But it's a bloody long way just to do a one-off demo job.
I'm inclined to think that a more expansive campaign of sabotage would be planned (and maybe they even have the ability to pull it off). I wouldn't be at all surprised given Indonesia's history of communism if they didn't recieve some encouragement and maybe even assistance from the Soviets. Particularly given that Garden Island and Fremantle harbour were significant for the US Navy at the time (and not simply for R&R, was also a major resupply point for food & fuel and even low level maintenance from what I understand). Plus we had Harry Holt running full bore along the same coast.
Personal anecdote.
Living in Perth during the 1980s, we could always tell a US carrier group was going to be visiting soon - we'd see the C-2 Greyhounds flying into Perth airport.
Another personal anecdote.
Way back when we were doing the LLOps training up north, during one of the Spiderman Exercises, one of the Pilbara Regt patrols picked up someone wandering around in the bush near the exercise area.
Apparently he claimed he was a tourist and was very lost. Turns out he was Indonesian. Turns out there was no record of him entering Australia by the normal accepted means.
Turns out about a week earlier, an unidentified low flying aircraft had been picked up by air traffic control as being in Australian airspace without logging a flight plan.
Further investigation supposedly identified him as an Indon army officer...
Now some of this was related to a group of us from our training WO because he was actually being posted to the Pilbara Regt as his next assignment and he was in touch with them regularly. All I know for certain is that someone was picked up and identified as Indonesian. The claims that he was an Indon army officer could have been soldier's stories. However I heard about the unidentified low flying aircraft from a second source many months after the Ex. (but that still could have been soldier's stories, just in this case it got picked up by civvies).
Still, it's one of those things that make you go "Hmm".
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