SIGHTED & SUNK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 July 1943, Page 3

SIGHTED & SUNK

JAPANESE SUBMARINE IN SOLOMONS AREA

FEAT OF NEW ZEALAND CREW. MANNING HUDSON BOMBER. (By Robin Miller.) GUADALCANAL. A brief message crackled out of a stormy skv into the radio dugout of the Royal New Zealand Air Force on Guadalcanal. It was from the New Zealand crew of a Lockheed-Hudson reconnaissance bomber which was flying far out over Japanese-dominated waters. Ils four words were: “Sighted sub. Sank same.”

They were old words, which had been made famous months before by an American flyer in another part of the Pacific, and the young Auckland sergeant pilot who was now stealing them knew it as well as anybody. Ever since he read them he had been waiting for the day when he might send the same message, but about a submarine of his own sinking. This was the day. Flying the Hudson deep into enemy territory on unhurried observation of everything from weather conditions to hostile movements, is a familiar task for every New Zealand air crew based in the. Solomon Islands, but it is not the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt. The most seasoned crew finds each patrol a hew test of skill and nerves and alertness against ambush by enemy fighters. So it was with the five New Zealanders in the late afternoon of this particular day as they reached the farthest point of their patrol. From the navigator’s position in the nose to the gun-turret near the tail, watchful eyes swept the sky and sea. The wireless operator and gunner, from Tc Kawa, sat in. the cockpit alongside the Auckland sergeant pilot who was the Hudson’s captain, while another Auckland sergeant stood watch in the astro hatch behind them. The Te Kawa man’s head, turning to scan the ocean on his side of the plane, stopped suddenly as his eyes riveted themselves on something big and dark which lay on the water about three miles to the south-east. “LET’S GET HIM!” It looked big enough to be a ship, and he switched on his telephone mouth piece and said so. The intercom, began to chatter. “It’s a Jap ship all right.” “Is it a shin or a sub.? Looks more like a sub.” “Yes, it’s a blanky Tojo sub.” “Let’s get him!” As the Aucklander at the controls began the approach, they saw the enemy submarine clearly silhouetted in the fading light. It lay fully surfaced and stationary on the fringe of a rainsquall which dropped from low cloud, and the captain decided to use that squall as cover for a low-level attack. He gathered speed in a shallow dive, and plunged into the wall of rain, and when the Hudson broke out of the squall it was on top of the submarine. On the conning-tower, which bore the red rising sun insignia on a white background, three Japanese sailors in white roll-necked jumpers stared up in wonder. The Patea sergeant in the gun-turret of the Hudson was filled with longing to sweep them into the sea with his guns as the aircraft roared overhead. When he found that the position of the plane prevented him from doing so, he swore in bitter frustration; all he could do was to watch the startled Japanese scramble madly to get. below. By the time the submarine began to move the Hudson was turning into the attack position with her bomb-doors open and the switches set for a spaced salvo of depth-charges and bombs. Now the enemy was attempting a desperate crash-dive, but only the bows were under water. ■ Plenty of moral support was being dinned into the bomber pilot’s ears. “We’ll get the so-and-so this time,” he promised. DIRECT HITS SCORED. Low over the submarine he measured his distance with a careful eye. He pressed the switch which would release the high-explosive bombs, and felt the Hudson buck a little as the charges fell away. In his compartment in the bottom of the plane’s nose the navigator, a flying officer from Te Awamutu, and the only commissioned officer aboard, stared tensely below. Almost before the charges had hit, his voice came back in a scream of joy: “You’ve got it.” The score was one near-miss and two apparently direct hits, one in front of the conning tower and the second behind it.

Back in his turret, the Patea reargunner now had what he calls a “grandstand view of an aviator’s pipedream.” Looking back across the tail he saw the submarine half submerged, with its screws still turning. Then, as it took the last explosion, a huge mushroom of oil and water gushed 30 feet into the air and the submarine disappeared. It was just the sight he had been waiting to see in 31 years of wartime reconnaissance flying. A patch of cil spread quickly over half an acre, and pieces of what looked like wreckage bobbed up in the middle of it. While the others babbled their commentaries happily through the phones, the Auckland flyer remembered the article he had seen months before about an American flyer who must have felt as pleased with himself as the New Zealanders did now. He grinned, and handed the wireless operator his message for the base. Their jubilation temporarily exhausted, the New Zealanders settled down to the arduous flight back to Guadalcanal. The weather had closed in and it was growing dark. They flew through rain and thunderstorms all the way, sometimes using the lightning flashes to pick up islands on their course. As the Hudson pitched into the storms a routine message was flashed to it from the radio room on Guadalcanal, and immediately after it came two strictly off-the-record words: “Good show!”