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You are here: Home / Archives for A.N. Other

A.N. Other

Occasional Paper 91: Invidious Choices – The German East Asia Squadron and the RAN in the Pacific, August to December 1914

October 6, 2020

By Lieutenant Commander Desmond Woods RAN

This paper was first published by the Australian Naval Institute online and in an abbreviated form the by the UK Naval Review and by US Naval Institute Proceedings. The Society is grateful to Lieutenant Commander Woods for making it available to the Naval Historical Society of Australia.

Lieutenant Commander Woods joined the Royal New Zealand Navy in 1974, subsequently serving in the Royal Navy, the British Army and the RAN as an Education Officer, teaching naval and military history to junior officers. From 2003-2010 he ran the Strategic Studies Course and Naval History induction at the RAN College before joining the staff of the Australian Command and Staff College. He was the Military Support Officer to the Defence Community Organisation in Canberra, worked on the RAN’s International Fleet Review in 2013, was the Staff Officer Centenary of Anzac (Navy) and Chief of Navy’s Research Officer. He is the Navy’s Bereavement Liaison Officer. LCDR Woods is a Councillor of the ANI and is a regular contributor of naval articles and book reviews to Australian and international naval historical journals.

On the morning of 4th November 1914 news reached the Admiralty in Whitehall of the disaster that had overtaken Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock and his cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth at the Battle of Coronel off central Chile on the evening of 1 November.  Cradock and all 1660 men of his two outclassed, under gunned and obsolete cruisers had been destroyed – without inflicting any serious damage on Vice Admiral Maximilian’s von Spee’s armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gniesenau and his cruiser escorts.  These were the ships of the German East Asia Squadron that had crossed the Pacific from their base in China, solved the problems of coaling and supply, and retained their capacity to strike at the Royal Navy’s South Atlantic Squadron with lethal force. Cradock made very clear before leaving Port Stanley to engage von Spee that he did not expect to survive such an encounter but would not attempt to evade it either. He told the Governor of the Falklands, Sir William Allardyce in his last meeting with him that he did not expect to see him again. He handed him a package with his medals and a farewell letter for an Admiral who was a former shipmate. He was well aware that his ships HMS Good Hope and Monmouth were inadequate for the battle he believed he was obliged to fight.

HMS Monmouth

At the Admiralty 4th November was the first day of Admiral Sir John ‘Jacky’ Fisher’s return after taking over from Prince Louis of Battenberg as First Sea Lord. Fisher had built Britain’s modern battle fleet in preparation for war at sea with Germany.  From retirement he had watched as his pre-war plans for using his fast, heavily armed battle cruisers to clear the trade routes of the world of commerce raiders had been ignored in favour of retaining these powerful ships in the North Sea awaiting the anticipated day of reckoning with the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet.

As the scale of the defeat at Coronel and the loss of life became apparent Fisher demanded to know where his battle cruisers, ‘his greyhounds’, as he called them, had been when Cradock was sunk. Specifically, Fisher wanted to know why von Spee’s armoured and light cruisers had not met the fast powerful battle cruisers that he had built to, in his phrase, ‘Eat German cruisers as an armadillo eats ants.’ [i]

Winston Churchill as First Lord of the

The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, who had recalled the now elderly, but still mentally vigorous Fisher, to office, reacted to the news asking among many other questions how  swiftly the most powerful warship in the Pacific, the RAN’s battle cruiser, HMAS Australia would take to get to the Galapagos Islands.[ii] This request for information was ironic because it was the Admiralty which for weeks past had been preventing Admiral Sir George Patey, RN, the RAN’s fleet commander at sea in his flagship, from following his strategically sound instinct to pursue von Spee to South America in Australia.

On the 12th October Patey signalled the Admiralty proposing a route to South America for Australia via the Marquesas and Galapagos Islands to ensure that von Spee was not using either place as a coaling base. On the 14th the Admiralty replied to this request:

It is decided not to send Australian Fleet to South America. Without more definite information it is not desirable to proceed as far as the Marquesas Islands.[iii]

Throughout September and October, as von Spee made his way across the Pacific, Churchill had denied Cradock the powerful reinforcements for which he had asked.  Instead he sent him the slow and mechanically unreliable pre dreadnought battleship HMS Canopus. Churchill seriously overestimated her capability.  Because she carried four 12 inch guns Churchill post war continued to describe this reserve manned, elderly battleship as, ‘…the citadel around which all our cruisers could find absolute security.’ [iv]

Churchill had been a cavalry officer as a young man and had no personal naval experience. In 1914, despite his years at the Admiralty with professional seamen, he appears to have been inclined to believe that the calibre of a ship’s guns could be used to assess a ship’s total fighting power, regardless of all other factors including her age, her state of manning and general battle readiness.  Once Cradock was joined by Canopus he soon discovered that the slow old battleship inhibited rather than enhanced his ability to manoeuvre and fight in the South Atlantic.  That was why she was not with him when he faced von Spee’s modern ships at Coronel. That absence probably saved her from destruction.

Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock

Had Fisher been deploying the RN’s worldwide fleet from the start of the war — rather than Churchill, Battenberg and the Chief of War Staff at the Admiralty, Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee —  it seems at least possible, that Cradock would have had HMAS Australia as his ‘citadel’ ship when he took on the German armoured cruisers. Had Patey’s timely request to leave his base at Suva and pursue von Spee in his battlecruiser been granted, then the battle off the South American coast, when it  came, would not have been a one sided fight which Cradock could neither win nor avoid.

Australia had eight long range 12 inch guns with which to engage the 8.2 inch guns of the two German armoured cruisers. If von Spee had evaded Patey’s pursuit of him across the Pacific, and reached the coast of Chile, then Cradock’s two armoured cruisers, Good Hope, Monmouth and the light cruiser Glasgow could have been supplemented by the fast and powerful Australian battle cruiser. The Germans’ main armament would have been outranged, and Australia’s heavy, armour piercing, 12 inch shells would on the balance of probabilities, have disabled either or both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Whatever the outcome of such an engagement in the eastern Pacific, von Spee’s plan to re-supply in Valpariso, round Cape Horn and attack shipping routes in the South Atlantic as he fought his way home to Germany would have been defeated.

Counterfactuals, such as those presented above, are not history, and are necessarily speculative.  But it seems reasonable to assume that had Patey and his flagship been released from the central Pacific in good time to pursue von Spee, then the gallant Cradock and his sailors might have survived their battle and the Royal Navy would have avoided its first significant defeat in a sea battle since the war against the United States of 1812.

Battle of Coronel

Why that possible outcome did not happen, and tragedy and disaster ensued for the Royal Navy instead, is the subject of this paper. To provide an historical context for Coronel and the opening months of the war in the Pacific an examination of the pre-war strategic situation is necessary.

The new strategic calculus in the Far East and Pacific in 1913

In October 1913 the strategic calculus in the Pacific shifted dramatically in favour of British maritime interests when the Australian Fleet Unit, led by the new battle cruiser Australia, steamed into Sydney harbour. With the flagship were two Chatham class light cruisers: Sydney and Melbourne, built for the RAN; a third older cruiser, Encounter, on loan from the RN; and three new destroyers.  Rear Admiral Sir George Patey, RN, relieved Admiral Sir George King-Hall, RN, the last of the Royal Navy’s commanders of the Australian Station.  The Australian government had bought and, with the assistance of the parent navy manned, a formidable maritime deterrent. The persistent colonial fear that in wartime Australia would have its ports blockaded or bombarded, and its trade routes raided by the German East Asia Squadron was lessened but not eliminated. Australians rejoiced as they welcomed their new Navy and politicians basked in the reflected glory of this long awaited maritime muscle.  In May of 1914 the deterrent power of the guns of the new fleet was augmented by the modern E class submarines AE1 and AE2 with the capacity to attack German ships with torpedoes.

August 1914 in the Pacific

HMAS Australia leads the RAN’s First Fleet Unit into Sydney 1913

Nine months after the arrival of the Fleet, on the day war was declared, Australia steamed out of Sydney … ‘in all respects ready for battle.’  She would not return until 1919. Admiral Patey and the young RAN were ready for offensive or defensive operations in the Pacific, depending on what von Spee, and the Naval Staff in Berlin were planning for their East Asia Squadron.

 

 

SMS Scharnhorst Flagship of the German East Asia Squadron

In 1911 Berlin had reinforced German East Asia Squadron with two modern armoured cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gniesenau, and several fast light cruisers, and had given this prized command to the aristocrat Count Maximillian von Spee, a respected and seasoned commander and a man of undoubted personal courage and integrity.

Rear Admiral Count Maximillian Von Spee

 

 

 

Berlin’s Pacific war plan

The German Naval Staff’s war plan was to wage a cruiser war – against trade routes in the South China Sea, to the north of Australia, and in the Indian Ocean. German archives reveal that this was the strategic intention in the years before 1913 and the arrival of the RAN Fleet Unit in Sydney. Berlin’s planners took the view that food and raw materials from Australia and New Zealand were essential to Britain sustaining a long war and that attacking ships on sea lanes of the Empire therefore justified the inherent risks to the commerce raiders of meeting more powerful warships.  It was assumed in Whitehall that the German Squadron would operate from its naval base at Tsingtao in northern China. British naval war plans called for Vice Admiral Sir Martyn Jerram, C-in-C China Fleet, based at the British concession Wei Hei Wei, to attack Tsingtao as soon as hostilities were declared.

The RN’s China Fleet War Plan thwarted

Vice Admiral Sir Martyn Jerram C-in-C RN China Fleet

When the opportunity came Admiral Jerram was in position to execute the Admiralty’s pre-war plan with his powerful armoured cruiser HMS Minotaur, HMS Hampshire and two modern light cruisers.  On the point of carrying out his orders Churchill, supported by Sturdee, signalled Jerram giving him orders to sail south to Hong Kong to join the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Triumph, which was unmanned and in dry dock. Jerram was furious and wrote to his wife:

All being ready I raised steam and was on the point of weighing anchor to proceed to a line to the south of Tsingtao, my recognised first rendezvous in the war orders submitted by me and approved by the Admiralty. To my horror, I then received a telegram from the Admiralty, dated 30 July to concentrate at Hong Kong, of all places, just over 900 miles from where I wanted to go. I was so upset that I nearly disobeyed the order entirely. I wish now I had done so. [v

 

The cost of not capturing SMS Emden at Tsingtao

This reversal of plans by the Admiralty was to have profound ramifications, and the rationale for it was never satisfactorily explained after the war by Churchill or his staff. There was no threat, real or imagined, to Hong Kong to justify Jerram being despatched there.  Had Jerram been permitted to attack Tsingtao on the declaration of war he would not have caught Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which were far to the south east in the Caroline Islands, but he would have captured the fleet train and colliers in Tsingtao which instead survived to join von Spee at Pagan in the German Mariana islands in the Western Pacific. It was these ships that fuelled and supplied the German squadron’s odyssey across the Pacific to Chile and kept them battle ready.

Most significantly, Jerram would also in all likelihood have caught Emden and her collier Markomania and sunk or captured them. They were waiting outside Tsingtao for the RN cruisers to raid their port.   The destruction of Emden in August would have avoided the later loss of 20 allied merchant ships and their cargos that Emden’s captain Karl von Müller captured or sank in the Indian Ocean. His three months of commerce raiding stopped British shipping from sailing to and from Indian ports.  Emden’s destruction would also have prevented von Müller sinking a Russian cruiser, Zemchug, with heavy loss of life, and a French destroyer, Mousquet, at Penang, and the burning of the British oil storage depot in Madras.  With Emden stopped before she began her successful cruiser war, Jerram’s China Squadrom could have been available for the main event — the pursuit and bringing to battle of von Spee.  In this alternative scenario the Indian Ocean would have been free for the undelayed sailing of the ANZAC convoys through Suez and on to France and the Western Front, their anticipated destination in October 1914.

Instead the moment for a planned attack on Tsingtao was lost; Jerram was ordered south by the Admiralty and Karl von Müller, to his surprise and relief, found that his base was still open to enter, re-supply in, and leave without interference.  After coaling and storing he escorted the swiftly converted armed merchant raider Prinz Eitel Frederichand von Spee’s fleet train, including heavily laden colliers, out of Tsingtao, and joined his admiral now at Pagan. Jerram, languishing pointlessly at Hong Kong, had effectively been played out of the war in the Pacific by the Admiralty.

Franz Joseph, Prince von Hohenzollern, the Kaiser’s nephew, serving as Emden’s second torpedo officer, wrote in his memoirs of the surprise that he and his fellow officers felt at their freedom to enter and depart from Tsingtao in these last days of peace and the first days of war:

Only later did we learn that Admiral Jerram had intended to cruise outside Tsingtao and seize any of our ships he encountered. This had always been a possibility. What a rich prize the Royal Navy would have gained as the greater part of our colliers and supply-ships lay in Tsingtao. Happily we had an involuntary ally in Winston Churchill who ordered the British Squadron to assemble in Hong Kong. This bought us time we could not otherwise have enjoyed. [vi]

Patey’s ‘raid’ on Rabaul – 11 August 1914

Von Spee’s signals to his cruisers were heard but were not able to be decoded for their meaning by naval intelligence staff led by Captain Hugh Thring in Navy Office in Melbourne. The code breaker Dr Wheatley could not give Patey the German Squadron’s exact location, but he was told that the signals appeared to be strengthening daily.  Navy Office deduced that von Spee was steering south east, and made the reasonable assumption that the squadron could be heading for Rabaul, the main port in German New Guinea.

As a consequence of receiving this intelligence Patey steamed the RAN fleet unit, which included the ill-fated submarine AE1, to Simpsonhafen.  He mounted an operation on 11 August to surprise the Germans ships he hoped were there with a night torpedo attack using his three destroyers.  Sydney was waiting as their support ship.  The blackened destroyers cleared for action and slipped into the anchorage and found nothing. The signal strength intelligence was misleading; the harbour was empty.  Von Spee was at still at Pagan, 3000 kilometres to the north, where his fleet was monitoring signals from the German WT station near Rabaul at Bita Paka.

He learned from these signals the unpalatable fact that just six days after the war had been declared the RAN had made a raid on a German port, 3000 km from its base in Sydney.  Von Spee now confirmed what he had already appreciated, that there was to be no safe German base for his ships in the South West Pacific.  He fully understood that he was opposed by a powerful well balanced Australian task force, capable of swift deployment and which was actively hunting his ships.  It must have been a bitter moment for him. On 18 August he acknowledged this reality explicitly when he wrote that the arrival of an RAN battle cruiser in 1913 had made any pre-war plans in Berlin for the squadron operating as commerce raiders on trade routes in the South West Pacific overly ambitious and positively dangerous.  His understatement written to his wife read:

The Anglo Australian Squadron has as its flagship Australia, which by itself, is an adversary so much stronger than our squadron that one is bound to avoid it. [vii]

Invidious options for von Spee

On 25 August Von Spee learned that the Japan had declared war on Germany.  The powerful Japanese fleet now made the North West Pacific hostile for him. Tsingtao was about to be under siege from Japanese troops and was no longer an option for basing or for resupply. There remained only one realistic course open, he had to cross the Pacific, round Cape Horn and attempt to make his way home against whatever the RAN and the RN could place in his path. He knew it was a dangerous, probably impossible, option, and a logistical nightmare, but it was all he had left to offer his men and his Kaiser. As long as he could stay afloat and keep moving he was effectively a ‘fleet in being’ and could divert RN and RAN ships that were needed elsewhere. That was a role that was worth adopting. But Emden’s Karl von Muller sought and received von Spee’s blessing to undertake cruiser warfare, to slip covertly into the Indian Ocean and to operate as a commerce raider in accordance with German naval staff plans.

Changing Pacific priorities 1913 -14

The Admiralty’s pre-war plan for the Pacific formed part of its world-wide commerce protection effort. Consequently both Admirals Jerram and Patey believed that their first priority was to find and destroy enemy commerce raiding cruisers. But once the war started competing British and Australian government priorities emerged. These included the seizure of German Pacific territories and the silencing of their wireless telegraphy stations by which the naval staff in Berlin could stay in touch with their deployed cruisers.

Churchill and Sturdee therefore changed their priority to the elimination of the WT stations and the seizure of the German colonies across the Pacific. The stated aim was to sever German communications which could aid German warships; the unstated intention was to use the territories as bargaining chips when the war ended. The Australian government was also keen to forestall the possible Japanese seizure of German colonies on Australia’s doorstep, particularly in New Guinea.[viii]

The Samoan Operation – Taking the Kaiser’s Colony

In the event of war the New Zealand Government had volunteered to occupy German Samoa with its troops and take over the WT station in Apia. It was now asked to do so by the Secretary of State for War, Kitchener. Seizing Samoa was deemed by the War Office in London to be:  a great and urgent Imperial Service.[ix] The Commonwealth Naval Board was surprised by this request and the Minister of Defence, Senator Millen, accepted in principle provided this did not divert the RAN from the primary task of finding and defeating von Spee’s squadron.  He replied to the request saying ‘… it is manifestly undesirable to divert any of the RAN’s warships from their present mission,’[x] and suggesting that the occupation of Samoa could be done with an escort of an armed merchant ship. This was unlikely to be approved in London or Wellington given the risk that such an unprotected vessel might run into any of von Spee’s ships with disastrous consequences for 1385 New Zealanders. In response to his cable Millen received an unequivocal reminder and hastener from London which read: ‘ …. military authorities hope to hear shortly of Australian activity dealing with German possessions in the Pacific Ocean.’

Patey had no choice but to agree to guard the troopships, and assembled at Noumea a powerful escort consisting of his flagship and Melbourne, and the French armoured cruiser Montcalm.  He believed the threat to the New Zealand troop convoy from von Spee was real and he also reasoned that if the German squadron was heading for Samoa, to defend the Kaiser’s colony, it could be brought to battle there.  On the basis of the knowledge then available it is hard to fault the proposition that the Samoan expedition was the best chance of achieving a favourable encounter with the German ships.  It was a reasonable and prudent assumption and in fact only a few weeks premature. Von Spee would head to Samoa in early September once he learned that it had been seized, but by then Patey had been ordered back to Rabaul.

Admiral Sir George Patey, RN

On route to Samoa Patey learnt that the Japanese had entered the war and he was more than ever convinced that von Spee, (who had learned of it by a signal from the German embassy in Tokyo), had no choice but to head for South America where re- supply was guaranteed in nominally neutral, but de facto pro German, Chile.  Patey reasoned, rationally, that Von Spee’s way into the Indian Ocean was blocked by Jerram’s fleet and he would have no chance of getting coal supplies there. It could be a logistical trap from which his fuel-hungry coal fired armoured cruisers could not escape. Therefore he had no choice but to keep heading east.

The German Governor of Samoa refused to formally surrender to the New Zealand troops, but wisely offered no resistance to the force that landed on 29 August.  Had Patey been permitted to stay at Apia, as he wished, to await von Spee, a battle would have been almost inevitable.  But once the Samoan expedition had succeeded the Admiralty reinstated the delayed expedition to be mounted to capture the Bita Paka WT station near Rabaul and to occupy German New Guinea. When first asked his opinion of the New Guinea operation Patey told the Australian Naval Board that: ‘…..wireless stations will have to wait for now.’  After the war Patey, wrote that his intention in going to Samoa was not only to cover the troop convoy but in the hope that:

I might have the opportunity of bringing Admiral von Spee to action, as I felt sure he would be in the vicinity, and I thought that once I had got so far east I might be left free to deal with the German Squadron in my own way. [xi]

Patey’s expectation that he would be given freedom of action as the local flag officer to continue the chase towards South America was overly optimistic.  The naval world encompassing the wireless telegraphy revolution, combined with older underseas cable links, meant that Patey, like all other RN flag officers at sea, could receive orders from Whitehall in a maximum of forty eight hours.  Consequently admirals became merely the executors of Admiralty orders. The era of independent strategic command was over.  The Admiralty became the de facto operational commander and the Australian Naval Board, which could have been more assertive and was closer to the scene, concurred in the decisions made in Whitehall. This was in accordance with the pre 1914 agreement that RAN ships would be commanded operationally from Whitehall in wartime.

Unfortunately during the early months of the Admiralty War Room’s operations its limited and inexperienced staff discovered that it was much easier to assume command of world-wide naval operations, using modern communications, than to actually try and conduct such operations from afar.

The Australian Naval and Military Force – the Battle of Bita Paka

The reinstated original Admiralty order of 6 August now required Patey to escort the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF) to Simpsonhafen, the port of Rabaul. It spoke of the removal of the WT station, but also tellingly re-stated that:

All German colonial territories taken would at the conclusion of the war be at the disposal of the Imperial Government for purposes of an ultimate settlement at conclusion of the war.  [xii]

Churchill also spoke on other occasions of the German colonies as:  ‘…. diplomatic hostages for the liberation of Belgium.’  Maritime strategy in the Pacific was being made subservient to theoretical peace negotiations and possible post-war diplomacy.  The admittedly difficult task of locating von Spee, which should have remained an urgent necessity, was now deferred in favour of the capture of another German wireless station at Bita Paka whose usefulness to von Spee was at an end as he proceeded ever further to the east across the Pacific and beyond its range. [xiii]

The German Squadron ‘raids’ Apia in Samoa

Von Spee, having heard of the New Zealand army seizure of German Samoa, diverted from his easterly course across the Pacific, left his fleet train and sailed his warships south to the now occupied colony. He arrived on 14 September hoping to surprise Patey.  But Patey had left Apia on 31 August and Australia and the RAN cruisers were back in Simpsonhafen, off Rabaul, supporting the operation to take the Bita Paka wireless telegraphy station.  Had Patey’s wish for HMAS Australia to remain at Apia been granted by the Admiralty,  we might now be discussing the Battle of Samoa, not the Battle of the Falklands, as being the decisive engagement fought by the German East Asia Squadron in 1914.

HMAS Australia carried eight 12 inch guns

Certainly von Spee and his men were keen to fight the Australians. They cleared for action before dawn and entered Apia Harbour at speed to mount a surprise attack on whatever allied warships might be there. They hoped to find an anchored RAN battle cruiser.  Instead, like Patey at Rabaul in August, they found the harbour frustratingly empty. Captain Pochhamer, the First Officer of the Gneisenau writing in his memoirs made much of the general disappointment in the squadron that Australia was gone when the Germans arrived.  However he also wrote more realistically that Australia’s 12 inch guns: inspired a certain respect. [xiv]

Scharnhorst’s 8.2 inch guns – no match in range or weight for Australia’s

If Australia had been at Apia, and if the Germans had achieved surprise at close range with their excellent gunnery an RAN victory is not certain.  However, the probability is that the duty patrolling cruiser and, in daylight hours, the New Zealand lookouts at the WT station, would have provided Patey with the warning he needed to weigh anchor and proceed into battle at an advantageous range of his choosing.  Had that occurred the 8.2 inch guns of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would have been out-ranged.

Under these circumstances the likelihood is that von Spee would have lost ships. Even if he had escaped outright destruction his ammunition supply for his main armament would have been too diminished to allow him to engage in battle again. His chance of getting back to his fleet train for resupply would have been very low. In practice, any encounter with the RAN Squadron off Samoa would have stopped von Spee’s progress across the Pacific towards Valpariso, Cape Horn and the Atlantic.

It was not to be. Once in Apia harbour von Spee sensibly made no attempt to re take the German colony or to shell its wireless telegraphy station, now being operated by New Zealand army signallers.  He knew his gunners were going to need every one of their irreplaceable 8.2 inch shells when battle was eventually joined, as he knew it must be one day.  The Australian Naval Board, the Admiralty and Patey now knew precisely where the German Squadron was, but their priority was now safe transit of troops to war, not a naval battle.

Emden calls the shots

On 19 September the Admiralty first learned that von Müller and his elusive cruiser Emden was regularly sinking British ships in the Indian Ocean and sending their crews and passengers to India. Battenberg up to this point had made his priority finding the German East Asia Squadron and bringing it to battle.  But this menace at large in the Indian Ocean complicated the situation, and the pursuit of the von Spee became of secondary importance. Churchill’s focus shifted to getting Australian and New Zealand troops to the Western Front. The First Lord of the Admiralty personally took charge of the Royal Naval Division’s defence of the port of Antwerp and was not thinking about the Pacific. Meanwhile, the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg, was under daily attack in the press for his German ancestry.

The Admiralty’s attention, and that of the British cabinet and Australian and New Zealand Governments, shifted to the pursuit of Emden which imperilled this strategic objective.

The urgent priority was now to assemble a powerful escort to get the NZEF and AIF Divisions from Wellington to Albany in Western Australia, and then to Egypt and swiftly into the trenches in France to reinforce the British Expeditionary Force.

Understandably, the Australian and New Zealand Governments had no intention of sailing their troops across an ocean known to contain a German raider without a powerful covering force to guard them from a potentially catastrophic attack.  Delay inevitably ensued. Churchill, on his return from Belgium, now overrode Battenberg’s objections to this shift of priority away from von Spee to von Müller. The First Sea Lord was forced to concur with Churchill’s view that getting the troops to the Mediterranean was so important that nothing except the certain prospect of fighting enemy ships should delay it.

At the insistence of the New Zealand Government, supported by the Australian Governor General, Sir Ronald Munro Fergusson, Jerram’s flagship the armoured cruiser Minotaur and the Japanese armoured cruiser Ibuki were sent to Wellington to escort the New Zealand troop transports across the Tasman and the Great Australian Bight to Albany.

Japanese sailors from armoured cruiser HMIJNS Ibuki in Wellington Harbour with HMS Minotaur

To achieve this result Patey was stripped of Sydney and Melbourne which, with Minotaur and Ibuki, made up the powerful convoy escort that finally sailed on 1 November from Albany after being delayed since mid September by Emden’s depredations on the British merchant fleet in the Indian Ocean.

HMAS Sydney escorts the First AIF and NZEF Convoy out of Albany

Australia was also briefly ordered to escort the troop convoy, and proceeded south on 15 September, only for the orders to be cancelled two days later.

When news of the disaster at Coronel on 1 November reached Fisher in London he detached Minotaur from her duties escorting the convoy and sent her to Capetown at her best speed.  Fisher reasoned that it was not impossible that von Spee might continue round the Horn, cross the South Atlantic heading for the German colony of South West Africa and seek refuge in the deep water harbour at Walvis Bay. Based there he could attack the multitude of British ships using the Cape route from India and Australia and New Zealand to Britain.  It would be an audacious, but not impossible plan which had to be countered by a sensible defensive strategy.

Emden’s strategic achievement in the Indian Ocean

Von Spee had released Emden at von Müller’s request to engage in cruiser war in the Indian Ocean. Tactically he performed brilliantly, but strategically he did far more. He threatened all British trade in the Indian Ocean and diverted all available allied warships from their alternative task of pursuing the German East Asia Squadron.

German light cruisers were commerce raiders not designed to stand in the battle line

Von Spee knew he commanded a ‘fleet in being’.  He was at liberty with the only German naval task force outside Europe still able to inflict a significant defeat on the Royal Navy, if luck and circumstances favoured him. Emden’s cruise was a distraction from this obvious but unresolved fact. Emden’s task was to tie down warships in the Indian Ocean which would otherwise have been concentrating on bringing the German Squadron to battle.

German postcard showing Emden in Penang harbour

On 30 October, when Emden entered Penang harbour by night and torpedoed and sank the Russian cruiser Zemchugand the French destroyer Mousquet, von Müller was fighting precisely as von Spee needed him to be. This was textbook cruiser warfare and spread alarm across the whole of the Indian Ocean. By late October British ships were not sailing from Indiana ports. Commerce was paralysed by the clear and present danger to maritime trade and the sky-high insurance rates for ships operating where Emden might sink them

Nine days after the heavily escorted Anzac Troop Convoy finally sailed from Albany, Emden’s nemesis overtook her in the shape of the convoy escort, Sydney, at the Battle of Cocos.

HMAS Sydney at the Battle of Cocos

By then von Müller’s job of holding the world’s attention while von Spee proceeded unhindered across the Pacific was accomplished.  He had served his Admiral well and demonstrated with his single light cruiser just how severe the disruption to the Empire’s trade routes could be in a period of six weeks.

If, in August, von Spee had chosen to ignore the coal supply problems which worried him, and taken Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and his three light cruiser escorts into the Indian Ocean as commerce raiders, before heading for the Cape of Good Hope, the disruption he would have caused would have been serious and lasted longer. He may have been wise logistically not to go west, but it was surely a finely balanced decision. Had he chosen the bolder course of commerce raiding with his entire Squadron and successfully captured the coal he needed, then he had the number of ships and the firepower to have struck a serious blow to the supply lines of the Empire in the opening months of the war.

The threat from Emden to the troops who left Albany and that were to become the Anzacs, was real. We know this to be true because after Emden was wrecked by Sydney’s shell fire and driven aground, von Müller was captured and spoke of how he saw his duties.  He was asked by Sydney’s Captain John Glossop, over a shared dinner in his cabin, what he would have done if he had known of the convoy of thirty seven troop ships passing within fifty miles of the Cocos Islands the day he raided the wireless telegraphy station on Direction Island. Von Müller replied that, ‘Emdenwould have shadowed the convoy in darkness and at first light attacked the troop transports with guns and torpedoes until out of ammunition or we were sunk by the escorts, whichever came first.’

Under that entirely possible scenario it seems highly likely that one of more troopships would have been sunk by Emden.  Australians and New Zealanders would have died, in perhaps large numbers, without ever seeing Egypt, far less the beaches of Gallipoli.  The negative effect on public opinion in the Dominions would have been severe indeed.

SMS Emden firing on HMAS Sydney early in the battle of Cocos

Von Spee’s Pacific progress to South America

While von Müller was attracting a massive allied hunt for a single ship in the Indian Ocean von Spee was solving immense logistical difficulties in getting to South America. His German warships were not designed for steaming over such long distances with so many mouths to feed and coal holds to fill. Coal consumption was the over-riding concern and dictated a slow speed. Re-supply was brought to the squadron by neutral American colliers coming from Hawaii. Fresh food and water were also limited.

After being frustrated at Samoa, by Australia’s absence, von Spee visited Bora Bora in the Society Islands. He flew no flags, and greeted the French Chief of Police in English.  Gullible French colonists resupplied him with pigs and fruit and bread before an observant and literate native in a canoe pointed out the word Scharnhorst painted over on his stern.  France apparently did not send her more observant policemen to the central Pacific.  Von Spee paid the helpful French, thanked them for their assistance and sailed on to Tahiti intending to seize the coal stocks he needed.  A junior French naval officer, who knew from Samoa’s wireless warning that von Spee was coming, set fire to the island’s coal supplies.  Von Spee, silenced the disembarked gun battery from the sloop Zelee that bravely fired on him. He then bombarded Papeete’s marketplace briefly, causing no casualties, before sailing away without French coal and frustrated.[xv]

An elementary ‘Ruse of War’ and its strategic consequences

HMS Defence – modern armoured cruiser

Knowing he was being observed, and that his position and course would be reported, von Spee sailed north west from Tahiti over the horizon before resuming his easterly course towards Chile.  This elementary mariner’s ‘ruse of war’ was later reported to the Admiralty who fell for this trick and concluded, without any corroborating evidence, that von Spee might be heading back into the western Pacific.  As a result of this elementary deception Cradock in his old cruisers at the Falklands would wait in vain for the more powerful armoured cruiser HMS Defence, which he believed to have been sent to reinforce him from the Mediterranean. Defence had started her voyage but was stopped at Malta because it was now believed in the Admiralty that von Spee was probably not heading for Cape Horn and the South Atlantic.

HMS Canopus – pre Dreadnought battleship

The Admiralty did not inform Cradock of this change of plan or the flawed assumptions on which it was based. By the time this ruse had been detected and Defence finally left the Mediterranean it was too late for her to get to the Falklands to join Cradock before he sailed into the Pacific with Canopus.

In October, on Admiralty orders, Patey in Australia was at Fiji conducting pointless patrols, searching for the supposed return of the German ships to the western Pacific south of the Equator. Simultaneously, the Japanese Navy was searching for them  north of it.  Meanwhile, through October, von Spee continued his slow progress via Easter Island – where he was willingly re-supplied by a British cattle farm manager who had not heard that a war had started – and on to Juan Fernandez. There he fuelled from colliers escorted to him from San Francisco by the light cruiser Leipzig.  Now refuelled it was only a short voyage to the ports of Chile and the snow-capped Andes. But before his welcome from the German community in Valpariso would come his crushing defeat of Cradock at Coronel.

HMAS Australia and Patey – a dog tethered to its kennel

While von Spee’s laborious trans-Pacific progress was occurring, Patey continued to patrol off Fiji, and it would not be until 8 November, a week after Coronel had been fought and lost, and Fisher was back at the helm in Whitehall, that the Admiralty finally ordered Australia, with her fast collier, to sail to the Galapagos to be ready to block von Spee’s progress if he turned north.

By then, for nearly two months Patey had been in a state of impotence described by Arthur Jose, the Official Australian War historian, as being: ‘like a dog tethered to his kennel. He made darts into neighbouring waters and was pulled back before any results could be obtained.’[xvi]

Hindsight is a wonderful asset, and it is easy to be wise about what should have been done with its assistance. But two contemporary naval strategists who were in the midst of these events and who deplored what they saw cannot be lightly dismissed.  Admiral Jerram, observing events, lamented what he called: ‘……blundering about in the Pacific achieving nothing.’ He wrote to his wife:

The Australian Squadron, were within about 1200 miles of the German cruisers and by Admiralty order footling about with expeditions to New Guinea and Samoa, operations which could not possibly have any effect on the outcome of the war and which might have been undertaken at any slack time later on. Absolutely contrary to all principles of naval warfare, as in the first place, they were extremely dangerous due to the near presence of a powerful cruiser force and, in the second, they gave time for the enemy to collect coal stores  etc. [xvii]

Captain Hugh Thring, who had prepared the RAN for war, and was  the most experienced Pacific planner and maritime strategist in Australia, called the Samoan Expedition: ‘…..futile and a waste of precious weeks.’  Thring in Melbourne provided the Admiralty with the decrypted information which continually indicated that Von Spee was moving eastward and was not returning to the South Pacific. The Admiralty used the highly successful decoding skills of Thring’s German speaking linguist Dr Frederick Wheatley but refused to trust the evidence that von Spee was heading for Chile he was producing for them.

What might have been had HMAS Australia joined Cradock before Coronel

There are clear alternative possibilities for HMAS Australia’s movements which were being urged by Patey. Were they feasible? If released at the beginning of September, Australia, perhaps accompanied by either Sydney or Melbourne,might have joined Cradock at the Falklands. The RAN ships could have taken the southerly great circle route into high latitudes round the Horn to minimise the distance into the South Atlantic.  Patey kept with him at all times a fast collier, the SS Mallina and supply ships to accompany Australia into the South Atlantic. He and his officers were waiting to be sent east and hoping to bring von Spee to battle before, as they imagined, a powerful RN hunting squadron in the South Atlantic forestalled them.

Alternatively Australia could have travelled a shorter distance and been directed by the Admiralty to meet Cradock’s ships off Chile and together the reinforced squadron would have waited for von Spee’s inevitable arrival in the waters off Valpariso.

It was not to be. Like Jerram, sent pointlessly to Hong Kong in August when he wanted to be dealing with Emden and von Spee’s fleet train in Tsingtao, Patey had been played out of the game by the Admiralty. The last opportunity to bring von Spee to battle in the Pacific on advantageous terms had been frittered away. Consequently, the understrength and outclassed Royal Navy South Atlantic Squadron were defeated at sea at Coronel.  Two cruisers were sunk, sixteen hundred British sailors were dead.  The British public was appalled and enraged and the newspapers were demanding accountability and swift revenge.

Admiral Sir John (Jacky) Fisher

Fisher now took charge and ordered Jellicoe, commanding the Grand Fleet to detach Australia’s two half sisters, Invincible and Inflexible, from the battle cruiser squadron at Rosyth, Fisher placed them under the command of Admiral Doveton Sturdee, (whom he wanted out of the Admiralty for personal reasons), to steam south and take their revenge on von Spee. Churchill had to be convinced that two battlecruisers were needed to take on Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. He was concerned about weakening the Battle Cruiser force in the North Sea.

On Fisher’s orders the new battle cruiser Princess Royal was sent to the Caribbean in case von Spee had plans to use the Panama Canal to return to the Atlantic.

Simultaneously Fisher ordered Patey to take Australia at her best speed and to block the Pacific entrance to the canal in case von Spee had plans to go north from Chile and use the canal to return to Europe. With the old Sea Lord back in charge serious strategic thought was being given to all logical possibilities open to von Spee in the Pacific. Fisher’s doctrine had always been: ‘destroy opposition wherever it presents itself with overwhelming force.’

HMS Inflexible and HMS Invincible steam south in November 1914

None of this belated activity could undo the damage done by weeks of dithering and lack of attention to what von Spee was most likely to be doing. This failure by the Admiralty to make good use of time was noted by one keen observer based in Australia, the Governor General of Australia and Commander in Chief, Sir Ronald Munro Fergusson

 

 

 

 

 

The climax of the ‘long bungle in the Pacific’ 

Sir Ronald Munro Fergusson – Governor General of Australia

On the 15 November having learned of the scale of the defeat at Coronel, Fergusson wrote to the British Government in trenchant terms outlining Australian views on what he called ‘the long bungle in the Pacific’.  He spelt out very clearly the scale of the lost opportunity to use the RAN for the purpose for which it had been built. He wrote:

While reluctant to concern myself with naval strategy I have to report a prevailing opinion that the loss of our cruisers off the Chilean coast is the climax of a long bungle in the Pacific. The maxim of seeking out the enemy’s ships and destroying them has been ignored. Nearly a month was wasted over Samoa; after the wireless station at Simsonhafen has been destroyed the Australia was detained for many days at the Bismarck Archipelago; lastly valuable time was lost cruising around Fiji. Had Admiral Patey immediately destroyed the German wireless station and then sought out the enemy’s ships, these would not have been left unmolested for three months nor, in all probability would our military expedition to Europe have been so seriously delayed.

Admiral Patey at our interview in Sydney on August 2nd was insistent on the need for an immediate and unremitting chase of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and I know that he never swerved from that view. There is but one opinion here, viz., that HMA Fleet, and the China Squadron also, has been singularly ineffective; and that to the remoteness of Admiralty control may be traced the concentration of German ships off Chile with its lamentable results. [xviii]

Jose quotes an unnamed post war German naval historian who saw the situation in a similar way. He criticised the Admiralty’s strategy as being disjointed and unduly hampered by the expeditions to Samoa and New Guinea before concerted measures were taken to find and fight the German Squadron. Tellingly this German historian is quoted by Jose as writing…. ‘the mere sending of the Australia to the west coast of South America might have averted the disaster for the British at Coronel.’ [xix]

Disaster averted at Port Stanley

HMS Canopus opens fire on the German fleet off Port Stanley

Inflexible and Invincible arrived at the Falklands only one day before von Spee did so. Both ships were coaling with their hatches open and not ready for battle. Had von Spee closed the range and opened fire on them he might have achieved strategic surprise.  What saved the situation was the elderly Canopus which had been beached as a guardship on Fisher’s orders to protect the entrance to Port Stanley. Her 12 inch guns were fired remotely from the shore and though no hits were scored they came close to Gneisenau and deterred von Spee from attempting his plan to take the Falklands, burn its coal stocks, and capture its Governor. He had seen the masts of the two British battle cruisers in the port and decided to try to outrun them. It was a fatal mistake. Inflexible and Invincible with their cruisers had all day in which to leave the port, overhaul the Germans and eventually destroy them. They did this with the same type of 12 inch guns that HMAS Australia carried.

Coronel and the Falklands
HMS Carnarvon witnesses the end of SMS Scharnhorst

HMAS Australia after Coronel – the nearest point of contact

After the Battle of the Falklands and the destruction of the German Squadron by Inflexible and Invincible, Australiawas ordered to sail to the United Kingdom via Cape Horn as the Panama Canal was temporarily closed.  Over the location of the Battle of Coronel the flagship stopped and a funeral service was held for Cradock and his RN sailors who lay below on the seabed with their ships.

Later that month, after rounding Cape Horn, as the flagship steamed through the waters off the Falklands where Fisher’s other two ‘greyhounds’ had avenged Cradock, Australia stopped to pick up a souvenir of the battle spotted by the officer of the watch.  It was a life buoy with the word Scharnhorst on it. It was taken to Patey to examine.  That life buoy was the closest that Fisher’s antipodean ‘greyhound’, HMAS Australia, got to the enemy that she had been designed and bought to counter in the Pacific and bring to battle.  Admiral Patey and his ship’s company must have been above the wrecks of the East Asia Squadron’s ships containing the bodies of Vice Admiral Maximillian von Spee, his two sons, and nearly 2200 German sailors.  These men had joined Rear Admiral Christopher Cradock and his 1660 Royal Navy sailors on the sea bed of the Southern Ocean.

Conclusion and unanswerable questions

Could it have all been different? Could Australia and the very able Sir George Patey have found and engaged Scharnhorst and Gneisenau if he had been given the tactical autonomy he asked for?  If he had remained at Samoa when he asked to do so would there be an engagement known as the Battle of Apia?   Could a better strategic understanding of the Pacific, a realistic appreciation in the Admiralty and careful following of the intelligence have given Australia the only chance she would ever have to engage an enemy battle squadron?  Would she have prevailed in battle against the two German armoured cruisers?  Had Australia been with Cradock off Chile would he and his 1654 men in their underarmed ships Good Hope and Monmouth have survived the battle?

Questions about why Australia was not employed for the purpose for which she was built were asked at the time and have been asked for a century, and we are no closer to knowing the answer and nor will we ever be. The answers are unknowable, lost to us like the brave men on both sides who fought the war at sea in the southern oceans in 1914 and paid with their lives for their dedication to doing their duty as professional naval officers and sailors.

Cradock Von Spee and Sturdee

END NOTES

  1. Fisher quote. In regard to cruisers, no number of smaller type of cruisers can cope with even one thoroughly powerful first-class armoured cruiser. An infinite number of ants would not be equal to one armadillo! The armadillo would eat them up one after the other. http://dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/
  2. Pitt, Barrie, Coronel and the Falklands p 43
  3. Jose, A.W, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 p 123
  4. Churchill, Winston. The World Crisis,. Odhams Press, London 1938 p. 370
  5. Jerram Private papers, letter to wife Clara, Nov 1914, GB 00064, quoted in Carlton. M, First Victory 1914 p 83.
  6. Hohenzollern-Emden, Prince Franz Joseph, Emden: The Last Cruise of the Chivalrous Raider, 1914 p 32.
  7. Jose, A.W, p 31.
  8. The Australian view of the Anglo Japanese alliance was very different from that of the Imperial government.Before the Battle of Tsushima Australians viewed Japan with suspicion. After that 1905 victory many Australians viewed the Japanese navy with alarm.
  9. Jose, A.W, p 47 Cable from British Government Committee of Imperial to the Commonwealth Government 6 August.
  10. Ibid p. 49
  11. Carton, M, First Victory p.94.
  12. Jose, A.W p 47. In the early weeks of the war a negotiated conclusion to the hostilities was anticipated in London and the future of Germany’s overseas colonies was seen by HMG as a part of the negotiations for a European settlement.
  13. Bita Paka WT station was duly taken on 11 September with the loss of one RN officer, five Australian sailors, an Australian Army doctor, one German regular and approximately thirty native German irregular police
  14. Pochhammer, Kapitan zur See Hans, Before Jutland: Admiral von Spee’s Last Voyage, p 212.
  15. The French navy court martialled the officer in Toulon for losing his gun boat before later decorating him posthumously for his bravery.
  16. Jose, A,W. p 123
  17. Jerram: Private Papers, GB 0064 JRM quoted in Carlton p 171
  18. Jose, A.W p 110.
  19. Ibid p 47.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Bean, C. E.W. Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18 University of Queensland, 1921 Vol IX: The Royal Australian Navy 1914-1918 and Vol X; The Australians at Rabaul

Carlton, Mike.  First Victory 1914- HMAS Sydney’s Hunt for The German Raider Emden, William Heineman, Australia, 2013

Churchill, Winston. The World Crisis, 1911 -1918. Odhams Press, London, 1938

Corbett, Sir Julian, Naval Operations, Vol 1, Longmans, Green & Co. London, 1920.

Gilbert, Gregory. Steaming to War:  HMAS Australia (I) in August 1914 – AWM Wartime Magazine 2014.

Massie, Robert K.  Castles of Steel Britain Germany and the winning of the Great War at Sea, Random House, 2003

Mackay, Ruddock F. Fisher of Kilverstone. London: Clarendon Press. 1973.

Overlack, Peter. The Commander in crisis. Graf Spee and the German East Asian Cruiser Squadron in 1914’, in J. Reeve & D. Stevens (Eds) The Face of Naval Battle. The human experience of modern war at sea. Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 2003.

Pitt, Barrie, Coronel and the Falklands, Cassell & Co, 1960.

Pochhammer, Kapitan zur See Hans, Before Jutland: Admiral von Spee’s Last Voyage, Jarrolds, London, 1931.

Hough, Richard, The pursuit of Admiral van Spee, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1969.

Hohenzollern-Emden, Prince Franz Joseph, Emden: The Last Cruise of the Chivalrous Raider, 1914, Lyon Publishing International, London 1989.

Jose, A.W,  Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918.

Stevens D and Reeve J, Southern Trident. Strategy, History and the Rise of Australian Naval Power Sydney Allen and Unwin, 2001.

Stevens, D, In All Respects Ready – The RAN in World War 1, Oxford 2014.

Stevens, D, From Offspring to Independence, in Dreadnought to Daring.  Seaforth 2012.

 

 

 

Occasional Paper 86: Royal Australian Navy in the Pacific War

August 26, 2020

By Richard H Pelvin and Jozef H Straczek

This paper was provided courtesy of the Sea Power Centre – Australia. It was first published in 2003 and is available on the Sea Power Centre website Feature Histories page. Both authors worked for the Defence Department in a range of roles over many years. Jozef Straczek was the Senior Naval Historical Officer in the Naval History Directorate, Department of Defence, Canberra. He has written or contributed to many books and articles on naval history. Among his works is the reference book, The Royal Australian Navy: ships, aircraft and shore establishments (Sydney: Navy Public Affairs, 1996). Richard Pelvin worked for ten years in the historical sections of the Army and Navy. He was also Curator of Official Records at the Australian War Memorial and has written and published widely on military, naval and aviation history.

 

In the morning of 8 December 1941 Japanese troops commenced landing in Northern Malaya. This assault was co-ordinated with the Japanese strike against the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor (7 December, local time). As a consequence of these actions the Royal Australian Navy found itself facing a new enemy and fighting a new war. A war that was to last four years and see Australian ships and personnel operate across the vast expanse of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Prior to the outbreak of hostilities six corvettes of the RAN had already been based at Singapore. Other vessels, including the cruiser HMAS Hobart, the destroyer HMAS Vampire and the sloop HMAS Yarra, were ordered back to Australian waters to help meet this new threat. Vampire formed part of the escort of HM Ships Prince of Wales and Repulse on their ill-fated sortie to attack Japanese landing forces at Kuantan on Malaysia’s east coast. She rescued 225 survivors after both the capital ships had been sunk by Japanese naval aircraft.

HMAS Vampire was present for the sinking of HM Ships Prince of Wales and Repulse on 10 December 1941. She would later be sunk herself off Ceylon in April 1942

After this disaster the Australian ships were heavily involved in escorting the troopships bringing reinforcements to Singapore, often in the face of severe Japanese air attacks. On one occasion Yarra lifted over 1300 survivors from the troopship Empress of Asia after it had been dive bombed and sunk. A few days prior to this, on 27 January, Vampirecarried out a spirited but unsuccessful attack on a superior Japanese landing force at Endau. An accompanying British destroyer, HMS Thanet, was sunk. Other ships carried out patrol and evacuation duties. After taking part in the evacuation of Singapore the Australian ships formed part of the force allocated for the naval defence of the Netherlands East Indies.

To remove a threat from their flank while attacking eastern Java the Japanese Navy launched a heavy air raid on Darwin, which was being used by the Allies as a staging point for reinforcements. The bombers hit the town, airfield and harbour facilities, sinking five merchant ships and the destroyer USS Peary. Many other vessels, including the hospital ship Manunda, were damaged. This was the first of many such raids.

In Javanese waters, on 27 February a combined Australian, British, American and Dutch striking force composed of five cruisers, including HMAS Perth, as well as a number of destroyers, engaged Japanese forces covering the approach of a landing force. In this action, the Battle of the Java Sea, the Allies lost two Dutch cruisers and three destroyers with damage to a British cruiser. Subsequently the Allied naval forces were ordered to withdraw from the Dutch East Indies. However, whilst attempting to reach Australia through Sunda Straits, Perth, accompanied by the cruiser USS Houston, RAN into a Japanese force landing troops in Bantam Bay. In the ensuing action both cruisers were sunk with heavy loss of life. Many of the survivors were to subsequently die as prisoners of war.

AA Guns loaded

HMAS Perth displayed incredible fight while outnumbered by a superior force. The ship, superbly led by Captain Hector ‘Hec’ Waller was eventually sunk in the early hours of 1 March 1942.

The Australian built corvettes were able to withdraw successfully to Australia while the destroyer Vampire had reached Ceylon. Also fortunate was the destroyer HMAS Vendetta which had been immobilised and under repair in dry dock at Singapore at the time of the attack. She eventually reached Australia after an epic towing operation through enemy controlled waters. Less fortunate, the sloop Yarra which, whilst escorting a convoy south of Java, was surprised by a Japanese heavy cruiser squadron. Despite putting up a gallant fight she was overwhelmed and sunk on 4 March. The following month, on 9 April, Vampire was also sunk by Japanese carrier aircraft off Ceylon.

With the occupation of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies the strategic centre of gravity moved east. The Japanese, having occupied Rabaul and points on the northern New Guinea coast decided to occupy the Solomon Islands and Port Moresby. This would enable them to deny the Allies bases from which to attack Rabaul and also to threaten the RANs Pacific lines of communication. The Combined Operations Intelligence Centre, located in Melbourne, linking information from locally based signals intelligence units, Coastwatchers and aerial reconnaissance, issued an assessment on 25 April that a Japanese assault on Port Moresby was imminent.

On 1 May the cruisers HMA Ships Australia and Hobart and USS Chicago escorted by three American destroyers sailed from Hervey Bay to rendezvous with an American force built around the aircraft carriers Yorktown and Lexington. The Australian force, designated Task Force 44, reinforced with a fourth US destroyer and detached on 7 May to block the movement of any Japanese ships through the Jomard Passage. The force was bombed that day by Japanese aircraft incurring only superficial damage. Although no other enemy were sighted the presence of the Allied ships was influential in the Japanese decision to withdraw the Moresby Invasion force. Meanwhile US carrier aircraft had sunk the Japanese light carrier Shoho the same day.

In the action between the American and Japanese fleet carriers, Shokaku and Zuikaku on the 8th, the Lexington was sunk and the Yorktown badly damaged. Neither of the Japanese carriers were sunk though the Shokaku was badly damaged. Although the Japanese had inflicted greater losses in ships on the Allies they had not achieved their strategic objectives. Further, the Shokaku and Zuikaku had suffered such heavy losses in aircraft and personnel that they were not available for the Midway Operation in early June.

The combined effects of the battle of the Coral Sea, Midway and later the Solomons Campaign turned the tide of the Pacific War. Although no Australian vessels were present at the Battle of Midway, Australian naval signals intelligence played an important part in helping to monitor Japanese movements and intentions and passing this information onto the Americans at Pearl Harbor.

Just prior to the Midway Operation the Japanese again brought the war to Australia’ shores with an attack on Sydney Harbour by midget submarines. The accommodation ship HMAS Kuttabul was sunk alongside Garden Island but all three Japanese submarines were lost. This was not the first incursion by Japanese submarines into Australian waters. In January four minelaying boats had operated in northern Australian waters, laying mines off Darwin and in Torres Strait. One, the I-124, had been sunk by the corvette HMAS Deloraine, assisted by other RAN and US vessels. In February and March the submarine I-25 had launched its reconnaissance seaplane on flights over Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart before moving on to New Zealand and Fiji. Simultaneously, submarine operations off the west coast resulted in the sinking of two merchant vessels and attacks on three others.

The tracks of the three midget submarines through Sydney Harbour

The midget attack presaged a submarine campaign against shipping on Australia’s eastern coast which lasted from early June until August. Fourteen ships were attacked of which six were sunk. Convoys were introduced on the Australian east coast on 6 June. The Japanese submarines also shelled Sydney and Newcastle with little resultant damage. Further operations carried out in the first half of 1943 resulted in the loss of another eleven ships including the hospital ship Centaur.

While the first submarine campaign was being waged, plans were in hand to eject the Japanese from the Solomon Islands. On 7 August an Allied force landed on Guadalcanal. Naval support was provided by an Australian/American force of cruisers and destroyers, including HMAS Australia, Canberra and Hobart. Shortly after midnight on 9 August a Japanese cruiser squadron attacked the allied force sinking Canberra and three American cruisers. Although operations in the Solomons were to continue, further RAN involvement was limited, although valuable support was provided by Coastwatchers.

Later in August the Japanese landed at Milne Bay. Units of the RAN had convoyed troopships to the area and latter supported the defence of the area from the sea. On 29 August the new destroyer HMAS Arunta sank the Japanese submarine RO33 off Port Moresby, thereby removing a major threat to the logistic support for Australian troops. With the successful conclusion of the Milne Bay battle the RAN provided naval support for forces operating in northern New Guinea and commenced development of the string of bases that would be opened up along that coast to support the Allied advance. Operations included conducting hydrographic surveys, shore bombardments, t RAN sporting troops and providing logistic support.

December 1942 saw the commencement of Operation Lilliput, which over a six-month period saw the transportation of 60,000 tons of supplies and 3,802 troops from Milne Bay to Oro Bay, escorted by Australian corvettes. In March 1943 the Japanese suffered a major defeat when a reinforcement convoy heading for Lae was destroyed by Allied air attack in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Intelligence on this convoy was provided by the joint RAN /USN codebreaking organisation in Melbourne.

This same period saw a lesser but significant level of RAN activity in the area north and west of Darwin. While supporting commando operations in Timor the destroyer HMAS Voyager was lost in September 1942 as was the corvette HMAS Armidale in December. With the withdrawal of the commandos the RAN continued to support covert operations in the area by the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD) which were maintained until the end of the War. In September 1943 SRD operatives in small boats carried out Operation Jaywick, successfully attacking Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour. They had been t RAN sported there in a small captured fishing vessel, the Krait. In late 1944 another covert attack on Singapore Harbour was mounted by the SRD but was to end in disaster. Throughout the war the RAN units based on Darwin were also to provide support for settlements, missions, airfields and other military installations in the area. On 22 January 1943, while undertaking one of these voyages, the stores carrier HMAS Patricia Cam was bombed and sunk.

As 1943 and 1944 progressed Australian ships were involved in the campaigns to oust the Japanese from West New Guinea and adjacent islands. In the succession of landings carried out the cruisers and destroyers carried out bombardments and provided seaward cover. The corvettes escorted merchant ships through the area. The armed merchant cruisers HMAS Manoora, Kanimbla and Westralia were converted to Landing ships Infantry (LSI). As such they were to take part in many of the amphibious operations such as those at Hollandia, Biak, Aitape and Morotai which brought the Allies closer to the Philippines.

In July 1943 the cruisers were detached from the 7th Fleet for operations in the Solomons area. Enroute to Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides Hobart was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and put out of action for nearly two years. In the previous month the heavy cruiser Shropshire had been transferred from the Royal Navy as a replacement for Canberra.

Captain John A Collins CB RAN assumed command of HMAS Shropshire on 7 April 1943 and she commissioned as HMAS Shropshire at Chatham on 20 April 1943.

Morotai was taken in September 1944 and from there the landings in Leyte were mounted. The LSIs landed American troops at Panaon while the covering forces included Australia, Shropshire, Arunta and her sister ship HMAS Warramunga. Survey work was carried out by the frigate HMAS Gascoyne. On 20 October a Japanese aircraft crashed into Australia causing heavy damage and casualties and forcing her withdrawal with Warramunga as escort.

In the Battle of Surigao Strait on 25 October Shropshire and Arunta formed part of the large American force formed around six battleships which overwhelmed a much smaller Japanese battle squadron attempting to attack the amphibious forces. Shropshire engaged the battleship Yamashiro with gunfire while Arunta carried out a torpedo attack. Surigao Strait was the last action fought using the traditional battle line. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, of which it was part, remains the largest naval battle in history and saw the end of the Imperial Japanese Navy as a fighting force.

In January 1945 the Allies commenced the invasion of Lingayen. Australia, now repaired, Shropshire, Arunta and Warramunga carried out bombardment duties while Manoora, Kanimbla and Westralia landed troops. The sloop HMAS Warrego and the frigate HMAS Gascoyne performed escort duties and carried out survey tasks in Lingayen Gulf. The Allied ships came under frequent air attack, especially from kamikaze aircraft. Gascoyne and Westralia were near missed and Arunta damaged. Australia, however, was grievously damaged when, between 5 and 9 January, she was hit five times. She continued to carry out her bombardment duties until ordered to retire with Arunta on 9 January. The other vessels continued operations in the area until March, by which time the repaired cruiser Hobart had rejoined.

At this time the British Pacific Fleet commenced operations in the Pacific. The RAN was initially represented by the destroyers HMA Ships Quickmatch and Quiberon as well as a number of corvettes. Later the destroyers HMA Ships Napier, Norman, Nizam and Nepal joined. All of these vessels had previously served in the Indian Ocean with the British Eastern Fleet. The destroyers had taken part in attacks on Japanese oil installations in Sumatra and the N Class vessels had supported the Army in Burma. The corvette HMAS Launceston had sunk the submarine RO 110 off Vizagapatam. The destroyers saw service in support of the Okinawa operations in April while the corvettes formed two minesweeping flotillas.

The RAN ‘s last operations in the Pacific were those in support of Australian troops in the landings at Tarakan, Brunei and Balikpapan in May, June and July respectively. As before the cruisers and destroyers provided gunfire support, troops were landed from the three LSIs and the sloops, frigates and corvettes carried out patrol, escort and surveying duties. RAN vessels, especially the smaller motor launches, were also active in the final operations in New Guinea waters.

Upon the conclusion of the war the RAN played a significant part in the arrangements for the surrender of various Japanese forces in South East Asia and the South West Pacific. Minesweeping continued for a number of years after the surrender and Australian service personnel and prisoners of war from around the region were repatriated.

The Pacific War saw an expansion of the infrastructure necessary to support wide ranging naval operations. Defensive minefields were laid in Australian, New Zealand and New Guinea waters. Harbour defence systems were established around Australia and forward operating bases provided logistic support to ships close to the combat areas. The manufacture of mines, torpedoes, guns and ammunition was undertaken as was the development and construction of sophisticated electrical equipment.

Shipbuilding, repair and maintenance facilities were greatly expanded, including the construction of the Captain Cook Graving Dock at Garden Island. Three destroyers, twelve frigates and sixty corvettes as well as numerous smaller vessels were built. A large number of merchant ships were converted for naval purposes and many others were defensively armed and given mine countermeasures. Most of this work was carried out by the men and women of the unarmed forces who worked in the factories and dockyard around Australia.

Women were enlisted into the Navy for the first time and helped provide many of the support functions so desperately needed by a navy at war. Some of these women played an invaluable, and largely unrecognised, role in supporting the large intelligence organisation that had been established. One, Ruby Boye, also served as a Coastwatcher at Vanikoro from February 1942 to October 1944. Before the end of the war the peak strength of the RAN had reached 39,650 with approximately 337 vessels ranging from cruisers to motor launches in service.

In proportion to its size the RAN made a significant contribution to the Allied effort in the war against Japan. This was more noticeable in the earlier days of the war when operations were taking place in Australia’s proximity and before the United States was able to fully deploy its manpower and industrial strength. The amphibious operations, survey, minesweeping, convoy and patrol tasks from late 1942 to 1945 tend to be overlooked yet they were all essential components in the exercise of sea power and ultimately the war in the Pacific was a maritime campaign.

Occasional Paper 84: Operation Musketeer – the 1956 Suez Crisis, RAN Members’ Involvement

July 27, 2020

This paper was written by Society volunteer, Commander Martin Linsley RAN Rtd. Its genesis was a list of the RAN participants in the Suez Crisis compiled by Mike Fogarty a former RAN officer and diplomat. Contributions were also received from participants; Commodore Kelvin Gulliver AM RAN Rtd and Captain Nick Bailey RAN Rtd who were served as junior officers in HMS Newfoundland at the time.

One chronicler called it ‘the shortest and silliest war in history’[i], but Operation Musketeer, better known as the 1956 Suez Crisis, signified the end of an era and the beginning of a new world order. The conflict focused on the Egyptian owned Suez Canal, and involving a conspiracy orchestrated by France, the UK and Israel. At least 13 members of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) were involved.[ii]

Following the end of WWII, the RAN maintained close links with the UK’s Royal Navy (RN), its parent service. It was common for RAN members, particularly officers, to be posted to the RN for ‘service, training and promotion courses’. The posting was welcomed by many. It began and ended with a 4/5 week’s sea passage travelling first class on a passenger liner. The overseas allowances were good and RAN personnel were the envy of their RN contemporaries. More than one young officer found his future wife during his time in the UK.

Four other RAN members serving with the RN in 1956 had been commissioned from the ranks. Two of them, Graham (Spider) Currie and Leonard Peterson had been conscripted for service in WWII, after which they were accepted into permanent service and undertook officer and specialist training. By September 1965 SBLT Special Duties (the SD designation first being used that year) Currie was serving as a Communications Officer in HMS Woodbridge Haven, the command/depot ship of a Coastal Minesweeping Group. SBLT SD Peterson was a Boatswain Officer in the aircraft carrier HMS Albion. Fellow SD officers Charles Goodwin and Norman (Bruce) MacRae also undertook their officer training in the UK. SBLT Goodwin’s first sea-posting as an Ordinance Engineer officer was to HMS Tyne, a depot/headquarters ship; and for Communications Officer SBLT MacRae it was to the destroyer HMS Cavendish.

In August 1956 another six Australian officers were on their second or third postings with the RN. LCDR Ian Burnside, a navigation specialist, undertook long-course training during his first posting, and was sent to a destroyer HMS Duchess for his second. Rory Burnett was the Torpedo and Anti-Submarine officer in HMS Jamaica, a light cruiser. Onboard another light cruiser, HMS Ceylon, LEUT Ian Macgregor was the Assistant Gunnery Officer. Aged just 27, he had already served six years in UK. Subsequently, he lost his life in the Melbourne/Voyager collision.  LEUT Edmund Melzer was a communications specialist in HMS Woodbbridge Haven assisted by Graham Currie. Donald (Weary) Weil joined the RAN in January 1949 and just eight months later was sent to UK for 3½ years of RN training and service. In March 1956 he was back in UK, and by October he was onboard HMS Bulwark, an aircraft carrier.  LEUT Ian Nicholson undertook the RN Long Communications Course in 1954. On completion he was posted to sea and in October 1956 he was serving in the destroyer HMS Daring.

RN service was the first overseas posting for three young Supply Cadet midshipmen; Brian Bigelow, Keith Denton, and Kelvin Gulliver who were 15-year-old classmates when they joined the Naval College in 1953. After initial training they were sent to the UK in 1955 to join their RN contemporaries in the training carrier HMS Triumph for further Cadet training. They were promoted to Midshipman on 1 Jan 1956 and posted to sea for 12 months to complete their sea training. This was followed by Supply specialist training ashore in UK for 16 months before returning to Australia in May 1958. In September 1956, on the outbreak of the Suez crisis, Brian was serving in HMS Eagle an aircraft carrier,Keith in another carrier, HMS Albion, and Kelvin in HMS Newfoundland, a Singapore based light cruiser. In Newfoundland also was Nick Bailey an RN Midshipman who subsequently joined the RAN and became a Captain.

All these British ships were part of the RN’s Mediterranean Fleet for Operation Musketeer. Newfoundlandaccompanied by Diana, Modeste and Crane had been transferred from the Far East Fleet to patrol at the southern end of the Canal. Australia’s then Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, was not supportive of the Australians being onboard RN ships during a conflict in which Australia was not directly involved. While he could do nothing to prevent it, his concerns were evident in the requirement for the 13 Australians to conceal their nationality. This entailed changing the only marks at the time that distinguished their uniforms from the RN by replacing the Australia inscribed brass buttons with RN ones. It is doubtful whether many carried out this direction because of the late notice and that they were in tropical rig or Action Working Dress (AWD).

The Suez Canal, stretching 193.3 km between the Mediterranean and Red Seas, was completed in 1869. It was built by the Suez Canal Company. The enterprise began with mostly French private investors and a significant Egyptian shareholding, but by 1890 it was 44% British owned. The canal slowly became very profitable, but for Britain it had strategic significance because it shortened the time taken for the country to reach India and its eastern colonies.

In response to an anti-European riot in 1882 Britain landed an army, seized the Suez Canal and developed a protectorate over Egypt. After WWII the company’s profits grew rapidly as oil shipments increased. In 1952 developing nationalism in Egypt resulted in a military coup led by Colonel Nasser that overthrew King Farouk. To invigorate Egypt’s economy Nasser undertook to dam the river Nile at Aswan. In 1956 the World Bank denied a loan for the project. To gain the funds necessary for the dam Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company in July 1956, promising to fairly compensate its shareholders.

Britain, wishing to retain its influence over the canal and the Middle East, considered Nasser a threat against which it was prepared to use force. So did France, which was fighting an Egyptian-supported rebellion against its rule in Algeria. Israel was also anti-Egypt. Since its formation in 1948 it had consistently and increasingly been harassed by Egypt, including denial of its use of the Suez Canal. Egypt was also sponsoring raids by fedayeen guerillas that resulted in Israeli civilian casualties. While understanding these issues, the USA and other countries opposed the use of force for their resolution.

Five Nations led by Sir Robert Menzies were chosen in September 1956 to negotiate with Nasser. Menzies proposed the “establishment of principles” for the future use of the canal. This was to ensure that it would “continue to be an international waterway operated free of politics or national discrimination and with a secure financial structure and international confidence”. He envisaged that increased confidence would expand Canal use and guarantee a secure future. The proposal also included a convention to recognise Egyptian sovereignty of the Canal, and the establishment of an international body to run it. Nasser rejected these proposals. As Menzies negotiating skills on the international scene were limited, he was unable to reach an understanding with Nasser.

In October 1956 France convened a secret meeting with Britain and Israel. Under the Protocol of Sèvres the parties agreed that Israel would invade the Sinai. Britain and France would then intervene – supposedly to separate the warring Israeli and Egyptian forces – and set a 24-hour deadline for the forces to withdraw 16 kilometres from either side of the Suez Canal. Assuming Egypt would not accept the ultimatum, Britain and France would then argue that Egypt’s control of the Suez Canal was too fragile and that it needed Anglo-French management. A pretext for invasion was set, so too was the start date for invasion.

Originally planned and prepared as an Anglo-French operation for early September 1956, Operation Musketeer had to be delayed because of the need to coordinate with Israel. The Operation had no clear goal beyond seizing the Suez Canal zone by capturing Port Said at the northern end of the waterway, and then moving south.

Since August 1956 the Anglo-French air-sea-ground force had been concentrating in the Eastern Mediterranean, planning and training. It consisted of approximately 45,000 Britons and 34,000 Frenchmen, 200 British and 30 French warships (including seven aircraft carriers), more than 70 merchant vessels, hundreds of landing craft, and 12,000 British and 9,000 French vehicles. One New Zealand vessel, the cruiser HMNZS Royalist was also present, as a carrier group radar picket, ‘but was ordered not to take part in any operations’[iii]. Of this force, only the cruiser HMS Newfoundland and her 3 escort vessels were located south of the canal.

The Suez Canal invasion – October November 1956

The conflict began on 29 October when Israeli aircraft attacked Egyptian positions throughout the Sinai. Paratroopers were dropped and ground forces headed south and west, routing Egyptian opposition within five days.

On 30 October Britain and France sent the ultimatum to Egypt and Israel. As planned, Israel accepted and, as expected, Egypt rejected it. Egypt’s response was to continue fighting, sink all 40 ships that were then in the Suez Canal and thereby deny the conspirator nations their purpose of keeping the waterway open. Operation Musketeer commenced. On 31 October a land- and carrier-based air strike neutralized much of Egypt’s air forces.

With Egypt having a small and comparatively ineffectual navy, the major roles for the British and French navies were to support and protect an amphibious landing, and to provide aircraft for ground attack. During the night of October 31-November 1 the Anglo-French invasion armada sailed from Malta and Algeria. Shortly after, a smaller force loaded at Cyprus, which was closer.

On the night 31Oct/1 Nov at the southern end of the canal, the cruiser HMS Newfoundland, (a Crown Colony Class light cruiser of 9000 tons, 3 x 6” guns, 14 bofors) encountered and ordered the Egyptian frigate Domiat to “heave to”. Domiat refused and opened fire and caused some damage and casualties with several 4” shells. (1 killed, 5 wounded). Newfoundland and the accompanying destroyer, HMS Diana returned fire and sank the Domiat. (38 killed, 69 Survivors). Domiat was a British built River Class Frigate (1590 tons, 2x QF 4 in /40 Mk.XIX single mounts CP Mk.XXIII) (similar to HMAS Barcoo) and had been sold to the Egyptian Navy in 1948. Midshipman Gulliver’s Action Station in Newfoundland was in the Emergency Crypto team deciphering and transmitting the multitude of highly classified signals. This provided him with a unique insight into the many factors involved in the conduct of the War. Before the commencement of hostilities, he had been working in the Pay Office which suffered a direct hit from the Domiat. Nick Bailey was on the GDP on the Port side of the Bridge and witnessed the whole engagement.

 

Domiat Egyptian Frigate
HMS Newfoundland Pay Office_Shell damage 1956

HMS Newfoundland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Australian officers in the ships in the East Mediterranean were involved in supporting activities in their respective ships[iv]. They would have witnessed carrier aircraft and helicopters taking off and landing from their operations against Egypt. They would also have been aware that the British and French ships were being shadowed and harassed by ships of the US 6th Fleet.

World reaction to the attacks, led by the USA, was near immediate and almost uniformly negative. President Eisenhauer was distracted by the forth coming election in USA and John Foster Dulles, the US Secretary of State was completely opposed to it. Lord Mountbatten, the First Sea Lord, had opposed the invasion but reluctantly accepted his Government’s decision. A further distraction was Russia’s brutal invasion of Hungary at that time. On 2 November a United Nations resolution calling for a cease-fire was passed[v]. Only the three conspirators together with Australia and New Zealand voted against it[vi]. Egypt accepted the direction, but the fighting continued regardless.

First RN Ship HMS Theseus_to enter Port Said Harbour (PA Images Getty Images)

Early on November 5 British and French paratroopers landed at strategic points surrounding Port Said. Despite spirited resistance, they soon achieved their objectives.

Musketeer’s amphibious phase began on November 6. Following limited gunfire support and mine-sweeping activities, landing craft and amphibious tracked vehicles left the ships lined-up five miles offshore. Shortly afterwards British commandos left the British carriers Theseus and Ocean for the first helicopter-borne assault landing in history. With Egyptian resistance becoming increasingly disorganized, the attackers won control of Port Said and the area surrounding the northern end of the Suez Canal.

In the afternoon of November 6, the British government succumbed to intense internal, diplomatic and economic pressure and, after advising France, ordered a cease-fire from midnight. By interpreting ‘midnight’ to mean local time. the Anglo/French advance continued for 6 ½ hours, meaning that Musketeer’s ground war came to an end after less than 43 hours. Instead of displacing Nasser and controlling the entire length of the Suez Canal, just a quarter of its length was under Anglo/French control.

Following the cease-fire, British and French forces were to withdraw and Israel was to leave the Sinai. Israel only agreed when the United Nations undertook to employ an Emergency Force to occupy the canal zone as a buffer between itself and Egypt. The evacuation of Anglo-French forces was completed on 22 December when a United Nations Peacekeeping Force, proposed by Lester Pearson (future Prime Minister of Canada), was implemented to patrol the Canal. Under the auspices of the United Nations, a fleet of salvage vessels raised approximately 40 ships sunk by the Egyptians to block navigation in the canal. It was reopened in April 1957.

Although tactically a success, both in the amphibious and airborne assaults, Musketeer proved to the world that Britain and France were no longer superpowers. It left a power vacuum in the Middle East. Only Israel achieved its objectives. It gained access to the Canal when it reopened after five months closure, and a dangerous and hostile neighbor was weakened. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was also diminished; there was animosity and suspicion between Britain and France and both these countries were displeased with the lack of support from USA.

Egypt and the Soviet Union fared best from the conflict. Nasser emerged as a hero of the Muslim world and Egypt’s ownership of the Suez Canal was affirmed. The Soviet Union was now considered to be friendly to Arab interests and the Canal was opened to its use for the first time since WWI.

British military and RAN participants in Operation Musketeer were awarded the Naval General Service Medal (1915-1962) – clasp Near East. As Australia had not allotted any of its personnel for duty in the Suez Operational Area medal recipients were precluded from repatriation benefits.

It was one of the last occasions that Australian servicemen received combat honours for service in the military operations of another country for which they had not been allotted for duty. Current regulations preclude this practice.

 

[i] Suez Crisis: Operation Musketeer. Deac WP Military History, accessed April 2001

 

[ii] The members listed in this article were identified by Mike Fogarty, former RAN officer, diplomat, and historian, through a search of RAN files at the National Archives collection in Melbourne circa 1990. It is unofficial, and more RAN members might have been present.

 

[iii] Operation Musketeer. Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Musketeer_(1956), accessed April 20

 

[iv] Royal Navy aircraft carriers in which Australian officers were embarked included Eagle, Bulwark and Albion.

 

[v] The first ever emergency special session of the United Nation’s General Assembly’s convened on 1 November 1956 after Security Council resolutions involving the belligerent parties failed on 30 October. The General Assembly adopted the proposal of the United States calling for: an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of all forces behind the armistice lines, and the reopening of the Canal. The resolution was adopted by 64 votes to 5, with 6 abstentions.

 

[vi] A detailed analysis can be read in Australia, Menzies and Suez. Australian Policymaking in the Middle East Before, During and After the Suez Crisis. Bowker, Dr R. Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, 2019. It is not commercially available, but can be bought at the National Library of Australia bookshop

Occasional Paper 80: The Early Years (1970-1971) of HMAS Brisbane (DDG-41)

June 24, 2020

The following paper was delivered by Captain Ralph T Derbidge MBE RAN (Retired) at a reunion (mostly of commissioning crew members and those who deployed to the Vietnam War in the ship in 1969 and 1971).  His address was made on 9 May 2018 at Maroochydore, Queensland.  It describes a mix of personal experience and memorable anecdotes about his time in the ship.

NUSHIP Brisbane is presently undergoing post-construction trials and is scheduled to be commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy on 27 October 2018.  She will be the third ship to bear the name BRISBANE in the history of the RAN.

NUSHIP Brisbane at sea during builders trials viewed from her sister ship, HMAS Hobart.

Her namesake, HMAS Brisbane II (DDG-41), pictured below was commissioned in Boston, USA on 16 December 1967, de-commissioned in Sydney on 19 October 2001 and sunk as a dive site to seaward of Maroochydore on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast on 31 July 2005.  Her Battle Honours were Vietnam 1969 and 1971 and Kuwait 1991.  One of her 5-inch/54 gun mounts and her bridge are preserved at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra as an interactive display, part of the Conflicts 1945 to Today exhibition.  Her mast forms the centrepiece of an impressive memorial at Alexander Headland overlooking the dive site.

You could always tell a DDG commissioning crew-cum-Vietnam War sailor – but you couldn’t tell him much.  They were good, and they knew it.  There aren’t that many of the breed around anymore – witness tonight.  And that goes for the ships they served in.  All said and done, they were destroyers and neither we nor anybody else are building steam driven destroyers the way they used to.

HMAS BRISBANE (2) CHARLES F. ADAMS CLASS DDG 1967-2001-SPC-0026

Do not be deluded – the RAN’s new DDGs, including NUSHIP Brisbane, can be viewed almost as cruisers, bigger than the light cruisers of WW 2 and, of course, able to deliver much more of a bang for the buck.

And what really defines a destroyer? Let me remind you.  It was not always fair winds and a following sea.  Nothing short of an iron stomach was sufficient for withstanding a destroyer’s motion.  Destroyers could list 45 degrees off keel.  The motion of a destroyer at sea is not just up and down but more like a corkscrew churning through water.  Our Brisbane could do that, usually at meal hours!

 

I have been called upon to deliver formal speeches concerning our beloved DDG-41 on a number of occasions – at the sinking of the ship as a dive-wreck to seaward nearby, at the dedication of the splendid mast memorial also near at hand and more recently at the moving plaque dedication ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.  Our ship features also in a lecture I have given frequently on the RAN in the Vietnam War.  Some may view this as a bit odd for I did not command the ship.  I was simply the Gunnery Officer through 1970 and 1971.

I really wasn’t intended to serve in that role at all.  Previously, I had been the Gunnery Officer of four ships, Anzac, Quiberon, HMS Llandaff while on exchange with the RN, and Vampire – all with British systems and 4-inch or 4.5-inch ammunition and none missile armed, but I knew my stuff.  I was serving in Vampire on the screen in the South China Sea in 1969 when Melbourne collided with the USS Evans. Brisbane at this time was on her first Vietnam deployment.   One outcome of the collision was an eventual shuffling around of RAN ship commanding officers.  Vampire’s CO was shifted to Stalwart, the Executive Officer took over command and I found myself as both Gunnery Officer and the First Lieutenant of D-11 that was soon to undergo a major half-life modernisation.

Then came the unexpected – a pierhead jump to Brisbane in early 1970 because of the resignation around the same period of six RAN gunnery officers, the names of which some of you may recall – Atkins*, Bartlett, Brett-Young, Marrable, Mellish and Playford.  This left Officers’ Postings with few options.

I wasn’t too impressed, having been at sea for most of the 1960s, recently married while serving in Vampire and looking forward to some long-overdue shore time.  Moreover, I had had no DDG training or experience but was told I could handle it and to get on with it.  And so, while Brisbane and Vampire were in maintenance periods, it was into the Tartar missile system books and hardware with David Kitchen and Peter Flynn* and out to HMAS Watson for advice from John McDermott on the Mk 68 gunnery system and 5-inch ammunition.

I managed to get in some brief sea-riding in Perth out of Sydney.  On leaving harbour, I sensed things were going to be different when I heard the pipe, “Able Seaman Bloggs report to the wild cat flat!” I turned, puzzled, to the newly joined Chief Boatswains Mate, the legendary Warrant Officer QMG ‘Butch’ Berry*, who explained, “That’s the cable locker.  I’m trying to weed out all of this American stuff but I don’t think I will have much joy with turrets instead of gun mounts!”

Enough of this pre-amble – rather than continue in a ‘boots-and-braces’ mode, I have chosen to recall for you some memorable anecdotes about my time in the ship.  And, dear ladies, be forewarned – the still handsome hunk of a man here tonight on your arm may not have been the saint you always thought him to be.  I will conceal the names of the guilty where relevant in order to protect the innocent.  Sadly, in both cases, and others identified in this narrative, many have crossed the bar.

I moved my goods and chattels from Vampire into Brisbane, joining mid-week in Garden Island Dockyard in that summer of 1970 and taking up residence in Cabin 4 forward with Ian MacDougall, the Operations Officer.  I was told there was not much sleep left in the bunk vacated by John McDermott.  The CO then was the admirable Captain John D Stevens*[i], he having recently relieved Captain Alan A Willis*.

I was the overnight Duty Executive Officer on the Friday night of that first week onboard and aware I was to attend with my wife with other guests a dinner party on the following night in the Wardroom, to be hosted by Captain Stevens and his wife.

On the Saturday morning, well before ‘Call the Hands’, I was abruptly shaken by a very agitated Duty Petty Officer who blurted out, “They’ve broken into the Beer Store!”.

Still half-asleep, I asked “Who, what, where, when?” not having any idea where the Beer Store was at the time.

“The Stokers!” he replied.

I dressed quickly and followed the PO down to the after Stokers’ Mess where I found duty watch bodies and others in all states of undress, asleep in all manner of positions and places and many snoring loudly.  Empty beer cans and plates were strewn everywhere.  On further inspection, it was discovered that, during the night, the bolts of the hinges to the adjacent heavy steel door giving access to the redundant Tartar missile maintenance barbette (used as the Beer Store) had been knocked out and the door swung open on its large padlock.  Nirvana lay ahead for the burglars.

But wait, there’s more to come, and it got worse.  The beer was warm.

“There’s ice in the ice-cream room,” said one of the ring-leaders.  The ice cream room lock was duly forced and, once inside, the perpetrators couldn’t believe their luck.  There, laid out on a bench, was more than a dozen plates with a delectable sweet dish on each.  What a treat, and something to be washed down with the soon to be chilled beer.

The subsequent revelry apparently went on long into the silent hours until most fell into a paralytic slumber.  The revellers did not know it at the time, but the consumed sweet dishes had been carefully prepared by the chefs on the Friday and placed in the locked ice cream room overnight, to be served up as desserts at the impending Captain’s dinner party.

The revellers also did not know that they were in the process of ruining my whole day for the resultant investigation, with Naval Dockyard Police assistance, went on well into the Saturday afternoon.  Moreover, I had to arrange for a local catering firm to provide replacement desserts for the dinner party.  At the subsequent assizes, when the Captain was very lenient overall, the guilty showed little contrition for purloining the beer but were most remorseful over misappropriating the Captain’s desserts.

For a while there onboard, the Stokers were not top of my hit parade but a few G & Ts from the then MEOs, the irrepressible Warwick Robinson* and the laconic Ian Watson, placated me and all was soon forgiven.

And so the ship sailed for a shakedown in the East Australia Exercise Area (EAXA) at the end of the maintenance period, with many new personnel embarked following the return from the 1969 Vietnam deployment.  A busy year lay ahead in Australian waters.  At the end of 1970, Captain Stevens was relieved by Captain R Geoffrey Loosli* during a maintenance period.  At the same time, there was another sizeable change of personnel.  By this time, the ship’s company knew that Brisbane would be returning to Vietnam and the Gunline from March to October of 1971.

Work-up for the deployment began early in the new year.  During the first run of the first AA practice firing under Captain Loosli’s command, the aircraft towed sleeve target was quickly destroyed in spectacular fashion early in the first run by one of the automatically fired salvo of shells.  On the horizon, shortly after, could be seen a number of exploding shells followed by the sound of muffled explosions.  The Captain, quite pleased by the target destruction, nonetheless queried the source of the horizon explosions.  I replied that there must be another ship in the exercise area perhaps firing HE shells at a surface target.

The Captain seemingly bought this at the time.  The aircraft, minus target, was released to return to base and the serial terminated.  There was little left to do but return to the magazines unexpended shells from the gun mounts.  I looked down from the Gun Direction Platform to observe shells being unloaded from Mount 51 and stacked on the forecastle shot mats.  They bore the wrong colour coding for the firing.  Horror of horrors – it was HEVT ammunition and not VT Prac shells.  Despite the Firing Orders for the practice and my preliminary policy broadcast, the magazine crew had fed the wrong ammo to Mount 51.  I looked the other way, said nothing to the Captain as the shells were carried below, and months later wrote off the ammo in a Gunline mission off Vietnam.  This mistake was never repeated, and a good thing too, for the crew of target towing aircraft are not at all keen on the idea!

The Captain might have guessed for there is a cartoon titled Workup 71 – First AA Shoot that appears on page 35 of the HMAS BRISBANE 25th Anniversary commemorative book published in 1992.

The cartoon unmistakably depicts me reporting to the equally recognisable Captain Loosli sitting in his chair on the bridge after the shoot.  The included caption has me stating, “Oh it’s easy to tell they’re not live rounds, Sir.  We’d be wearing steel helmets if they were!”

The workup proceeded smoothly and the last box to be ticked was a successful Overall Readiness Evaluation.  The Navigation Officer, Colin Bartlett, and I felt sure we would get a counter battery call for fire while bombarding Beecroft at night during the Final Battle Problem.  So, beforehand, and by devious means, we had obtained the grid co-ordinates of just about every likely target (old tram cars and vehicles etc) on the peninsular range.  These were printed, given alphabetical designators and a copy provided to Gun Plot for pre-loading into the surface gunnery system.

Sure enough, such a call came through from ashore at which point I requested the Captain to put the wheel hard over, increase to full speed and head due east to seaward while I simultaneously initiated counter battery fire.  As the ship heeled over and gathered speed, I got the nod from the NO and CO, barked into the mike to Gun Plot, “Counter battery – Target Delta – Mount 52, six rounds HEPD, fire for effect – engage”.  This all happened quite quickly, which was the whole point of the exercise.

With the rounds in the air, a startled Fleet Training Group observer burst into the Operations Room and screamed, “Who said anything about firing live rounds?”  Moments later, over the shore bombardment net, the spotter reported loud and clear, “Good shooting.  Target destroyed.  Bravo Zulu!”  Nothing further was said by the FTG observer, at least not to me!

And so, the ship subsequently sailed north from Sydney, acquitted herself well on the seven months Vietnam deployment while firing some 7,000 rounds on the Gunline and returned home in October to be the last RAN ship to be so deployed in that war.  Early in the new year, the ship was awarded the Gloucester Cup for 1971 and I finally had my shore time at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC, USA.  And the rest, they say, is history.

Maybe, but not quite.  For not forgotten by some was Cebu City in the southern Philippines where the ship made a two day port call towards the end of the deployment prior to a final period on the Gunline.  The legacy of that so-called goodwill visit could have been disastrous for the ship and her reputation.  Common sense prevailed and the bad news was kept in-house and out of the official record.

The impending drama began on the first day with the ship berthed portside to at a large godown with no perimeter fence and little local external security.  That afternoon, prior to an official reception onboard, the city Police Chief visited and asked to see the Gunnery Officer.  I offered him tea and sandwiches in the Wardroom during the course of which he asked me if I would like to go flying with him in his private aircraft the next day.  Then came the catch – in return I might provide him with some small arms ammunition, both pistol and rifle.  He explained that the paranoid President Marcos, fearing a coup, had emasculated the nation’s police force by denying them ammunition for their weapons.  As diplomatically adept as could be, I thanked him for his flying invitation, told him I was required onboard for duty the next day and declined firmly his bid for ammunition.  He persisted but eventually accepted my stand and I farewelled him at the gangway.

During both nights in port, better notice might have been taken by more senior duty personnel of small waterborne craft in the vicinity of the ship and sailors casually, and apparently innocently, fishing over the outboard starboard side with rods and handlines.

 

Senior management was no doubt relieved to be free of Cebu City when course was set for Vietnam across the South China Sea.  The aforementioned drama unfolded on that first evening on passage when the Coxswain got an anonymous phone call that suggested there was a number of illegal pistols in the ship.  The caller revealed the concealed location of one of them.  It was duly found – a cheap .38 ‘Saturday-night special’.  The XO, Ted Keane*, was informed who in turn advised the CO.  Captain Loosli was under no illusions about the adverse impact this would have if such a weapon was uncovered by Customs or another authority on return to Australia.  He immediately ordered Clear Lower Deck and a locker search of all junior personnel.  A number of pistols came to light, primarily because an amnesty was declared – hand them in or ditch them over the side and there will be no repercussions.  By the following day, the CO and XO were reasonably confident the menace no longer existed.

Several days later, during a lull in Gunline missions, the Petty Officer in charge of the Gunner’s Party reported to me that a quantity of small arms ammunition was missing from the magazine.  The Cebu City Police Chief apparently had found his man.  I consulted with the XO and we both agreed that the CO should be spared another heart-stopping report.

I had the greatest respect and admiration for the hard-working Gunner’s Party throughout the deployment but I suspected that one of them had to be the culprit.  The team members had ready access to the magazine keys.  All of the party members were stared down and grilled at length in turn by the XO, me and the Coxswain but we were unsuccessful in extracting a confession.  In the absence of any incriminating hard evidence, the matter was put on the back-burner and eventually dropped, the Captain was left in peace and we got on with the business at hand with the main armament.  After detaching from the Gunline for the last time, the Gunnery Log recorded the conduct of several recreational small arms firings during the fortnight’s passage home.

In a moment we will hear a replaying of our RAS song, Proud Mary, after which I will ask you to stand and join me in a toast to our ship and absent and departed shipmates, of whom there are many.

There was always some conjecture about how the ship adopted the song.  I remember quite clearly.  It came about during a Wardroom run ashore with the Captain to one of the naval base clubs following our first arrival at Subic Bay for the turn-over with Perth.  A Filipino band was playing the Credence Clearwater Revival version of the song which many of us at the club that night had not heard before.  Hal Thomsett turned to the Captain and excitedly declared, “That should be our RAS song!”  We all agreed and the Captain said, “Make it so!”

Further Reading

Naval Operations in Vietnam, by Jozef Straczek, Sea Power Centre-Australia, available at https://www.navy.gov.au/history/feature-histories/naval-operations-vietnam

Crew List HMAS Brisbane 1st & 2nd Deployments: 1969 and 1971 available at http://www.gunplot.net/main/content/crew-list-hmas-brisbane-1st-2nd-deployments

Video of Interest

Royal Australian Navy: HMAS BRISBANE RAS and Breakaway featuring Proud Mary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbLHS7Z6Tic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[i]  *  All deceased

Occasional Paper 77: HMAS Assault. WWII Combined Operations Directorate Establishment – Port Stephens NSW

April 14, 2020

By Dennis J Weatherall JP TM AFAITT(L) LSM – Volunteer Researcher

HMAS Assault, also known as the Amphibious Training Centre to American personnel, was a combined operations establishment for training Allied personnel in all aspects of amphibious warfare. It also provided operational and logistics support to amphibious units of the Royal Australian Navy. During its short three-year commission (September 1942 to August 1945) more than 22,000 personnel undertook training which was essential for the successful repulsion of Japanese forces from the Pacific Islands. This paper provides insight into its establishment, roles, challenges confronted and personnel who played a significant role in contributing to victory in the Pacific.

In 1942 Australian Forces were heavily committed to the War against Germany and its Allies in Europe then in its third year.  As in WWI, RAN units were under the command of the Admiralty and employed against Italy in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.  The Japanese had entered the war in Australia’s own area of interest with the invasion of South East Asian countries and the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  Following the rapid Japanese conquest by the Japanese of Malaya and the “Fall of Fortress Singapore” on 15th February, Australia found itself threatened for the first time since British settlement.  The subsequent Japanese advance through the Dutch East Indies and islands in the South-West Pacific basin brought WWII to the Australian mainland on 19 February 1942 with the bombing of Darwin.

However, by early 1942, the Allies were already planning for the invasion of Europe and had successfully established a “Combined Operations Command”.  Australian planners then urged the Australian Government to seek British assistance with information and expertise to establish a similar Australian Directorate.  This was essential if Japanese forces were to be repelled from the Pacific Islands.  Fortuitously service by many Australians in all three British Services meant there was a pool of experienced Australian available to return home with a small number of British Officers for the task of establishing an indigenous amphibious capability.

The officers seconded to establish an Australian “Combined Operations Base” were;  Commander T. W. Cook RAN (ex CO HMS Tormentor British Combined Operations School) , Lieutenant Colonel M. Hope – Royal Artillery, Lieutenant Colonel T. K. Walker – Royal Marines, Wing Commander A.M. Murdoch – RAAF, Lieutenant Commander H. George – RANVR, and Lieutenant D. Richardson – RANVR.  All had “Combined Operations” experience and understood the importance of an amphibious capability to push the Japanese out of New Guinea, Borneo, Bougainville and occupied islands between Australia and Japan.

In June 1942, the Defence planners made a strong recommendation for the formation of the Australian “Combined Operations Directorate” to be set up in Melbourne.  On 5 June, 1942 the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, Captain Frank Getting RAN, Commander Cook and Lieutenant Colonel Hope met with General Macarthur’s Brigadier Chamberlain in General Macarthur’s Headquarters, then located in Melbourne.  They were informed that any such “Combined Operations” in Australia would come under the command of Macarthur.  There was agreement on an immediate start to train three Divisions – one Australian and two American – in amphibious warfare.  The RAN was also to produce one third of the total number of crews required and also provide all naval means (craft and crews) for soldiers undergoing training.

Location of former HMAS Assault at Port Stephens, New South Wales

An immediate task for CMDR Cook and LT COL Hope was to find a suitable location to establish the training base.  They took to the air and eventually decided that Fly Point in Port Stephens, NSW as an ideal location.  A ground inspection confirmed the decision.  Then followed the construction from scratch of a shore base in the scrub country away from prying eyes.  Training for all facets of amphibious operations (sea, land the air) could be conducted in the immediate vicinity.  From a security perspective, Port Stephens being a small fishing village with little other activity in the area, the location was ideal.

No time was lost awaiting the building of the base.  The Auxiliary Merchant Cruiser HMAS Westralia was loaned as an accommodation vessel from 21 August, 1942 and on 1 September, 1942 HMAS Assault was actually commissioned in Westralia with 24 Officers and 280 Seamen Trainees.  HMAS Westralia was then designated as a Landing Ship Infantry when she arrived in Port Stephens on 3 September 1942.

It was hoped at the time that Westralia’s sister ships HMA Ships Manora and Kanimbla would also be made available as LSI’s and fitted out with landing craft.  Provision was made in planning for these ships to be made available and Flinders Naval Depot made aware of the requirement for trained ratings as they finished their basic training.  The Naval Board was supportive and the training pipeline to HMAS Assault commenced.

At the same time, the requirement for landing craft was presented to the Naval Board.  It was recommended that these be built locally as they could not be delivered off-the-shelf.  Until purpose-built craft were available, training was undertaken in nine motor boats requisitioned from civilian sources.  These were referred to by the sailors as the “Hollywood Fleet”.  Folding- boats were provided by the Army.

The base was designed from ground up with layout the was first consideration.  Accommodation for all personnel, moorings, piers, slipways, maintenance facilities all had to be built in a virgin bushland setting 125 miles north of Sydney.

On 1 October 1943, one year after commissioning ashore it was reported that 100 Officers, 100 Coxswains, 453 Boat Crews, 250 Stokers, 40 Landing Craft Signalmen and 120 Naval Beach Party Commandos had been trained.  As it took until 10 December 1942 to complete all buildings the majority many trainees and staff were accommodated in HMAS Westralia for the first three months.  Some 90 officers and men were transferred to a Queensland Army Camp at Toorbul following their training.  They were then used to train soldiers in certain phases of amphibious warfare.  This camp was later taken over by the American Forces and the Australians reposted to Assault.

The roles of HMAS Assault were to train;

  1. Officers and ratings for boat crews,
  2. Naval Commandos for beach parties,
  3. combined operations signal teams, both Naval and Army with spares posted to the LSI vessels,
  4. act as a base for LSI’s arranging transport, victualling, spares and repairs,
  5. designated Commanding Naval Officers to also be Naval Officer in Command of a post.

By 1 October 1943 all three LSIs had been supplied with Assault trained Officers and Boat Crews, along with Beach Commandos, with a factor of 25% spare trained personnel.

On 1 October 1943 HMAS Assault commenced a new phase in its evolution.  With its training role mature and sufficient personnel trained to commence amphibious landings to re-take Japanese occupied territory the new role was logistics support.  This involved;

  1. operating as a stores depot supplying spare parts for the landing craft carried on the LSI’s,
  2. operating as a pool depot for a reserve of trained combined operations personnel, and
  3. assisting with the base’s trained boat crews in training US soldiers passing through the Amphibious Training Centre (ATC).

The ATC was the American organisation responsible for training assault troops and to which HMAS Assault was responsible.  Some 22,000 men from various services received amphibious training including 2,000 Australians.  The remainder were all US Servicemen.

As expected, trainees who had completed their training at Assault had to wait for postings to the LSI’s and in some cases, subject to their wait time, had to be brought back for various refresher courses.  This occurred when such trained personnel had returned to their previous establishments to awaiting a billet on an LSI.  As the Assault expanded and more accommodation became available trained personnel were kept onboard Assault and kept in training until posted to sea.

In the early stages of developing HMAS Assault, there was a shortage of actual landing craft until the locally-built Australian craft were delivered.  This shortage made training in craft handling difficult.  Until December 1942, only two LCA’s (Landing Craft Assault) were actually operational at the base and the requisition civilian craft (nothing like a LCA) were used in conjunction with the two LCA’s.  Although not ideal, training continued with what was available.  Whilst allowing crews to experience handling twin screw boats, these civilian craft couldn’t replicate running ashore and beaching craft in all conditions of weather and sea states.

HMAS ASSAULT – Beach Landing Exercise AWM image

On 14 December 1942 sufficient American landing craft arrived for the USN Advanced Landing Craft Base, the name of the American base at Port Stephens.  Following delivery of these craft training in all conditions could be undertaken.  The Port was an excellent location as within the immediate area and along the coast were steep and shallow, sandy beaches, with or without surf, rock, mud and mangrove areas, all in close proximity to the base.

On 10 January 1943 the Australian-built LCA’s started to arrive.  This allowed Assault to return five requisitioned craft to Sydney for deployment to other urgent tasks.  On 20 March 1943 19 American landing craft were handed over to Assault control by the American Landing Force Equipment Depot (LFED).  Finally there was sufficient craft of various types to provide instruction and gain experience.

In addition to the LSIs, Westralia and Manora, HMAS Assault had on its warrant list several other vessels.  These were;

  • HMAS Ping Wo, a tender for the transportation of water and stores for the LSIs. She was also used as a training ship.  Ping Wo and was an ex Chinese River Steamer of 2,000 tons.
  • HMAS Gumleaf, an ex Seine Trawler, 55 ft OA used for escort, patrol and salvage duties.
  • HMA Ships Flying Cloud and Kweena, both Auxiliary Patrol Vessels’,
  • A variety of landing craft:
  1. LST – Landing ship tank x 1 (US)
  2. LCI – Landing craft infantry x 12 (US)
  • LCT – Landing craft tank x 4 (US)
  1. LCM – Landing craft mechanised x 7 (US), 4 loaned to “Assault”
  2. APC – Auxiliary patrol craft x 2 (US)
  3. LCV – Landing craft vehicle x 67 (US), 14 loaned to “Assault”
  • LCP – Landing craft personnel x 15 (US), 1 loaned to “Assault”
  • LCS – Landing craft support x 7 (US)
  1. LCA – Landing craft assault x 9 (AU)
  2. Motor boats x 4 (AU), of which 38 were under “Assault’s” control
  3. Three boat ramps for slipping, scraping and painting

The buildings ashore in HMAS Assault consisted of 67 structures.  These were classified as “C” series-type unlined, galvanised iron huts.  They were located 800 yards from the landing craft moorings and general pier area.  They were described as hot in summer and freezing in winter, but this was nothing new in time of war!

HMAS ASSAULT – St Nazaire Road Dinning Hall and Galley. AWM image

The base was originally designed for 500 officers and men, but as many as 870 were housed, of which 70 were officers and 800 other ranks.  As in the British counterpart establishments, roads were named after successful operations and buildings named after military personnel who had achieved success in Combined Operations to date in WWII.

A jetty to suit naval requirements was constructed using as its basis, an existing jetty on requisitioned land.  It was altered and extended considerably to reach out 510 feet with a width of 12 feet, and at the end an L-shaped return of 162 feet which formed a boat compound.  The outer perimeter of the jetty was enclosed with planking set 3” apart to act as a breakwater.  The pier had a depth of 7 feet alongside at low water and could handle 5 ton loads with fuelling points located along its length.

Unfortunately, by late 1943 slipping facilities for the repair and painting of boats were found lacking.  This was overcome by the employment of naval divers and by the end of the year the initial work started by civilian contractors was completed.  The result was a working slipway and boat shed.  Prior to completion, boats had to be slipped at Tea Gardens, some 3 miles distance, and only when the facilities there were available.

The Assault boat shed was 112 feet long x 30 feet wide, set up with a winch to haul boats, along with machinery for general maintenance.  The slipway had a capacity of 25 tons but the depth of water limited the size of the vessel that could be slipped.  At high water, it was reported only 4 feet 6 inches at the water end, and only 2 feet 6 inches at the shore side.  It meant that only boats with an average draft of 3 feet 6 inches could be slipped, and only at high water.  The solution would be to extend the slipway another 40 feet at the water end.  However, no record could be found of this ever being done.

The slipway came with three cradles which allowed three boats to be lifted out of the water at any one time for maintenance.

Located nearby was the Engineers’ Work Shop, a building of 114 feet in length and width of 42 feet.  It was well equipped with; lathes, milling machines, drills, shaping machines, a 60-ton hydraulic press, valve grinder, bench drills, punch shears and an electric welding unit.

One of the biggest problems for the base was spare parts for the overhaul of the landing craft engines, as these were mainly of US origin.  Lack of the smallest part could keep a craft alongside for weeks and impact practical craft ship handling exercises.

HMAS Assault was well-located with quite a pleasant temperate climate.  However, summer heat could make it more sub-tropical.  Unlike bases situated in far Northern Queensland, there was little in the way of environmentally induced illness.  The base had a capable hospital which treated mainly casualties from vigorous activities.  On 24 May 1943 casualties from a PBY-Consolidated Catalina which crashed into Port Stephens were treated on base.  Post WWII the base hospital became the Port Stephens civilian hospital.

Men came and trained, then left.  The base had ample sporting facilities available to keep the trainees amused; swimming, surfing, fishing, along with cricket in summer and football in the winter months.  In 1943, the Assault rugby team won the First Grade Newcastle League.

Like all bases in war time, religious observances were conducted by Navy Chaplains and the YMCA and Australian Comforts Fund people ran the recreation, with regular parties and entertainment.

The entire concept of establishing HMAS Assault was to train Australian and American sailors and soldiers in the art of amphibious warfare, and to get the Army conditioned to working with the Navy, and vice-versa.  When the American Training Group was established the two facilities were combined and designated the ATC – Amphibious Training Centre.  This took place in February 1943 under the overall command of the Commander South West Pacific Force, Rear Admiral Daniel E Barbey USN, who answered directly to General Macarthur.

HMAS Ping Wo

This brought all such training in Australia under American command.  From this time until training concluded US Marines, RAN sailors and US Army personnel served together on base.

HMAS ASSAULT: Beach launching in surf conditions work party returning to HMAS Westralia AWM Image

Training at HMAS Assault was, to say the least, intense.  It covered every conceivable aspect of amphibious landing operations to face the enemy on inhospitable landing sites.  RAN sailors took part in all the courses, from assaulting beaches to coxswaining landing craft and other vessels of opportunity, not only to meet the enemy face on, but to learn clandestine skills for infiltrating enemy lines.  The specially selected naval beach commandos were instructed in all makes and models of weapons and explosives, as well as hand-to-hand unarmed combat.

Lieutenant Donald Davidson RANVR was the chief instructor in hand-to-hand combat.  No-one knew from where he originated but at war’s end those he trained knew where he’d been.  He was training officer for those selected to be “Special Service Beach Commandos” and sailed on MV Krait, the Japanese fishing boat captured before Singapore surrendered.  It was known as the “fishing boat that went to war”!  LEUT Davidson was 2IC to Major Ivan Lyons in Krait.  Before this Davidson had established the “Special Reconnaissance Department” based on Fraser Island, Queensland.  He was later a member of the ill-fated ‘Rimau’ raid on Japanese shipping in Singapore.  LEUT Davison was severely wounded in this operation and holed up on Tapai Island.  So he wasn’t taken prisoner and tortured for what he knew he took his ‘last resort’ cyanide tablet carried by operatives.  Major Lyons died in a fire fight on Soren Island, it’s said whilst holding off over one hundred Japanese soldiers.

HMAS ASSAULT: Air Force Ground Support exercise. AWM Image

Many HMAS Assault trainees went to various postings in the three LSIs.  There they operated their landing craft in operations to expel Japanese forces from conquered territory.  Some were employed in the Special Operations with Lyons and Davidson, others were posted to US Military Small Ships and even wore US Army uniform.  They served on these small vessels throughout the South West Pacific theatre as far as Japan until the end of hostilities.

In early March 1944, training at Assault ceased.  It had served its purpose well.  On 4 August 1944 the base was designated to “care and maintenance” and manning was reduced to just one officer and twenty-four other rates.

After the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Monday 6 August 1945 and three days later the second A-Bomb on Nagasaki the Japanese surrendered and so ended WWII when General Macarthur signed the surrender in Tokyo Bay onboard USS Missouri on Sunday 2 September 1945.

On 7 August 1945 HMAS Assault was decommissioned but not abandoned – it was transferred to the Royal Navy and used as the shore depot for the British Pacific Fleet, known also as the “Phantom Fleet”.

References:

  • RAN website HMAS Assault – history
  • Sailor & Commando – A.E. Ted Jones, 1942-46, Hesperian Press ISBN 0 85905253 2
  • Commanding Officers’ Monthly Reports to the Secretary, Naval Office Melbourne
  • Australian War Memorial Canberra – website
  • Photographs from various sites – public accessible
  • National Archives – Canberra
  • Huddart Parker Shipping Company History
HMAS ASSAULT: Bringing the equipment of war ashore in exercise mode, AWM image 304846
HMAS ASSAULT Sailor on Guard Duty Main Gate Entrance to Base. RAN image
HMAS Assault Canteen Hut, AWM image

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