Dive! Australian Submariners at War. By Mike Carlton, AM. Penguin 2024
Reviewed by Peter Scott
Mike Carlton is a past master in the craft of writing eminently relatable tales describing the actions of the Royal Australian Navy for the wider reading public. Not before time, Dive! Australian Submariners at War presents as the fifth book in his impressive collection, which now spans more than a century of operations.
Dive! is structured around three distinct acts covering the exploits of our earliest submariners in World War One, the mini-submarine (X-craft) crews of World War Two and the Oberon-class submariners during the Cold War. It begins with a heartfelt dedication to Carlton’s good friend, the late Rear Admiral James Goldrick, AO, CSC, RAN; the first of many close naval connections he has fostered over the past decade. The foreword, written by the Chief of Navy, presciently points to the vital naval role of deterrence for a maritime nation and to the submariners who crew our principle strategic deterrent. Carlton ably illustrates these themes throughout the ensuing pages.
Carlton draws heavily on, and quotes extensively from, a wide variety of contemporaneous sources, including official reports and histories, speeches, personal letters and memoirs. In doing so, he wisely calls on the lived experience of others to describe the intricacies of submarines and submarine life. While there are occasional glitches in this regard (for example dolphins are earned, not ‘won’; and while Australian submarines might conduct intelligence collection operations, they do not ‘spy’), what shines through is Carlton’s clear determination to faithfully, and intimately, convey the stories of the submarines in which Australians have served and of the people who brought them to life.
At times, ‘Dive!’ stretches beyond the seemingly tight sub-title of ‘Australian Submariners at War.’ The extensive coverage of AEI and AEII’s predominantly surfaced delivery voyage, hardly a wartime tale, is an example. Some of Carlton’s success, however, lies in the broader canvas that he paints. Connecting seamlessly with world events, he uncovers remarkable individual tales of Australians submariners in action – from the North Sea and the English Channel to the Mediterranean, the South China Sea and the Pacific – and animates them within their historical context, forcefully capturing the attention of the reader.
While early chapters are thick with the traditional bonds and characteristic differences between the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy, later chapters point to the ever expanding ties between the submarine services of the RAN and the United States Navy. In this regard, Carlton does well to tread lightly on the subject of operations by Australian submarines during the Cold War years. He is apparently satisfied with lighting our imagination in this regard, while avoiding giving undue credit to the journalistic efforts and speculation of others.
It is an historical fact that the Australian Submarine Arm never existed in sufficient strength during the wars of the twentieth century to be truly impactful. Nonetheless, Carlton’s storytelling beautifully illustrates the skill, commitment and courage of those few Australians warriors who found their way to submarine service when the need was most dire. Thoroughly recommended.
