Yuri IL\'IN Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >
> Marlborough was reconnoitred by enemy subs
>
> 01 FEBRUARY 2002
>
> The existence of a World War 2 "spy base" at
> Rapaura, as recounted in last week's Saturday
> Express raises the question about U-boats in New
> Zealand waters and around Marlborough's coast
> during those years. Tony Orman reports.
>
>
> It was just another moonlit night in the 1940s
> when Jim Heberley was rowing back across Tory
> Channel towards his home after visiting
> neighbours.
>
> Suddenly something large broke the surface to his
> right and near the entrance to the channel. A
> whale perhaps, thought Jim. Then to his startled
> eyes, he saw it was something quite different - a
> submarine!
>
> Jim stared fascinated and with a growing sense of
> fear, for in the bright moonlight he could make
> out the Japanese markings. It may have been a few,
> several or a score of minutes. Perhaps the
> submarine commander then saw Jim? Either way the
> submarine submerged and the waters were quiet
> again.
>
> Jim hurriedly rowed ashore, rang the military
> authorities and reported what he had seen. The
> reply was seemingly dismissive, apparently
> alleging he had enjoyed too many drinks at the
> neighbours.
>
>
> My comment:
> New Zealand in 19 century feared the attack of
> Russians. This is not joke. In Cook strait was
> built a fort for feflection of Russian landing.
> Fort has power and modern artillery. However, not
> any Russian ship so appeared there. Instead
> Russians water of New Zealand visited Japanese and
> Germans. Lets us not lose the real perception of
> reality and then it is not necessary for us to
> construct unnecessary forts for the reflection of
> fantastic attacks.
>
> Regards,
> Yuri IL'IN
> Moscow Russia
>
>
> In actual fact, the authorities were playing a
> deliberate game with any reports such as Jim
> Heberley's.
>
> Historian and researcher Robert Montgomery, of
> Blenheim, says the public reaction of the
> government and military was understandable.
>
> "To avert public fear and to deny the Japanese any
> useful feedback, all reports of aircraft or
> submarine sightings were officially discounted as
> a case of jittery nerves. However, beneath the
> surface they were being investigated all the
> same."
>
> At least five enemy submarines are known to have
> visited the Cook Strait area during World War 2,
> says Robert.
>
> The book, The Royal New Zealand Navy - an official
> history by SD Waters, said the first venture of a
> Japanese submarine appeared to have been made in
> March 1942, but "possibly one or more may have
> done so earlier".
>
> Indeed, a Japanese document captured in 1944
> revealed the reconnaissance cruises made by the
> Japanese I class, 100 crew, large
> aircraft-carrying submarines may have begun as
> early as November 30, 1941.
>
> "As well as their armament of eight, 21 inch
> torpedo tubes, one 5.5 inch gun and two
> anti-aircraft machine guns, each vessel could
> carry three midget submarines or a small aircraft
> with wings that could be dismantled. The aircraft
> fitted into a car shed-sized hangar forward of the
> conning tower," explains Robert.
>
> In May 1942, Japanese midget submarines launched
> from two mother submarines, attacked Sydney
> Harbour sinking several ships.
>
> One, the Japanese submarine I-25 carrying a small
> float plane came through Cook Strait under a full
> moon. It was forced to take a surface course
> because the strong underwater current was greater
> than the submerged speed of the vessel. The sub's
> plane made a successful reconnaissance of
> Wellington Harbour.
>
> "This may well have been the sub Jim Heberley
> sighted," says Robert.
>
> The type of aircraft was a small two-seater,
> mono-float-plane Yokosuka E14Y1 capable of staying
> aloft for three hours and known to the Allies as a
> Glen aircraft.
>
> Japanese flights from submarines were made over
> Wellington on March 8 and Auckland on March 13,
> 1942.
>
> "It is known that a Japanese aircraft made at
> least one reconnaissance flight over the
> Marlborough Sounds, as well as flying over the
> entire Nelson-Marlborough area."
>
> In Marlborough, other submarine incidents apart
> from the Tory Channel one, occurred. Early one
> morning, a submarine was observed moving slowly on
> a gently curving course near Long Island, Queen
> Charlotte Sound, before retrieving its Glen
> aircraft. Later in the war, a Port Underwood
> farmer recalled that one foggy afternoon his
> curiosity was aroused by the throb of a diesel
> engine out on the water. From a distance he
> observed a "long, dark craft, very low in the
> water with a bridge or conning tower amidships."
>
> "Japanese, German or American? Who knows?" says
> Robert. "After all the possibility of a US sub
> cannot be discounted as US subs were in New
> Zealand waters towards the end of the war, as was
> at least one U-boat."
>
> At the same time, German U-boat submarines are now
> known to have prowled New Zealand's coast often in
> audacious yet circumspect style.
>
> In June 1943, the German navy chief Admiral Karl
> Donitz sent a fleet of 27 long range U-boat
> submarines to the Far East. Only 15 made it as the
> others were sunk by Allied aircraft or ship
> attacks. Two boats headed back to Germany, while
> the remaining 13 U-boats began operations. One was
> the submarine U-862 commanded by Kapitan Heinrich
> Timm.
>
> In December 1944, it sailed down the east coast of
> Australia and sank a US liberty ship near Sydney
> on Christmas Eve. Past conjecture was that it may
> have visited New Zealand.
>
> It indeed did, as proved by Robert Montgomery who
> managed to obtain a translated version of Kapitan
> Timm's log-book from Germany.
>
> January 3, 1945 - "We are gradually getting closer
> to the New Zealand coast."
>
> On January 5 the U-862 was north of North Cape and
> proceeded to travel down the east coast of the
> North Island. En route, it tried to stalk and
> destroy steamers, but was frustrated by a
> combination of the need to avoid detection, at
> times rough weather and alertness by ships
> spotting the approaching torpedo track and taking
> evasive action.
>
> Kapitan Timm wrote in his log, "That's the old
> problem when you are pursuing a steamer near to
> the coast; you can't get into position to fire at
> night and then you don't manage because you can't
> get up close enough during the day without being
> seen from the land."
>
> Frustrated he wrote after one day, "And that's how
> it went today. In the dawn we dived and another
> steamer has got out of our clutches."
>
> Each night Kapitan Timm would surface to give the
> crew some fresh air. With only the conning tower
> awash the U boat sometimes eased towards shore so
> close that at Napier, the Kapitan recorded "You
> can see the beach cafe with bright red lights and
> the dance music is playing old tunes."
>
> The U-boat lay off Gisborne and was so close that
> "during the day you can see through the periscope
> people walking along the street".
>
> One night the submarine sneaked into Gisborne
> harbour noting, "The docks are brightly
> illuminated, behind them a big factory." However
> U-862 found "no worthwhile ship at anchor or at
> the docks which we could have sunk".
>
> Kapitan Timm observed: "The people here are all so
> magnificently unsuspecting."
>
> U-boat 862 slipped out from the harbour under
> cover of darkness.
>
> "We go about very carefully, slip out of the
> harbour and later are taken up into the open sea
> without being noticed."
>
> Twice the U-boat did fire torpedoes at two
> steamers, but missed each time.
>
> New Zealander Air Marshal Sir Rochford Hughes met
> U-862's Kapitan Timm in 1950 when serving in
> Germany, five years after the end of World War 2.
>
> "Kapitan Timm was the sort of chap I believed
> implicitly," he said in an interview some years
> later.
>
> Kapitan Timm then related an incident off the
> Hawkes Bay coast. Among the U-boat's crew were
> several young men brought up on farms in Germany.
> At night in an inflatable dinghy they stole ashore
> and milked some cows to have fresh milk with their
> breakfast.
>
> U-862 then moved southwards and on January 19
> passed by "Cook Strait towards the south", and
> then headed to Australia where it sank a liberty
> ship near Perth before returning to its base at
> Penang in Indonesia.
>
> However, there were other unexplained encounters
> with submarines that were not the work of U-862,
> as they occurred well before she entered New
> Zealand waters. A gun crew on the inter-islander
> Rangatira on March 1, 1944, reported seeing a
> torpedo wake pass close astern.
>
> On March 8, 1944, a submarine sighting was made
> off Pencarrow Head near Wellington. An
> anti-submarine vessel made sonar contact and
> dropped depth charges but to no result.
>
> On November 3, 1943, another identified radar
> contact was made from a radar station at Cape
> Campbell. A patrol boat dropped depth charges, but
> again with no result.
>
> Sightings from inter-island ferries, observed
> torpedo tracks across the bows of ships, a
> sighting from a navy minesweeper, unidentified
> objects on radars and an incident in Pelorus
> Sound, all were unexplained at the time.
>
> In February 1943, radar picked up an unidentified
> object off Palliser Bay, then later that day
> personnel at a shore battery near the entrance to
> the Sound reported a "black speck" 25km out in
> Cook Strait. Radar contact was made with the
> object, but an aircraft search about half an hour
> later, revealed nothing as the sub had probably
> dived.
>
> Marlborough may have been a key in enemy plans to
> take the South Pacific. The presence of
> submarines, confirmed or not confirmed, hints
> strongly at it.
>
> Meanwhile Robert Montgomery is currently compiling
> a book The Armed Camp on Marlborough's role and
> activities in World War 2.