Rear Admirable Quentin Cockburn continues his remarkable story of courage and invention.

By chance the idea of how to get the relative height and distance right for launching the Austral Mk V torpedoes came to me one night when I was watching the two new acts at Ashtons’.  I was sitting in row G, as ‘Hockey and Bill’, the fill-ins for the depleted dwarf troupe were performing a comic routine, exchanging mock insults and trying to knock each other off their respective perches.  The act finished with a mock chase in which they both boarded a car, named uproariously “Team Australia” and launched themselves down a ramp with a jump at the end.  The crowd ‘Ooohed’ in anticipation, believing the car about to smash, when just at the last moment, a small rocket launched the car across the void and into a net.  That was when, at the precise moment of impact, Bill, shortened the trajectory by attaching a coat hanger to a guy rope and brought the car, Hockey the fat dwarf and the entire routine to an abrupt stop.  In an instant I had a solution.  A ramp to be fitted to the escort submarine, and within range the midget would be launched, and with rocket assisted takeoff use the force of momentum to cut through the nets and at precisely the time the rockets were expended, the coat hanger would grip the edge of the torpedo net, flick the firing mechanism, the torpedoes would be released and the Tirpitz would be no more.  A coat hanger!!   ‘G20’!! I cried exultantly, and returning to the lab, we had the prototype tested and it worked.

Collins Class Mini Sub (Note the secret, but deadly, Coat Hanger)

The time for the attack came, we went in under cover of night and launched the sub as practised, and rehearsed hundreds of times.  It left the ramp, hit the water, the rockets ignited as planned, and in a sheet of flame and a spume of froth it rocketed across the fjord, descending at the last moment to drop its lethal cargo upon the German battleship. But then… just as we braced for the impact, nothing happened.  We waited, still nothing, and then from the other side of the fjord a terrific explosion.  It seems the sub and torpedo had committed itself to a singular and irredeemable course and unswayed by tide, external communications and any other external factor had gone though the nets, under the target and exploded on the far side, and why?  It seems the commander equipped with those necessary traits of aggression, single mindedness and resoluteness was without imagination.  He could go straight, but not deviate a millimetre from a predetermined course.  It was only one way for him, straight through, not a crash dive but crash through and crash.  Eventually we did succeed, but that is another story when Lieutenant Palmer, and his vessel the ‘Bombast’ stuck tight to the battleship and held the entire crew to ransom, not the way we intended, but the desired effect in the long run…

Next, on Monday, we look at the myriad benefits Australia has reaped from Cockburn’s experience and expertise. But first tomorrow bring a Musical Dispatch, and then we are blessed with Poetry Sunday.