CHAPTER NINE
THE ATTACK COMMENCES
Luck was certainly on the side of the defenders, and was undeserved in the early stages when inactivity and indecision were manifested.
Royal Australian Navy, 1942-1945,
G. Hermon Gill.
Outside the harbour, the Third Submarine Company manoeuvred towards the harbour entrance as darkness was enveloping the sea. The majestic cliffs of North Head guarding the harbour approaches, and the beams at Hornby and Macquarie Lights on South Head, were clearly visible. Beyond the entrance the navigation light at Dobroyd Point was visible, and Middle Head was outlined in the failing light.
Lieutenant Matsuo joined Commander Ageta in the control room of I-22 and joked with the crew. Earlier in the day he had shaved his head in preparation for his mission, and the crew took delight in his new appearance. Ageta invited Matsuo to look through the periscope. The harbour was approximately one nautical mile wide and six miles long, with scores of complicated channels. Water depths varied considerably and the winding waterways would make the speedy passage of the midget submarines difficult.
Ageta considered Matsuo to be a capable midget submarine commander with quite a task ahead of him. After the Pearl Harbor operation, he realised that the chances of survival for Matsuo and his crewman, Tsuzuku, were remote. He also realised the danger to which I-22 was exposed in approaching so close to the harbour, and moved out to sea to make the final preparations for launching the midget submarine.
Petty Officer Tsuzuku carried out the final checks on the craft and placed bottles of mineral water, whisky, and concentrated food in the control room. The food consisted of soda biscuits, dried fish, pickled plums, peas, soft chocolate and special caramels, and had a combined nutritional value of one meal – all that was required for their mission. Matsuo examined the Admiralty chart and photographs of Sydney Harbour that had been taken from Australian periodicals. The Admiralty charts were marked in Japanese characters, “Confidential – General Staff February 1942”.
Matsuo collected his operational orders including the callsign list of the submarine force and a checklist of operational abbreviations for use between the craft when in close proximity to the enemy. The abbreviations were necessary because the midget submarines could risk being on the surface for only short periods. From the reconnaissance report, Matsuo noted the boom net and the two incomplete openings, the western opening the larger of the two. All these items he carefully placed in the small control room of the craft.
According to Japanese ritual, Matsuo and Tsuzuku changed into fresh uniforms sprayed with perfume. As a final gesture to the crew of I-22, Matsuo addressed them over the piping (boat’s address) system and thanked them for assisting him during the voyage south. Clutching a new ceremonial sword inscribed with his name, given to him by his father at their last meeting in Kure, Matsuo entered the craft through the “traffic sheath” and carefully hung the sword in the control room. Having been preceded by his crewman, Matsuo closed the hatch, sealing them from the parent submarine. Once again, I-22 headed towards the harbour where, approximately seven miles east of the entrance, he launched the midget submarine. Shortly after sunset, at 4:54 pm, Matsuo started his engines and sped away from I-22.
Similar procedures were carried out in I-27 and I-24 with the midget submarines launched at 5:28 pm and 5:40 pm, respectively. In the meantime, I-29 and I-21, now without their seaplanes, took up positions north and south of the harbour entrance so they would be in a position to observe enemy shipping movements. Captain Sasaki recorded that everything was normal and that the harbour was bathed in reflections from the foreshore lights.
The submarine carriers monitored the progress of the midget submarines on hydrophones until their drones could no longer be heard. Once they had faded, the carrier submarines proceeded to the recovery point off Port Hacking, 20 miles south of Sydney Harbour, to wait for the midgets’ return. While Captain Sasaki’s initial attack order indicated the midget recovery point was off First Point, Broken Bay, north of Sydney, this was later changed to Port Hacking because there were no known battery defences along the southern coastline.
From a working chart recovered from Matsuo’s craft after the raid, four minutes after slipping away from I-22, he fixed his first position at 260 degrees from Outer South Head Light, 7.2 miles. Later fixes put the midget submarine 253 degrees 4.1 miles, 247 degrees 3.6 miles, and 260 degrees 1.7 miles from Outer South Head Light, but no times were recorded.
Another well-known mariner had sailed exactly the same route as Matsuo 172 years earlier. Captain James Cook sailed HMS Endeavour from Botany Bay on 16 May 1770. He headed north and came across a harbour, where he took his bearings on the same points of land as Matsuo. Cook wrote the following account from his circumnavigation of the world in 1773:
We set sail from Botany Bay with a light breeze from the north-west. Soon after coming to southwards, we steered along the shore north-north-west and at noon our latitude by observation was 33 degrees 50 minutes south. At this time we were between two and three miles distance from the land and abreast of a bay or harbour which I called Port Jackson.
The position Cook described was the same as Matsuo’s last plotted position, which placed him 33 degrees 50 minutes south, between two and three miles distance from the land at North Head. Ironically, Matsuo was using a chart originally surveyed by James Cook.
While the remainder of the submarine force had departed for the recovery area, Sasaki remained off the harbour entrance to watch the enemy’s initial reaction. At 4:00 am the following morning, he telegraphed Vice-Admiral Daigo that visibility was good and that the lighthouses at the entrance to the harbour were on. He reported that about the time of the midgets’ entrance into the harbour, at approximately 7:00 pm, there were no signs of abnormalities, but at 8:00 pm he observed searchlights moving uncontrolled within the harbour. According to Sasaki, the searchlights continued to strobe the harbour for 30 minutes and, judging from this reaction, he presumed the midget submarine attack had commenced but did not know the results.
Sasaki’s report of searchlights moving about the harbour at random was in fact army batteries along the cliff tops testing their searchlights, as was the practice when changing the duty watch.
Lieutenant Chuma and Petty Officer Ohmori were the first to enter the harbour. At 7:55 pm, a crossing was recorded at the Indicator Loop Station on South Head, which was identified as the Manly ferry. This was followed four minutes later by another signature on the inner loop, also a ferry. Two minutes later, at 8:01 pm, a distinct yet smaller signature was recorded but its significance went unreported.
Chuma’s craft was discovered by Maritime Services night watchman, James Cargill, a fiery, red-headed Scotsman and an alert man. Cargill had seen service in the Merchant Navy as well as the Australian Army, and was aware of the necessity for vigilance while the boom gates were being constructed. His report of the incident is now held in the Maritime Services Board archives and is contained in a letter addressed to Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould, marked secret and dated 3 June 1942.
At about 8:15 pm I noticed something unusual between the nets and the west channel pile light. I then called my mate, W. Nangle, and asked him what he thought it was. We thought at first it was a fishing launch with no lights and knowing that that was not allowed, I went in the rowing boat to investigate. The obstacle was about 50 yards away. I went right up alongside and found it was a steel construction about four to five feet above the water, which looked like two large cylinders with iron guards around them. I went straight away to No 14 patrol boat [sic], which I saw about 80 or 100 yards away, and reported the result of my investigations to the officer in charge of the boat. He asked me what I thought it was and I told him that I thought it was a submarine or a mine and I suggested to him that he should come and investigate. He said that he could not go any closer. I then suggested he send a man with me and I would take him to it in the rowing boat. I then rowed almost alongside the obstacle, which had by this time come higher out of the water, and he said it was a submarine and asked me to put him back aboard the patrol boat as quickly as possible, which I did. The officer in charge of the patrol boat took my name and told me I could go back to my job. It would then be about 10:30 pm.
In an interview with the author in 1982, Cargill said the submarine commander may have seen him moving about in his boat. Earlier in the evening he had noticed a derrick swinging dangerously on the crane barge at the western end of the net and sculled his punt to the barge to secure the loose guys attached to the derrick before sculling back. Forty years after the attack, I asked him to recount his memory:
He tried getting through the gate on the bottom and hit the pile light inside the channel. He must have gone astern as he got one of the big rings of the net around his propeller. He struggled a long time then blew the submarine up. The metal went 40 feet aloft. How lucky we were. The pile light saved Sydney.
Cargill recounted that all inward shipping went down the Eastern Channel, including ferry boats, while the deeper Western Channel was used for outward shipping and large draught vessels. According to Cargill, the submarine was caught inside the boom net defences near the West Gate when it became entangled.
It’s plausible Chuma planned to sink a large outward bound vessel in the western channel, before misfortune overtook the midget submarine. The priorities of the midget submarine commanders were to carry out a successful attack, then to protect the crews of the mother submarines. Sealing the harbour’s major shipping channel would allow the midget submarines to return to their parent submarines in relative safety.
If this was Chuma’s plan, it could have resulted in a serious disruption to Allied naval and merchant shipping in the south-west Pacific. Dockyard facilities within the harbour may have been inaccessible and rendered useless for a considerable length of time. Damaged naval and merchant shipping would have had to be diverted to Simonstown, South Africa, the nearest dockyard large enough to cope with such vessels.
It’s also possible Chuma’s craft passed through the West Gate and simply hit the pile light before becoming entangled in the boom net. Despite the modifications to the midget submarines following the Pearl Harbor attack, their crews still had difficulty controlling them.
The official account of Chuma’s discovery varies from Cargill’s account. According to Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould’s preliminary report of the attack on Sydney Harbour, he wrote that the watchman “took some time to collect a friend and to communicate this vital information to the channel patrol boat on patrol”. In his official report of 16 July, he records that HMAS Yarroma was not informed by Cargill of the object until 9:30 pm, but the channel patrol boat would not approach, fearing the object was a magnetic mine. Cargill also confuses Yarroma for Lolita, “No 14 patrol boat”, which he saw about 80 or 100 yards away.
According to the chronological narrative, Yarroma (No. 51 patrol boat), reported a “suspicious object in net” to the Garden Island operations room at 9:52 pm and was told to close and give a full description. At 10:10 pm, Yarroma reported the “object was metal with serrated edge on top, moving with the swell.” Yarroma was ordered to give a fuller description and at 10:20 pm a stoker from Yarroma accompanied Cargill the short distance back to the object caught in the net, more than two hours after the initial discovery. At 10.30, Yarroma reported: “Object is submarine. Request permission to open fire.” Five minutes later, Yarroma reported the submarine had exploded.
A more emboldened Cargill expounded on the events of that night in interviews with the Sydney Morning Herald in 1945 and, again, in 1957. From these interviews it can be seen that a good deal more occurred during this crucial period than Muirhead-Gould mentioned in his report.
In newspaper accounts, Cargill suggested that the patrol boat should follow him in his boat to investigate, and he sculled alone towards the object. He was more than surprised to find that Yarroma had picked up anchor and made her way towards a nearby pylon from where it examined the mysterious object from a distance with a searchlight. Yarroma’s commander, Sub-Lieutenant Eyers told Cargill he thought it looked like naval wreckage, but Cargill replied it was not. Cargill reported the object was thrashing backwards and forwards, attempting to pull clear of the net and he advised Eyers that he “had better hurry up or we will have no navy left”. Sub-Lieutenant Eyers advised Cargill that it would be dangerous to go any closer, because there were depth charge canisters on his deck and he feared that the object may be a magnetic mine. Muirhead-Gould later wrote that the actions of Yarroma were “deplorable and inexplicable”.
At 9:52 pm, more than an hour and a half after Cargill first discovered the object, and over an hour after he reported his findings, Eyers notified the Operations Room at Garden Island of a “suspicious object in the net”. Yarroma was ordered to “close and give a full description”. Able-Seaman Pat Doyle on Yarroma recounted many years after the war that the channel patrol boat was unable to raise the Port War Signal Station or the Garden Island Operations Room by radio for some time after Cargill’s initial report.
At 10:20 pm, Yarroma signalled HMAS Lolita by Aldis lamp to “come over”. Under the command of Warrant Officer Herbert S. Anderson, Lolita was patrolling the East Gate opening, unaware of the activity at the western end of the boom net. Anderson immediately closed in on Yarroma and was informed of the suspicious object caught in the net and ordered to investigate. Anderson manoeuvred Lolita to within 5 yards of the object, with her stern facing the submarine so as to cover it with the patrol boat’s machine gun.
Anderson described the “baby submarine” as being about three feet out of the water with the periscope clearly visible. The stern appeared entirely submerged and it was struggling to extricate itself from the net. Unlike Eyers, Anderson realised the urgent necessity for action and ordered his crew to “standby depth charges”.
The coxswain of Lolita, Able-Seaman James Nelson, vividly recalled the anxious moments leading up to the attack. In an interview with the author he related how the channel patrol boat first examined the object with the Aldis lamp, after which both he and Able-Seaman James Crowe immediately identified it as a “baby submarine”. The periscope was rotating and the beam of their searchlight reflected from the periscope glass. At that time the Dutch submarine K-9, which had a very similar sort of net cutter on the bow, had been working with the Australian navy. Both Nelson and Crowe thought it might have been the K-9 returning to harbour, but the size of the submarine caught in the net disturbed them. Nelson recalled that the decision to attack was made by Anderson because there was every chance the submarine would break free of the net. Anderson ordered Nelson to send a short visual message to the Port War Signal Station – “Have sighted a submarine. Intend to attack.”
Lolita carried out two depth charge attacks, but the charges failed to detonate because the water depth was too shallow. When the first charge failed to detonate, Nelson and Crowe rigged three elliptical floats to a second charge, which they hoped would delay its descent in the water, enough to cause the charge to prematurely detonate. The charge could only be detonated by a combination of depth and pressure and they reasoned that by delaying the descent, enough water might enter the pressure chamber to trigger the detonator. However, this charge also failed to explode. Nelson and Crowe rigged a third charge in a similar manner but as Lolita was making her run, the submarine exploded. The blast was so big, loud and forceful that it lifted the patrol boat out of the water before she heeled violently over to port. Nelson said later that Lolita was fortunate not to get blown to pieces along with the submarine.
When a large oil patch appeared on the surface, it left no doubt in Anderson’s mind that the submarine was destroyed. In his report, he recorded that the midget submarine exploded at 10:35 pm. After informing Eyers of what had happened, Anderson resumed his patrol at the East Gate opening while awaiting instructions; but none came.
NAP flotilla leader, L. H. Winkworth, in Lauriana, was at the harbour entrance when Chuma’s craft self-destructed. He recorded in the vessel’s running log that he saw an orange-coloured flash roar 40-foot above the sea, followed by a delayed explosion which sounded to him like a depth charge. Immediately afterwards, searchlight beams from concealed crevices at George’s Heights and rock faces near Lady Bay converged on the boom net area. Visibility at this time was fair, although the night sky was still cloudy. Winkworth watched the searchlights and the channel patrol boats scurrying along the boom net and waited for instructions from the Port War Signal Station; but none came.
When the submarine exploded, the anti-submarine vessel, HMAS Yandra, also on patrol at the harbour entrance, sped towards the scene of the explosion to investigate, while Lauriana waited off Inner North Head and Allura patrolled off South Reef. Yarrawonga had gone off duty earlier for an hour’s rest and Winkworth ordered the auxiliary vessel back on patrol.
Before the explosion, Muirhead-Gould had been dining with officers from USS Chicago at his official residence in Elizabeth Bay. Following Yarroma’s initial report of a suspicious object in the net, he was unconcerned, aware that seaweed and other debris had clogged the net over previous days. He took no immediate action and, instead, decided to wait for Yarroma’s complete report. Following Yarroma’s more alarming report of a metal object with serrated edge on top, he suggested to Captain Bode that he should return to his ship and proceed to sea with Perkins. At 10:27 pm, he issued a general alarm for all ships to “take anti-submarine precautions” and closed the port to outward shipping. Eight minutes later, the midget submarine exploded.
Muirhead-Gould had once been reported saying that he hoped the defences of Sydney Harbour would not have to be put to the test. His forebodings were now realised when he issued a general alarm:
Presence of enemy submarine at boom gate is suspected. Ships are to take action against attack.
The explosion resounded through the harbour suburbs, shattering the stillness of the night. With the explosion, Sydney had received its first practical confirmation of the close proximity of the enemy. But getting the alarm out was another thing. Muirhead-Gould writes in his report of the great congestion in signal traffic through the Port War Signal Station overlooking the harbour approaches.
It is evident that Port War Signal Station is not capable of, and was never intended to cope with, such a situation. It was impossible for the Operations Room at Garden Island to communicate with these boats direct, and the only alternative method was by boat. In order to ascertain exactly what was happening, I had myself to go down to the boom and interview officers on the spot and return with the information to Garden Island.
Muirhead-Gould highlighted that channel patrol boats and naval auxiliary patrol boats were not fitted with R/T transmitters, and they had no signalmen, which complicated visual communications. He also reported that “the R/T set at Port War Signal Station was out of action at the time of the incident”. As a result, the general alarm had to be conveyed by word-of-mouth by the duty staff officer at Garden Island from a boat scurrying around the harbour to alert the defences. Each vessel had to be informed individually, and many of those vessels that did have R/T transmitters had switched their sets off for the night. Some vessels were unaware of the alarm until the following morning.
Meanwhile, a second submarine had penetrated the harbour defences, crossing the inner indicator loop at 9:48 pm and, as yet, remained undetected. 