The Secret Submarine

A forgotten battle off Australia’s shores

By Tom Lewis

Published by Big Sky Publishing

RRP $36.99 in Paperback

ISBN 9781923300064

The official history of the Royal Australian Air Force claims that no enemy submarines operating off the Australian coast during World War II were sunk.

But author Tom Lewis asks the question: what if history got it wrong?

Early on in the war, Japanese submarines, he writes, ‘had it easy’. Reconnaissance aircraft launched from the submarines to identify targets initially encountered no resistance as they flew over coastal cities.

Australia, in fact, was under-prepared but by 1944, Australia had produced seven hundred Bristol Beaufort twin-engine torpedo and light bombers with these aircraft becoming the RAAF’s principal bomber type in the Pacific theatre.

It was the Beaufort bombers that engaged the deadly I-178 Japanese submarine off the coast of New South Wales.

The submarine lies lost somewhere north of Sydney to this day.

For noted military historian Lewis, piecing together the story of this lost submarine has been an intricate work of detection, sorting the numerous false reports from the facts.

This book is more than a simple rewriting of history. It chronicles the broader, brutal struggle that saw over forty ships sunk and countless lives lost off Australia’s east coast.

Tom Lewis has been widely praised for his attention to detail and depth of research. It is a book that will gain a broad audience of military history readers.