During the early months of the Pacific war, Allied submarines retreated from the Japanese onslaught to Western Australia, which itself was bracing for possible enemy invasion.
Australia had already been officially at war for more than two years before the outbreak of the Pacific war. Traditionally Australia looked to Britain for leadership and protection, so when the mother country entered the Second World War in September 1939, Australia’s prime minister, Robert Menzies, announced to the nation almost immediately that as “a result, Australia is also at war.”1 Four months later the first Australian troops, members of the Second Australian Imperial Forces, were dispatched to fight in the Middle East, and by 1941 three Australian divisions were fighting in the eastern Mediterranean theater. As one historian puts it, the first two years of the war afforded Australia “with a long warm-up session” for what followed.2In November 1941 the war crept closer to Australia when the German raider Kormoran sank the cruiser HMAS Sydney a little over a hundred miles off the Western Australian coast. Although not a single member of the crew of 645 on board the Sydney survived, the attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor the following month came as a much greater shock. John Curtin had only taken office as Australia’s prime minister on 7 October, the same month that he turned 51. Informed of the Japanese attack during the early hours of 8 December, Curtin told Australians in a radio broadcast that evening, “This is our darkest hour.” He also informed his audience that “our efforts in the past two years must be as nothing compared with the efforts we must now put forward.”3 Three days later, Curtin warned that “the enemy is seeking the earliest possible hour in which he can set foot on our soil.”4
The quick succession of disasters that followed further eroded public confidence. The sinking of the British warships Repulse and Prince of Wales by aircraft off Malaya on 10 December sank the myth of Royal Navy supremacy in the Far East. Wake Island, Manila, Guam, Hong Kong, Thailand, North Borneo, Singapore, and the Netherlands East Indies all succumbed to the enemy offensive with a speed that surprised even the Japanese. Especially with the surrender on 15 February 1942 of Singapore, long considered the linchpin of regional security, the possibility of an invasion of Australia from the north seemed very real. With the fall of Singapore, 62,000 Allied soldiers, including 15,000 Australians, became prisoners of the Japanese. Only four days after the surrender, the Japanese launched a massive air attack on Darwin, Australia’s northernmost city. In a memorable phrase, General Thomas Blamey characterized Australians as “a lot of gazelles in a dell on the edge of a jungle.”5 With a national population of only seven million and more than 12,000 miles of coastline to defend, Australians felt intensely vulnerable.
Isolated on the edge of the continent, with an even sparser population and longer coastline than the other states, Western Australia was especially vulnerable. Occupying 965,000 square miles, about one-third of Australia’s total land mass, the state had a population of about half a million. It seemed the nightmare of an Asian invasion, long ingrained into the Australian psyche, might materialize. A meeting of Australia’s defense chiefs on 28 February discussed the difficulties of reinforcing the west as well as Fremantle’s potential as a Japanese fleet base, fears that were exacerbated when radio propagandist Tokyo Rose boasted that Perth would soon fall to the Japanese.6 At Fremantle, considered by some an obvious target for a Japanese attack, residents held a public meeting as early as December 1941 calling on the government to draw up evacuation plans.7 By March 1942 more than a hundred ships crowded with refugees from the Japanese onslaught in Southeast Asia arrived at Fremantle, sometimes forced to moor four abreast in the harbor.8 The escapees from Java included seven Australian corvettes and four old U.S. destroyers that reached Fremantle on 4 March.9 Despite military censorship, the flow of people and shipping south afforded abundant evidence of the war’s proximity.
Among the refugees arriving at Fremantle were British seamen who survived the sinking of their destroyer HMS Electra in the Battle of the Java Sea. They had spent hours in the water before a submarine suddenly approached on the night of 28 February. Many expected to be machine-gunned by the Japanese, but the submarine proved to be American. Under the command of Lieutenant Henry Glass Munson, S-38 took aboard some 43 men and then continued the search for survivors until eventually recovering another 11 sailors. Within the cramped confines of S-38, survivors recalled that the Americans “couldn’t do enough for us,” surrendering their bunks and providing clothing.10
On the morning of Tuesday, 3 March 1942, Japanese air raids brought the war directly to Western Australia. Flying from Penfoei airstrip at Kupang on the western end of Timor, Japanese Mitsubishi AGM2 Zero fighters raided the northern towns of Wyndham and Broome. The planes strafed the airfield and destroyed a fuel dump at Wyndham, while another group of planes staged a more spectacular raid on Broome some 435 miles southwest. The sleepy pearling port of Broome, more than 1,200 miles north of Perth, had assumed a new importance as a staging point for moving supplies north to Java and then as part of an escape route from the Dutch East Indies as people fled from the Japanese assault. A formation of nine Zero fighters wiped out all the aircraft based at Broome save one small floatplane that managed to escape south. Many of the planes were crammed with Dutch refugees. Between 70 and 80 people were killed in the raid, some victims apparently taken by sharks as they swam for their lives from the burning aircraft in Roebuck Bay.11
Western Australians found themselves assaulted not only from the air but from the sea. On the same day as the air attacks on Wyndham and Broome, 3 March, Japanese submarines made their presence known off Western Australia’s coast. That morning the 8,667-ton Dutch freighter Siantar was torpedoed by I-1 northwest of Shark Bay. Of the Siantar’s crew of 58, 21 men were lost with the ship. The same day, I-3 attacked the 8,988-ton steamship Narbada northwest of Fremantle en route to Colombo, Ceylon. Armed with a 4-inch gun, the Narbada exchanged fire with I-3 for nearly an hour before the submarine broke off her attack. That afternoon I-3 made another attack, this time on the 8,720-ton armed New Zealand steamer Tongariro en route from Wellington to Fremantle. The same day, survivors from the ill-fated Dutch freighter Parigi were recovered. On the evening of 1 March, at 2003, I-2 had sunk the 1,172-ton Parigi west of Cervantes while the ship was en route from Tjilatjap, Java, to Bunbury, Western Australia. The survivors, in two lifeboats, were picked up by the southbound corvette HMAS Yarra two days later.12
Sensing the prospect of further Japanese attacks on Western Australia, regulations promulgated on 11 March ordered the removal of all road signs within 20 miles of the coast. By the end of the month, blackout conditions were implemented at Fremantle and the beachside suburb of Cottesloe.13
Prime Minister Curtin had a firsthand appreciation of the situation in Western Australia. He was the elected member of Parliament for Fremantle, and his family resided in Cottesloe. With the British apparently unable to come to Australia’s assistance, Curtin made his own views clear in a statement at the end of December 1941. In words later recognized as a historical watershed, Curtin told his countrymen, “Australia looks to America.”14
It was against this backdrop of fear and anticipation that the first American submarines arrived at Fremantle. By 10 March 1942, ten U.S. submarines had reached the port, each carrying crews with their own stories of near-disaster. Among the most demoralized was Lieutenant Commander Tyrell Dwight Jacobs, commander of the USS Sargo (SS-188). Shortly after he arrived at Fremantle on 5 March, Jacobs told a senior officer, “I’ve had it. I want to be relieved.”15 It had been barely a year since Jacobs assumed command of the Sargo. Based at Manila when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Jacobs departed the following day for his first war patrol in the area off Cam Ranh Bay, a deep-water port on the coast of Indochina (today Vietnam) used by the Japanese fleet. The Sargo crew fired 13 torpedoes at enemy ships, but all missed, and Jacobs had no explanation for this other than a belief that the torpedoes ran deeper than set or that the magnetic exploders were faulty. With a master’s degree in ordnance engineering, Jacobs understood torpedoes well, and his suspicions that the weapons were faulty would eventually be confirmed. At the time, however, Jacobs received only criticism for his lack of success.16
With the destruction of the American submarine base in the Philippines on 10 December 1941, the Sargo and her crew retreated to the Dutch naval base at Surabaya on the island of Java. Making her second war patrol from the Dutch East Indies, the Sargo delivered a million rounds of .30-caliber ammunition to beleaguered Army troops on the Philippine island of Mindanao. During the patrol the Sargo crew picked up 24 members of the U.S. Army 14th Bombardment Squadron who had escaped from the island of Luzon. The extra men on board made the return voyage to Surabaya uncomfortable, especially after a refrigerating compressor broke down and temperatures in the submarine hovered at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.17
An article published in the London Times on 27 February 1942 boasted of American submarine successes in the vicinity of Java, claiming that the adjacent waters were “ideal for submarine warfare, and this is one of the most potent arguments in favour of holding Java as an allied base, whatever the cost may be.”18 The reality was quite different. Japanese air raids soon forced the abandonment of Surabaya, and the Sargo’s next patrol included evacuating 31 Navy personnel to Australia. As the Sargo approached Fremantle, cruising on the surface, lookouts spotted a plane about five miles away. Flying just under a heavy bank of cloud, the twin-engine aircraft appeared to be heading straight for them. Although supposedly in friendly skies, Jacobs ordered the submarine to dive. In heavy seas the Sargo struggled to submerge, however, and while still partially surfaced a bomb rolled the submarine on her side and simultaneously lifted the stern out of the water. As the Sargo reached a depth of 50 feet, a second bomb detonated with what Jacobs described as “terrific” force.19
Many of the men on board reported seeing the submarine’s steel hull bend in from the explosion. Concussion from the bomb damaged the conning tower hatch, burst light bulbs, broke depth gauges, and jammed the stern planes, plunging the Sargo into a runaway dive toward the bottom of the sea. The crew managed to regain control of the dive, but an assessment of damage found the conning tower flooded, the periscopes wrecked, and three heads (toilets) destroyed.20
Such a beating from an enemy plane might have been palatable, but the Sargo had been almost destroyed by an ally, a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson. It was the first attack made on a submarine by the RAAF Western Area. Alerted to the likely presence of a Japanese sub in the area by the destroyer USS Whipple (DD-217), the Hudson’s aircrew made a near-fatal assumption. No one had briefed them on U.S. submarines heading toward Fremantle.21 Indeed, throughout the war Allied submarines remained vulnerable to “friendly fire.” By the end of hostilities, British submariner Mervyn Wingfield had been attacked not only by Italian and Japanese aircraft but also by Norwegian, French, British, and American planes.22 When the Sargo crew docked at Fremantle, the Australian aviators who bombed them were there to apologize, but Jacobs remained adamant that he wanted to be relieved. He told his division commander, Commander Stuart “Sunshine” Murray, that he had lost all confidence in the torpedoes and that his nerves were shot.23
Another submariner to be relieved of command at Fremantle was Lieutenant Commander Theodore C. “Ted” Aylward, skipper of the Searaven (SS-196). The submarine had been undergoing an overhaul at the Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines when Japanese bomb shrapnel punctured her superstructure and wrecked part of the deck. After making emergency repairs, the Searaven crew departed on 13 December 1941, only to be depth-charged by destroyers at the entrance to Manila Bay. They were attacked again when patrolling off Cam Ranh Bay. While traveling south to Fremantle, they played cat and mouse with another submarine thought to be Japanese. Only after reaching port did the crew discover that the other submarine was the Swordfish (SS-193), which had been ordered to Fremantle while en route back to Surabaya. When the Searaven limped into Fremantle, the crew’s food supplies were nearly exhausted, and Aylward, suffering high blood pressure and other symptoms of stress, was replaced.24
Captain John Wilkes, who commanded American submarines in the Philippines and then in Java, departed for Australia in the Spearfish (SS-190) along with other senior officers and top-secret code equipment. The Spearfish had already been depth-charged off Celebes and then took another pounding as a Japanese invasion force approached Java. The submarine’s skipper, Lieutenant Roland Fremont Pryce, sent a message that he was worn out, and he was relieved by Lieutenant James Charles Dempsey. When the Spearfish sailed for Fremantle, Pryce traveled as a passenger on board his former command.25
Getting the Spearfish to Fremantle proved problematic. While the crew knew the latitude and longitude of Fremantle from a Dutch sailing table, they lacked detailed charts of the Western Australian coast and had to make do with an old map from a National Geographic magazine that one of the officers had acquired in Manila. When they were 50 or 60 miles out of Fremantle, they were met by a Royal Australian Navy destroyer that transferred some detailed charts on how to enter the harbor. At Fremantle they found the port crowded with ships; perhaps a hundred merchant vessels were tied up flying various national flags, along with destroyers and other warships that had survived the retreat from the Philippines. The most welcome sight was the submarine tender USS Holland (AS-3). The Spearfish pulled alongside the mother ship, and the crew boarded the tender to find out the latest news.26
Even in March 1942 the Americans were not the only submariners in Fremantle. At the time Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, there were 15 Dutch submarines in the Far East, including 12 K-class boats and 3 O-class boats. During the frantic period between the Japanese attack on the Philippines and the evacuation of Surabaya in early March, Dutch submarines based in the Netherlands East Indies in fact made a stronger showing than their U.S. counterparts. The Dutch managed to sink six enemy ships compared with three by U.S. submarines.27 These early successes, however, were followed by a series of disasters in which one Dutch submarine was lost in a British minefield, one fell victim to a Japanese destroyer, one was sunk by a Japanese submarine, and another was scuttled after being badly damaged by a depth-charge attack. By the time the base at Surabaya was evacuated only seven Dutch submarines remained operational; four were sent to Ceylon and three to Fremantle.
Those that arrived in Australia (K-VIII, K-IX, and K-XII) were the oldest and needed repair the most. The K-class (Kolonien, or Colonial) submarines had been purpose-built for service in the Far East, equipped with air conditioning and gun armament and able to make lengthy voyages. By World War II, however, many of the Dutch K-class submarines, first based at Surabaya in 1924, were largely obsolete. It had been two years since any spare parts for submarines reached the Far East from the Netherlands, and any repair to the diesel engines required the arduous task of making parts locally. Of the three Dutch submarines that arrived at Fremantle, two never left Australian waters.28
K-VIII departed Surabaya on 3 March 1942 and reached Fremantle on the evening of 17 March. With Surabaya burning, K-VIII had difficulty taking on sufficient fuel for the journey and ended up needing to be towed the final leg to Fremantle. Johannes Loep, who arrived in Fremantle with the submarine supply ship MV Janssens, was assigned to work in K-VIII’s engine room, but when the Americans inspected the submarine in May they declared her unfit for war patrols. Loep and five others were transferred to England to join another submarine.29 With K-VIII decommissioned, she was pillaged for parts. The main battery and some electric motors were installed on the troubled K-IX, while the conning-tower deck was used for the pilot boat Lady Forrest (today on exhibit in the Western Australia Maritime Museum). One of the submarine’s propulsion electric motors ended up in a winch house used to service the submarine slipway later constructed at the west end of Fremantle Harbour, and the empty hull was towed to Jervois Bay south of Fremantle, where it lay abandoned for many years until determined to be a navigational hazard. The remains were finally blown up in 1957.30
Like K-VIII, K-IX was originally built in 1922, but survived longer. After participating in antisubmarine training off Fremantle, the aging boat was sent to Sydney in May. With increasing Japanese submarine activity off Australia’s coasts and without any submarines of its own, the Royal Australian Navy accepted K-IX as a training vessel to provide a target for Asdic (sonar) operators to practice on.31 Only K-XII, originally commissioned in 1925, carried out operational missions from Fremantle during 1942. As Japanese forces closed on Surabaya, K-XII was the last vessel to leave the Dutch base on 6 March. Her passengers included Rear Admiral Pieter Koenraad, the naval commander of Surabaya, along with his staff. The submarine originally headed for Ceylon, but after encountering two Japanese sub hunters and surviving a 12-hour depth-charging, K-XII diverted to Fremantle, arriving on the evening of 20 March.32 K-XII’s crew had already distinguished themselves by sinking a Japanese troopship and tanker off Kota Bharu, Malaya, in December 1941. On Christmas Day 1941 they recovered nine men from the crew of a shot-down British Catalina seaplane and delivered the men to Singapore two days later. After arriving at Fremantle the submarine was sent to Sydney for refit before returning to operate from Western Australia from September 1942 to May 1943.
The Dutch submariners had even more reason than the Americans to feel demoralized in the opening months of the Pacific war. While they had sunk more enemy ships, they had also lost far more men to enemy action and had to cope with the abysmal mechanical condition of their boats. Most of all they suffered the emotional strain of worrying about the fate of families and friends left in the Netherlands East Indies. Many of the men had no idea what happened to loved ones now under Japanese control.33
For the U.S. Navy, with recent memory of the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, Manila, and Surabaya, the concentration of submarines at Fremantle created the specter of a similar disaster. It was decided to split the force, and on 15 March the Holland and the Catalina tender Childs (AVD-1), accompanied by the minesweepers Lark (AM-21) and Whippoorwill (AM-35) with the destroyer Parrot (DD-218), escorted five submarines some 250 miles south to Albany. The Holland remained there for the next four months refitting submarines.34 The Lark and Whippoorwill, in addition to carrying out minesweeping and antisubmarine patrols, met incoming submarines at sea to escort them to base.
Albany’s inner harbor provided a good defensive position since it could be entered only through a narrow dredged channel. The Holland, moored behind the dock in Princess Royal Harbour, was positioned so that her guns could sweep the entrance channel if necessary. On the other hand, the only land-based antiaircraft defenses were two outdated 6-inch guns.35
The potential threat to Albany was taken very seriously by Thomas Blamey, returning from the Middle East and shortly to be appointed the commander-in-chief of Australian military forces. When the Queen Mary, converted to a troopship, anchored at Fremantle on the afternoon of 23 March, Blamey was among the passengers. More than 30 years earlier he had worked as a schoolteacher at the Fremantle Boys’ School, a school among those recently closed in the fear of an imminent attack. Although he spent only two days in Western Australia before flying east, Blamey was struck by the state’s vulnerability. He believed the Japanese might seize Western Australia’s potential wealth with a force no larger than the one used to capture Malaya, and he thought Albany in particular offered an attractive anchorage for the enemy.36
In reality, unknown at the time, the worst of the Japanese offensive on Western Australia was over. Although the Japanese bombed Broome three more times and eventually made a total of 17 air raids on Western Australian territory, most proved to be “nuisance raids” or “diversionary tactics” rather than doing serious damage. The last Japanese submarine attack on shipping off the Western Australian coast came on 4 August 1942, when I-32 shelled the 8,720-ton passenger ship Katoomba 300 miles from Albany.37 Based on the attacks of March 1942, however, most Western Australians assumed things would only get worse.
Periodic alarms about a possible Japanese attack continued to drive submarines south. When the USS Tambor (SS-198) arrived at Fremantle on 19 September 1942, rumors of a Japanese assault resulted in the submarine spending the next 18 days at Albany.38 As late as 18 March 1943, John Curtin sent telegrams to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt singling out Fremantle as especially vulnerable to a Japanese naval bombardment or attack by carrier-based planes. It was not until July 1944 that Western Australia’s premier, John Willcock, announced that “we feel we have now averted any threat of invasion.”39
1. Quoted in Garry Disher, Total War: The Home Front 1939–1945 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983), 3.
2. John Robertson, Australia at War 1939–1945 (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1981), 193.
3. Quoted in Libby Connors et al., Australia’s Frontline: Remembering the 1939–45 War (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1992), 31.
4. Quoted in Bob Wurth, Australia’s Greatest Peril 1942 (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2008), 58.
5. Quoted in John Hetherington, Blamey: The Biography of Field-Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1954), 127.
6. Wurth, Australia’s Greatest Peril, 149. Charles Lockwood, Sink ’Em All: Submarine Warfare in the Pacific (1951; repr., New York: Bantam Books, 1984), 39; notes to pages 6–10, 165.
7. Michael McKernan, All In! Australia during the Second World War (Melbourne: Nelson, 1983), 103.
8. Malcolm Tull, A Community Enterprise: The History of the Port of Fremantle, 1897–1997 (St. John’s, Newfoundland: International Maritime Economic History Association, 1997), 140.
9. Robertson, Australia at War, 95.
10. T. J. Cain and A. V. Sellwood, H.M.S. Electra (London: Futura Publications, 1959), 247.
11. The Weekend West, 3–4 March 2012, 18. Kevin Gomm, Red Sun on the Kangaroo Paw (Perth: Chargan, 2009), 21–22, 25, 43, 56. Alan Powell, Northern Voyagers: Australia’s Monsoon Coast in Maritime History (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), 270–71.
12. Gomm, Red Sun on the Kangaroo Paw, 160–63. IJN Submarine I-3, Combined Fleet, www.combinedfleet.com. David Stevens, A Critical Vulnerability: The Impact of the Submarine Threat on Australia’s Maritime Defence 1915–1954 (Canberra: Sea Power Centre, 2005), 185–86. Terry Jones and Steven Carruthers, A Parting Shot: Shelling of Australia by Japanese Submarines 1942 (Narrabeen, N.S.W.: Casper, 2013), 232.
13. Anthony Barker and Lisa Jackson, Fleeting Attraction: A Social History of American Servicemen in Western Australia during the Second World War (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1996), 69.
14. Wurth, Australia’s Greatest Peril, 20, 31, 80.
15. James Fife, The Reminiscences of James Fife, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, 250.
16. USS Sargo First War Patrol Report, Attacks, disc 6, Submarine Memorabilia (hereafter SM). Anthony Newpower, Iron Men and Tin Fish: The Race to Build a Better Torpedo during World War II (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006), 62, 64–65. Robert C. Stern, U.S. Subs in Action (Carrollton, TX: Squadron/Signal Publications, 1983), 5–6.
17. USS Sargo Second War Patrol Report, Major Defects, General Remarks, disc 6, SM.
18. The London Times, 27 February 1942.
19. USS Sargo Third War Patrol Report, 4 March 1942, disc 6, SM.
20. Doug Rhymes, “The Saga of Bob Rose and Sargo’s Welcome to Australia,” Polaris, August 1982, 14. Doug Rhymes, in Edward Monroe-Jones and Michael Green, eds., The Silent Service in World War II: The Story of the U.S. Navy Submarine Force in the Words of the Men who Lived It (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2012), 60–62.
21. Report of Attack on U.S. Submarine by Hudson Aircraft A16-122 on 4th March 1942, Series A1196, Control Symbol 60/501/97, National Archives of Australia (Canberra). USS Sargo Third War Patrol Report, 4 March 1942, Aircraft Sighted, Major Defects and Casualties. Theodore Roscoe, United States Submarine Operations in World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1949), 80–81. Clay Blair Jr., Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War against Japan (1975; repr. ed., Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 140–41, 169–70. Stevens, A Critical Vulnerability, 186.
22. Mervyn Wingfield, Wingfield at War (Dunbeath, Scotland: Whittles Publishing, 2012), 71.
23. Stuart Murray, interview, box 98, Clay Blair Collection, American Heritage Center, Laramie, WY (hereafter CBC). Stuart S. Murray, Reminiscences of Admiral Stuart S. Murray (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1975), 151. Rhymes, “Saga of Bob Rose,” 15.
24. Chester Smith, interview, box 99, CBC. Roscoe, Submarine Operations, 193. A. J. Killin, in Monroe-Jones and Green, The Silent Service in World War II U.S. Navy Submarine Force in the Words of the Men who Lived (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2012), 28–30. Maxwell Hawkins, Torpedoes Away Sir! Our Submarine Navy in the Pacific (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1946), 67–68. Blair, Silent Victory, 190.
25. Stuart Murray, interview, CBC; Murray, Reminiscences, 174, 176.
26. Murray, Reminiscences, 177–79.
27. Newpower, Iron Men and Tin Fish, 109.
28. Michael W. D. White, Australian Submarines: A History (Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service, 1992), 166. Jean Hood, ed., Submarine: An Anthology of First-hand Accounts of the War under the Sea, 1939–1945 (London: Conway, 2007), 62, 347. Pieter Van Ewijk, “History of the Dutch Submarine Force,” notes to Pages 12–15, 167, The Submarine Review (July 1992), 79–81; Hans van der Ham, “The Experiences of the Dutch Submariners Operating out of Australia during the Second World War,” transcript of public lecture, March 1995, WAMM. Doug Hurst, The Fourth Ally: The Dutch Forces in Australia during WWII (Canberra: self-published, 2001), 45. Michael Wilson, A Submariners’ War: The Indian Ocean 1939–45 (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2000), 64. Mark C. Jones, “Give Credit Where Credit Is Due: The Dutch Role in the Development and Deployment of the Submarine Schnorkel,” Journal of Military History 69, no. 4 (October 2005): 1004–5.
29. Johannes Loep, transcript of public lecture, March 1995, Western Australia Maritime Museum (hereafter WAMM). Murray, Reminiscences, 182. Van der Ham, “Experiences of the Dutch Submariners.”
30. KVIII, Dutch Submarines, www.dutchsubmarines.com. Van der Ham, “Experiences of the Dutch Submariners.”
31. Jan van Hattam, transcript of public lecture, March 1995, WAMM.
32. Jan van Hattam, transcript, WAMM; Van der Ham, “Experience of the Dutch Submariners.”
33. D. H. Van Velden, “Fremantle’s Forgotten Fleet: A Social History of the Royal Netherlands Navy in Western Australia, 1942–1945” (Doctorandus thesis, University of Leiden, 2000), 53, 84. Lockwood, Sink ’Em All, 40. Van der Ham, “Experiences of the Dutch Submariners.”
34. Barker and Jackson, Fleeting Attraction, 63. Lynne Cairns, Secret Fleets: Fremantle’s World War II Submarine Base, 2nd ed. (Perth: Western Australian Museum, 2011), 19. Jones, “Submarines in the Battle for Australia,” 62.
35. Lockwood to Vice Admiral Leary, 4 June 1942, box 56, folder 20, CBC. Lockwood, Sink ’Em All, 18. Mike Ostlund, Find ’Em, Chase ’Em, Sink ’Em: The Mysterious Loss of the WWII Submarine USS Gudgeon (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2006), 127. Arthur Moorhead, The Australian Blue Book (Sydney: Blue Star, 1942), 64. Barker and Jackson, Fleeting Attraction, 75.
36. Hetherington, Blamey, 134–36.
37. Gomm, Red Sun on the Kangaroo Paw, 7, 92, 133. Jones and Carruthers, A Parting Shot, 232.
38. Robert Schultz and James Shell, We Were Pirates: A Torpedoman’s Pacific War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009), 98.
39. West Australian, 5 July 1944.