Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

Taking The OFFensiVe 1942–45
across the main lines of sea communications between the United States and Australia.
While the fighting raged, Allied offensive capabilities based in Australia were growing.
The obvious weapon for the IJN to apply to the problem of slowing this build-up was
its submarine force. It had large, fast and well-armed boats with the endurance for the
long-distance patrols required in the Pacific. Submarine crews were an elite force, and
the prestige of the Sixth (submarine) Fleet was high. Moreover, Japanese submarine
torpedoes were superior to any similar Allied weapon, and had been well proven in
exercises before the war. If they had been deployed effectively, the 62 boats with which
the IJN started the war could have defeated the ill-prepared and shorthanded Allied
ASW effort in the SWPA. 308
However, and fortunately for the Allies, the Japanese never engaged in the kind
of strategic warfare against Allied economic targets that their Axis partners in the
Kriegsmarine waged. 309 This was a direct outcome of the Japanese strategic concept
of ‘decisive battle’. IJN submarines were first and foremost fleet units, with the roles
of intelligence collection, scouting and harassment of USN major units to weaken
and demoralise the Americans before they encountered the might of the Combined
Fleet. 310
This doctrine had three important consequences for Allied ASW forces. The first was
that the IJN admirals regarded their boats as high-value units and were not keen that
they should be risked in attacking merchant ships. 311 Second, relatively few submarines
could be sent on extended anti-shipping patrols because of the need to have them
available in case an occasion for decisive battle arose. Third, and as a direct result
of the first two, Japanese submarine captains were relatively cautious and unskilled
in their anti-commerce task. Nevertheless, in the Allied condition of 1942 following
the loss of the Malay Barrier, and while the war of attrition raged in the Solomons,
Japanese submarines were a serious and urgent threat to shipping off the Australian
east coast. 312 Map 11, an amalgam of information from several sources prepared by
the author, depicts the submarine attacks recorded on shipping off the Australian east
coast in 1942 and 1943.
Responsibility for protecting shipping in the SWPA resided with CSWPSF, who directed
the operation of the convoy system, assigned escorts and requested cooperative air
cover from Commander Allied Air Forces. Importantly, as CNS, he also fulfilled the
role of ‘raising, training and maintaining’ the Australian contribution to the ASW
escort force, and in 1942 this was no sinecure. The principal problem was a major
shortage of escorts. There were enormous calls on the few ships available to support
Allied troops fighting in Papua, New Guinea and Timor, to convoy coastal shipping
and to participate in Allied offensive operations. 313 The Australian shipbuilding
program was just beginning to show results, the United States similarly had yet to
reap the benefits of its massive industrial mobilisation, and there was no possibility
of reinforcement from the hard-pressed British. Shipments of vital electronic systems
109