- Author
- Editorial Staff
- Subjects
- Ship histories and stories, WWII operations, History - WW2
- Tags
-
- RAN Ships
- HMAS Krait
- Publication
- March 2025 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
Three views of the Second World War Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD) vessel Krait. The following description is from the Australian War Memorial website:
“Operation Jaywick was a raid on shipping in Japanese-occupied Singapore harbour between September and October 1943.
The raid was carried out by members of Special Operations Australia (SOA) from Z Special Unit. The team comprised of four British soldiers, and 11 AIF and Royal Australian Navy personnel, commanded by a British officer, Major Ivan Lyon.
Disguised as Malay fishermen, Lyon’s team travelled from Exmouth in Western Australia to Subor Island, 11 kilometres from Singapore, in a captured boat, renamed MV Krait. Krait was a slow-moving, wooden-hulled vessel about twenty-metres long and sporadically suffered engine trouble for the duration of the voyage. On reaching the island three-and-a-half weeks after leaving Australia, the team launched three two-man collapsible canoes (folboats).
Lyon and five others then paddled into Singapore Harbour. Arriving at night they split up and slipped from ship to ship attaching limpet mines, paddling another 80 kilometres to rendezvous with Krait six days later on 2 October.
When the mines exploded, seven ships were sunk or badly damaged. Krait recovered its intrepid but exhausted canoeists and travelled back to Australia, arriving at Exmouth on 19 October 1943.”
Krait was found in Borneo in 1964 and returned to Australia for preservation. In 1985 she was handed over to the Australian National Maritime Museum, at Darling Harbour in Sydney.
