AUSTRALIAN COAST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25239, 31 May 1943, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN COAST

JAPANESE OPERATIONS BIG SUBMARINE FLEET (Rec. 0.15 a.m.) SYDNEY. May 30. Following the recent acceleration of their submarine campaign along the east coast of Australia the Japanese are now reported to have despatched their biggest undersea fleet to the South Pacific in an endeavour to check the growing Allied strength in that. area. Admiral Halsey’s headquarters, however, are stated “ not to be* deeply perturbed.” The Japanese claim to have sunk 13 Allied vessels, including five transports, in the South Pacific qrea between May 5 and May 23 was described by an American spokesman as “ another fishing expedition”. “We have lost ships, but the Japanese claim is tremendously exaggerated,” he told war correspondents. “ One of the ships sunk, /hough not by submarines but by aerial bombardment, was the 1300ton former pleasure yacht of the nine-times-married American asbestos millionaire Tommy Manville. The yacht, the last word in luxury pleasure craft, was serving in the south-eastern Solomens as a mother ship to a torpedo boat squadron.” It is reported that soon after the v< ssel was taken over a senior officer;, who was lying in bed. idly pressed a button beside his reading lamp. Immediately the steel bulkhead dropped down and the experimenter found himself side by side with a bed in an adjoining cabin in which reclined a startled junior officer. The yacht s name was changed from the Hiesmaro to the Niagara. She was still the luxury ship of the United States navy when'" she caught fire after receiving direct bomb hits. She was abandoned without loss of life and subsequently sank.