Joe from OZ
Nov 26, 2006, 04:54 AM
Gday from Australia, well a few divers/fisherman solved a 60 yr mystery by finding the lost midget sub( THE OTHER 2 RECOVERED ) of the Imperial Japanese Navy M24 that attacked Sydney Harbour in WW2, pretty cool
OK, Saw footage the other night on tv, the sub is resting perfectly on the bottom in 30-40 meters of water on a sand bed. It was actually very spooky to see this cigar shapped thing appear. These two guys must have been legends to operate this little thing 74ft in lgth, u can actually see perfectly the 20mm bullet holes it had taken. To get to where they ended up with a sub damaged and taking water is amazing, somewhere off Long Reef Beach. What happened is still a mystery, the M24 and the two other midget subs were meant to RV with the mother ship further south of Sydney after they had attacked the US battleships that lay in Sydney Harbour at Garden Island. Two of the subs were subsequently sunk and the remains of the two subs were pieced together to make one and have been on display ever since in the War Memorial in Canberra. The M24 successfully managed to off load its cargo of two torpedoes, it has been said that the japanese officer had to manually sight his target as his conning tower had been damaged, two torpedoes en-route to a US battleship with a full crew on board as the torpedoes were about to strike, a local ferry called the "Kuttabul" passed and bore the brunt of one torpedo the other missing its target and running aground on garden island. What then happened to the M24 became a 60 year mystery as it was sighted leaving Sydney Harbour. Countless documentaries have been made looking for this bloody sub, hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours, there was recently a big documentary saying they had found it of Lyon Island in Pittwater and of course detailed three D sonar images proved that something was there but they found nothing, untill now.
So it has now been left as a war grave as the remains of two officers from the Japanese Special Attack Group ( the SAS of today ) are still onboard. Hopefully the relatives of the men aboard can now find some peace, and be reassured that these men created a part of history and will and should be respected from bothe sides
OK, Saw footage the other night on tv, the sub is resting perfectly on the bottom in 30-40 meters of water on a sand bed. It was actually very spooky to see this cigar shapped thing appear. These two guys must have been legends to operate this little thing 74ft in lgth, u can actually see perfectly the 20mm bullet holes it had taken. To get to where they ended up with a sub damaged and taking water is amazing, somewhere off Long Reef Beach. What happened is still a mystery, the M24 and the two other midget subs were meant to RV with the mother ship further south of Sydney after they had attacked the US battleships that lay in Sydney Harbour at Garden Island. Two of the subs were subsequently sunk and the remains of the two subs were pieced together to make one and have been on display ever since in the War Memorial in Canberra. The M24 successfully managed to off load its cargo of two torpedoes, it has been said that the japanese officer had to manually sight his target as his conning tower had been damaged, two torpedoes en-route to a US battleship with a full crew on board as the torpedoes were about to strike, a local ferry called the "Kuttabul" passed and bore the brunt of one torpedo the other missing its target and running aground on garden island. What then happened to the M24 became a 60 year mystery as it was sighted leaving Sydney Harbour. Countless documentaries have been made looking for this bloody sub, hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours, there was recently a big documentary saying they had found it of Lyon Island in Pittwater and of course detailed three D sonar images proved that something was there but they found nothing, untill now.
So it has now been left as a war grave as the remains of two officers from the Japanese Special Attack Group ( the SAS of today ) are still onboard. Hopefully the relatives of the men aboard can now find some peace, and be reassured that these men created a part of history and will and should be respected from bothe sides