LOSS OF FIVE FREIGHTERS

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23943, 10 May 1943, Page 6

LOSS OF FIVE FREIGHTERS

ENEMY SUBMARINE . CAMPAIGN SURVIVORS TELL OF SINKINGS (Special Australian Corresp., N.Z.P.A.) SYDNEY, May 8. “The sinking of five Allied freighters off the east coast of Australia only begins the Japanese submarine campaign to cut our supply lines from America,” declares the Sydney Daily Telegraph” in an editorial to-day. _ “The object is to weaken us before launching an offensive or to prevent us from building up forces and materials for a counter-offensive. The American occupation of Guadalcanar is generally conceded to have frustrated the enemy’s first attempts to dominate the sea route between the United States and the southern Pacific, compelling the inauguration of an under-sea campaign, which is expected to be maintained and intensified. It is presumed that valuable cargoes were lost with the sunken ships. Three masters went down with their ships. Only two members of the crew are missing from one Australian vessel which stayed afloat for some hours after being torpedoed, while the entire complement of an American freighter was saved. It is believed that this vessel was intercepted by a submarine some time before the attack. The submarine is thought to have followed the vessel, submerging and creeping up unobserved to fire a torpedo at close range. Survivors of the sinkings spent up to 13 hours clinging to the wreckage or drifting on rafts before they were rescued. Several were naked. Sharks swam among two groups of survivors floating in the water, but did not attack.

These sinkings bring the total of Allied ships announced as being destroyed by Japanese submarines off the east coast of Australia to 10. Submarine attacks have been made on at least seven other vessels. Several New Zealanders were among the crew of one large Australian vessel sunk in the latest series of attacks. The first warning of this attack came from the look-out man, William Jenkins, aged 27, of Opunake, who saw the wake of the torpedo. After the torpedo struck, many of the crew of 70 dived overboard and clung to rafts and wreckage until rescued. The survivors say. they owe their lives to blowing the whistles attached to the life jackets to draw the attention of a night rescue ship. William Shand, of Greymouth, spent the first hours of his twenty-first birthday in the water. “I was in my bunk, and immediately rushed to the deck,” he said. "I found I had no pants on, and rushed to get them. I dived 40 feet off the bow into the water, and was picked up in about 15 minutes. It was a wet birthday party.”

The youngest member of the crew, Murray Brown, aged 16. of Wellington, said that the patrol ship nearly cut him in two.

“I pushed myself off its bows, and as I swished along its side I grabbed a line and was hauled aboard,” he said.

His lifejacket saved a 15-year-old Sydney boy, one of three Australian survivors from a Norwegian freighter. He fell down the hold and was knocked unconscious as the vessel was sinking. “The next thing I remember is that I was in the water and a Dane was slapping my face,” he said. "I had gone down with the ship, but my lifejacket had floated me out of the hold and brought me to the surface.” The most annoyed man rescued is Ching Kaiigong, a Chinese steward in an American freighter. He was taking a shower when the torpedo struck and he had no time to dress, but ran naked from the shower to a lifeboat. Ching is already planning his revenge. He summed up his feelings in one sentence when he was landed at an Australian port. "Some day me catchee Jap in shower!” he said.