The 20th Century 1943
Newcastle Herald
Thursday December 9, 1999
The Hunter
The BHP ship the SS Iron Knight enroute from Whyalla to Newcastle with a cargo of iron ore was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine.
Thirty-six lives were lost from the crew of 50 in the tragedy off the south coast.
The Iron Knight was one of 41 Australian and Allied merchant and naval ships sunk off the east coast of Australia by the enemy in the `forgotten war' between 1939 and 1945.
The new State Dockyard workshops at Carrington's Dyke End were working feverishly. Equipment was relocated there from the defunct 1914 Walsh Island dock site upstream.
Wartime shortages also began to bite in the oddest ways. Only about a year before came the first sign when unionists warned Newcastle's 15,000 BHP Steelworkers would soon face a future without flannel shirts.
Since the start of the war, prices had almost doubled from 7/11d (80?) to 14/11d for the long-sleeved shirt. The flannel was described as being essential for workers in high temperatures.
The Metal Trades Group said angrily that when a worker did `fluke' buying a shirt, the price of 18/11d `was hotter than the temperatures the men worked in'.
Australia
IN Albury, NSW police began a special investigation into the 1934 `Pyjama Girl' murder and Allied forces won the bloody battle of Buna in New Guinea.
Some Australian soldiers were fighting a guerilla war in Timor and later about 12 Australians took part in the RAF's famous `Dam Buster' raid over Germany.
A sealed road was completed from Darwin to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory and war rationing continued.
Former NSW premier Jack Lang, the `Big Fella' of ALP politics, was expelled from the Labor Party again. There was public uproar after the Australian hospital ship Centaur was sunk off Brisbane by a Japanese submarine.
The World
THE tide of war began to turn this year in favour of the Allies after a string of defeats. The first cracks in the Nazi facade appeared in January with news that the German-held city of Stalingrad, in Russia, fell after a bitter siege.
About 100,000 German troops surrendered to the Russians although German supreme commander Adolf Hitler forbade it.
In Australia, there was a hero's welcome home for the men of the Ninth Division who withstood the nine-month desert siege at Tobruk. The soldiers were bound for New Guinea to reinforce Australian soldiers already there.
© 1999 Newcastle Herald
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