By NOEL MURPHY
As thousands gather at Point Impossible for the Anzac Day dawn service, few might be aware of the World War II Japanese spy plane that flew over that very Torquay beach in summer 1942.
The plane was launched from a submarine near King Island two hours before dawn on February 26, manned by Nobuo Fujita and Shoji Okuda and en route to Melbourne.
They headed for Cape Otway and followed the coast, crossing the Bellarine Peninsula from Torquay toward Point Lonsdale and Portarlington.
Fujita, a warrant flying officer, struck banks of cloud as he continued along the west coast of Port Phillip Bay and became uncertain of his position.
After some time, he and Okuda dropped below the clouds to about 300 metres and were horrified to find the Laverton RAAF Base directly below – along with a dozen Wirraways and several Lockheed Hudsons and Avro Ansons.
They retreated to their cloud cover but not without being spotted and two aircraft scrambled in hot pursuit. They proceeded on to Altona and over the Williamstown rifle range, where ack-ack gun crews spotted them as well.
The gun battery failed to open fire, the officer in charge opting to telephone his superiors seeking permission. Fujita and Okuda hightailed out of the place, heading out toward the bay.
Flying as low as 300 metres they managed to continue unmolested in an extraordinary reconnaissance in which they spied the city centre, the docks at the Yarra River’s mouth — and ships being repaired –as well as the rooftops of suburban Melbourne, open countryside and livestock.
The pair followed the bay coastline around to the south, passing over St Kilda, Brighton, Sandringham, Frankston, noting some 19 ships and boats on the bay, six warships – a light cruiser and five destroyers.
Crossing the coast at Dromana, they flew on to Cape Schank and then out over Bass Strait toward King Island’s Cape Wickham, where the Japanese submarine l-25 was waiting some six nautical miles to the east.
