BOOK REVIEW | DIVE! Australian Submariners at War

This large, extensively researched, and well-written book is both informative and a pleasure to read. Australia has become more submarine conscious of late given the Collins-class construction debacle and the almost inevitably worse mess of the impending AUKUS project. Those particular factors make the book especially important and timely.

Australia has a lengthy, interesting, and not always successful submarine building and operating history. The Royal Australian Navy (RAN), as the author relates in considerable detail, first acquired two British-built, commanded, and partially crewed subs, AE-1 and AE-2, in 1913, soon after the navy was first independently established. Despite the bravery of their crews, both submarines were lost within nine months of the outbreak of World War I. Put bluntly, they contributed little to the war effort.

During the 1920s, further submarines were acquired by the RAN, but none were successful and they were rapidly returned to their Royal Navy source. The RAN then remained without submarines throughout World War II and, despite their absence, the service survived the war thanks to valuable support from mainly American and some British boats.

As the author makes clear, Australia’s first and, arguably, only successful acquisition of submarines was the 1960s purchase of the Oberon-class boats. Built on The Clyde in Scotland, they were delivered complete and on their own bottoms and served Australia very well for thirty years. They made a useful contribution to the Allied cause during much of the Cold War.

Probably the less said about the Adelaide-focused Collins-class construction project, the better. The author, however, reasonably clearly describes it.

The book, though, as its sub-heading makes clear, is about Australia’s submariners more than their boats. That is what it makes it so interesting. Submariners are a particular and, perhaps, peculiar breed. They are well described here.

And while the RAN operated no subs in World War II, a number of Australians, mostly RAN reservists, served, often with considerable distinction, aboard submarines and midget submarines of the Royal Navy. Some actually commanded such vessels. Apart from one glaring omission, those brave men are well described and recorded in the book.

That omission was Melbourne-born and -bred Lieutenant Commander William E. I. Littlejohn DSC, OBE who was, at age 23, the Royal Navy’s youngest submarine commander.

Lieutenant Commander Littlejohn served with great distinction in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres and often dangerously close to the coasts of occupied Europe inserting and extracting Special Operations Executive operatives, among other activities. Twenty years after the war, he performed another important service, as a suburban general practitioner, when he removed this reviewer’s burst appendix!

Author: Mike Carlton

Available from Penguin Random House Australia, Sydney, Australia.

Web: www.penguin.com.au