SUBMARINE OPERATIONS?

Evening Star, Issue 23349, 19 August 1939, Page 15

SUBMARINE OPERATIONS?

SUSPICIOUS OBJECTS OFF QUEENSLAND COAST AIR FORGE PLANES' VAIN SEARCH Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright i SYDNEY, August 18. The Minister of Defence, Mr G. A. Street, who is visiting Sydney, to-day declared that his department had received reports concerning a submarine or submarines off the coast of Townsville and admitted that three Air Force planes had specially searched the locality earlier in tho week without sighting anything of a suspicious nature. The officers had come to the conclusion that they must have been whales, not submarines. Further reports from Brisbane to-day strengthen the view that a submarine is operating in the vicinity of Barrier Reef, where the crews of fishing boats, all reliable men, adhere to their original statement and also repeat tho assertion that a periscope has been seen on various occasions. Captain Leslie Thompson, of Bundaberg, stated that while sailing a yacht 60 miles off Bundaberg, on route to Barrier Reef last night, he saw a bright light a mile and a-half on the port beam, accompanied by flares, and thinking the vessel was in distress he set his course in that direction, but when he got to the scene the vessel had disappeared or submerged. Residents of Palm Island arc quite convinced that lights they saw recently were those of a submarine, not ordinary ships’ lights. There is some speculation whether the lights were those of a vessel engaged in smuggling Chinese or opium into Australia.