- 30 - Pacific War -Attack on Sydney Harbour, June 14-21, 1942

During the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese dispatched 5 Type A midget submarines^[1], each carrying two men and two torpedoes^[2]. The night before the attack at 6:45am the destroyer USS Ward came across 1 of 5 midget submarines trying to enter the harbor and opened fire on it sinking it, this was the first official shot of the Pacific War. One midget submarine shot a torpedo at Seaplane tender Curtiss missing and another, Ha-19 was captured on December 8th. These failures led the IJN to upgrade their midget submarines in the hopes of attempting another strike on a harbor. This episode will be about the attack on Sydney Harbor

 

^[1] I-16,I-18,I-20,I-22 and I-24, Ko-hyoteki-class

^[2] They also had swords and pistols to commit suicide with if caught