Qualla: Attack on Sydney Harbour

Attack on Sydney Harbour: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Nick-D, CC BY 3.0. Just after midnight on the 1st of June, 1942, a torpedo ran the wrong way through Sydney Harbour. It had been aimed at the heavy cruiser USS Chicago, fired from a Japanese midget submarine barely fifteen metres long. It missed the warship entirely, passed beneath a Dutch submarine, and struck the seawall beneath an old converted ferry tied up at Garden Island. HMAS Kuttabul was no fighting ship — just a floating barracks where sailors slept between postings. The explosion broke her in two. Twenty-one young men, nineteen Australian and two British, died in their bunks. It was the only time in history that Sydney came under attack, and for a city that had believed the war was something happening to other people, the harbour would never feel quite so safe again.

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Image: User:Nick-D | CC BY 3.0

Attack on Sydney Harbour: Through the Net

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PhantomII.Rider, CC BY-SA 4.0. The plan was audacious and built on a hard lesson. Japanese midget submarines had failed completely at Pearl Harbor, so the navy tried again with a better-defended target and crews trained to slip in unseen. On the night of 31 May, three Ko-hyoteki midgets — M-14, M-21, and M-24,...

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Image: PhantomII.Rider | CC BY-SA 4.0

Attack on Sydney Harbour: A Night of Disbelief

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit photographer is unkonwn, Public domain. What followed was less a battle than a slow, costly failure to believe what was happening. When a searchlight on Chicago caught M-24 close alongside, the cruiser opened fire, but its guns could not depress low enough; shells skipped off the water and slammed into Fort Denison's o...

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Image: photographer is unkonwn | Public domain

Attack on Sydney Harbour: The Shells of the 8th

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit inas, CC BY-SA 3.0. A week later the harbour's attackers struck from the sea. In the small hours of 8 June, two of the large Japanese submarines that had carried the midgets surfaced off the coast and opened fire. I-24 lobbed ten shells toward the Harbour Bridge; most fell into the Eastern Suburbs, ...

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Image: inas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Attack on Sydney Harbour: Honour Among Enemies

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nick Dowling, Public domain. The damage was slight; the fear was not. Sydney families fled west, and house prices fell in the Eastern Suburbs while rising beyond the Blue Mountains. But the most striking thing the attack left behind was a gesture of grace. When the bodies of the four Japanese midget crewmen ...

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Image: Nick Dowling | Public domain