A couple of interesting stories about the wartime sub that sank off Bungan Head on the northern beaches. (thanks to the Goat for rounding these up)
From NSW govt Dept of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts website…
For over 60 years one of the great Australian wartime and maritime mysteries was the whereabouts of the third and last Japanese midget submarine, which invaded Sydney Harbour on the evening of 31 May 1942. That night, the harbour was full of allied naval vessels and the midget submarines were on a mission to inflict maximum damage.
Read more…
And here’s a fun and very well written little story called No Bodies: what became of the crew of M-24 (published on the website afloat.com.au.
The mystery and intrigue surrounding the missing crew of the Japanese midget submersible and their postattack steps are carefully retraced by expatriate historian, Associate Professor Kojihiro Matsuda*.
As my colleagues and I think, the crew did not die but abandoned their sinking midget submersible by jumping-off and going ashore at the Collaroy Basin. The damaged midget M-24 drifted on, empty, and sank quietly off Bungan Head. It was still dark, on the south end of Fisherman’s Beach, as Ban and Ashibe brushed the soft northern beaches sand from their feet and put their highly unpopular polyester socks and rubbersoled, lace-up, special submariners’ shoes back on. They easily skirted the tank traps that had been laid along the beach, laughing quietly, because as far as they knew; no tank-landing was being considered.
Smoking a navy-issue cigarette he had kept dry in a cellulose acetate drybag, superior officer Ban made the decision to proceed north by land to the end of the peninsular, confident that they would be able to signal the mother sub from the headland for a belated pickup.
Reaching the narrow sandy strip behind Collaroy Beach which ran beside the recently upgraded Pittwater Road, they saw on the other side of the road what they thought was a concrete bunker. It was in fact the local cinema, with The Wizard of Oz spelt out in belatedly dimmed incandescent bulbs. Wooden power poles and weatherboard houses lined both sides of the un-kerbed but upgraded road.
As they wandered North they saw a military radar station in complete darkness, its radar antenna motionless.
All was quiet except for some earlyrising roosters on a nearby chook farm and to the north a few still undimmed streetlights pinpointed the small settlement at Narrabeen.
