SUBMARINES SEEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 August 1939, Page 7

SUBMARINES SEEN

ACCORDING TO QUEENSLAND OBSERVERS SOME CIRCUMSTANTIAL DETAILS. DEFENCE MINISTER’S THEORY. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright SYDNEY, August 18. The Minister of Defence, Mr Street, who was visiting Sydney today, declared that his department had received reports concerning a submarine or submarines oil the coast from Townsville, and admitted that three air force planes had specially searched the locality earlier in the week without sighting anything of a suspicious nature. He had come to the conclusion they must have been whales, not submarines. Further reports from Brisbane today strengthen the view that a submarine is operating in the vicinity of the Barrier Reef where the crows ol fishing boats, all reliable men, adhere to their original statement that they saw submarines, and also repeat their assertion that a periscope was seen on various occasions.

Captain Leslie Thompson, of Bundaberg, stated while sailing a yacht GO miles off Bundaberg en route to the Barrier Reef last night, he saw a bright light a mile and a half on the port beam accompanied by flares. Thinking a vessel was in distress he set a course in that direction, but when he got to the scene the vessel had disappeared or submerged. Residents of Palm Island are quite convinced that lights they saw recently were those of a submarine, not an ordinary ship's lights. There was some speculation as to whether the lights were those of a vessel engaged in smuggling Chinese or opium into Australia.