increased by 15%; but it was thought doubtful whether the increase would greatly relieve the Sydney beer shortage.
Meanwhile, 30 miles off Sydney Heads, Captain Hankyu Sasaki, commanding the Third Submarine Company, was encouraged by Ito’s reconnaissance report and prepared his attack order to launch a midget submarine attack into the harbour.
The Third Submarine Company consisted of five I-class submarines, which had been assembling off Sydney Harbour since 24 May in preparation for the attack. The 3,000-tonne I-class submarines were then the world’s second largest - only the French commerce-raiding Surcouf submarine was larger (3,304 tons). Three of these submarines carried midget submarines clamped to their decks, piggy-back style, and two carried reconnaissance aircraft.
The midget submarine crews included Lieutenant Keiu Matsuo who was a key strategist in the planning of the unsuccessful midget submarine attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. When none of the craft from that operation were recovered, he returned to Japan and went to work learning how to improve the midget submarines’ performance.
The commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, was deeply affected by the loss of the 10 crew members from the midget submarine operation at Pearl Harbor, but he was convinced by those associated with them, and the crews themselves, that a second midget submarine operation would be successful if the craft were modified and the raid carried out on a harbour, which was weakly defended. Subsequently, plans were drawn up for simultaneous surprise attacks in the Indian and South Pacific Oceans.
In February 1942, Yamamoto ordered I-25 to proceed to Australian waters to carry out aerial reconnaissance over Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, to pinpoint harbour defences and to locate the heaviest concentration of Allied naval shipping. The Japanese also studied aerial photographs of major ports in the South Pacific, including Sydney Harbour, taken from Australian periodicals published in 1938. The Japanese naval authorities had also acquired Admiralty charts of the Australian coastline and its ports and harbours prior to the War in the Pacific.
At the beginning of April 1942, a force of six submarines, under the command of Captain Hankyu Sasaki, was ordered to proceed to Australian waters to search for major naval vessels. One submarine was sunk en route, reducing Sasaki’s force to five. Only after determining the location of the greatest concentration of naval shipping was the attack to take place, sometime at the end of May when the moon would be bright.
Following an aerial reconnaissance over Sydney on 23 May that reported battleships and cruisers in the harbour, Captain Sasaki ordered his submarine force to assemble off the harbour entrance. Arriving off Sydney on 28 May, he launched a second reconnaissance flight to re-affirm the presence of large warships in the harbour. Sasaki ordered the attack to commence shortly after sunset on 31 May. He shrewdly calculated that on that day Australian defences would be less alert than usual. Indeed, Australian apathy and the action of wharfies in holding up the unloading of warships had prompted a Sydney joke to the effect that Japan was fighting a total war while Australia was only engaging in a five-day-a-week war.