Torpedo sabotage in world war 2, a sad story of RAAF history.

During world war 2 sabotage was an issue with the defence of Australia. The torpedoes that the RAAF utilised needed alcohol in the gyroscope to function properly. Unfortunately various people, whether common criminals or japanese sympathesizers would siphon the alcohol from the torpedo gyroscopes and make it look like nothing had happened.

The sabotaged torpedoes would be loaded onto the aussie planes, sent out with dedicated crewmen who would risk life and limb to approach japanese ships and courageously drop those torpedoes upon the ships.

The gyroscopes wouldn’t function and the torpedoes would just bob up and down in the ocean non functional. The RAAF aircrew would sometimes die when that happened as the japanese ships would then not need to worry about making emergency actions to avoid the torpedoes, but instead would have freedom to move to optimise their weapons upon the RAAF planes.

The RAAF aircrew would fly home, get out of their planes, assuming they were not part of the 25% typical casualties for each mission, often vomit and collapse until their next mission.
Meanwhile the common criminals would either be getting drunk, or profiting from the sale of that alcohol, or reporting back to their japanese masters “sabotage successful”.

My grandfather, Walter Arthur Pretty flew in those Beaufort’s and informed me of those sabotage actions through his historical archive.

Please, if you are inclined to be a peaceful campaigner, don’t be sabotaging weapons of the aussie defence forces, service men and women literally loose their lives to defend our Great One Nation.