A SUBMARINE ADVENTURE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 59, 24 March 1944, Page 4

A SUBMARINE ADVENTURE

NAVAL estimates of the cruising range of the Japanese: midget submarines allow them only 200 or so miles. They made. a brief appearance on the first day of the Pacific war, when several engaged somewhat abortively in attacks on United States shipping in Hawaiian waters, coincidentally with the damaging air assault on the Pearl Harbour naval base. Early in June of 1942 three Japanese midgets made another, and suicidal, foray, this time: into Sydney Harbour, whence none of them escaped. The extent of the success for which they and the lives of their crew were forfeit was the infliction of some damage on what was described as an insignificant harbour vessel. The value of the midget submarine had, in fact, been merely suggested but certainly not established in the reports of the: enemy use of the new weapon. Indeed, the raid on Sydney Harbour comes into the same category as that in which the United States bombing attack on Tokio is now generally classified, as a gesture which, however gallant, was in the final accounting of more advantage to foe than to friend. It is believed that the Doolittle raid actually had a galvanising effect upon Japanese morale and hastened the construction of air raid shelters and the completion of other preparations against future raids ; and the visit of the midget submarines to Sydney no doubt came with a shock to the: complacence of the people of the Commonwealth, and was turned to good account in the tightening up of precautions against further attacks that might be regarded as possible either upon Australian ports or upon ships at sea. It has remained for the British Admiralty, so far as the. history of war in the making has revealed, to utilise a type of the midget submarine successfully for a task of a special nature—a task which could not have been as well performed by any other medium, and which had a, specific object. A war which has called forth constant examples of courage, has provided no finer example than the raid by the British midgets on the main units of the Nazi fleet in Alten Fiord, concerning which the official report has now been issued. This raid possesses the authentic Nelson touch in its sheer calculated audacity; and no one with an ounce of imagination needs to be tcld of the immense mental stamina that must stay mere physical courage in an enterprise undertaken in submarine craft in the closely-guarded and confined waters of a Norwegian fiord. The definite evidence which reconnaissance has provided of the practical success of this bold adventure makes it as noteworthy as an act of war as it is an act of heroism.