In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the idea to keep the Japanese Combined Fleet fenced in its home waters was through investing a lot in submarines. Admiral Hart’s Asiatic Squadron, based in the Philippines, had no capital ships and just a few old cruisers and destroyers, but it did have subs– 29 of them!
As noted in IJNH:
Following his arrival as CinCAF in 1939, Hart had steadily increased the number of submarines assigned to his small fleet from six to seventeen, including the first modern fleet-type boats. As the war clouds gathered in November 1941, another squadron of twelve modern fleet boats with their submarine tender Holland sailed into Manila Bay from Pearl Harbor as reinforcements.
Likewise, the Dutch spent a bunch of guilders in buying Koloniën (“colonial”) submarines for use in barring the door to the Dutch East Indies.
Of course, events soon proved that almost nothing was enough to stop the Japanese juggernaut in December 1941-April 1942 and (almost) all of these boats soon found themselves forced to withdraw to the best friendly option available at the time— Freemantle in Western Australia.
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Freemantle was a submarine hub in the West Pac during WWII, with Allied boats of all stripes including British and Dutch vessels, mixing with locals and Americans. In all, some 170 Allied subs at one time or another passed through Fremantle between 1941 and 1945.
In fact, during the war, no less than 127 American submarines operated out of Fremantle at one time or another, carrying out 353 patrols. Added to this were 10 Dutch boats and, after August 1944, an increasing number of British Pacific Fleet boats. All told the Allies mounted something like 416 submarine patrols from Fremantle during the war.
And, in this edition of Everything Old is New Again, an American sub-tender is headed to HMAS Stirling, just outside of Freemantle.
From Navy Times:
The Navy plans to conduct its first-ever submarine maintenance work in Australia this summer using the sub tender Emory S. Land, with 30 Australian sailors embarked to learn how to repair the Virginia class of submarine.
This step will help establish a nuclear-powered attack submarine maintenance capability at the HMAS Stirling naval base in Western Australia in the next few years as part of the trilateral AUKUS arrangement.
And the beat goes on…