Description
Title: The Sea War in the Bass Strait
Author: Loney, Jack
Condition: Near Mint +
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 1993
ISBN: 909191514
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 71 pages
Comments: For most Australians, the first time war came to our shores was in February 1942 when the Japanese bombed Darwin followed a little over three months later by three Japanese midget submarines entering Sydney Harbour.
But in Bass Strait and along Victoria’s windswept coastline, a quiet war had been under way for almost two years by the time Darwin was bombed illustrated this week by confirmation that one of the casualties, the US merchant ship City of Rayville, had been located in its watery grave off Cape Otway.
Destroyed by a German-laid mine on November 8, 1940, the Rayville, the first US vessel lost during World War II, was one of two merchant ships sunk off the Victorian coastline within 24 hours. In the following fortnight another two vessels would be damaged as a result of the minefields in Bass Strait.
Suddenly things had changed. The war was on Victoria’s doorstep.
