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It seems hard to believe that a piece of cable 45cm long could have a profound effect on the outcome of the war but that's how it was.
The piece was cut from the Japanese underwater communications cable linking Saigon and Singapore during Operation Sabre by Sub-Lieutenant Ken Briggs, operating from a midget submarine in the Saigon River delta on 31 July 1945.
With the underwater cable out of action, the Japanese were forced to send their traffic by radio, enabling the US Navy to decode the signals.
The Americans had cracked the Japanese military codes early in the Pacific War, which gave them a major advantage in the sea battles that followed.
Because the US Navy was intercepting all Japanese radio communications and gaining access to their plans, the Japanese began routing all sensitive communications through its submarine cable network, thus avoiding the prying eyes and ears of the US Navy.
The decision was taken to cut the underwater cables - but this was easier said than done.
As it happened, the end of the war in Europe had freed up the top secret midget submarines the Royal Navy had used to attack German targets such as the battleship Tirpitz.
The midget subs were transported to Australia in crates on the deck of a depot ship HMS Bonaventure, ending up in Brisbane.
When the decision was made to attack the underwater cables which linked Saigon with Singapore and Hong Kong, Sub Lt Ken Briggs was one of those selected to take part in Operation Sabre.
Briggs, who hailed from Glen Innes, had joined the Royal Australian Naval Reserve straight from school in 1941 as an Ordinary Seaman 2nd class. He was trained as an anti-submarine detection (ASDIC) operator and then sent to Britain along with 15 colleagues.
After service with British coastal forces on motor launches in the Mediterranean where he served for three years, he was recommended for a commission and returned to England for training.
After that he was transferred to the top secret midget submarines which normally had a crew of three, the commander, navigator and engineer - but often operated with the addition of a diver who was needed for jobs such as attaching limpet mines to the hulls of enemy shipping or cutting anti-submarine nets guarding harbours.
Ken was one of two divers who crowded into the tiny submarine, XE4, on 30 July 1945, lying on top of the batteries for most of the 30 hours or so that the expedition lasted. It had been towed to the area by a full sized submarine, Spearhead, to within 170km of the Vietnamese coast before setting off under its own power.
As it approached the Vietnamese coast to search for the cable, the submarine was towing a grappling hook with which it hoped to snag the cable.
After one false alarm when the cable caught on a rock, it finally hooked onto the underwater cable.
Ken Briggs went through the procedure of flooding the wet-dry chamber in which he was travelling, then exited the submarine to check the line. To his delight he found they had hooked onto the cable and he returned to the sub for the air-powered cutters necessary to cut through the thick cable. This part of the operation took barely more than 10 minutes.
The ship's operation report described it in unemotional language.
1229 Diver out (S/Lt Briggs)
1236 Diver cut Saigon-Singapore cable
1242 Diver in with short length of cable as evidence
1250 Proceeded on course
His job achieved, he took the 45cm piece he had cut out of the cable and re-entered the submarine.
With half the job done, the crew then went looking for the Saigon-Hong Kong cable. Again they were lucky and a second diver had the honour of cutting this one.
Then it was back to their towing submarine and depot ship in Labuan.
The successful expedition was hailed by the US military who were about to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and were desperate to have access to Japanese cable traffic again.
Ken Briggs was awarded the DSC by the Royal Navy while the skipper of XE4, Lt Max Shean, another Australian who lives in Perth, was awarded the DSO and the American DFC.
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