Ghost Below: The Lost Submarine of Sydney Harbour - Couverture souple

Carruthers, Steven

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1764220218 ISBN 13 : 9781764220217

Editeur : Bluewater Press, 2025

Synopsis

Ghost Below: The Lost Submarine of Sydney Harbour

On the night of 31 May 1942, three Japanese midget submarines slipped into Sydney Harbour with orders to strike Allied warships. In the desperate battle that followed, HMAS Kuttabul was sunk and 21 sailors killed—the only Allied deaths from enemy action in Sydney during the Second World War. Two of the raiders were destroyed inside the harbour, but the third, designated M24, escaped into the night and vanished.

For over six decades, the fate of M24 remained one of Australia’s most enduring wartime mysteries. Did it sink just outside the Heads, still under pursuit? Was it hidden in the silt of the harbour itself? Or had it managed to slip south before succumbing to battle damage or exhausted batteries? The unanswered question gave rise to theories, rumours, and generations of fruitless searches.

Ghost Below traces the full arc of this extraordinary story. Drawing on Japanese naval records, Allied reports, declassified intelligence files, and the latest archaeological findings, Steven Carruthers reconstructs the raid and its aftermath in meticulous detail. He explores how the mystery of M24 gripped naval historians, divers, and the public alike, feeding speculation that blurred the line between fact and folklore.

The book begins in the modern era of discovery. In 2006, a team of divers from the Northern Beaches group No Frills Divers located the wreck off Sydney’s coast after years of futile searches and false claims. Their find—confirmed by archaeologists as the missing M24—was hailed internationally as one of Australia’s most important maritime discoveries. Showing evidence of net entanglement and corrosion on the seabed with its torpedo tubes empty, the submarine lay as a silent tomb for its crew, finally ending a search that had spanned more than sixty years.

Highlights include:

• A gripping account of the Japanese midget submarine operation and its impact on wartime Sydney.

• Insights into the lives of the Japanese crew and the Australian sailors caught in the attack.

• The tangled trail of false leads, speculation, and folklore that sustained the mystery.

• The remarkable role of No Frills Divers in solving the puzzle and the archaeological study that followed.

Part wartime history, part maritime detective story, part diving adventure, Ghost Below reveals how a single night of conflict left an enduring shadow over Australia’s home front. It captures the courage, tragedy, and persistence that link the sailors of 1942 with the divers who finally solved the mystery six decades later.

Engrossing and authoritative, this is the definitive account of Sydney’s “lost submarine” and the long search to find it.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Steven Carruthers is a naval historian, former Royal Australian Navy serviceman, and commercial diver. He has spent four decades researching Japan's submarine campaign against Australia's east coast and the 1942 Sydney Harbour midget-submarine raid. As founder of Bluewater Press, he continues to explore the intersections of wartime history, maritime archaeology, and remembrance.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Bluewater Press
• Date d'édition: 2025
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1764220218
• ISBN 13: 9781764220217
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 366
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg