OPERATION RIMAU Oct 1944 Geelong
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
CHAPTER 1 8 OPERATION RIMA U HILE the Task Force was engaged in the decisive operations at W Leyte in October 1944, frigates, corvettes, and motor launches o f the R.A.N. were carrying out their less prominent but important dutie s on the lines of communication . Three frigates, twenty corvettes, and a number of M .L's were escorting, patrolling, and carrying out other opera- tions in waters north of New Guinea, some with occasional bombardmen t missions.' About this time three of them—one corvette and two M .L's- were to be the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth ships of the R .A.N. sunk during the war, excluding small craft of which, until then, six ha d been victims of marine disaster and two of enemy action . Mention ha s been made earlier of the loss of one of the M .L's, ML827, lost on 20th November after running ashore near Jacquinot Bay, New Britain . Actually she was the last of the three to go . First to be lost was ML430 (Lieutenant Wordsworth 2 ), sunk off north Biak on 14th August 1944 . She was in company with ML819 (Lieutenant Moore3 ) on patrol when she was hit by gunfire during an attack on what was believed to be an enemy submarine . On the night of 13th August ML819 proceeded to a patrol area off Warsa, north Biak . Lights were seen, flashing at regular intervals, about one mile east of Tanjong Obubari . At 10.10 p.m . lights were seen flashing on the water' s edge in the approximate position of Warsa . Soon afterwards a vessel, presumed to be enemy, was sighted, and identified as a sub - marine. Moore made an enemy report, which apparently was neve r received. At 10.50 p.m. ML819 contacted ML430, and asked her to join in support . At this time visibility closed down . There was no sign of ML430, and Moore launched an attack on the submarine . ML430 reported being hit by gunfire in the magazine, and burning . A search of the area for the submarine yielded no result, and Moore close d ML430 and embarked her ship's company. After another fruitless search of the area for the submarine, ML819 closed the burning ML430 and endeavoured to sink her by gunfire. While so engaged a vessel, presume d to be the submarine, was sighted proceeding at high speed . Moore tried to get it in silhouette against the glow from the burning ML430, but the stranger disappeared and was not again sighted . ML819 thereupon pro- ceeded to Mios Wundi, and there landed the ship's company of ML430. Second on the list of R .A.N. casualties at this period was the corvette l Frigates : Barcoo, Burdekin, Hawkesbury. Corvettes : Ararat, Bendigo, Broome, Colac, Coota- mundra, Cowra, Deloraine, Geelong, Gladstone, Glenelg, Goulburn, Gympie, Katoomba, Kiama , Latrobe, Lithgow, Rockhampton, Strahan, Townsville, Wagga . a Lt A . A . Wordsworth, RANVR. ML1074 ; comd ML430 1943-44, ML817 1945 . B . Gordonvale , Qld, 27 Dec 1911 . s Lt R . A . E . Moore, RANVR . Comd ML813 1943, ML819 1943-44. Executive ; of Sydney ; b . Mosman, NSW, 10 Jan 1910 . 542 OPERATION RIMAU Oct 1944 Geelong. At 8 .37 p.m. on 18th October the N .O.I.C. Langemak (Lieut- Commander Phelan 4 ) received a signal from the master of the American tanker York : "Collision at 1007Z position Lat 06 04 South 147 50 East HMAS Geelong badly damaged . Standing by. " Phelan immediately dis- patched PC1121 from Langemak—she left at 9 .11 p.m.—and diverted a near-by merchant ship, Julian Early, to the scene of the collision, about 30 miles north of Langemak, to help if required . At 9.47 p .m. N.O.I.C. New Guinea (Captain Esdaile) told Phelan by signal that H .M.A.S. Ararat (Lieutenant Muzzell 5 ) was available at Madang if required, and at 11 .45 told him that Ararat was sailing at midnight to give assistance . Just after midnight the U .S. Army tug TP110 was dispatched from Finschhafen . A few minutes later a signal was received from PC1121 reporting that Geelong had foundered. All hands were saved and were on board York. Launched at Williamstown on 22nd April 1941, Geelong commissioned on 16th January 1942 under the command of Lieutenant C. G. Hill. From then until April 1944 she was employed on escort duty and genera l routine work mainly on the east coast of Australia, with a brief interlud e in Noumea in March-April 1942 . In April 1944 Lieutenant Mathers° succeeded Hill in command, and the ship was placed under the opera- tional control of N.O.I.C. New Guinea at Milne Bay, for duty in New Guinea waters . In the evening of 18th October she was northward boun d from Milne Bay for Madang and Hollandia, with her complement of 8 6 officers and ratings, and with four officers and 12 ratings on passage to Madang—a total of 102. At the time of the collision the weather was good , sea smooth, visibility four to five miles, with gentle S by E wind . Geelong was steering NW -1N against a two-and-a-half knot S by E set . She wa s burning no lights. York, owned by the United States War Shipping Administration, a tanke r of 10,448 tons, sailed from Humboldt Bay at midnight on 16th October , bound for Balboa. Immediately before the collision she was steering SE by E, burning dimmed masthead and side lights . At 7.55 p.m. York's master, Captain H . Birkland, went on to the bridge in readiness to change course. He instructed the Third Mate, who was officer of the watch, to make the necessary change to SE by S at 8 .7 p.m. "About 8.6 p.m. I thought I saw something about a point and a half on the starboard bow . I picked up the glasses to verify same and immedi- ately gave orders : hard right helm and full astern and gave one short blast on the whistle. Immediately following my orders came the repor t from the bow lookout black object on the starboard bow . "7 The lights of York were seen from Geelong and, at 8.6 p.m. the tanker' s one blast on the whistle ("I am directing my course to starboard " ) was a Lt-Cdr B . K. Phelan, RAN(EL) . HMAS 's Hobart, Platypus, Adelaide ; NOIC and Port Director, Langemak, 1944-45 . B . St Helens, Tas, 16 Sep 1908 . 5 Lt-Cdr N. M . Muzzell, RANR . Comd HMAS's Gunbar 1940-42, Ararat 1943-45 . Merchant nav y officer ; b. London, 6 Jun 1904 . Lt M . E . Mathers, RANR . HMAS's Canberra and Rockhampton ; comd HMAS Geelong 1944 . B . Hobart, 24 Sep 1909. 7 Captain's log, s .s . York. Oct-Nov 1944 COLLISION AT SEA 543 heard. Geelong increased to full speed, turned hard to starboard until th e ship commenced swinging, and then turned hard to port . But the ship s were in too close proximity for collision to be avoided, and at 8 .62 p.m. —only half a minute after Captain Birkland first sighted Geelong—she and York collided. In the words of Captain Birkland's log : We struck the H .M .A.S. Geelong on the port quarter. [The corvette's stern was severed abaft the minesweeping hatch.] They signalled they were listing badly an d sinking, and asked for immediate assistance . I launched two lifeboats and the y proceeded towards the Geelong and picked up two boatloads each of survivors . We were standing by about a quarter of a mile away . We succeeded to get the whole crew on board our vessel . At 9.51 p .m . the Geelong sank . We checked the whole crew and passengers, total 102 persons ; and finding them all here proceeded to take our lifeboats aboard. At 11 .19 p .m. proceeded towards Langemak. Our runnin g lights were on medium bright . Geelong had no navigation lights on . York arrived at Langemak at 7.20 a.m. on the 19th; Geelong's survivors were landed there, and taken on to Milne Bay by aircraft, and by H .M.A .S. Ararat. II On 21st November 1944, the day after ML827 broke adrift from the salvage tug Cambrian Salvor and sank off Jacquinot Bay, New Britain, the British submarine Tantalus, 8 some 3,100 miles to the westward, made a periscope reconnaissance of Merapas Island, about 70 miles south-east o f Singapore. Her action was the prelude to the final scene of the penultimate act in the operation RIMAU drama, the sequel to operation JAYWICK, th e raiding voyage of the Krait to Singapore in September and October 1943 . "Operation RIMAu, " says Ronald McKie in his excellent book on th e two operations, "was the child of JAYWICK and of Ivan Lyon's compulsion to attack Singapore, for the Krait raid was only just over when he wa s already planning to return . "9 RIMAU differed in a number of ways from JAYWICK. Instead of using a surface craft for transport from Australia, i t was planned that the approach to the vicinity of Singapore would be by submarine . Reaching the islands just south of Singapore, a local craft woul d be captured for the final approach to the launching place of the attac k on Singapore shipping, and this would be made, not in two-man paddled canoes as in JAYWICK, but in "Sleeping Beauties"—one-man electrically powered submersible boats . Using these, it was planned to affix limpet mines to ships in Singapore harbour as in the previous raid .