- Author
- Powell, Brian, RD
- Subjects
- Battles and operations, History - general, RAN operations
- Tags
-
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- March 2008 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
At Colombo, Royal Navy destroyers replaced the cruisers, as the threat from there on was from submarines rather than ocean raiders. The cruisers were of more value in the West Indies to search out German raiders and to watch neutral American ports. Battleships of the Royal Navy were better suited to support Gallipoli’s amphibious landings. This shows how navies can co-operate to get best use of their capital.
At 0230 on 25 April 1915, HMA Submarine AE2 left its Tenedos anchorage in the Aegean Sea. The Anzacs were also at sea en route to Gallipoli. Three allied battleships had been lost to mines as they tried to force their way through the Dardanelles, but AE2 was sailing into history as the first and only allied vessel to penetrate the defences of the Dardanelles and enter the Sea of Marmara, torpedoing a Turkish cruiser on the way. Tragically for us, all of AE2’s other torpedoes failed to explode.
AE2 Scuttled
Regrettably, AE2 later had to be scuttled as it exhausted torpedoes and fuel. The story of the Turks’ capture and treatment of the crew is one of hardship and tragedy exceeded only by the Japanese in World War II. It left old salts less enamoured towards the Turks than most other Australians.
While not part of the landings, the RAN was soon involved as an RAN Bridging Train at Gallipoli, landing at Suvla Bay on 7 August 1915. All Reservists, they built defences and bridges and saw action. When the Australian soldiers were withdrawn, the sailors stayed on with the English and were amongst the final allied servicemen to leave.
Smaller ships performed well in operations near Mombasa and throughout the South East Asia region, protecting communities, trade routes and convoys. The RAN’s role in the 1914-18 War was as crucial as anything the army did. It was luckier in battle than it was to be in 1939-45 but notched up an impressive component of its history.
Between the wars, our industry developed capabilities that had more bearing on our defence against invasion than is given credit. Government did far less. Several times Cabinet approved new Defence spending but Treasury failed to deliver the money. Australia was complacent and saw Singapore providing all that was necessary for Empire Defence in our Region. The Navy’s share of Defence expenditure was cut each year from 1932/33, but Japan’s Washington Treaty rejection in 1934 and the German 1935 repudiation of the Versailles Treaty galvanised Canberra into action. Within only another three years, it offered funding to enhance Australia’s and Canberra’s armour and to convert Adelaide from coal to oil fuel. This must have scared the living daylights out of the Japanese!
Prime Minister Lyons’ three-year defence program was welcomed so strongly by the then Chief of Navy that he offered his resignation on the spot! Lyons then relented, trading in our aircraft carrier, seaplane carrier Albatross, as part payment on the light cruisers Hobart and Perth.
In 1939, the first Reservists were at sea mid-August – arriving in Trincomalee as Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September. Hobart and five destroyers were working out of Singapore in October. The RAN had two heavy and four light cruisers, five destroyers and two sloops – barely enough to protect the Sydney-Hobart yacht fleet. But Navy was, as it should have been, in most respects the only combat-ready service.
During this war we lost three cruisers, four destroyers, two sloops, three corvettes and two auxiliary minesweepers. 1783 sailors died in action and 444 from other causes, equivalent to half the ships and a third of the men we had in 1939.
RAN ships were in the first battle fleet encounter of the war at Calabria, 1940, and the last at Surigao Strait (Philippines) in 1944. They fought in some of the most unfavourable and dangerous circumstances of maritime war, particularly in the Med. in 1941, South East Asia in 1942 and against the kamikazis in 1944-45.
We were the only Navy in the world to operate in every ocean during the war and the RAN traditions are ones of which we can all be proud.
The RAN loaned officers and sailors to the RN. During the German attack on Norway in 1939 two Australians won DSOs, and Sub-Lieutenant Freddie Osborne, a DSC. Twenty years later he was Menzies Minister for Air. Mid-1940, Sydney and several destroyers were in the Mediterranean and the ‘Tobruk Ferry’, which was Dr Joseph Goebbels’ famed Scrap Iron Flotilla, had 17 HMA Ships involved.
The ‘Old Chook’
In the Med, Sydney (Collins) helped sink the Italian destroyer Espero and won a resounding battle sinking the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni. Perth, Stuart and Vendetta were in the Battle of Matapan where the Italians lost three heavy cruisers and two destroyers, and later, Perth was damaged as she and others evacuated our troops from Greece and Crete. Not so lucky was Tobruk Ferry Waterhen. Holed by dive bombers, the venerable ‘Old Chook’ flooded, rolled over and sank.