A Very Rude Awakening by Peter Grose

Author:Peter Grose
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: HIS004000, HIS027100
ISBN: 9781741762457
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2007-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

The track followed by Ban’s midget is fairly well established. The timings are: (1) 9.48 pm, crosses Inner Loop 12, leaving a clear trace; (2) 10.50 pm, fired on by USS Chicago, and submerges; (3) 11.10 pm resurfaces, fired on by USS Chicago and HMAS Geelong, submerges; (4) 12.29 am fires two torpedoes at USS Chicago, both of which miss, but one sinking HMAS Kuttabul; (5) 1.58 am crosses Inner Loop 12; (6) 2.04 am crosses Inner Loop 11 and exits Sydney Harbour.

The bedlam in the harbour was well mirrored by chaos on land. Radio stations broadcast urgent appeals to sailors to return to their ships.Taxi drivers were asked to scour the streets, cinemas, theatres, pubs, bars, nightclubs and brothels in a hunt for sailors to be rushed back to their stations. Police cars joined in the hunt for roistering crews.

Among the civilians, wild rumours spread at amazing speed. The invasion had started. The Japs were here. Even those who should have known better joined in the madness. A caller to a Sydney radio station remembered a particularly hysterical air-raid warden on his street, knocking on doors and rousing the occupants with an urgent message: ‘There’s an armada of aircraft.They’re coming down.They’ve flattened Brisbane and they’re now over Gosford, and soon they’ll be bombing Sydney. Get the children under the table, in the hall, with a mattress on top. Good luck! Good luck!’

The 19-year-old Dorothy Levine had been on duty at the American Service Club in Phillip Street in Sydney’s Central Business District. She was trying to make her way home by taxi to Vaucluse. Just as she was passing Rose Bay Police Station she saw tracer fire on the harbour followed by booming explosions.

I said to the taxi driver: my goodness, fireworks in the middle of wartime. I think it’s ridiculous.

Then people came running out of all the units along the waterfront.We were told to go immediately to the nearest air raid shelter.We could hear boom, boom, boom, then a huge, loud explosion.

We were very frightened because it just wasn’t natural to have all that light. The whole sky was lit up with searchlights. There seemed to be a lot of people. They just came from nowhere. Everyone was running all over the streets, not knowing what was going on.

Rahel Cohen, a 23-year-old secretary serving in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, had come to Sydney from Wagga Wagga on leave.At 12.15 am she caught the last ferry from Circular Quay to Athol Wharf near her parents’ home in Mosman. There were only four people on board— Rahel, an army officer Captain Ross Smith, the ferry captain and the ferry’s engineer.

The ferry captain decided to take a slightly longer route this night. The Athol Wharf ferry normally tracked north-east from Circular Quay, passing to the north of the small harbour island of Fort Denison.

However, an hour earlier the captain had heard shooting and general uproar from the direction of Garden Island and the USS Chicago, so he decided to take his ship south of Fort Denison and close to Garden Island to see what was going on.

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