The Southland Times TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 1942. Sydney's Baptism of Fire

Southland Times, Issue 24765, 9 June 1942, Page 4

The Southland Times TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 1942. Sydney's Baptism of Fire

THE SHELLING of Sydney and Newcastle, presumably by enemy submarines, could scarcely be expected to interfere with Australia’s war effort. Bigger guns, and more of them, will be needed if the Japanese intend to strike heavily at the eastern cities. The raids do not appear to have caused much damage, and their nuisance value was limited. Indeed, they may have had a value of quite another kind. The authorities and the general public have been given a taste of enemy action just serious enough to test their emergency services. Weaknesses and omissions which, in a large scale raid, might have disastrous consequences, can now be detected and removed. No precautions can approach perfection until they have been tried out under conditions of actual warfare. Few great cities have had the opportunity bestowed on Sydney: as a general rule their A.R.P. personnel have found themselves learning and suffering simultaneously, in a major ordeal. The Japanese have now sacrificed the element of surprise on two occasions. Their submarine attack on Sydney Harbour failed utterly, and it will not again be easy for them to make a similar attempt. In the same way they have given the people of Sydney and Newcastle a somewhat perfunctory baptism of fire. Readers of The Southland Times may remember a serial published before the war in which the city was raked and shattered, without warning, by gunfire and bombs from an enemy battle fleet. That was the nightmare which haunted those who preached the need for preparedness. The real thing has turned out to be somewhat different. Shells from a submarine may smash up a house here and there and cause a few casualties: they cannot bring ruin and panic to a modern metropolis. But the raids, ineffective though they were, had a significance which the Pacific Dominions dare not overlook.

Yesterday’s shelling probably came from four-inch guns: next week or next month it may come from the 15-inch monsters of capital ships. The will to destroy, the animus of an implacable enemy, was not less active behind the guns of those raiding submarines than it would be behind the controls of an invasion fleet. One thing stands between the cities of Australia and New Zealand and the battle fleets of Japan—the naval cordon thrown across the Pacific by the United States. It is a strong cordon. The battle of Midway Island can be said to justify the faith that is placed in it by the southern Dominions. But it is also plain evidence, additional to that provided in the Coral Sea, that the Japanese are trying to come southwards. They will try again. Their naval strength, impaired though it may have been by two reverses in a single month, is still formidable. And it can be concentrated, more compactly than formerly, in the areas threatened by Japanese strategy. The submarine campaign off the coast of New South Wales, and the raids on Dutch Harbour, may have been intended to split up Allied naval forces while the main attack was directed against Midway Island. It is also possible, however, that the Midway action was part of the diversionary scheme, and that the main thrust is to come in another direction —perhaps down the Coral Sea. If so, the repulse at Midway Island could have thrown the plan out of gear. But it would be dangerous to accept this view as a certainty: it is merely an opinion. Safety can be found rather in the realization that the Japanese navy is on the move. Every stronghold in the Pacific, including New Zealand, must assume that the main blow may be directed against itself. Sydney has been warned. But the warning may have been a mere stratagem, to cover preparations for an attack upon a different objective. There could be no excuse, and no second chance, for any country in the Pacific war zone that refrained from acting as if the next blow might be struck against its own shores.