Raider In Pacific

Various Ships Disappear

AT least one enemy raider has been operating in the Pacific; and, up to the present, it has succeeded in eluding our sea and air forces.

On Tuesday evening, August 20, the N.Z. Shinning Co.’s freighter “Turakina”, 8,706 tons, then in the Tasman Sea, north-west of New Zealand, radioed that she was being shelled by an enemy raider, and gave her position. After that, silence.

Naval and air forces raced out from Australia and New Zealand, and made a wide search, unsuccessfully.

About the same time, the French steamer “Notou”. 2.489 tons, engaged in carrying metals from New Caledonia to Australia, returning with coal for the smelting works, was on her way from Port Kembla to Noumea with six French officers, a crew of 16 natives, and one passenger, M. Paul Vois, well-known head of the New Caledonian nickel mines. She has disappeared, and it is assumed that she was a victim of the same raider.

People from the Dutch East Indies be lieve that at least two armed Nazi sur face raiders, and one large ocean-going Italian submarine are in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The Nazis may be the converted liners “Scharnhorst” (18,184 tons) and “Potsdam” (17,528 tons) which sheltered in Kobe, Japan, when war broke out.

The indications are that the raider that was in the Tasman is very fast. It will not be caught easilv. Its main prob lem will be to secure fuel. The only bases available are the Italian ports, in the Red Sea.

The belief is held, in some quarters, that the “Turakina” message was a “fake”, sent out by the Germans to draw our air force and warships away, from the actual vicinity of the raider, to another part of the Tasman Sea.

It was announced on September 7 that the Norwegian motorship “Tropic Sea”, laden with wheat from Sydney, ‘was cap tured by a German raider near Norfolk Island on June 16. She was overtaken, weeks later, by a British submarine off the coast of Spain, when trying to sneak into port, and was scuttled by her Ger man prize-crew.

R.M.S. “Niagara”, on June 19, was sunk near Auckland by a mine, obviously dropped by a raider.

Another Nazi raider recently sank a British tanker in the Indian Ocean.