A further detailed letter has been received from member James Eagles, ex-RAN Communicator, documenting many instances of the Germans decoding British naval and merchant ship signal traffic in 1941, etc. ...
WWII operations
HMAS Sydney Inquiry (Letter No. 1)
Earlier correspondence from a member concerning an important point of ship recognition vis-a-vis Kormoran and Straat Malakka deserves response. He queries how the Dutch merchantman with a distinctive counter stern ...
Disaster at Bari
Mustard gas in World War II? Let me tell you of the happenings at Bari in Italy on the evening of 2 December 1943. Bari had recently become the main ...
Letters – Loss of sea language
Sir, Reading Roger Puttman’s letter (NHR 20-2) and his shared complaint concerning the loss of sea language put me in mind of an incident aboard Quiberon during Arch Harrington’s command ...
The Sydney – Kormoran Engagement – Part 1
Operation Downfall
Regarding “The Century’s Greatest Untold Story” in Vol. 20, No. 4, although OPERATION DOWNFALL may have been top secret, it was generally known, even in the BPF, that an invasion ...
Operation Downfall – The invasion of Japan – a sequel
Almost as sensational as “OPERATION DOWNFALL” – the top-secret plan for the invasion of Japan as detailed in the last issue of Naval Historical Review (Vol. 20, No. 4) – ...
The chase and sinking of the ‘Bismarck’
Book Review: The Raider Kormoran
Book Review: Atlantic Odyssey
Title: Atlantic Odyssey Author: Michael Thwaites Publisher: Self-published This is a fascinating account of a little-known aspect (in Australia at least) of the Battle of the Atlantic, seen through the ...
Book Review: Bombers and Battleships
Letters: Beattie of the St Nazaire raid
A small point that may be of interest to your readers (St Nazaire – The Greatest Commando Raid of WW II) is that Lieutenant Commander (as he then was) Beattie ...
Letters: Inquiry into the Loss of HMAS Sydney – Communications
Letters: Inquiry into the loss of HMAS Sydney
St Nazaire – The Greatest Commando Raid of WWII
Inquiry into the loss of HMAS Sydney by Joint Parliamentary Sub-committee
Letters – Sinking of Royal Oak
I was most interested to read the account in the Naval Historical Review of June 1998 of the sinking of the British battleship Royal Oak. I was in command of ...
Letters – Unacknowledged heroes
I have read with interest the comments in the Naval Historical Review on HMAS YARRA and Leading Seaman Taylor’s heroic action. I also believe this last action of YARRA’S has ...
Letters – Japanese surrender in Timor
There was a uniqueness about the RAN involvement in the Japanese surrender ceremonies in Timor, raised in Peter Evans’s (Fairmile Association) letter in REVIEW Vol 19 No. 2 when he ...
The raid on St Nazaire 1942
1942, and the British were clinging on while their convoys were only just getting enough supplies through to keep the people and the war effort going. But on the Biscay ...
Attack on Sabang, Northern Sumatra, 1944
This article refers to the British Eastern Fleet’s first attack on Sabang in Northern Sumatra, in April, 1944. To relieve some of the pressure on his own forces, Admiral King had ...
Book Review: Sensuikan I-124
Author: Tom Lewis This is the story of the Japanese minelaying submarine I-124, built at Kobe in 1928 and sunk off Darwin on 20th January, 1942. The author also discusses ...
Sinking of HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow by U-47
HMAS Hawkesbury – The Pathos of Palawan
The Loss of HMAS Voyager I – Timor, 1942
I would like to comment on the loss of HMAS Voyager I – Monograph No. 25, transcript by Commodore Bryan Cleary, RAN (Rtd). I was serving in HMAS Voyager at the time ...