Sneak Attack - If we only had a six pounder.

In his new book, Danger on our Doorstep , Former Army Major General and now Australian Senator, Jim Molan has written about a sneak attack, stating “We won’t have a clue it’s coming.”

“Australia’s AUKUS pact was made to shore up peace and presence in the Pacific. But what if China launched a surprise attack, which would make Pearl Harbour look like the work of amateurs,” writes Molan.

An attack on Australia would not be a first. This month is the 80th anniversary of a surprise attack off Sydney that has had lasting impacts for my family. My wife’s Great Grandfather was Captain William Reid of the Balmain based fishing trawler the “Dureenbee” and the following shocking news is from the front page of The Daily Telegraph in August 1942.

Telling his story while maintaining??Vigil by the bedside of his badly??wounded brother, Alexander, Captain William Reid, master of an unarmed trawler, which was attacked off the Australian East Coast by a Japanese submarine, declared ; "If we had only a six pounder we would have fought until we died, but Lord, we don't like murder."??

Swept By Machine-Guns -??The submarine surfaced in bright moonlight, and attacked with shells and machine-gun fire. Men on the trawler sought shelter behind the steel sides of the ship, but the shells cut through the metal.??When the submarine approached within 50 yards the trawler's captain, William Reid, ran to the bridge and shouted that the vessel was "only a??helpless fishing craft."?

The Japanese immediately reopened??fire, and a shell carried most of the bridge away just as Reid had regained the deck. The two men killed were hit by a shell and machine-gun bullets as they attempted to get the lifeboat into the water. Their bodies were riddled again as they lay on deck. The trawler was struck by 12 shells. The attack was seen from a fishing town, and N.E.S. officials summoned??aid for the trawler's crew.?

Today we know the fishing town was Moruya, south of Sydney. The following day, Captain Reid’s brother, Alexander, died from his wounds. The Dureenbee was a large trawler and had a displacement of 223 tonnes.?

One man said that the Japanese submarine was about, 300ft. long, and was obviously capable of travelling thousands of miles. Another member of the crew said that the submarine must have used glass and wire in shrapnel shells. Broken glass, which, he said, was not wreckage of the ship, lay about??the decks, and one injured man had??a piece of wire in a wound.

The murdered crew, including Alexander were buried at the Moruya Cemetery. The remnants of the trawler still lie in the sea off what is now the Murramarang National Park.

The Japanese submarine is thought to be a mothership associated with the midget sub attacks on Sydney Harbour. We now know that following the shelling of the Dureenbee, the submarine headed north to the Solomon Islands and was involved in the Battle of Guadalcanal.?

Today, Senator Molan continues in his new book “The prospect of a war in the Western Pacific is dark enough for the US, but it is even darker for Australia, with our one-shot defence force, our enormous vulnerability” because of import dependence for fuel, pharmaceuticals, fertiliser and many other critical supplies.

Based on average daily consumption over the past year, current Australian fuel stocks are only expected to last 32 days. Diesel alone is much less. According to an article in?The Guardian , “Part of the issue has been the decline in domestic production capacity. In a decade, Australia has gone from 20 operating oil refineries to two. According to the report, Ampol’s Lytton refinery and Viva’s Geelong refinery have capacity to produce less than a quarter of the volume of petroleum products consumed by the country in 2018-19.”

We have some work to do.

And not a moment to spare.

Lest We Forget

Michael Sharpe is the National Director for Industry at the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre , a Director of the Sharpe Family Office and Founder of the Nuclear Skills Forum .