Attack on Sydney Harbour
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| Attack on Sydney Harbour | |||||||
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| Part of World War II, Pacific War | |||||||
 June 1, 1942. A Japanese Ko-hyoteki class midget submarine, believed to be Midget No. 14, is raised from Sydney Harbour. (Photograph by Ronald Noel Keam.) |
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| Combatants | |||||||
| Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands. | Japan | ||||||
| Commanders | |||||||
| Gerard Muirhead-Gould | Hankyu Sasaki | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| Two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, two armed merchant cruisers, three destroyers, two corvettes, one submarine, two anti-submarine vessels and six channel patrol boats. | five submarines, three midget submarines | ||||||
| Casualties | |||||||
| 22 dead; one depot ship sunk; one fighter plane lost due to mechanical failure. | six dead; three midget submarines and two spotter planes lost. | ||||||
| South West Pacific campaign |
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| Philippines 1941-42 – Dutch East Indies 1941-42 – Portuguese Timor – Australia – New Guinea – Philippines 1944-45 – Borneo 1945 |
| Battle for Australia |
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| Air raids – Darwin – Broome – Coral Sea – Naval attacks – Sydney & Newcastle – Kokoda – Milne Bay |
In late May and early June, 1942, a group of five Imperial Japanese Navy submarines made a series of attacks on Sydney, Australia and the nearby port of Newcastle. These attacks are one of the best known examples of Axis naval activity in Australian waters during World War II. On the night of May 31-June 1, the submarines launched three Ko-hyoteki class midget submarines against Allied shipping in Sydney Harbour. A torpedo exploded under a small Royal Australian Navy (RAN) depot ship HMAS Kuttabul, killing 21 people. On June 8, two of the submarines shelled Sydney and Newcastle, with little effect.
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[edit] The forces
On May 18, the submarines I-22, I-24 and I-27 left the major naval base at Truk Lagoon, in the Japanese territory of the Caroline Islands. Each was carrying a midget submarine. They later made a rendezvous with two other submarines, I-21, I-29 and 56 kilometres (35 miles) off Sydney. The submarine group, known as the Eastern Advanced Detachment, was commanded by Captain Hankyu Sasaki. Its main mission was reconnaissance, although it was planned that any "major enemy warships" sighted would be attacked with the midgets. The Imperial Japanese Navy had first used midget submarines during the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. By May, it was planning to use them in virtually simultaneous attacks on two harbours: Sydney and Diego Suarez, Madagascar.[1] (See Battle of Madagascar for more details of the attack on Diego Suarez.)
The Allied Naval Officer in Charge, Sydney, was a British Rear Admiral, Gerard Muirhead-Gould. Naval vessels in port included: the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser Chicago, the USN destroyers Perkins and Dobbin, the RAN minelayer Bungaree and the Royal Indian Navy minesweeper HMIS Bombay, all in Man-of-War Anchorage; the RAN heavy cruiser Canberra in Farm Cove; the RAN auxiliary cruisers Kanimbla and Westralia, in Neutral Bay; the obsolescent light cruiser HMAS Adelaide, on the west side of Garden Island; the RAN corvettes Whyalla and Geelong, on the north-west corner of Garden Island, and; the Royal Netherlands Navy submarine K-IX and the converted suburban ferry Kuttabul, at the south-east corner of Garden Island.
Other defences included an electromagnetic indicator loop at Sydney Heads. At the inner entrance to the harbour there was a semi-completed antitorpedo net, between George's Head on Middle Head, and Green Point on Inner South Head. The centre part of the net, including boom gates, was complete but there were gaps at each end. The net had gates to allow vessels to enter and leave the harbour. The anti-submarine vessel HMAS Yandra on duty patrolling near the harbour entrance and a similar vessel, HMAS Bingera, was on stand-by at the Naval Anchorage in Woolloomooloo. The minesweepers HMAS Goonambee and HMAS Samuel Benbow were located in Watson's Bay. Six channel patrol boats armed with depth charges and four unarmed auxiliary patrol boats were also on duty in the vicinity of the boom gates.
[edit] The midget submarine attack
Three of the Japanese submarines carried spotter seaplanes. On May 23, the pilot of a Yokosuka E14Y1 from I–29 made a brief flight over the Sydney-Newcastle area, detecting a large number of ships in Sydney Harbour. However, the plane's wing was damaged shortly after landing near I-29.
The following day, at 3.45am, I-21 launched its own E14Y1. The pilot, Warrant Officer Susumu Ito, made several reconnaissance circuits over Sydney Harbour. P-39 fighters from the United States Army Air Forces's 41st Pursuit Squadron, based at Bankstown Airport, were sent up to investigate, but by that time Ito had spotted Chicago, believing it to be a battleship and had returned to I-21. Ito's plane capsized soon after landing and was then scuttled.
The following afternoon, the Japanese force approached to within 11 kilometres of Sydney Heads, and at about 4.30pm the three midget submarines were launched. Midget No. 14 was detected by harbour defences at about 8.00pm, but was not precisely located until it became entangled in the net. The channel patrol boat HMAS Lolita, a converted yacht, dropped three depth charges that failed to explode, due to a lack of water depth. Before a similar vessel, HMAS Yarroma, was able to launch its own depth charges, No. 14's self-demolition explosives were ignited, destroying the vessel and killing the two crew members, Lieutenant Kenshi Chuma and Petty Officer Takeshi Ohmori.
At 9.48pm, Midget "A" (also known as Midget No. 24, or M-24) entered the harbour and headed west towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was also detected and a general alarm was sounded at 10.27pm.
Midget No. 21 entered the harbour after Midget "A". At 10.52pm, the crew of the unarmed auxiliary patrol boat Lauriana spotted Midget No. 21's conning tower above the surface and signalled HMAS Yandra. Just after 10.54pm, Yandra attempted to ram the sub, near Taylor's Bay, and at 11.07pm Yandra dropped six depth charges. These caused serious damage to Midget No. 21 and the crew of Lieutenant Keiu Matsuo and Petty Officer Masao Tsuzuku committed suicide with their handguns to avoid capture.
By this time the waters of the inner harbour were well-illuminated by searchlights and Midget "A" was spotted by Allied personnel about 200 metres from Garden Island, and was fired on by Chicago and Geelong. Some 5-inch shells from Chicago accidentally hit a small fortified island, Fort Denison, and fragments landed in the harbourside suburbs of Cremorne and Mosman.[2] At about 11.26pm the submarine's crew, Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban and Petty Officer Namori Ashibe, returned fire with two torpedoes. One torpedo ran ashore on Garden Island without exploding. The other passed under K-IX and struck the harbour bed beneath Kuttabul where it exploded, sinking the ship and killing 19 RAN personnel and two British seamen. As a result of the explosion K-IX was severely damaged by an impact from Kuttabul.
Midget "A" then disappeared with its crew, before it reached the larger Japanese submarines. (See the Aftermath section of this article for further details.)
[edit] The Shelling of Sydney and Newcastle
Over the next week, the Allied navies and air forces searched, without luck, for the mother submarines.
On June 8, just after midnight, I-24 surfaced about 10 km (6 mi) off the Sydney suburb of Maroubra. For a four minute period, the submarine's deck gun was fired at the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Every shot landed well short of its target, with at least 10 shells hitting the residential suburbs of Rose Bay, Woollahra and Bellevue Hill. All but one of the shells failed to explode and there were no fatalities or serious injuries. Several houses were destroyed or badly damaged. Lt George Cantello of the 41st PS took off from Bankstown, but suffered mechanical failure soon afterwards, crashed and was killed. I-24 submerged and left the scene before it could be located by defence forces.
About two hours later, I-21 surfaced about 9 km (5.5 mi) north east of Newcastle. At about 2.17 am, its deck gun fired the first of eight illuminating star shells and 26 live rounds towards the Newcastle shipyards, at Carrington. From about 2.26, the coastal artillery at Fort Scratchley returned fire. I-21 continued firing for about another 10 minutes. There were no casualties and little damage was caused. I-21 submerged and left the scene
[edit] Aftermath
The raid was the first time that Sydney had been attacked by enemy military forces. It remains the only such attack to have taken place. Although the raid lacked the psychological impact of the air raids on Darwin several weeks earlier, and it failed to sink any major warships, it nevertheless represented a symbolic victory for Japan, soon after its setback at the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Like the bodies from the Kuttabul, the bodies of four of the Japanese submariners were recovered. The Japanese seamen were cremated with full military honours and their ashes were returned to their families in Japan by way of a neutral country.
Two of the Japanese midget sumbarines were raised and used to construct a composite midget submarine. This submarine toured Australia during the war and is now on display at the Australian War Memorial.
Chicago and Canberra were both lost in battle within a year.
I-21 and I-22 both disappeared at sea within a year of the Sydney attack. I-24 was sunk by Allied forces off Alaska in 1943. I-27 was sunk in the Indian Ocean in 1944. I-29 became one of only a few Japanese submarines to reach Nazi-occupied Europe, but was sunk off the Philippines on its return trip in 1944.
On November 28, 2005, documentary filmmaker Damien Lay claimed in a television documentary He’s Coming South – The Attack On Sydney Harbour shown internationally on The History Channel that the wreckage of Midget "A" was buried under sand on the seabed, 20km north of Sydney Harbour, just east of Lion Island, at the mouth of Broken Bay. Lay claimed to have confirmed that copper wiring found at the site was consistent with that used in similar Japanese vessels [3]. However, a few weeks later, New South Wales Planning Minister Frank Sartor announced that sonar scans conducted by the New South Wales Heritage Office at the location specified had found no trace of the lost submarine.[4]
[edit] References/external links
- Kennedy, David (2003). The Midget Submarine Attack against Sydney: May 1942. Mysteries/Untold Sagas of the Imperial Japanese Navy. CombinedFleet.com. Retrieved on 2006-11-06.
- Steven L Carruthers (1982), Australia Under Siege: Japanese Submarine Raiders, 1942. Solus Books. ISBN 0959361405
