Us Navy Has Midget
p. 11 · Read in the full issue
Submarine
From Our Noumea Correspondent WHEN the Japs lost their final toehold on northern Guadalcanal, last Feb ruary. they sank two midget sub marines at Visale Bay. in such haste that the commander left his sword behind in the conning tower of one.
The US Navy found them and sent along a naval tug whose divers affixed air hoses and pumped one dry enough to be raised from 24 feet of water. There after, the baby submarine was towed to Noumea.
It imnresses one as being imnossiblv cramped, dirty and disagreeable. Its range is estimated at only 180 miles and she could not live in the North Sea or the Atlantic. It is cowered bv an elec tric motor, driven by 224 wet batteries, and construction is of the crudest.
Mr. “Tommy” O'Dea. who was general manager of Guinea Airways. Ltd.. New Guinea, until the Jap invasion, is now nrenaring to return to aerial transnor tation in Northern Australia, after a long spell of hospital and convalescence. He was living his own plane during the Owen Stanlev-Kokoda battle, last spring.
and carrying wounded out from the top of the range, when the plane struck a soft patch on a temporary landing-strip at Myola. and crashed. Mr. O’Dea was severely injured, especially his right hand and his head, and he spent some months undergoing special treatment in Mel bourne.