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AUSTRALIAN HOSPITAL SHIP CENTAUR
THE MYTH OF IMMUNITY SOLVING THE LAST GREAT MARITIME MYSTERY OF WW2
Christopher milligan & john foley
Australia = AUD$35 (including postage in Australia) PNG and NZ = AUD$50 (including economy air mail) The World = AUD$55 (including economy air mail) 'JAP SUB SINKS HOSPITAL SHIP' screamed the world's press in mid-May 1943, after Prime Minister John Curtin and General Dougles B. MacArthur announced the loss of AHS Centaur off Brisbane. The unarmed and brilliantly-lit ship -supposedly immune from attack -had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. She sank in less than three minutes. To their doom went 268 of the 332 souls on board -non-combatants all. All but one of 12 female nurses perished. The death toll on the Centaur was the highest of any merchant vessel sunk by submarine in the Pacific during WW2. But sadly, over the half-century since that fateful day, the Centaur's innocence has been questioned. Sceptics were sure the military had compromised her hospital ship immunity by illicitly stuffing her holds with munitions and her wards with armed troops, possibly even commandoes. That a political/military cover-up took place is undoubted by many people, even today. Other mysteries enshroud the ill-fated Centaur. Why, it can be asked, was she close to the coast that night, instead of 110 miles offshore as ordered? Why did the submarine's captain so flagrantly violate that most sacred of all conventions of war? And why did the Japanese deny any culpability at the time, when under international pressure to do so, yet concede it a quarter of a century later? The questions go on and on. In this book Professor Christopher Milligan (who lost an uncle on the ship) combines 14 years of international research with the local knowledge of maritime historian and author Captain John Foley. Between them they address without fear or favour all the accusations and conjecture directed at the luckless Centaur. Fifty years of allusion are more than enough, the Centaur deserves to be exorcised of all her ghosts so that she will be remembered for what she was, a lady of mercy, a speck of sanity on a sea of insane times. Armed with meticulous research, Foley and Milligan have set out to solve the 50-year-old mystery of the sinking of the Centau1; one of Australia's greatest wartime disasters. This is an impressive piece of historical detective work. , Jane Cadzow, Sydney Morning Herald. As with his earlier works Captain john Foley brings maritime history to vivid life. ..further enhanced this time by painstaking research from Dr Christopher Milligan.' Lawrie Kavanagh, Brisbane Courier-Mail. 340 pp - hardback - Published 1993
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