CT Grognard
Posts: 694
Joined: 5/16/2010
From: Cape Town, South Africa
Status: offline
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Cap Mandrake is spot on that the captain of the K.IX, being a Dutch boat, would have likely used the exclamation "Schijt!" 
The real-life K.IX was indeed a very unlucky boat.
She was heavily damaged during the night of 31 May/1 June 1942 in a Japanese midget submarine attack of Sydney Harbour.
The K.IX and the K.XII had been offered by the Dutch government-in-exile for use by the Royal Australian Navy on 30 April 1942.
Just after midnight a torpedo intended for the cruiser USS Chicago passed under K.IX which was moored on the east side of the Garden Island Naval Base alongside HMAS Kuttabul, an accommodation ferry. The torpedo detonated against the sea wall, with the concussion ripping the bottom out of the Kuttabul and rolling the submarine K.IX onto her beam-ends and lifting her diesel engines off of their beds and also damaging the aft batteries. Her forward superstructure was also crushed when the Kuttabul rolled over and hit her while sinking.
The Royal Netherlands Navy made a decision that repairing the 20-year-old K.IX would be pointless since it would not be able to support the war effort effectively, and that they needed more trained submarine crew in the United Kingdom for the new submarines being built there.
On 26 June 1942 the Dutch government-in-exile gave permission to the Royal Netherlands Navy to decommission the K.IX and send the crew to the UK.
Despite this, the Royal Australian Navy decided to continue repair work on the K.IX and it was manned by Royal Navy and United States Navy volunteers as officers and completed with Royal Australian Navy volunteers. The K.IX was formally stricken on 27 August 1942.
Repair work continued on her and her main battery was replaced by one salvaged from the scrapped K.VIII. Although the Sydney dockyard installed the main battery, nobody carried out any tests on it to see if it was safe for installation. On 22 June 1943 K.IX was renamed HMAS K9 and commissioned to the Royal Australian Navy. Originally planned to complete its refit on 5 July 1943, more defects were detected and its introduction slipped back first to September and then (due to engine trouble) to November 1943.
In January 1944 a further mechanical defect developed with the starboard main motor becoming inoperative, but due to repair dockyard workload it could not be repaired for at least a month. The K9's commander decided to complete his week of exercises with the boat using only the port main motor.
On 22 January 1944 disaster struck the hapless vessel again - the defective starboard main motor reacted catastrophically with the poorly ventilated and maintained main battery - last overhauled five years before - resulting in a massive battery explosion in the aft section of K9's main battery. 35 battery cells were damaged, 29 cells were cracked, and the battery tank fittings and plates were buckled.
Due to this damage and numerous other defects, a decision was taken by the RAN to pay off the K9. She was decommissioned on 31 March 1944 and returned to the Royal Netherlands Navy as K.IX.
A decision was made to convert K.IX into an oil hulk, which conversion finished in May 1945. Among other things, her conning tower is removed.
While being towed out of Sydney harbour by the Dutch minesweeper Abraham Crijnssen bound for Darwin, the towline broke sometime during the night of 7/8 June and K.IX started drifting ashore. The Abraham Crijnssen only noticed this at sunrise on June 8; an air search spotted the K9 only late that afternoon, not yet stranded, but the search had to be called off because it was getting dark. On the morning of June 9 the K9 was spotted again, but by this time had wrecked on Fiona Beach, Seal Rocks, about 3 miles WSW of Sugar Loaf Point. The Abraham Crijnssen tried to tow the hulk off the beach but due to stormy conditions had to give up.
The Royal Netherlands Navy took the decision to abandon her.
On 20 July 1945 the "Commonwealth Disposals Commission" sold the wreck, still stranded on the beach, for scrap metal to two Sydney-based engineering partners for £985 who intended to refloat her. Locals had already started removing the diesel engine from her manually. The new owners recovered the rest of the estimated 126 tons of diesel fuel but not the hull since it was buried too deeply in the sand to move.
Later locals strip the internal hull of copper pipe and other valuable metals. It appears that the hull of the stranded submarine was largely intact, and locals recall being able to walk the full length of the deck in 1969, and partially as late as 1984.
The beach where she stranded was later renamed "Submarine Beach" in honour of the loss.
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