HMAS Australia II

Australians in the Decisive Thrust KING II – The Leyte Landings

December 25, 2019

By Paul Baker

Seventy-five years ago, on 18 October 1944, beaten only by the fast minesweepers and the attack forces securing the mouth of the Gulf, the crew of HMAS Gascoyne became the first Australians to enter Leyte Gulf since an RAAF Mosquito had carried out the initial aerial reconnaissance of the Gulf seven weeks earlier. The KING II landings conducted by Australian, British and US forces of the South-West Pacific Area (SWPA) and the Pacific Ocean Areas (POA) two days later not only led to the liberation of the Philippines, but proved to be the decisive thrust of the war against Japan, dealing the final destructive blow to the Japanese Navy’s ability to field a fleet, decimating the Japanese Air Forces to the extent they felt forced to adopt kamikaze tactics and driving a wedge between Japan and their critical resources in Southeast Asia. As SWPA Land Forces Commander General Blamey explained to Prime Minister Curtin, ‘There can be no question about the strategical correctness of the seizure of the Philippines, since this aimed straight at the heart of the Japanese ocean area’.

Although the Australian contingent in the landings only consisted of approximately 3,500 sailors, 236 soldiers and 20 airmen, they were far from minor players ‘attached’ to US forces as is so often reported. They were, in fact, integral members of SWPA units allocated to the KING II operation as a continuation of the SWPA offensive that began in earnest in 1943. With the most powerful warships in the Seventh Fleet, Australia provided half the major firepower for the Close Support Group as well as the critical interservice communications capability for US ships of the Group. To secure the ‘back door’ to the landing beaches, Australian landing ships landed a brigade sized unit to safeguard a critical passage used by PT boats in the Battle of Surigao Strait, while Australian signals intelligence personnel provided critical early warning of Japanese air attacks against the beachhead. Thirty Australians were killed in the fighting during KING II, and they are commemorated on the Australian Philippines Liberation Memorial in Palo on Leyte.

Australian Philippines Liberation Memorial Palo NHS

MUSKETEER – The Plan for SWPA Forces to re-occupy the Philippines

By July 1944, the eastern perimeter of the new Japanese defensive zone from Western New Guinea to the Mariana Islands had been penetrated at the extremities. In the north, the Marianas had been occupied by POA forces and were to be used as B-29 Superfortress bases for attacks on Japan. In the process of doing so, they had sunk two of Japan’s remaining three large aircraft carriers and shot down approximately 350 aircraft in a single day in what became known as the ‘Marianas Turkey Shoot’, gaining complete command of the sea and air in the Western Pacific. In the south, the Australian, British, Dutch and US forces of the SWPA had reached Biak on the north coast of New Guinea, one step short of Morotai in Indonesia, the final springboard to the Philippines. The two Allied commands were now converging on the Philippines. On 10 July, General Headquarters (GHQ) SWPA issued the MUSKETEER plan, for the conduct of the Philippines campaign. The basic scheme of manoeuvre remained unchanged from New Guinea, establishing air superiority over an area with airstrips, preventing the enemy from reinforcing the area, taking it by amphibious assault and then using the airstrips to establish air superiority over the next objective along the path of advance. The plan included four phases of amphibious landing operations:

The KING series to secure initial lodgment in the Philippines and to establish a base of operations.
The LOVE series to secure a safe route to and bases from which to support operations in Central Luzon.
The MIKE series to destroy the Japanese garrison, occupy Luzon and support operations against Japan.
The VICTOR series to consolidate areas by-passed in KING, LOVE and MIKE operations.

Leyte’s position on the Philippines’ central eastern seaboard made it an obvious choice for the main effort of the KING operations. The Leyte Gulf provided an excellent anchorage with direct access to the open Pacific as well as the waters of the archipelago, while the north-eastern coastal plain of Leyte held a main airfield at Tacloban and a new Japanese airfield system under development with four airstrips in the Dulag area 30 kilometres to the south. Importantly, the 50 kilometre stretch of beaches between Tacloban and Abuyog to the south, aside from being in close proximity to the airfields, also had the best landing beaches on the island with an absence of reefs or coral heads, and a favorable under-water gradient in selected localities which, except for occasional high surf, provided relatively few problems for an amphibious assault. In mid-September, POA carrier-based aircraft attacking Japanese airfields in the Philippines supporting the SWPA landing at Morotai destroyed or severely damaged about 500 of the estimated 884 Japanese aircraft in the country. POA reported that few serviceable planes in the Philippines were left to the Japanese, the bulk of the enemy’s oil supplies was destroyed, there was no shipping left to sink, the enemy’s non-aggressive attitude [was] unbelievable and fantastic, and ‘the area is wide open’. As a result, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered that some planned intermediate operations including the KING I landings in Sarangani Bay be cancelled and that A-Day for the ‘main effort’, the KING II landings in the Leyte Gulf, be brought forward to 20 October. Preparations for the SWPA’s expeditionary force’s leap forward to the Philippines were stepped up accordingly.

SWPA’s Expeditionary Force and the Australian Contingents

While maintaining responsibility for the defence of Australia and securing territory behind the line of advance, General Headquarters SWPA had developed what was effectively an expeditionary force which continued to grow in air and land strength. The Allied Air Forces (AAF) had been divided into two separate commands, the Fifth Air Force (5AF) including some RAAF squadrons becoming essentially an independent expeditionary tactical air force to support advancing army operations in New Guinea while RAAF Command with some US squadrons was responsible for the defence of Australian and AAF long range strategic operations beyond the envelope of tactical air force operations. In June, the AAF had been reinforced when the US Thirteenth Air Force (13AF) was reallocated from POA’s South Pacific Area to SWPA. Subsequently in September, as part of the plan for 13AF to take over 5AF airbases in New Guinea and Morotai as 5AF moved north for the Philippines campaign, the AAF commander ordered that the RAAF squadrons constituting No. 10 (Operational) Group under 5AF would be transferred to 13AF and would not take part in KING II. RAAF wireless units, however, were field units of GHQ’s Central Bureau providing dedicated signals intelligence support to SWPA. While Australian and US Army field units intercepted Japanese army communications, the interception of Japanese aircraft communications to provide local early warning of air attacks was solely the responsibility of the RAAF’s 1 Wireless Unit on Biak. With that unit remaining behind to support 13AF, 6 Wireless Unit (6WU), with a strength of 19 RAAF members, was raised from 1 Wireless Unit personnel on 9 October 1944 specifically to support 5AF during KING II.

SWPA Allied Naval Forces were structured along similar lines to the AAF. The Seventh Fleet was the SWPA’s naval combat and assault force, while the South-West Pacific Sea Frontier Force was responsible for defending Australia and the sea lanes. The Seventh Fleet was still relatively small in mid-1944, its combat units consisting of the Australian cruisers HMA Ships Australia and Shropshire, three US cruisers, 27 US destroyers and the Australian destroyers HMA ShipsArunta and Warramunga, 10 US torpedo boat squadrons and 30 US submarines. Despite SWPA Commander-in-Chief General MacArthur’s wishes, the dispersal of POA’s South Pacific Area assets in June saw POA retain the Third Fleet leaving the Australian heavy cruisers with their bigger guns the most powerful surface ships in the Seventh Fleet.Australian ships also played a major role in the Fleet’s Amphibious Force. HMAS Manoora had been the first landing ship made available for the force when it was established in 1943 and, due to the higher need for transports in other theatres, Manoora, HMA Ships Westralia, Kanimbla and a similar US ship were the only transports available to the Seventh Amphibious Force until April 1944. Australian frigates were also regularly assigned to the amphibious force as escorts and for service in the hydrographic and survey unit, while Australian escorts and auxiliaries were also allocated important tasks within the fleet. For KING II, Gascoyne and Harbour Defence Motor Launch (HDML) 1074 were assigned to the Mine-sweeping and Hydrographic Group. The total number of RAN personnel involved in KING II would eventually be about 3,500.

By September 1944, SWPA Allied Land Forces (ALF) had swelled from 12 Australian and four US divisions a year earlier to seven Australian and 15 US divisions. MacArthur initially proposed using the two experienced AustralianImperial Force (AIF) expeditionary divisions which constituted Australia’s I Corps separately under US corps commanders in KING II and a MIKE operation. The proposal was rejected by ALF commander Australian General Blamey who could under no circumstances concur in the use of Australian troops unless they operated as a corps under their own corps commander and his staff who were highly trained and were long and well experienced. The Australian Prime Minister later explained to MacArthur that it was laid down in the 1914-18 war that the Australian Forces serving outside Australia should be organised into and operate as a homogeneous formation appropriate to their strength, and that they should be commanded by an Australian officer. MacArthur, however, considered it impossible to utilise the entire corps in the initial landing force, probably because as his Chief of Staff later told Blamey that it was not politically expedient for the AIF to be amongst the first troops into the Philippines, in large numbers at any rate. As a result, the plan was changed with a view to employing the Australian Corps for an operation against Aparri on the northern coast of Luzon prior to a landing at Lingayen Gulf in early 1945, after which a third Australian division would be used in the final drive on Manila.

Australian soldiers were, however, allocated to other roles for KING II. At least four officers from Australia’s First Corps were assigned to US units in the landing as observers. Attached to the three Australian landing ships were Royal Australian Engineers’ Landing Ship Detachments, a total of 201 soldiers, which had been attached to the ships at the request of the Navy since the Seventh Amphibious Force was formed and played their part in every major amphibious operation, launching assault craft and unloading equipment and ammunition as well as manning light anti-aircraft gun stations and anti-submarine watches. A further 27 soldiers from the Royal Australian Artillery’s 1st Australian Naval Bombardment Group were attached to the Seventh Fleet’s two Australian and three US cruisers for the landings, acting as the interface between the assault troops and the ship’s gunnery fire control team. Four Australian Army intelligence analysts from the

Central Bureau and a British soldier on secondment were also attached to 6WU.

Grumman Avenger from escort carrier USS Santee covers Australian landing ship and destroyer escort off Panon beachhead 20 October 1944 AWM

POA Augmentation

The distance involved in leaping from SWPA’s forward-most base on Morotai to Leyte was over 1,000 kilometres. The isolation of the KING II landing sites and the size of the force to be landed meant it could not be carried out by SWPA resources alone, and would require massed carrier-based air support as well as the combined amphibious and naval forces available at the time. In order to capture the airfields quickly, the SWPA plan called for the simultaneous landing of two divisions in both the Tacloban and Dulag areas. As such, planning relied on POA’s Third Amphibious Force being attached to the Seventh Fleet to provide enough transport for the operation. As a result of the cancellation of the planned POA landing on Yap, however, the Attack Force, in its entirety of both assault shipping and troops, two POA divisions, were assigned to SWPA for KING II. Despite being a SWPA operation, there was now a perfect delineation between the Seventh Fleet landing of SWPA divisions in the Tacloban area called the Northern Attack Force and the Third Fleet landing of POA divisions in the Dulag area called the Southern Attack Force. With the Seventh Fleet’s Australian and US cruisers escorted by Australian and US destroyers constituting the Close Covering Group supporting the Northern Attack Force, the Third Fleet also provided protection and support in depth with a Bombardment and Fire Support Group of six battleships and six cruisers from the Third Fleet out in Leyte Gulf. Beyond them, sixteen escort aircraft carriers from the Third Fleet provided close air support and cover for the landings while, even further afield, the remaining six battleships, seventeen aircraft carriers and fifteen cruisers of the Third Fleet provided overall cover and support for the landings.

KING II – The Australian Experience

The need to secure the two islands in the mouth of the Leyte Gulf and the tip of the island to their south to ensure uninterrupted access into the gulf, intelligence reports of at least three minefields across the entrance to Leyte Gulf and the presence of a few shoals in the approaches to the landing beaches near Tacloban meant there were tasks that had to be completed before A-Day on 20 October. Accordingly, a vanguard consisting of a small Seventh Fleet attack group and the hydrographic unit, a combined Third and Seventh Fleet minesweeper unit, and a Third Fleet Beach Demolition Group arrived outside the Gulf on the evening of 16 October. Under cover of the Third Fleet’s battleships and cruisers, fast minesweepers led the attack group into the mouth of the Gulf on the morning of 17 October to land troops to secure the three islands. The hydrographic unit led by Gascoyne joined them in the Gulf on 18 October and immediately began marking shoals in San Pedro Bay. Gascoyne was attacked by a Japanese aircraft for the first time that evening, the bombmissing while the aircraft was possibly shot down. By the following evening, the minesweepers had cleared 227 mines while Gascoyne and her charges, HDML 1024 and two US minesweepers, had laid 32 buoys marking channels, beach approaches and shoals.

Soon after midnight on 20 October, A-Day, the Seventh Fleet’s Close Covering Group and the two Attack Forces moved down the cleared channel into the Leyte Gulf to prepare for the landings. Shortly after, Manoora, Westralia and Kanimbla peeled away from the Northern Attack Force as it continued on towards Tacloban accompanied by the Close Covering Group. Feeding into the southern end of Leyte Gulf, the Surigao Strait had been recognised as a vulnerability to the main landings, a ‘back door’ through which the Japanese could attack. To mitigate the threat, the three Australian ships had been tasked with landing a brigade-sized force on the southern tip of Leyte and the adjacent Panaon Island, securing the Panaon Strait to permit the passage of motor torpedo boats into the Mindanao Sea where they maintained early warning picket lines at the entrance to the Strait.

Escorted by HMS Ariadne and US destroyers, the convoy was attacked by a single Japanese fighter after daylight, but its bomb fell harmlessly well astern of Westralia and the aircraft disappeared. The landing was unopposed and, after the Australian Army detachments had offloaded the US force, the three Australian ships commenced their journey back into the Gulf proper while subjected to four unscuccessful single aircraft attacks, all driven off by anti-aircraft fire. They departed for Jayapura the next morning with the US landing ships of the Northern Attack Force.

Further north, as the Third Fleet’s battleships and cruisers were firing their pre-assault bombardment to cover the landings near Tacloban and Dulag, Australia, Shropshire and the two US cruisers of the Close Covering Group, each with an Australian Army bombardment liaison team aboard, were escorted by Arunta, Warramunga and five US destroyers into positions just off shore and immediately adjacent to the approaches to the assault beaches. They commenced bombarding the landing beaches, adjusting their fire as the assault troops approached the beaches, accompanied by their Australian observers. Once ashore the troops advanced, supported by naval gun fire requested through the shipborne bombardment liaison teams. It wasn’t until that afternoon that the Japanese really began to press with air attacks, and on the following morning the Australians suffered a disaster when a Japanese aircraft attempted to strafe the cruisers before passing between them where it was hit by fire from both ships and turned, bursting into flames and crashed into the foremast of Australia with its wing root from astern before going over the side of the vessel. Petrol that had probably gushed from ruptured fuel tanks of the aircraft caught fire and spread into the bridge. Thirty men including the captain and navigator were killed immediately or died of wounds over the following three days. Another sixty-four including soldiers were wounded. The number of casualties and the damage caused to the superstructure left the ship ineffective and Australia withdrew from Leyte Gulf that afternoon escorted by Warramunga.

Two soldiers and four airmen of a 6WU signals intelligence advance team aboard one of the command ships had actually intercepted a Japanese message ordering the aircraft to apparently concentrate on the two Australian cruisers close inshore. The team subsequently went ashore on 21 October where they were joined by the remaining 18 members of the unit on the following day. A camp was set up in the vicinity of some small hills approximately four kilometres from Tacloban where they began regular interception work. The intelligence gained by 6WU, including Japanese convoy movements as their progress was reported by aircraft covering them, was fed directly into the AAF intelligence staffs to be fused with other intelligence. From the beginning, AAF’s intelligence branch had a substantial Australian staff and at least one RAAF intelligence officer was also selected to move forward for KING II, boarding the aircraft carriers US ShipsIntrepid and Cabot from 20 October to brief pilots and aircrewmen.

The Japanese ‘Victory’ Operation

As the KING II landings were in progress, preparations for a major Japanese counterattack they had triggered were also underway. Following the loss of two of their three remaining large aircraft carriers in the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June, and at the same time as the SWPA MUSKETEER plan was being developed, the Japanese developed plans to commit all available sea, air and ground forces to a decisive battle at one of four points along their inner defensive line where they expected the Allies to land. On 18 October, orders were given to implement the Philippines contingency version of the plan to crush the enemy. Confusion, disagreements and logistics meant that committing maximum ground strength to defend Leyte would take time with only one division on Leyte at the time and a second division to join them from Mindanao on the night of 24 October. A third division from Luzon and another on its way to the Philippines would also deploy to Leyte as soon as possible. In the meantime, the Navy and Air Forces were commencing the first phase of the Victory Operation, a concerted assault on the enemy invasion fleet.

The navy’s part of the plan called for almost the entire surface combat strength of the Fleet consisting of the last remaining large and five light aircraft carriers, two battleships converted to launch aircraft, seven battleships and 21 cruisers to be divided into three forces. The northernmost force centred on the large aircraft carrier augmented by three of the remaining five lighter carriers and two battleships fitted to launch aircraft by catapult, but with only 108 aircraft between them, was tasked with luring the Allied naval forces to the north. This was intended to allow a force of five of their remaining seven battleships, including the super-battleships Yamato and Musashi, and 12 of their remaining 21 cruisers and escorts, supported by land-based aircraft attacking the US carriers, to pass through the San Bernardino Strait in the central Philippines and destroy the Allied landing forces at daybreak on 25 October. A third force in the south, composed of the remaining two battleships, a cruiser and four destroyers was to pass through the Surigao Strait to assist in annihilating the Allied landing forces. Another group of three cruisers escorted by destroyers was to follow this third force through the Surigao Strait.

The POA carrier-based air attacks over the previous month had crippled the Japanese Army and Navy air units in the Philippines. Even with reinforcments arriving, the Japanese Army’s Fourth Air Army only had 150 aircraft while the Navy’s First Air Fleet had less than 50 and the Second Air Fleet 196 aircraft on the eve of a coordinated air offensive planned for 24 October in support of the Navy’s surface attack. Given the lack of aircraft, the First Air Fleet at Mabalacat, which had been specifically ordered to neutralise the US carriers of the Third Fleet by 25 October, decided that the most effective method of attack would be to crash dive Zeros loaded with 250 kilogram bombs into the US carriers and twenty-six of their Zeros were formed into a new unit given the title of Kamikaze Special Attack Corps. Unfortunately for the Japanese ships approaching Leyte, the unit was unable to launch a successful attack until 25 October.

The Battle of Surigao Strait

In addition to the troops on Panaon Island landed by the Australian landing ships, PT Boat and destroyer picket lines at the southern end of Surigao Strait while battleships were ordered to steam each night across the northern end, Seventh Fleet submarines were also ordered to patrol the western entrances to the Sulu and Celebes Seas and off northern Luzon to provide early warning of Japanese ship movements. Beginning just after midnight on 22 October, the submarines began to pick up major Japanese ship movements in western Philippine waters and sank two cruisers of the Japanese central force on the following day. Allied air searches on 24 October, the same day as the Japanese launched their air offensive, identified the three separate Japanese forces, one off north eastern Luzon, one heading for the San Bernardino Strait and the last for the Surigao Strait. Fortunately, attacks by Allied carrier aircraft that day managed to sink one of the super-battleships, Musashi, and forced the central Japanese force to withdraw. That night, the strong US Third Fleet covering force of newer battleships and large aircraft carriers, accompanied by light carriers, cruisers and escorts, moved north away from the San Bernardino Strait to attack the Japanese carrier decoy force, unaware that the centre force of Japanese battleships had again turned around and was again heading for the Strait, intending on converging on the Leyte Gulf with the southern Japanese force then passing through the Surigao Strait.

In the Leyte Gulf that night, the Third Fleet battleships, cruisers and destroyers under operational command of the Seventh Fleet began to take up battle formation with the Seventh Fleet’s three remaining cruisers (including Shropshireand all with Australian Army bombardment liaison teams aboard) and six remaining destroyers (including Arunta) at the northern end of the Surigao Strait in order to attack the Japanese force approaching the southern end. As the Japanese ships passed Panaon Island in the Strait after midnight, they were first attacked on the flanks by PT boats and then by destroyers including Arunta firing torpedoes as they closed on the northern end of the strait. As the Japanese ships continued towards the Leyte Gulf, they sailed directly towards the line of US battleships running perpendicular across their path which was flanked by the Allied cruisers including Shropshire. By morning of 25 October, the Allied torpedo attacks and subsequent gunfire from the battleships and cruisers had sunk both battleships, the cruiser and three of the four destroyers in the Japanese southern force. The group following them decided against entering the Strait but still lost one of its three cruisers to air attack later in the day. The Battle of Surigao Strait had been a resounding victory.

As the morning progressed, the Third Fleet began attacking the northern Japanese force of carriers, sinking its three light and one large carriers. In the meantime, however, the centre Japanese force of battleships and cruisers had passed through the San Bernardino Strait and turned south to attack the Third Fleet escort aircraft carriers and their destroyers which had been placed under operational command of the Seventh Fleet to provide close air support and cover for the landings. As the northernmost escort carrier group located east of Samar came under attack, the Japanese Kamikaze unit made their first successful attacks on the escort carriers as well. In the meantime, the victorious ships of the Battle of Surigao Strait were preparing to sail north to engage the central Japanese force when the Japanese suddenly ceased their attack and withdrew in order to continue on their primary mission to Leyte Gulf.

When they were approximately 80 kilometres from the mouth of the Gulf, however, the lack of information on whether the decoy carrier force in the north had suceeded in luring away the Third Fleet’s newer battleships and large aircraft carriers combined with a report that a large US carrier task force had been spotted to their northeast, and the knowledge that the southern force had failed to break through to the Gulf while there were indications that Allied reinforcements were concentrating there, it was decided to turn around yet again to attack what turned out to be a non-existent US carrier task force. At that stage, lack of fuel became a determining factor and the Japanese centre force turned back through the San Bernardino Strait to return to Brunei Bay, sustaining further losses as they withdrew. By the end of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, by some accounts the largest sea battle ever fought and, in the Surigao Strait, the last of the ‘big gun’ naval battles, the Japanese Fleet lost their last large aircraft carrier, three of their five light carriers, three of their seven battleships and nine of their 21 cruisers

Brunei Bay Postscript

As the Japanese naval forces withdrew, the Allies knew that the surviving Japanese ships were all probably damaged but could not be struck off the list, still posing a raiding threat to the Seventh Fleet’s cruisers once the Third Fleet battleships were withdrawn. Even the Seventh Fleet’s most powerful cruiser, Shropshire, was no match against Yamato. As a result, B-29 Superfortresses based in India bombed the Japanese dry docks in Singapore on 5 November to deny them repair facilities. Two days later, on 7 November, a US reconnaissance aircraft discovered a Japanese aircraft carrier, four battleships including Yamato and five cruisers still in Brunei Bay, as well as two cruisers off nearby Miri. While they had been able to refuel upon returning to Brunei Bay, ammunition resupply had to wait until the aircraft carrier Junyo arrived with the necessary ammunition on 6 November, the unloading of which was only completed after the ships had been spotted by the US reconnaissance aircraft. Coincidentally, that same evening, eight RAAF Catalinas were taking off from Darwin for Morotai from where they were scheduled to mine targets in Borneo, including four sorties against Brunei Bay on 9 November.

Considered ‘Navy business’, the ‘attack aviation’ focused AAF commander shunned aerial mining from its introduction in SPWA in 1943 in favour of more direct action while the Seventh Fleet’s aircraft were too few and poorly position to take on the role. RAAF Command, on the other hand, embraced the role and by September 1944 had three squadrons tasked solely with mine-laying, working to broad targeting directives from Commander Seventh Fleet in his capacity as Allied Naval Commander. At the end of October, after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Commander Seventh Fleet had decided to extend the SWPA aerial mining program to targets on northern Borneo including Brunei Bay. With the discovery of the Japanese fleet, the Catalinas’ tasking was changed on arrival in Morotai for all available aircraft to conduct the Brunei Bay mission. That same day, however, partially in fear of an air raid possibly after spotting the US reconnaissance aircraft, the Japanese fleet put to sea and was seen sailing through the Balabac Strait into the Sulu Sea. As six Catalinas were dropping their mines in Brunei Bay that night, six of the cruisers were again spotted in the Sulu Sea. It was only on 11 November that two of the Japanese cruisers returned to Brunei Bay while the other warships refueled at Miri, although a reconnaissance of Brunei Bay and Kota Kinabalu harbour failed to find any Japanese ships at all on 12 November.

It was only on 15 November that reconnaissance aircraft again spotted up to three Japanese battleships and five cruisers at anchor in Brunei Bay where, by pure coincidence, the laying of a second round of mines by RAAF Catalinas had been planned since the start of November for that very night, most likely as a result of the sighting of the Japanese ships. With the Catalinas having closed the door on the Japanese ships in the Bay that night, some 40 13AF B-24 Liberators were sent from Morotai to bomb them on the following day. Although official reports state that photographs taken during the raid revealed that there was only one battleship, two cruisers, six destroyers and auxiliaries visible in the bay at that time, at least one eyewitness account suggests there were four battleships and six cruisers present. Five Japanese fighters attacked the bombers with one fighter shot down, while three of the Liberators were lost to antiaircraft fire. Unfortunately, only light near-miss damages were inflicted on the Japanese ships which had been seen and, after the raid, the Japanese fleet split up with three battleships including Yamato and escorts sailing for the Japanese homeland while the others headed southwest to Lingga anchorage south of Singapore. Four days later, on 20 November, the three battleships and their escorts passed the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait and, in order to save fuel, ceased zigzagging as a defence against submarine attack. The ships were spotted by a US submarine just after midnight and the Japanese battleship Kongo was sunk in the ensuing attack, leaving the Japanese with only three serviceable capital ships.

Commemoration

The sailors who died from the attack on Australia are now recorded on the Australian Philippines Liberation Memorial which was dedicated in Palo in 2014 near where the attack happened, and where an annual ceremony is held to commemorate the KING II landings on Leyte.

Occasional Paper 16: HMAS Australia and Atlantic rescue of Coastal Command Sunderland – 1940

October 1, 2017

October 2017

On Monday 28th October 1940, I was serving as an eighteen year old Midshipman in HMAS “Australia”, an 8 inch gun cruiser. At that time, we had arrived on the Clyde at Greenock, Scotland, only two days earlier, after passage from Gibraltar. What a contrast we found the weather from our recent time in the tropics; cold days and even colder nights, and rough Atlantic weather to cope with at sea.

We were ordered to sea that afternoon, to join a search for a German merchant raider, reported operating against our shipping, keeping open the life line from the United States. The convoys were necessary for Britain’s survival, bringing food, oil, etc., to allow the continued struggle against Germany by Britain and her dominions, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In 1940, this small group alone represented the free world against the might of the Third Reich.

The “Australia” and her crew were here to play our own small part in those very dark days. Notwithstanding the growing U Boat menace, and the wide geographic area covered by German aircraft, our merchant ships and those of many neutral countries were still at sea; many ships survived to arrive at their destinations on the West coast of the United Kingdom.

As Tuesday dawned, we learned of a coastal command Sunderland flying boat which had made a forced landing in the Atlantic Ocean West of the Hebrides. Our task was to try and locate this R.A.F. aircraft. There was a gale blowing, the barometer had fallen, visibility was poor, and finding the Sunderland in such adverse conditions appeared difficult, if not unlikely. The ship was running with an extremely rough sea, rolling heavily. During the afternoon, the flying boat kept up transmissions on her radio so that we could use our direction finding equipment to locate her, and then search along this D/F bearing. Just after noon we received a message from the flying boat: “Hurry up – am breaking up“.

As we approached closer to her estimated position we made smoke at intervals, hoping the crew could spot us.

Visibility was now very low, and we had increased speed to 26 knots in an attempt to arrive before it was too late – but the ship was making very heavy weather of the prevailing conditions. A huge sea was running and our heavy cruiser, which picked up on the crest of each wave then surfed down it the next trough, and the wind was blowing a gale.

At 1435 the Sunderland was sighted ahead, her tail occasionally visible above the huge waves – a crew member constantly operating a flashing light to guide us. When only half a mile from the boat, one of her floats dropped off; a moment later, an enormous wave picked the Sunderland and flipped it completely over on it’s back. We could see only one crew member perched on the upturned boat.

We now approached from upwind drifting down onto the wreckage, ropes having been prepared over our starboard side. Scrambling nets, and jumping ladders were also placed over the starboard side.

We suddenly sighted a group of airmen in the water with life jackets on – the ship drifted towards them and rescue ropes were passed.

Artist’s rendering of the mid-Atlantic rescue

However, the rough and icy Atlantic prevented the airmen from securing a rope to themselves – they were too exhausted to tie a knot – salvation at hand, but were the elements going to win after all? “Australia” was rolling heavily, one minute the starboard side would be feet under water, then a heavy roll would reverse to port, and the starboard side would be well clear of the water. Given the force of the wind, and the state of the sea the only way to pluck the survivors from the Atlantic was to send several officers and sailors over the side with bowlines to secure to the airmen. These were led and encouraged by the Commander J.M. (“Jamie^– or “Black Jack”) Armstrong RAN. One by one they had to be hauled on board, With the ship rolling heavily, the airmen’s heavy water-logged gear made for a long and difficult task. Persistence and sheer bravery from those over the side securing each airman finally triumphed. Nine of the crew of thirteen were finally on board, suffering from exposure, but they would be safe after time spent in the sick bay.

The remaining four of the crew drifted out of reach past the “Australia“. I can still recall the utter frustration of seamen trying to reach this group with heaving lines, but the wind force made it totally impossible to cast a line – it merely blew back in one’s face before achieving its objective – to reach the doomed four. At 1725 we were forced to abandon our rescue attempts, altered course to the South and proceeded at only 9 knots into the face of the storm.

The Sunderland had left its base at 1700 on Monday evening, sent out to escort a convoy.

The poor visibility prevented them finding their convoy, and the weather was too bad to enable the crew to obtain a D/F bearing of their base. The high winds caused more petrol to be used than normal, and so at 0700 next morning they ran out of fuel and were forced to attempt a landing in the Atlantic Ocean. It was a magnificent feat of airmanship for the pilot to put his flying boat down into this raging sea without capsizing it. The Sunderland had survived seven and a half hours in a howling Atlantic gale before their luck ran out, and the boat was overturned. The airmen were all sea sick and very weak from this ordeal. Although this rescue took place over fifty six years ago, I can still visualise the joy on the faces of those rescued, and remember the anger and the sadness we all experienced at having to leave the remaining four to face a certain death.

About the Author:

Lieutenant Commander Mackenzie ‘Mac’ Jesse Gregory joined the Royal Australian Naval College at HMAS Cerberus in January 1936 as a 13 year old Cadet Midshipman.

During World War II he served aboard HMAS Canberra and then HMAS Australia. He served in Australia in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans as well as the Mediterranean Sea. He retired in 1954 after a distinguished career. Late in his life he received news that a project initiated by him to erect a statue of a sailor with his kitbag at the end of Station Pier, Melbourne in memory of the thousands of navy personnel who embarked there for service in WWII would be fully funded and be realized. The statue was unveiled by Chief of Navy in 2016. Mac Gregory died on 27th August 2014.

Available online at https://www.navyhistory.org.au/atlantic-rescue-of-coastal-command-sunderland-1940/

‘Mission to Kerguelen’ – An Australian Military Operation in the Sub-Antarctic islands in 1941

September 5, 2017

By Rohan Goyne

I refer to the excellent article Antarctica the forgotten Continent by Hugh Farmer in the Naval Historical Review Vol. 38 No2 June 2017 and offer the following comments: Macquarie Island is territorially part of the State of Tasmania and not in the same category as Heard and McDonald Islands which are overseas territories for the purposes of International Law. The RAN also operated in the Antarctic during WWII with the expedition of HMAS Australia to mine the Kerguelen Islands to deny their harbours to German raiders operating in the Indian Ocean. The attached copy of my article on this operation published in Sabretache, Vol. 55 Issue 3 (September 2014), the journal of the Military Historical Society of Australia (MHSA) may be of interest to your members.

The genesis for the article was from the memoirs of Australia’s Antarctic pioneer Dr Philip Law – Antarctic Odyssey – where Dr Law refers to his expedition to establish an Australian base on Heard Island and stopping over at the Kerguelen Archipelago. In the introduction to the chapter on Iles de Kerguelen, Dr Laws notes that HMAS Australia visited the island in 1941 to lay sea mines to deny the enemy use of the main harbours of this Sub-Antarctic island.

The official history records Australia’s operation in the Kerguelen as: ‘For the rest of the year she was on escort and patrol duties on the South Atlantic Station, this period included a brief visit to Kerguelen to seek for possible raiders’.¹For example, the official history also records that the German raider Komet was present at Kerguelen in March 1941.

On 1 November 1941, Australia under the command of Captain George Moore, RAN arrived at Kerguelen Island and proceeded to undertake a sweep of the island to detect if there was any evidence of the activity of German commerce raiders utilising the island’s sheltered harbours as refuges whilst undertaking offensive operations against allied shipping lanes in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

On the strength of her investigations Australia laid magnetic mines in four locations at the entrances to the harbours of Kerguelen Island.²In particular sea mines were laid at the entrance to the old French whaling station at Port Jeanne d’Arc, as shown on the map of the island.

The strategic importance the German Navy placed upon Kerguelen Island is represented by the German plans to establish a meteorological station on the island as late as May 1942. The German raider Michel transferred a meteorologist and two radio technicians to a supply ship which was to transport them to Kerguelen Island to establish the station. Whilst in transit the orders were countermanded thus the plan was never put into action. The effectiveness of the sea mining operation conducted by Australia was therefore never tested as to whether the mines could deny enemy shipping access to the secure anchorages on the island.

Subsequently, the continued presence of the magnetic mines laid by Australia was reported by Phillip Law in 1949 as affecting the passage of the Landing Ship Tank, HMAS Labuan whilst making a landing at Kerguelen. The ship was supporting the Australian Antarctic Expedition to the continent, which was being led by Dr Law.

‘The passage to the anchorage was hazardous, for the mines laid in 1941 by HMAS Australia had blocked the normal entrances and the ship was forced to pass through a narrow gap 120 feet wide between two rocky islets’³

The continued presence of the sea mines is reported in the literature associated with the island as recently as 2008.

Notes:

Gill, G.H. Australia in the War of 1939-45 – Navy 1939-42, p 511

ADM 1/12148, Review of Kerguelen Sea Mining by HMAS Australia 1941-1944, National Archives of the UK

Law, Dr P. Antarctic Odyssey, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1983, p 53

Book review: Flagship: The Cruiser HMAS Australia II and the Pacific War on Japan

March 29, 2017

By Mike Carlton. Penguin Random House, Sydney, August 2016. Hardcover 642 pages with illustrations and many b&w photographs. RRP $50 – discounts available.

Some naval history books traverse well-worn tracks where many authors have been before and contribute little that is new or engaging. Mike Carlton’s new book Flagship is not such a book. On the contrary, this book has been missing from the literature. It is a timely book that will fill the general void in the public’s understanding of the Royal Australian Navy’s war at sea 1939 – 45 and the Pacific campaign in particular.

It is remarkable how many of our fellow citizens are well versed in the stories of Tobruk, Alamein, the fall of Singapore and the battles for the Kokoda Track. Whereas the loss of the light cruiser HMAS Sydney with all 645 of her men off WA in 1941 has been exhaustively retold, the lives of the sailors who served in the ships of the RAN and the Australian merchant navy in the Pacific war remains largely unknown. The RAN deployed to war in the Pacific in December 1941 to stem the Japanese invasion of South East Asia and Australia’s northern waters. By January 1943 the USN and the RAN with the RAAF had secured the sea lanes from an enemy that had planned to dominate Australia’s links to the world as a part of its plan to maintain Japanese dominance in the South West Pacific.

We are approaching the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, where the Japanese advance was first halted. The story told in Flagship of how Admiral Jack Crace, originally from Gungahlin near Canberra, took his RAN/USN squadron and blocked the Jomard passage to the Japanese should be better known and its significance more widely understood. Crace and his men, RAN and USN, despite being under air attack fought and survived and in doing so deterred the Japanese High Command from attempting to carry out their plan for a seaborne invasion of virtually defenceless Port Moresby.

Flagship covers the tragic night battle at Savo Island off Guadalcanal, the bombardment of New Guinea beaches as the allies went north and the vast sea battles off the Philippines at Leyte Gulf, Surigao Strait and Lingayen Gulf, when the Japanese surface fleet ceased to exist as a fighting fleet. These events are infrequently recalled and not formally taught to a rising generation. The few Australians with whom the names of these sea battles may resonate have little or no understanding that cruisers and destroyers of the RAN fought with the USN, and later the powerful British Pacific Fleet, right through the Pacific campaign from 1942 – 1945.

During those years RAN and USN ships sustained the allied armies fighting in jungles. They poured naval gunfire down on Japanese coastal strongpoints and softened up resistance saving thousands of allied soldiers and marines from virtually certain death as they disembarked from landing craft. Flagship brings these engagements vividly back to attention. The RAN paid a very high price in fine ships and young lives for being in the thick of the fight so often and for so long. The repeated and often fatal kamikaze attacks which HMAS Australia’s crew endured in late 1944 and early 1945, while continuing to do their duty, should be the stuff of national inspiration. It is not.

Why is there such a blind spot in the general knowledge of the RAN’s role in the Pacific? What accounts for this national amnesia? It may owe much to the lack, until now, of one good book which is available and easily read by any who wish to learn what happened to Australian sailors at war in the Pacific. Australia’s naval history in World War II is a significant part of the nation’s story and deserves to be formally taught to each generation. Flagship is the book every school could use for this purpose.

Sterling work has been done by generations of naval historians who have explained in ships histories where the RAN was in action. The sacrifices of the men who fought their ships is well documented. But much of that work is long out of print and none of those writers, since the official historian of the RAN in WWII, G.H. Gill, have worked on such a wide canvas as Flagship does. This book tells the whole story of the contribution of the heavy cruisers, Australia and HMAS Shropshire, made in the countless engagements large and small which led inexorably to the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.

But this is not a dry account of maritime campaigns only of interest to naval history buffs. Flagship is a rattling good read, full of fascinating detail and grounded in excellent research aided by the professional historians at the Sea Power Centre – Australia where the Navy keeps its historical archives. Flagship is also a social history of a very particular, never to be repeated, human experience. It asks, and answers, the question how did young Australian civilians transform and adapt to what the Naval Prayer calls ‘the dangers of the sea and the violence of the enemy.’

Flagship reaches into the cruisers’ mess decks and gunrooms and tells through their letters and diaries the stories of the young men who lived there, often for years, while their ship carried them into danger and back out again. Here are the lives of those who lived and returned to Australia, and those who were killed in action and buried at sea by their grieving shipmates, usually the same day. Flagship also deals with the role that the American High Command in Australia and the Australian Naval Board played in the decisions about where and when the RAN went into action. Key allied commanders and their political masters made choices which determined the outcome of the Australian contribution to the war in the Pacific.

The manifest failures that led to disaster at the night battle of Savo Island and the loss of HMAS Canberra are not glossed over and the sad truth that it was a badly aimed, hastily fired, American torpedo which first crippled the Australian cruiser is not shied away from. This fact has been widely accepted and documented since 1994 when it was fully explained by those RAN officers who were there and much later in life gained access to the USN’s archives. It is right that this sad truth should be re-stated with supporting evidence. But also here is the epic account Canberra’s surviving crew who recovered from the loss of their captain, their ship and shipmates and went to war again in Shropshire, an RN cruiserfreely given by Winston Churchill to the RAN. Her guns crews avenged their eighty four dead Canberra shipmates when they attacked the Japanese battle line at Surigao Strait and earned the high praise of the Americans for the speed and accuracy of their 8 inch salvos. That is a great Australian example of ‘never say die’ and Flagship tells that story, and many others, with the generosity, accuracy and the compassion which the men who lived these quietly heroic lives richly deserve.

The generation of RAN sailors who went to war in the Pacific in Australia, Canberraand Shropshire are very nearly all gone now. The author interviewed the few who are left and recorded their memories. These last sailors standing were very young when they went to war but their insights and memories bring freshness to the battle scenes described. The author also read the unpublished accounts, held in private family archives, of those who wrote what they remembered of the times they survived. More work on the RAN in the Pacific war awaits those historians who wish to explore further into the archives and diaries.

This well illustrated, very substantial new book with 560 pages of text does justice to those men who are still with us, to those who were killed by kamikaze attacks at their action station in HMAS Australia, to those men who came home from war and lived their lives among us. It pays tribute to those eighty four sailors and officers who still lie in Iron Bottom Sound, off Savo Island, with their lost cruiser, Canberra.

Reviewed by Desmond Woods

The Battles for Leyte Gulf: where Australian ships fought in one of the greatest battles in naval history

September 27, 2016

By David Scott

David Horace Ford Scott grew up on a soldier-settler block near Holbrook, NSW but his parents were forced to walk off the property during the Depression and live with grandparents. David gained a bursary to Melbourne Grammar School and on completion of his secondary education entered the navy. He served as an Able Seaman in HMAS Arunta as part of her gun’s crew. Pride in his ship and affection for his mates was mixed with the horrors of combat, which included the Battles of Leyte Gulf. After the war David settled down to married life and became a director of the Brotherhood of St Lawrence and Community Aid Abroad. He was also involved in the struggle for self-determination for the people of East Timor. For his ‘outstanding achievement and service’ he was made an officer of the Order of Australia. He died in Melbourne on 22 April 2012.

David wrote of his experiences in Arunta in 2004. A copy of the manuscript was recently presented to the Naval Historical Society by one of his shipmates, Ray Northrop, past President of the HMAS Arunta Association. Minor amendments have been made to this previously unpublished work..

HMAS Arunta

I was an eighteen-year-old Able Seaman, anti-aircraft gunner on the Tribal-class destroyer HMAS Arunta, she was a member of an Australian task force attached to the United States Navy in July 1944. The force consisted of heavy cruisers HMA Ships Australia and Shropshire and our sister ship HMAS Warramunga. Arunta was a fast ship of 2,500 tons capable of a top speed of 36 knots, an exciting and formidable speed to be pushing nearly 3,000 tonnes through the water. She was built for a crew of 260 but had 320, the number needed to man the extra guns and equipment installed during wartime. My gun was a 20mm Oerlikon positioned on the port side of the flag deck, just below the bridge.

Arunta about to commence jackstay transfer with Shropshire – author

A month earlier Arunta covered an American landing on the island ofBiak off what was then the Dutch East Indies. It was one of the thirteen landings Arunta covered with the force of US and Australian cruisers and destroyers.The landing followed the familiar pattern of heavy air bombardments followed by shelling of the landing area by ships and a dash for the shore by the troops in landing craft. At night at full speed we chased Japanese destroyers but failed to catch up with them.

Sixty years later I discovered how close to destruction we were. Battleship Musashi by Akira Yoshimura is a splendid account: The Making and Sinking of the World’s Biggest Battleship¹. Reading it, I discovered that in early June 1944 Musashi was on her way to Borneo where the vessels of the entire Japanese Combined Fleet were gathering for a decisive confrontation later with the US.When reports reached the Japanese fleet that the Americans were landing on the Japanese base of Biak Island, northwest of New Guinea, Yamato and Musashi (the largest and newest battleships in the world) set a course for the island with an escort of destroyers and a land based air patrol of 480 fighters (2).

On the way to Biak the Japanese General Staff advised Musashi that a large portion of the US Fleet was heading for Saipan (Taiwan) and ordered Musashi to break off its attack on Biak and rejoin the Combined Fleet. The battleships must have been very close if the destroyers escorting Musashi were the ones Arunta chased in the night. In half an hour and at long range they could have sunk every vessel in our modest task force, including Arunta.

The Big Picture

At this time President Roosevelt was meeting Naval and Army chiefs in Hawaii to determine a strategy for winning the Pacific War. The US Navy had been restored and strengthened and had won notable successes against the Japanese Navy.The question to be decided was how should the huge fleet, the hundreds of transports, the many divisions of troops and squadrons of aircraft now available be employed to bring the war to a speedy and victorious conclusion. Macarthur bottled up some 250,000 Japanese forces along the coast of New Britain and New Guinea and in the Dutch East Indies of West Papua. Where to next?

Admiral King planned to establish a small base in the southern Philippines to contain the southern Japanese fleet around Singapore and Borneo and lock up the Japanese armies in the Philippines and along the China coast. This would isolate Japan from its supplies of coal and other raw materials. He could then sweep across the Pacific to the Marianas and Formosa (Taiwan) islands that would provide bases close to Japan for the final assault on the mainland.

General MacArthur insisted that priority be given the re-conquest of the Philippines to redeem his pledge to the 70,000 US and Filipino soldiers he had left in Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines, that he would return.Roosevelt decided on a compromise, perhaps persuaded by reports that Macarthur, a popular hero, might contest the Presidency of the United States. There would be a big leap across the heavily defended southern Philippines island of Mindanao, for a landing on the smaller island of Leyte. The Army would proceed north from there to Manila³.

Back to Arunta

Aboard Aruntaon 13 October 1944 the order over the loud speakers was: Cable party of the white watch muster on the foc’sle. Hands out of the rig of the day off the upper deck. Close all X doors, scuttles and deadlights. Special sea duty men to your stations. Then from Hollandia we set out to join the immense force of six battleships, eight cruisers and twenty one destroyers, many tankers, troop carriers, aircraft carriers, supply, repair and maintenance ships, tank and personnel landing barges heading for Leyte Gulf to take part in ‘the final and most decisive surface engagement of the Second World War’⁴.

The fleet of the more than 450 vessels spread out on the calm seas from horizon to horizon in every direction was uneventful. Historian Richard Hough said that Overlord, the force that launched the invasion of Europe, ‘was a trifling affair compared with the Leyte Gulf operation.’⁵. The convoy speed for the journey of 1,250 miles was 9 knots. A light following wind of about the same speed created a still miasma of heat and funnel exhaust. The day before a lone Japanese aircraft had spotted the main landing on 20 October 1944 as minesweepers were clearing a passage through small islands at the entrance to Leyte Gulf.

An immense bombardment by bombers, heavy ships and seemingly endless rocket barrages precededthe landing. The wakes of hundreds of landing craft snaked across the water as they carried 100,000 men to the shore. Arunta fired a total of 745 round sat targets, leaving only 369 for future use⁶.It was a watchful but uneventful time for the anti-aircraft gunners sweating in antiflash gear consisting of a treated smock, balaclava and gloves and an uncomfortable helmet. Arunta with Warramunga bombarded gun emplacements on a hill south of the village of Tanauan in Leyte Gulf. The huge rolling bombardment moved along the coast and shifted inland as landing craft came close to the beaches. At 0945 MacArthur disembarked from the cruiser Nashville, waded through the shallows and walked up the beach to announce ‘I have returned.’At dusk Arunta helped lay a smoke screen to cover the transports at the vulnerable time of the day when enemy aircraft flew at water level to take a target among the ships. They attacked frequently as we patrolled off the landing beaches. One lone pilot flew down the line of anchored heavy ships, and dropped a torpedo, hitting the US cruiser Honolulu and killing sixty officers and men.

Bombardment from HMAS Arunta’s 4.7-inch guns – RAN

The next morning, 21 October, the heavy cruiser Australia was getting under way from its anchorage when its radar picked up an approaching aircraft, then two, three and four. The Japanese had chosen an angle that prevented most of Australia’s guns from firing at them. Sailors in Australia watched, aghast, as one plane headed for the bridge and crashed into the foremast. Debris and burning fuel sprayed on to the air defence positions above the compass platform killing 30 men, including Captain Dechaineux and wounding another 64, 26 of them seriously. Australia and the damaged Honolulu were escorted south by Warramunga and a US destroyer for repairs at Manus Island.

It was assumed Australia was chosen as a kamikaze or suicide target then and on later occasions because it looked large and clumsy compared to the sleek American cruisers. Being high out of the water it was also an easier target to hit. But John Alliston, commander of Warramunga, speculated that the special attention given to Australia could be explained by the fact that Commodore Farncomb flew his broad pennant from the main mast⁷. US flag officers, he said, were forbidden to fly their admiral’s flag in action. If true it was a remarkable and lethal example of Nelsonian bravado. The suicide attack on Australia heightened tension as we patrolled across the Gulf. A further dimension to conflict was added by knowing that pilots were prepared to sacrifice their lives life to make sure they hit their targets.

On 24 October we were at action stations or ‘second degree of readiness’ all day. ‘Action Stations’ required everyone to be at his position on a gun, at signaling equipment, on the bridge, in the engine room or locked in the ammunition magazines below the water line.At ‘’second degree’ we could relax around action stations but always with headphone link to the bridge but ‘closed up’ our particular action station. I thought how unbearably claustrophobic it would be below decks, in the engine room or in ammunition magazines with the heavy watertight doors ‘dogged’ on the outside. Meals were mostly tea and sandwiches collected from the galley.On the evening of Tuesday 24 October our captain, Commander A.E. Buchanan, announced that Arunta was moving south down Surigao Strait, which leads into Leyte Gulf, to engage a large enemy force. We were closed up at ‘action stations’ for the next twenty-four hours.

Battles for Leyte Gulf

‘Look at this,’ said the radar operator inviting me through the heavy black out curtains into the radar room, little bigger than a cupboard, a few metres from my gun on the flag deck. He pointed to the thin beam of light rotating from the centre of the screen. As it passed a southeasterly position several maggot-like shapes appeared in line moving northwest. We learned later they were two Japanese battleships, a heavy cruiser and four destroyers, part of the planned Japanese response to the Leyte Gulf landings. It was the first stage ofthe Japanese Sho, or Victory Plan, that almost succeeded.

The Japanese command had anticipated that MacArthur would land in the Philippines and on 18 October Admiral Toyoda, commanding officer of the Japanese Navy, activated three separate naval forces to destroy the US fleets and the immense invasion force in Leyte Gulf. The decision he said was ‘as difficult as swallowing molten iron’ but his Admirals Kurita, Nishimura and Ozawa welcomed the plan. Ozawa was taking an immense gamble. He was prepared to sacrifice his entire force to lure the US Third Fleet away from Leyte Gulf. From then on historians recorded ‘everything went wrong for the Japanese’⁸.

Suddenly star shells burst above us. It was as light as day. Bob Rule, the loader on my gun, signalman ‘Spider’ Currie and I peered in to the darkness beyond the arena of light. A moment later water spouts from Japanese shells erupted near us. Buchanan reported that some shells fell to the right and some fell short. ‘As the enemy were not engaged’, he wrote in the log, ‘I expected a heavy volume of fire’. Caught literally like rabbits in a spotlight we waited for 18-inch shells to crash down before we could reach the shelter of the smoke screen. I recall feeling detached, a spectator waiting for the show to begin. You could try to duck or take shelter from an aircraft or even a bomb and flex for the impact as a torpedo trail was sighted but there was nowhere to hide from an 18-inch shell. But the Japanese did not continue firing, possibly to avoid giving their position away to the US battleships.

Torpedo Attacks

Arunta, leading other destroyers, fired its four torpedoes at 6,500 yards. One from our force, credited to be from Killen, hit Yamashiro. Hearing gunfire and believing a US destroyer was engaging the enemy, Buchanan turned back to provide support. At 0345 we opened fire at a target. The fire ended abruptly at 0356 as we heard on the TBS (open talk between ships) the order to ‘Happy Hour’, our code name.‘This is Big Boy. Get out or be blown out’, we were told as the battle force across the head of the straits opened fire.

The unassuming Commander Buchanan gives a bland account of the incident in Arunta’s action report:

We were steaming south at 15 knots rather like Mr Micawber hoping for something to turn up. It did. We were told to cease fire and get out. With the vivid recollection of what the gunfire of our battleships and cruisers could to the enemy, we retired at 25 knots tothe north.

The Commander (C.T.G. 773) happily took charge of the situation and saved us from an engagement with our own battle fleet.

Admiral Oldendorf, commander of the Allied Force in Leyte Gulf, watched the progress of the Japanese and the attacking destroyers on his radar screen. He had placed his six battleships, five cruisers and nine destroyers in a double line across the Surigao Strait, which was only twelve miles wide at this point. (Edwards in Salvo!says ‘two of Arunta‘s torpedoes slammed into Yasmashiro but it ploughed on’. This alerted me to read historians with caution.

As soon as the torpedo attack was completed, Oldendorf ordered the deadly accurate heavy guns from his five battleships and seven cruisers lying broadside across channel to open fire. Edwards says ‘these double-banked ships mounted between them over 3,000 heavy guns including sixteen 16-inch and thirty-six 14-inch – a massed array of weaponry never before seen in the history of naval warfare. In twenty minutes 3,250shells were loosed off’⁹. Shropshire fired 32 eight-inch broadsides, a total of 214 shells in 15 minutes.

Other Firsthand Accounts

John Date of Shropshire wrote: ‘The battleships West Virginia, Tennessee, California and Maryland repeatedly hit Yamashiro. The scene was unforgettable: the magnificent and incredible rate of fire of the Americans, particularly the cruisers with their tracer ammunition the sight of the battleship Yamashiro, flagship of Nishimura, on fire bow from stem to stern and the unbelievable use of searchlights by the Japanese, undoubtedly the last occasion in naval history’¹⁰.

The horizon crackled like a fuse as salvo after salvo arced through the air towards the Japanese. An American destroyer captain described it as ‘a continued stream oflighted railroad cars going over a hill.’At 0349 the battleship Fuso blew up. Its two halves drifted crazily down the Strait for some time before sinking. In the confusion, as Yamashiro altered course, the American destroyer Grant came under a hail of 6-inch shells from American cruisers, killing thirty-four and wounding ninety-four before Oldendorf ordered a cease-fire.

Yamashiro had no radar and took a fearful pounding as it steamed north to find a target. Oldendorf ordered a cease-fire at 0409 when he discovered Grant was being shelled. Yamashiro was by then burning from stem to stern. She sank at 0419 and with her almost the entire crew of more than 1,000.Admiral Nishimura went ‘to the warrior’s death’ one historian wrote, ‘he seemed to be seeking’ in steaming on in the hail of fire. Only the destroyer Shigure escaped.

As dawn broke we saw columns of smoke rising from burning oil. The ship’s surgeon Shane Watson said each destroyer was given permission to pick up not more than 70 Japanese survivors but most of the hundreds in the water refused to be rescued. Watson described seeing destroyers stalking a Japanese whaler with four crew sitting upright in the stern as it chugged towards land. Some Japanese sailors were shot by fire from US ships, others left in the water and afterwards many bodies were washed up on the shores of Surigao Straits.

Admiral Halsey

Meanwhile to the north Kurita’s fleet, including the newly built battleships Yamato and Musashi, three old battleships, twelve cruisers and fifteen destroyers had been detected and attacked by US submarines and 250 aircraft from Admiral Halsey’s carriers. Eight-inch plates and a speed of 30 knots were not sufficient to protect Musashi and she was sunk together with two cruisers and five destroyers¹¹.

At this point Halsey turned away to chase the Japanese fleet under Ozawa which had decoyed Halsey well away from Luzon. Kurita re-grouped; emerging from San Bernadino Strait and heading south for Leyte Gulf he ran into a US force of six light aircraft carriers escorted by seven destroyers. ‘In a courageous running fight the US lost a carrier and three destroyers and Kurita two of his heavy cruisers. This setback, and a belief that Halsey’s main force was returning persuaded Kurita to call off the fight and turn back to San Bernadino Strait’¹².

At 0420 on 25 October, after the destruction of Nishimura’s fleet in Surigao Strait, Admiral Kincaid at the Leyte Gulf beachhead sent a signal to Halsey: ‘Are the fast battleships guarding San Bernadino Strait?’ Kincaid did not receive the negative answer until three hours after he had asked the question. Kincaid had assumed Halsey was going north with only his carriers and that his fast battleships had been left to guard San Bernadino. But Halsey had assumed that Kurita had been so badly damaged to the west of the Strait that ‘he could no longer be considered a serious menace to the Seventh Fleet’.

Arunta once more

Soon after Kincaid’s cable, Arunta and the smaller ships headed back to Leyte Gulf leaving columns of smoke still rising from the battleground¹³.The news that Kurita’s force had passed through San Bernardino Straits and Halsey’s battleships were not there to confront them was deeply worrying. The battleships and cruisers of Oldendorf’s bombardment force and our task force, with magazines and shell-rooms depleted, was all that stood between Macarthur’s vast invasion fleet and its destruction.

‘Consternation reigned in Admiral Kincaid’s flagship in Leyte Gulf’ said historian Donald Mcintyre. A cable from Blue Ridge said: ‘People here feel that the Third Fleet battle ships are chasing a secondary Japanese force, leaving us at the mercy of the enemy’s main body. We are the ones trapped in Leyte Gulf. As soon as the Jap finishes off our defenceless CVE (escort carriers at San Bernadino Straits), we’re next and I mean today’.

Arunta refuelled and took on ammunition in Leyte Gulf. I remember it well. I was standing on a plank between the supply ship and Arunta, part of a chain passing cordite cylinders and shells from the supply ship to Arunta. Suddenly I was flying through the air and into the water with a 55-lb cordite cylinder in my arms.I dropped the cylinder, wondering if this was a punishable offence, hit the water and surfaced to see a line of laughing faces looking down. No one had noticed the ships drawing apart until the plank and I tumbled down. I swam a few strokes through oil and rubbish and clambered up a rope ladder thrown over the side. After a clean-up I was back in the chain, but not on the plank.

We stood by the guns all day. On night patrol, two Japanese destroyers were detected but not attacked in the hope they would lead us to bigger game. They did not, but we spent a weary night at action stations. There were constant air attacks around the gulf. We escorted two small carriers, ready to pick up any pilots who might crash while landing. One evening, ten fighters returning late took over an hour to land, as the flight decks could not be illuminated.

Another evening alarm bells rang as were going the regular dusk ‘action stations’. A carrier opened fire on our port side. I opened fire as an aircraft roared overhead, getting away almost a full drum of shells before the cease-fire bell rang. It was a US Grumman Martlett that was coming in to its carrier from the wrong direction. Another was shot down.

We went alongside the battleship Maryland on one patrol to replenish our depleted stores. It was a ‘first’ for both of us. We had never been alongside a ‘battler’ and they had never had an Australian destroyer alongside.About midday of the next afternoon, two Japanese aircraft hovered above the US destroyer Abner Reid close to us. One plane came in low as if to make a torpedo attack but continued on and hit Reid just for’ard of the gun on her stern, blowing her up with a tremendous explosion.

Nearby ships blazed away at the second aircraft coming down in a steep dive to finish off Reid. Nearing its target it faltered, hit the water and blew up a few yards astern of the stricken destroyer. Two destroyers stood by Reid as it blazed furiously. A big column of smoke billowed up and an explosion told us the magazines had exploded.Reid turned on her side, bows in the air and slid under, leaving a great oil blaze on the surface. Before she sank we spotted torpedo wakes from Reid heading for one of the battleships. All ships opened up with 5-inch and close range weapons at the trail in the water. Some shots strayed dangerously close as we scuttled for shelter on our decks.Our first sight of a kamikaze attack so close was unsettling and we were deeply sorry for the crew of the Abner Reid, with whom we had shared operations. A US Admiral wrote:

Among us who were there I doubt if there is anyone who can depict with complete clarity our mixed emotions as we watched a man about to die in order that he might destroy us in the process. There was hypnotic fascination to a sight so alien to our Western philosophy.

Supplies were again low. This time we went alongside the battleship Mississippi. As we tied up the entire crew seemed to be looking down at us from dizzy heights. One asked for an ‘Aussie cigarette’. A packet was thrown up and showers of US cigarettes were thrown down to us. Next it was money and soon the air was thick with cigarettes, dollar bills, ships’ tally bands, candy, chocolate and anything that could be exchanged The stores they gave us were exotic compared to our meagre rations.

On Monday 13 November Warramunga arrived with our mail. It was always a great occasion for the married men and those with steady girl friends who withdrew to the quietest place they find to read and re-read the letters from their wives and families. Two days later, with salt-caked funnels and blackened gun barrels, we headed south for Manus Island.In his Report of Proceedings for 29 October, the again unassuming Commander Buchanan wrote:

It was a crowded and strenuous ten days for all. There have been long periods at Action Stations and in second degree of readiness; continual air raids and alerts were, and still are, the order of the day. A surface action has been fought.

The end of this month marks the end of the 12 months since Arunta sailed from Brisbane to Milne Bay. The ship has visited Sydney twice – once for 21 days and once for 17 days -total of 38 days. This is the only time officers and men have been out of the ship. The remainder of the time has been spent in the tropical waters of New Guinea and now of the Philippines. Owing to the danger of tropical diseases ashore the complete lack of facilities and the ship being at short notice, officers and men have remained on board throughout this period. That is, they gave been shut up in a crowded steel box in conditions of tropical heat for almost a year. I emphasise these conditions because they represent, I believe, a fine instance of the staying power of bothofficers and men.

The claims of historians that the Battle of Leyte Gulf, made up of three engagements, was the greatest naval battle in history rests on comparisons of the number of ships in a battle. There were 254 ships comprising 1,616,000 tonnes and 8,826 men were killed in the Battle of Jutland in the First World War. In the Philippines 282 ships took part, the total tonnage was 2,014,000 and 10,278 men were killed¹⁴.

Notes:

Yoshimura, Akira, Battleship Musashi. The Making and Sinking of the Biggest Battleship in the World. Kodansha International, Tokyo, New York. 1991
Yoshimura, Akira, Battleship Musashi.
Edwards, Bernard, Surigao, in Salvo!: Epic Naval Gun Actions, US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD. 1995.
Australian War Memorial, HMAS Aruntareference.
Hough, Richard, The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45, Cassell & Co, London, l986.
‘Action Report’ by Captain A.E. Buchanan, HMAS Aruntafor 13-29 October 1944.
Allison, John Destroyer Man,Greenhouse Publications, Melbourne 1985
Steinberg, Rafael, Return to the Philippines, Time-Life Books, 1979.
Edwards p. l80.
Hough (1986) p 328
Yoshimura Akira, Battleship Musashi
Edwards p. 184.
‘Heroic Arunta Fought Jap Battleship’, the Melbourne Ageannounced, saying Aruntawas the only Australian destroyer to have tackled an enemy battleship.
Roscoe, Theodore, United StatesNavy Destroyer Operations in WW2, US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1953.

HMAS Australia II

October 2017

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