Missing
Japanese Sub... Found By Divers
So
you are a group of amateur divers with a dream, discover
the most important wreck in Australian military history.
So you dive and dive... until one day, you find it.
Welcome to a scuba diving miracle!
A
mystery over a Japanese midget submarine that went
missing after attacking a ship in Sydney Harbour during
World War II has been solved, an Australian television
station claimed Friday.
The submarine was one of three that slipped into the
harbour on the night of May 31 1942 after being launched
from a fleet of five larger Japanese submarines offshore.
Two of the midget vessels were spotted and attacked,
leading the two-man crews to commit suicide. The remains
of those subs were recovered and a rebuilt composite
is on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
But the third midget submarine managed to fire two
torpedoes at the US heavy cruiser USS Chicago, one
of which exploded beneath an Australian depot ship
HMAS Kuttabul, killing 21 sailors. The
submarine then slipped out of the harbour, its mission
complete, according to the national archives, but
historians have long argued about whether it managed
to make a complete escape.
On Friday, Australia’s Channel Nine announced
that the submarine had been found by scuba divers
in deep waters off the coast. It said pictures of
the vessel would be shown in its 60 Minutes programme
on Sunday night. ‘The
sub is in amazingly good shape. It is sitting up on
its keel on the sand and instantly identifiable as
a submarine,’ the station told The Australian
newspaper.
It acknowledged that a documentary aired by the History
Channel last year claiming to have found the missing
submarine was later found to be incorrect, but said
this was ‘the real McCoy’. A
rival television station, Channel Seven, on Thursday
night cut in on Nine’s scoop, broadcasting photographs
which it said showed the submarine. Channel
Seven said the pictures, showing an object encrusted
in barnacles and seaweed, would be published next
week in a magazine owned by the network.
Sipadan
Reefs Ruined By Steel Barge
A
steel barge carrying thousands of tons of building
material has crashed into popular diving site off
the Malaysian island of Sipadan. DIVE contributor
Alex Mustard, who witnessed the crash at the weekend,
said the reef suffered extensive damage as a result.
'The
grounding literally sheared off the top of the reef
- leaving a flat white limestone surface - rather
like a motorway across the top of the reef,' Mustard
told DIVE. 'The area of damage was at least the size
of a couple of tennis courts.'
The
steel barge was forced on to the reef following a
gale. Malaysian dive guide author Andrea Ferrari criticised
the island's authorities for allowing the steel barge
to anchor on Sipadan Island.
'It
is incredible that the barge was allowed to anchor
right in front of Sipadan's legendary drop-off,' Ferrari
said. 'It was brutally pushed by a nightly gale against
the reefs, ending up beached on the island like some
monstrous whale after having scraped clean all nature's
delicate work of a thousand years between the old
pier and Barracuda Point. The barge's flat steel hull
has wiped corals away like a titanic knife edge spreading
butter on toast.'
