Australian (RAN) Cruisers in the 1939/45 War

Kamikaze attack on HMAS Australia in Leyte Gulf, Philippines, 21 October 1944

HMAS Australia and HMAS Canberra were heavy cruisers of the Royal Navy's Kent Class.

Displacing 10,160 tonnes, these ships carried main armament of eight 8-inch (20 cm) guns each capable of firing four rounds per minute, along with twelve smaller guns and twelve machine-guns.

Ships of this class were also fitted with quadruple 21-inch (53 cm) torpedo tubes which were a first in any navy.

Ordered from Britain as part of a five-year naval procurement plan announced in 1924, the two cruisers were built in Clydeside shipyards and launched in 1927, arriving in Australia the following year. Operating mainly from Sydney, both ships were used for training cruises along the Australian east coast during the 1930s. Australia spent time with the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean in 1935-1936 returning to undergo a modernisation program at Cockatoo Island which included the fitting of increased armour protection.

With Australia recommissioned in August 1939, both the heavy cruisers served as flagship of the Australian Squadron at various times during the first years of the war.

The two ships were engaged in escort and patrol Australian waters until mid-1940, when HMAS Canberra was sent to the South Atlantic and Australia joined Royal Navy operations in West Africa.

Based in the Indian Ocean from late 1940, on 4 March 1941 HMAS Canberra intercepted the German raider supply vessel Coburg and the captured Norwegian tanker Ketty which had earlier refuelled the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer. The enemy ships attempted to separate at the cruiser's approach, and HMAS Canberra initially gave chase to Coburg.

When HMAS Canberra opened fire and set Coburg on fire the Germans scuttled their ship.

The Australian cruiser then turned to the fleeing tanker, which had been receiving the attention of Canberra's aircraft in the form of some warning bombs.

The tanker's crew also took scuttling action and, despite efforts to salvage them, both enemy ships sank.

After searching for enemy raiders in Antarctic waters, HMAS Australia arrived back home in December 1941.

This ship now became the flagship of the Australian Squadron under Rear-Admiral J.G. Crace, while Canberra entered an extensive refit.

On 7 May 1942, during the battle of the Coral Sea, an allied force led by HMAS Australia (and which included HMAS Hobart) came under attack from torpedo bombers while blocking a Japanese move on Port Moresby, but escaped without serious damage.

Crew display wreckage a Japanese suicide plane that hit HMAS Australia.

The flagship also became the target of nineteen Japanese high-altitude bombers, yet survived despite being straddled by explosions which drenched its upper deck.

Both the RAN's heavy cruisers, along with HMAS Hobart, were present during the US invasion of the Solomon Islands in August 1942.

Flying his flag in HMAS Australia, Rear-Admiral V.A.C. Crutchley (Crace's successor) commanded an allied cruiser force protecting the troopships landing 16,000 US marines on Guadalcanal on 7 August.

In response to this move, a powerful Japanese striking force of seven cruisers and one destroyer sailed from Rabaul to attack allied shipping off Guadalcanal.

In a short but ferocious action during the early morning hours of 9 August, the Japanese caught Crutchley's force by surprise off Savo Island and virtually annihilated it. Suffering 24 hits from shells in the opening moments of the action, within two minutes HMAS Canberra was a listing wreck without power or communications. There were 193 casualties among the ship's crew, 84 of whom had been killed or would die from their wounds - including the cruiser's Captain, F.E. Getting. Three American cruisers were also sunk and another damaged by a torpedo, with the loss of nearly 1,000 lives.

Following this disastrous action, all allied shipping was withdrawn from the area the following morning.

The surviving crew members on HMAS Canberra received instructions that, if the ship could not be got underway by 6.30 a.m., it was to be abandoned and sunk.

Since damage to the cruiser had immobilised it, the crew reluctantly left and watched as Canberra was sent under the waters of Ironbottom Sound by gunfire and torpedoes from accompanying warships.

Recognising the severe impact on a small force like the RAN of Canberra's loss, and of other Australian ships in preceding months, the British government offered to transfer, "freely and unconditionally", one of its cruisers.

HMS Shropshire, a slightly modified version of the Kent Class, arrived in June 1943. This ship was to have been renamed Canberra, until the RAN learnt that the U.S. Navy planned to give the name Canberra to a cruiser it already had under construction, also in honour of the Savo Island victim. HMAS Shropshire subsequently played an active part in operations until 1945, and continued in RAN service until the mid-1950s, when it was sold and taken to England for scrapping.

Meanwhile, Australia continued to play a distinguished part in the Pacific campaign. In October 1944 the cruiser led the RAN's involvement during US landings in the central Philippines which triggered the great battle of Leyte Gulf.

On 21 October, during the early amphibious phase, HMAS Australia was hit by an enemy suicide bomber shortly after 6 a.m. Thirty men were killed or suffered fatal wounds, including Captain E.F.V. Dechaineux, and 64 others were also injured.

Hastily undergoing repairs, HMAS Australia was ready to participate in the next major operation in Lingayen Gulf in January 1945, involving landings on the island of Luzon.

As at Leyte, the allied invasion force was subjected to suicide attacks by Japanese aircraft.

At 4.35 p.m. on 5 January HMAS Australia took the first of several hits when a bomber dived vertically into the cruiser's upper deck on the port side, hitting amidships.

Despite heavy casualties and damage, the cruiser remained on station and next day entered Lingayen Gulf to carry out a bombardment run assigned to it.

At 5.34 p.m. another bomber succeeded in breaching the screen of antiaircraft fire and destroyed itself on Australia's upper deck, causing fires and more casualties.

Two hits were suffered on 8 January, the second of which left the cruiser listing, followed by yet another the next day which sheered off the top one-third of one funnel.

A total of 44 crew members were killed in these five suicide attacks.

Stained-glass window commemorating three RAN ships called Sydney. Garden Island Chap el, Sydney.

Undergoing repairs which involved one of its aft 8-inch (20 cm) turrets being removed and replaced by a twin 40mm anti-aircraft gun mount in February 1945, Australia survived to take its place in the post-war RAN. After an extensive refit it continued to serve as flagship until the arrival of the aircraft carrier Sydney. From the time of its re-commissioning in August 1939 until it was sold for scrapping in England in 1954, HMAS Australia had travelled over 476,300 nautical miles.

The main component of the RAN's light cruiser force - Perth, Sydney and Hobart - had all been acquired from Britain during the 1930s.

Originally ordered by the Admiralty as HMS Amphion, Phaeton and Apollo, they were officially described as modified Leander Class ships despite differences in their appearance.

Each displacing 7,112 tonnes and mounting eight 6-inch (15 cm) guns, they were completed in 1935-1936.

Sydney enjoyed an outstanding moment of glory in the Mediterranean on 19 July 1940 when, in company with a destroyer HMS Havock, it met and defeated two Italian cruisers each equivalent in firepower to itself.

The enemy ships, Giovanni delle Bande Nere and Bartolomeo Colleoni, first came into contact with four British destroyers hunting for Italian submarines near Cape Spada, Crete.

Under command of Captain J.A. (later Vice-Admiral Sir John) Collins, Sydney hurried to the scene and by 8.30 a.m. it opened fire on the Italian ships at a range of 18,000 metres.

Firing salvo after salvo, after just five minutes Sydney scored a hit on Bande Nere, sending a shell through the forward funnel which exploded on deck. The Italian commander, Vice-Admiral Ferdinand Casardi, decided to break contact and turned away.

Sydney now took on the role of pursuer. Expectations that the faster Italian ships would make their escape changed when the rear-most, Bartolomeo Colleoni, suffered hits in her engine room and was put out of action. Ordering the destroyers to finish her off, Collins focussed on catching the Bande Nere.

By 10.25, however, he was forced to give up the chase, by which stage his forward guns had only ten rounds of ammunition remaining.

HMAS Sydney had suffered only one hit from the Italians' return fire, which holed the forward funnel but caused no casualties.

The hero of the Cape Spada action: Captain John Collins of HMAS Sydney.

Triumph turned to tragedy sixteen months later when HMAS Sydney, now under command of Captain J. Burnett, clashed with the German raider Kormoran off the coast of Western Australia, near Carnarvon.

About 4 p.m. on 19 November Sydney first came across the enemy which represented itself as a Dutch merchantman. Although ready for instant action, Burnett apparently exposed his ship to danger by coming too close while establishing the stranger's identity.

At 5.30 p.m., according to the Kormoran's captain, Commander Anton Detmers, the moment came to drop the disguise. The raider opened fire at less than 1600 metres - virtually point-blank range - with guns and torpedoes. Although suffering crippling hits, Sydney returned fire during the next half-hour and inflicted such damage that at 6.25 p.m. Detmers was forced to order his crew to take to life-boats.

Kormoran was later scuttled.

The discovery of survivors from the Kormoran five days later led to the rescue of 315 of that ship's crew of 393.

Despite an intensive sea and air search being carried out, no trace was found of Sydney or any of its 645 personnel .

Sole item of wreckage recovered from Sydney.

According to interrogation reports of the German sailors, the Australian cruiser had last been seen about 10 p.m. as a flickering glare on the darkened horizon; by midnight even that had disappeared. The mystery of what could have happened to prevent any survivors from the ship being found, or any wreckage apart from a single Carley life float (damaged by gunfire), remains to this day. The death toll from this one sinking was the severest blow suffered by the RAN in the war. The career of Sydney, both brilliant and tragic, is recalled on one of the stamps.

Barely three months later the Navy was rocked by the loss of another of its cruisers, when Perth was sunk in the Sunda Strait on 1 March 1942. In company with the US cruiser Houston, Perth under Captain H.M.L. Waller had unexpectedly encountered a Japanese convoy landing troops at the western end of Java island. Although some minor enemy vessels were destroyed, and others damaged, both allied ships also went down after a desperate méleé. Of Perth's complement of 681, 353 (including Waller) were killed in action, four died ashore, and the remainder became prisoners of the Japanese. One third of the latter group also died in captivity, half of these on the notorious Burma railway.

So it was that by 1942, the RAN's light cruiser force had been halved in number. Among the more modern ships of this type, only Hobart remained to see out the rest of the war, although it, too, almost came to grief.

On 20 July 1943, while conducting support operations in the Coral Sea HMAS Hobart was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and suffered heavy damage which kept it under repair for the rest of that year.

When this ship was eventually sold for breaking up in Japan in 1962, it was, in fact, the RAN's last cruiser.

The remaining light cruiser maintained by the RAN was HMAS Adelaide, displacing 5,588 tonnes. Constructed at Cockatoo Island during the last years of World War I but not finished until 1922, this ship was not really an impressive fighting unit.

Obsolete by 1939, only the fact of its late completion had caused it to be retained in commission; Adelaide was actually the oldest cruiser to see service in World War II.

Items recovered by diving teams which reached the wreck of Perth in 1967 and 1974 included the ship's bell.

In 1938-1939 a major refit and modernisation had been carried out, during which it was converted to oil-firing and re-armed to counter the increased threat posed by air and submarine capabilities.

Despite its limited contribution to maritime strength, the old cruiser nevertheless played a notable role in ensuring that a regime was installed in the French colony of New Caledonia which favoured the
allied cause. In September 1940 Adelaide escorted a Norwegian tanker taking a new Free French governor to Noumea, and closed the harbour while the new arrival ousted pro-Vichy officials then in authority.

Damage to Hobart from a Japanese torpedo, July 1943.

In mid-1942 HMAS Adelaide was transferred to the Australian west coast and based at Fremantle. On 26 November the cruiser was escorting three cargo ships when it came across the German blockade runner Ramses in the Indian Ocean.

After receiving no reply to signals sent to the strange ship, the ship's captain suspected the vessel to be a raider and ordered fire to be opened on it at 3.40 p.m.

He stopped minutes later when the Ramses began to sink by the stern as a consequence of scuttling action by the crew.

Adelaide then rescued the 87 survivors from the vessel. After spending the whole of 1943 on the west coast, Adelaide was eventually transferred to the Pacific in 1944 where it carried out convoy escort work which included supporting Australian landings at Ambon.