HMAS Bataan, 1952 : An Australian Warship in the Korean War 9781742231198, 9781742231181

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HMAS Bataan, 1 9 5 2

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hmas bataan ,  1952 A n Au s t r a l i a n Wa r s h i p i n t h e Ko r e a n Wa r

anthony cooper

UNSW PRESS

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This book is dedicated to Alice Matilda Cooper, the grandmother I never met, but who kept Geoff ’s letters.

A UNSW Press book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © Anthony Cooper 2010 First published 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Cooper, Anthony James, 1961– Title: HMAS Bataan, 1952: an Australian warship in the Korean War/ Anthony Cooper. Edition: 1st ed. ISBN:  978 1 74223 118 1 (hbk.) Notes:  Includes index.             Bibliography.  Subjects: Bataan (Destroyer: 1945–1954)                   Destroyers (Warships) – Australia – History – 20th century.                   Korean War, 1950–1953 – Naval operations, Australian. Dewey Number: 359.32530994 Design Josephine Pajor-Markus Front cover Bataan’s three radars are visible in this fine portrait, taken from HMS Ocean off the coast of North Korea. (Geoff Cooper) Front flap Y gun’s crew after nine hours on the gun during Operation Round-up. (Geoff Cooper) Back cover HMAS Bataan. (Geoff Cooper) Back flap The men go over the side of the fo’c’sle to scrape the ship’s side in preparation for painting. (Geoff Cooper) Printer Everbest, China This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

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Contents

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Acknowledgments

vi

Introduction

vii

1 Trial by fire

1

2 Australia and the Korean War

15

3 HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

28

4 Bataan’s mechanical problems

47

5 The war of the islands

66

6 Shore bombardment

100

7 Supporting Allied air power

116

8 The air and subsurface threats

134

9 Navigating in hazardous waters

150

10 Refuelling and ship-handling

168

11 At liberty in Japan

180

12 Shipboard living

207

13 Leadership and morale

225

14 The end of the line

249

Appendix: Signals of congratulations

257

Notes

259

Glossary

277

Bibliography

282

Index

286

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Acknowledgments My thanks go to Tim Goulding, Jane Murphy, Ian Rose and Lindy Harvey for critical feedback and proofreading, and to Trudy Cooper for producing the illustration on page 8. I need to especially express my appreciation to Jane Murphy for allowing this book project to pre-empt so much of our time, and that of our children; and to Geoff Cooper for entrusting me with his letters and photographs in the first place. This project would not have been possible without the access to official records provided by the Australian War Memorial and the National Archives of Australia. My thanks to Phillipa McGuinness for seeing the potential of this project, and to Scott Forbes for his sharp eyes in improving the text.

vi

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Introduction Launched in January 1944, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) TribalClass destroyer HMAS Bataan entered service too late to see action in World War II. However, she went on to play a vital role in the Korean War, the conflict between the Soviet-backed forces of North Korea and China and the armies of South Korea, the United States and their United Nations allies, which took place between June 1950 and July 1953. Alongside her sister ship Warramunga, HMAS Bataan not only became the mainstay of the Australian naval commitment to the war, but also, in difficult circumstances, helped secure the Royal Australian Navy’s reputation as a highly professional organisation whose ships could be confidently employed as part of any Allied force. Over two tours of duty, both the Bataan and the Warramunga served eighteen months in the war zone, whereas the average for the other six Australian warships committed to the war was only six months. The two sisters dominated the RAN’s contribution to Korea until the last year of the war. Bataan performed typical duties for a Korean War destroyer, screening carriers, launching and recovering aircraft, rescuing ditched aircrew, patrolling the inshore channels and islands, policing the fleets of Korean fishing junks in search of clandestine Communist minelayers, and firing thousands of rounds of 4.7-inch (119-millimetre [mm]), 4-inch (102-mm) and 40-mm shells at enemy positions ashore. Although regularly shot at by North Korean artillery batteries, she was lucky enough to escape the war with a single 76-mm shell hit that caused no casualties. It could thus be said that Bataan, like the navy in general, had an easy war. However, it was still eminently possible to get killed doing the navy’s job between 1950 and 1953. North Korean artillery batteries displayed good gunnery as well as a certain amount of stealth and cunning. In the event, the enemy gunners enjoyed less luck than their often-excellent marksmanship deserved, and thus it was the vii

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

army and the air force that paid most of the cost of Australia’s war commitment in Korea. However, the thankful absence of ‘blood and guts’ in no way lessens Bataan’s contribution. My father, 44580 Able Seaman Geoff Cooper, was sent to this war, serving aboard Bataan in 1952 throughout her second tour of duty. This book offers a narrative of that tour, based on his records. It thereby examines the naval war from the perspective of one ship, during a tight eight-month period, and provides detailed and highly personalised descriptions of key episodes and events. Bataan’s 1952 tour of duty was particularly noteworthy for her intimate combat involvement in the little known war of the ‘Wolfpack’ guerrillas. These bands of exiled anti-Communist North Koreans garrisoned the many offshore islands in the Haeju Gulf. This area became the ship’s most significant operational area, where she fired barrages in direct support of this irregular infantry in combat operations along the enemy coasts. Bataan became identified with this stretch of coastline, gaining renown for effective gunnery, winning the confidence of the US special-operations officers responsible for the local guerrilla units, and setting a hard act for succeeding ships to follow. By participating successfully and efficiently in the UN naval forces’ inshore patrol, she made a major contribution to the service culture of Allied interoperability that was to characterise the era of the Cold War and beyond. Furthermore, from Australia’s point of view, Bataan’s strong combat performance in 1952 was not merely desirable, it was critical, as it was badly needed to compensate for the RAN’s token numerical contribution and mask the difficulties it was then facing in maintaining even this tiny force in the theatre of war. Luckily for the navy, Bataan’s ship’s company had a good depth of experience and high morale. They developed a perverse pride in their ship and a strong sense of tribal loyalty (no pun intended), and so they did their duty reliably and efficiently. By the time the ship steamed home to Australia, Bataan had won an enviable reputation and secured a combat record to place alongside her more senior sister ships, Arunta and Warramunga. The story of how the ship’s viii

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Introduction

company achieved this, and how they felt about it, is the subject of this book. Geoff Cooper’s letters and photographs provide an authentic eyewitness account of Bataan’s combat service off the North Korean coasts, as well as an intriguing and valuable ‘lower-deck’ perspective on wartime service. Next to these records, the most useful primary sources have been the ship’s deck log and the Reports of Proceedings, the latter penned every month by Bataan’s commanding officer, Commander Warwick Bracegirdle RAN. His reports were conscientiously done, and provide an intelligent and insightful account of his own ship’s operations and of the tactical situation in which she operated. Bracegirdle provided his superiors with both considered judgments and lively anecdotes full of understated humour. His writings provide a broader ‘upper-deck’ perspective that neatly balances and complements Geoff Cooper’s necessarily limited lower-deck point of view. Poems provide another, unusual source for this book’s narrative. Written aboard Bataan during her 1952 tour, both by Bracegirdle himself and by an anonymous lower-deck spokesman, these have been included at relevant points in the narrative, verbatim. Although unusual in a book of this nature, this inclusion can be justified on two counts. Firstly, as Bracegirdle did not leave memoirs and personal writings for posterity, his poems are among the very few sources providing an insight into his character and personal views—they are the flip side, in other words, of his in-role official reports to the Naval Board; moreover, they are refreshingly satirical in character, providing valuable evidence of his ability to relate to his peers through the use of shared humour. Secondly, the lower-deck poems, which are similarly satirical, reveal how the men really felt about their officers, and hence provide reliable evidence of the ship’s company’s morale. Together, these sources unlock a period that is long gone, and, in that respect, represent a time capsule. They not only provide an informative account of what it was like to serve on those old ships in ix

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combat, but also provide sidelights on a range of broader elements of the war experience. They transport us to a decade in which the British Empire still existed, when the RAN still had intimate connections with the Royal Navy, when ships were still driven by steam, when Australia still had to formulate its role in the region, and when the United States was only just starting to mobilise the Free World against Communism. They form a connection to that vanished era from which contemporary Australia has sprung. The story of Bataan’s 1952 tour thus both salutes a generation of servicemen and offers fresh insights into a hitherto-neglected period of twentiethcentury Australian history. The narrative of Bataan’s Korean War service also honours the contribution of this Cinderella of the RAN’s three Tribal-Class destroyers. Measured against the service records of her sister ships, Warramunga and Arunta—both doughty veterans of the South West Pacific campaign during 1942–45—Bataan had a problematical and peculiar history: she was completed late, experienced untimely breakdowns and was finally lost to the service prematurely as a result of the damage suffered in an embarrassing collision. Korea, however, was her finest hour. There is also another reason why Bataan deserves her posthumous place in the sun: her final war cruise represented the combat swansong of the classic British destroyer. Though these rakish, narrow-beamed and low-waisted ships are now as extinct as dreadnought battleships, they were state-of-the-art naval technology in the first half of the twentieth century. Overpowered and overgunned, they could churn through the water at up to 36 knots (67 kilometres per hour [kph]) and fire a thunderous broadside. At the same time, the shimmering heat haze from their funnels testified to the technological age to which they belonged: the age of steam. Moreover, their guns were served by men who stood on the deck in the spray, wind, sleet and rain; even the officers stood in the rain on the open bridge, wiping the salt spray from their binocular lenses and cursing those cold trickles of water inside the collars of their duffle coats. x

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Introduction

Bataan represented the end of this era. Within ten years of her last war cruise, naval gun power was being replaced by guidedmissile technology, bridges and weapons systems were being enclosed, and officers and men were assuming action stations deep within airconditioned ships—in action today, few men receive a glimpse of the deck, let alone the sea beyond. Steam power was replaced by gas turbines, which still drive warships to this day. Bataan’s 1952 Korean tour was the last time that a Western navy would go to war with frontline warships from the pre–World War II era. Yet despite the fact that she and her Tribal-Class sisters represented obsolescent technology, Bataan operated highly effectively in Korea. Her officers and men got the best out of her old systems, producing a level of operational performance that was indistinguishable from that of more modern ships. That she did so was due, in great part, to the proficient service of the ship’s officers and men. This book is my tribute to them.

Bataan undertook 11 war patrols during her 1952 tour, based out of the Japanese ports of Kure (the Commonwealth naval base) and Sasebo (the larger American base). These patrols are itemised in the table on page xii. The chapters that follow will not provide a chronological narrative of each of these patrols, as might perhaps be expected, but will instead follow a thematic approach, each chapter dealing with a particular aspect of the ship’s operations, or of the ship’s company’s experiences. Quotations from the letters of Geoff Cooper are not cited in the endnotes, but a list of the dates of the letters appears in the appendix. Those unfamiliar with naval terms may find the glossary at the back of the book helpful.

xi

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HMAS Bataan’s patrols, 1952 Patrol

Date

Sailed from

Duties

1

8–25 Feb

Kure

Inshore patrols; shore bombardment in the Cho Do area and along the ‘Cigarette Route’

2

6–15 Mar

Sasebo

Screening carrier USS Bairoko; nocturnal ‘Worthington’ patrols

3

21–31 Mar

Kure

As above

4

7–21 Apr

Sasebo

Escorting USS Rochester to the Yalu; Haeju inshore patrol, including the defence of Yongmae Do

5

1–22 May

Kure

Haeju inshore patrol, including Operation Round-up

6

28 May–7 Jun

Sasebo

Screening carrier HMS Ocean; nocturnal ‘Worthington’ patrols

7

10–20 Jun

Sasebo

Inshore patrols; shore bombardment off the east coast; replacing the grounded HMS Constance

8

2–13 Jul

Kure

Screening carriers HMS Ocean and Unicorn

9

19–31 Jul

Sasebo

Screening carrier USS Bataan; nocturnal ‘Jaguar’ patrols to the Yalu

10

1–5 Aug

Inchon

Hosting Admiral John Collins on a tour of the Haeju operational area

11

15–31 Aug

Kure

Haeju inshore patrol; dealing with Typhoon Karen

Opposite A map of the Korean peninsula in 1950, illustrated with photographs of Allied ships (clockwise from top left): HMS Ocean, USS Rochester, USS Chevalier, HMAS Bataan and HMCS Nootka

xii

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1 | Trial by fire It was very good shooting by the North Koreans, and a very rude awakening for the men of HMAS Bataan. She had only arrived in the war zone on 8 February 1952, and there she was, surrounded by shell splashes less than a week later. Exhibiting ‘formidable accuracy’1, the North Korean artillerymen had achieved the gunnery feat of straddling the Australian destroyer with their first salvo. Unbeknown to anyone aboard until after the action, they had also scored one direct hit. This turn of events, shocking as it was in the moment of the shells striking the sea, would have come as no surprise to Bataan’s captain, Commander Warwick Bracegirdle RAN, DSC and bar, for the perils of accurate enemy gunfire from coastal shore batteries were already amply understood among the United Nations naval forces. The area on the west coast of Korea between the Amgak Peninsula and the island of Cho Do, off the eastern side of which Bataan had just been steaming, was a notorious hot spot for UN naval forces. Only a couple of months previously, a British destroyer, HMS Constance, had been targeted by North Korean guns firing from the Amgak Peninsula and had her side badly holed by several direct hits.2 In spite of these known hazards of using the area’s inshore channels, it was easy to grow at least a little complacent: Bataan had already steamed 20 times through the 7-kilometre-wide deep-water 1

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channel between Cho Do and the enemy-held mainland—part of the so-called Cigarette Route of channels leading to Chinnampo, the port of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang3—without event, only to be shelled on the 21st time! Yet on the very morning of the day that she was struck, Bataan had been reminded that the barren shoreline opposite harboured a lurking menace. While anchored offshore in company with the destroyer USS Porterfield, Bataan observed about six shell splashes falling near her consort, which was anchored about 1.5 kilometres further inshore. Luckily, the enemy guns were firing at extreme range, so that when both ships weighed anchor and got underway, they immediately moved out of range and the fire ceased.4 The fact that Cho Do was a major Allied base might have induced a false sense of security. Defended by a garrison of 4000 South Korean guerillas, Cho Do was the principal Search and Rescue (SAR) centre on the north-west coast. The SAR helicopters based there, plus the air-defence radar installation, provided invaluable services to Allied airmen limping south in damaged aircraft.5 This garrison and the island’s geographical location enabled the Allies to dominate the Cigarette Route, which had consequently become the main inshore

Bataan steams slowly into the anchorage off Cho Do.

To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

2

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north–south axis for Allied shipping. Cho Do was like a watchtower overlooking an Allied highway. However, much could happen unobserved on the mainland shore only a few kilometres across the water. As was always the case off the Korean coast, being shelled was an unpredictable, seemingly random occurrence. The Communist gunners would move their field guns into camouflaged positions after dark, take the range by registering the position of known landmarks and buoys in the channels, and wait. This patient preparation paid off for them in the form of very accurate opening salvoes, giving rise to the belief that they were radar directed; this is unlikely, however, given the fact that the batteries in question were army field batteries, trained to shell fixed positions by indirect fire. Firing at moving warships was certainly not the task for which their equipment had been designed, but the competence of the enemy gunners in their improvised role was manifest in the accuracy of their fire. The most dangerous moments were the first few enemy salvoes, when the gunners ashore had the range, and when the target ship was still moving slowly and predictably. Thereafter, with the target accelerating and manoeuvring, the enemy gunners had difficulty finding the range, lacking as they did radar range-finders and automated fire control computers, and by then having to make their sighting adjustments under return fire. So it was in Bataan’s case: she was hit by the accurate opening salvos, but her manoeuvres thereafter successfully spoiled the enemy’s aim. After the action, it was discovered that one 76-mm6 shell had made a direct hit on the after deckhouse, the shot exploding through a Carley float life raft and smashing through the bulkhead of the captain’s unoccupied day cabin. The detonation of the shell was absorbed by the canvas-wrapped timber of the life raft, the steel bulkhead and the empty space of the cabin. Commander Bracegirdle inspected the damage later, finding fragments of shell casing scattered all over his cabin floor. The shell had wrecked the raft, penetrated the outer bulkhead to the day cabin and then ricocheted 3

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

The site of the shell-hit on the starboard side of the after deckhouse. The Carley float visible in the background is identical to the one destroyed in the shell explosion.

through an interior bulkhead into the next compartment—the captain’s sleeping cabin. The next day, the ship’s Damage Control party patched a total of 16 shrapnel holes in the bulkhead.7 The men of Bataan had been lucky, for if the shell had struck 3 metres lower it could have exploded in the gearing room. A shell detonation in this space stood a good chance of disabling the ship’s steam-propulsion system. Only a few metres forward were the torpedo tubes and their warheads; a hit there meant a potentially catastrophic explosion. Instead, the worst of it was merely farcical: a piece of shrapnel had torn the tail of Bracegirdle’s full-dress frockcoat, left hung up inside the cabin. It was, ironically, 13 February. Upon receiving Bracegirdle’s report of the action and apprising himself of the details of the purely cosmetic damage, British Admiral Sir Alan Scott-Moncrieff, the commander of the Commonwealth West 4

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Coast Squadron, responded with understandable if puerile levity; he signalled facetiously to Bracegirdle, ‘Sorry to hear about your tail’.8

Prior to the ambush, Bataan had been steaming through the narrow inshore channel between Cho Do and the mainland, conducting a routine and monotonous patrol of that channel, and was just about to complete the northward run before turning 180 degrees port to head for her night station in the lee of Cho Do.9 It was the middle of the Northern-Hemisphere winter, and so the men on deck had been contending not with the enemy but with the cold. The ship had spent the day ploughing through kilometres of ice floes. Dusk was falling as Bataan steamed north-east at 10 knots (18.5 kph) right into the teeth of a nor’easter.10 As Able Seaman Geoff Cooper remarked, this wind made the notoriously cold westerly winds back home in Toowoomba seem warm. It was –5 degrees Celsius and the bare hills of Korea off the ship’s starboard bow were covered in snow. Ice floes off the North Korean coast near Cho Do. The enemy 76-mm gun battery fired from somewhere on this shoreline.

To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

5

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Geoff ’s gun crew, normally assigned to Y gun, on the quarterdeck right aft, was standing watch on B gun, just forward of the bridge, and jumping about on the gun deck to keep warm. Bataan’s guns were mounted in open gun shields, like those of other British destroyers of the era (and in contrast to those of the US destroyers, which had enclosed gun houses). The layer and trainer were ensconced within, but everyone else performed their duties on the open gun deck behind the guns. These men were hemmed in by the approximately 7-by-8-metre perimeter of their deck, and even this space was cluttered with ready-use ammunition lockers. Those not hunched out of the wind within the gun shield spent the watch doing ‘the march of the penguins’ around this narrow, exposed space: stomping about with their chins down and hands in duffle-coat pockets—as Geoff reported home, ‘Believe me, we cover some miles in the course of the day’. With Bataan steaming at cruising stations, B gun was the only one of her three 4.7-inch gun mounts being manned, for two of the three watches were down below. (Unlike in World War II, only two degrees of readiness were used in Korea: action stations, when every man was at his station, and cruising stations, when only one of the three watches was on duty.) It was teatime, and so the other two watches were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the mess-deck forms two decks below, concentrating on their hot meals. The previous day, the ship’s company had received their first close look at Korea in daylight, and Geoff had found the sight most unprepossessing, comparing it unfavourably with the impressive landscapes of other places in the Far East, such as Hong Kong and Japan: I’ve seen some desolate places in my time but this one took the cake; bare hills without a tree on them and practically no grass, with a few native villages scattered along the shores.

This evening, the men on deck got an even closer look at this inhospitable shoreline as Bataan steamed north parallel to the coast. 6

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Although the shoals and mudflats restricted the ship to a narrow and predictable path along the marked channel, Geoff still thought that the ‘skipper’ had taken them in a bit close. The cruising-watch gun crew were forced to contemplate the barren scenery, only about a kilometre or so off to starboard, as they tried not to think about the pain of their frozen hands and feet. With the fading light of the setting sun behind her, the slowly moving destroyer made an easy target for gunners ashore, who had had plenty of time beforehand to range their guns onto the channel. It was 6.25 pm11 when Geoff, standing on the gun deck behind the breeches of the twin 4.7-inch guns, suddenly saw water spouts erupting around the ship. He watched in disbelief as shell explosions threw up further tall columns of water. Recognition of what was happening came instantly: ‘My god, some bastard is trying to kill me!’ Even more alarmingly, the enemy gunners had their range, for Bataan had been straddled in the first salvo. On the bridge, Commander Bracegirdle was likewise startled by his observation of five gun flashes to starboard. He registered that some of the shots fell over, and some short, and that they were more or less falling in line with the ship’s torpedo tubes.12 The officer of the watch on the bridge pressed the action stations button and the crowded forecastle mess decks came alive as men abandoned their meals and rushed up and aft to get to their posts. Joe Flaherty, a member of X-gun crew, was sitting at a table attending to his dinner when suddenly ‘there were blokes running over the top of me’.13 He joined the scramble, rushing aft through the hatch, along the passageway, and onto the open weather deck, heading for his action station on the after deckhouse. Bracegirdle meanwhile had ordered speed to be increased to 20 knots (37 kph) and had commenced evasive manoeuvring: the ship was turned hard to port, reversing her course to accelerate back out the way she had come. This ‘violent avoiding action’14 threw the enemy off his aim—from this moment the Communist gunners had irrevocably lost their firing solution. Under Bracegirdle’s direction, 7

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

A plan of Bataan, showing Geoff’s initial location during the attack and his and the rest of the crew’s rush to action stations.

Bataan lengthened the range, ‘zigzagging violently’15 as she went. Under all this helm, heeling this way and that, and shuddering from the reverse thrust on the inside propeller, the ship, not surprisingly, took five minutes to attain the commanded 20 knots.16 Geoff ’s cruising-watch gun crew on B gun did not get a shot off before the regular crew arrived, though Geoff did have time to stare at the gun flashes a kilometre or so away on the enemy-held shore. By going to action stations, the captain had forfeited the chance to return fire immediately with B gun, opting instead to accept an initial delay in order to obtain more quickly the use of the ship’s entire broadside. This was a sound decision, given that the hard port turn 8

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had masked B gun’s firing arc anyway. In fact, Bataan’s first shots would not be fired until three minutes after the first fall of shot, once the ship was out of her initial hard turn and was heading south.17 By then the range to the enemy battery was 5500 metres.18 Geoff and the other men gave up their places to B gun’s regular crew and rushed to their own action station. This involved a run of 15 metres aft along B-gun deck, sliding down two sets of ladders onto the weather deck and then a further run of 50 metres aft to the quarterdeck. These men had the longest distance to cover to reach their action station of anybody on the ship, for Y gun was furthest aft of all, right at the stern over the propellers. The men had the presence of mind to move aft down the portside ladders, thus keeping to the disengaged side of the ship. There was heavy traffic in both directions along the guardrails and ladders, partly due to the Bataan’s Nelsonian prewar accommodation arrangement, whereby the officers’ cabins were right aft and the men’s mess decks right forward, resulting in officers rushing forward against a stream of men rushing aft.19 To avoid this, later war-built British destroyers followed the American example and placed the men’s messes both forward and aft, and concentrated the officers’ cabins under the bridge. A, B and X guns were quickly ‘closed up’—meaning that their men were in position and ready for action—and able to open fire at the gun flashes ashore. X gun, the twin 4-inch was the first to fire and had the best of the engagement initially, for the ship’s turn opened up its firing arc and kept it open throughout the retirement. X gun’s ‘Ozzy’ Osbom, who had been aft at his cruising station on the twin Bofors gun when the first shells landed, got to his nearby action station while the rest of his gun crew were still getting in each others’ way and leaping over mess tables up forward in the fo’c’sle. Not the sort of man to wait, he closed up the twin 4-inch alone, single-handedly training, laying and firing before Taffy Jones, the ex-RN gun captain, arrived to take over. Gerry Shepherd, Joe Flaherty, Tubby Cregan and the others then slid into their places and the gun was 9

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fully closed up for further sustained (and more accurate) firing. Meanwhile, A and B guns could only fire when their firing arcs on one side or the other were opened up by the ship’s evasive turns to port or starboard. As Y gun’s crew moved aft to their gun, incoming shells continued to splash into the sea around them. As he went past the after deckhouse, Geoff noticed that the air was thick with what looked like small fragments of silver paper. He did not have time until after the action to realise that this was debris torn from the inside of the Carley float by the shell that had exploded on the opposite side of the deckhouse only seconds before he got there. Indeed, the shell had struck only 10 metres forward of Geoff ’s gun, but in all the excitement and din the hit had gone unnoticed, resonating within the closed confines of the empty cabin. Geoff reached his action station at Y gun and stood by his gun breech on the exposed deck, ‘shit scared’. As was the case for many of the seamen aboard, it was his first time under fire. Destroyers were thin-skinned vessels, devoid of any armour protection. The main gun mountings were fitted with gun shields that even a gunnery officer admitted were for ‘psychological effect only’. They shielded the gun crew against gun flash and offered some shelter from the weather, but they offered only illusory protection from gunfire and shell splinters.20 The loading numbers (Geoff included) and gun captain stood completely exposed on the deck. The first lieutenant21, Lieutenant JW ‘Johnny’ Golder RAN, was a short and fiery man. He took his action station by Y gun on the quarterdeck, animatedly ‘geeing up’ the men to load, lay and fire. Though Y gun was the last gun to fire, once closed up it was perfectly situated to maintain fire at the flashes on the receding coastline aft. Geoff now had a job to do, which took his attention away from the enemy guns and the shell splashes around the ship. Like the other loading numbers, he sweated beneath his duffle coat, manhandling the 4.7-inch shells and cordite cases onto the loading trays of the guns, standing clear of the recoiling breeches, and heaving aside the 10

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ejected shell cases. His training had taken over, helping him to forget his fear and focus on his assigned duties as part of a team executing a much-practised gun drill. During the first minutes of firing, the guns were in ‘local control’, meaning that they were individually directed by their gun captains, who aimed visually at the gun flashes ashore. As soon as possible, however, the firing of the main armament—Bataan’s 4.7- and 4-inch guns, as opposed to the 40-mm secondary armament—was brought under the central command of the gunnery control officer (GCO), who was positioned high above the bridge in his rotating director tower (known satirically as the ‘God box’). It took some time for the director crew to close up at their stations, to acquire the target, to find the range and to obtain a firing solution for the guns, and they had to do all this in an accelerating, manoeuvring ship, heeling over in fullpower evasive turns. In fact, the limitations of Bataan’s manual fire control system meant that any hard turn would result in the director crew losing the target. Like other British-designed destroyers, and unlike her US equivalents, Bataan’s guns lacked a gyroscopic stable element, remote power control (RPC) and automatic director following, so the guns had to be held on target manually. In practice, that meant there were just too many human interfaces to cope with sudden changes in target bearing, and it was only once the ship was up to speed and settled on a steady course, with the range extending advantageously, that director control became practicable. After extending the range to 10 000 metres, Bracegirdle turned the ship about and headed back towards the target. This finally gave his GCO, Lieutenant ‘Jock’ Yule, a steady enough platform to fire deliberate broadsides.22 However, in this action, eight-gun broadsides were difficult to achieve, due to the target bearing right aft during the earlier part of the action, then right forward as the ship closed the range again. The GCO’s deliberate control of the broadsides is shown by the ship’s economical ammunition expenditure. All told, Bataan fired 78 rounds of 4.7- and 4-inch before the enemy battery finally ceased fire at 6.47 pm.23 The action had lasted 22 minutes—at an 11

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average of about one four-shot salvo per minute, this was deliberate firing indeed. Men who have never been in action before can tend to freeze and forget their drills in the heat of the moment. However, the navy had a sufficient pool of long-service ratings to place a leavening of experienced men in every gun crew, and these men helped keep the others at their jobs; even a man who was almost frozen in terror could be impelled to attend to his gun drills. Geoff later reflected that: We were fortunate in having many WWII experienced officers and other ranks on the ship in our first taste of action in Korea. They were and are the basis of a well trained and happy ship’s company as well as a great morale booster for those experiencing their first trial by fire.

The guns of a ship like Bataan required ‘highly drilled muscle power and a concentration that could not be diverted from serving the gun’.24 Although the ship’s firing lasted less than 20 minutes, Geoff remembered that the men were ‘intensely busy’ throughout, with no time for ‘sight-seeing’ from the moment they closed up at their action stations to the moment they finally ceased fire. Naval guns are powerful weapons, with very high muzzle velocities of over 800 metres per second. The firing of the main armament was consequently extremely loud; Brian Sheedy, a signalman on HMAS Perth, recalled the ‘harsh crack’ with ‘a fierce concussion of air that physically struck the flesh of one’s body’. Because X gun was mounted one deck higher than Y gun, it could fire over the heads of Geoff and his comrades as they laboured one deck below. The noise was very severe, rendering men without ear protection temporarily deaf after only a few rounds fired.25 Bracegirdle’s violent manoeuvres threw off the North Koreans’ aim, while the ship’s return fire suppressed their rate of fire. The men on deck were cheered to see two fires break out in the enemy battery position. Once safely out of range, and shielded by nightfall, the captain released the ship from action stations at 7.50 pm, and then 12

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anchored her 3 kilometres or so south of Cho Do.26 The gun crews meanwhile cleaned up the litter of shell cases scattered around the gun decks, lashing them against the guardrails wherever there was room. Bataan weighed anchor at 10 pm that evening and returned stealthily before midnight, to exact her revenge upon the ‘cheeky cows’, as Geoff described them, who had come so close to doing her real damage. Thirty rounds were fired blind at the offending gun position, according to Geoff ‘just for laughs’, but according to Bracegirdle ‘in the hope of catching the enemy gunners in the act of moving their “pieces” from the gun-sites’.27 The enemy had probably long since vacated their by-now-compromised battery-site in the intervening three hours. In any case, Bataan’s blind fire, with ranges and bearings read off the map, was unlikely to have been particularly accurate. As Geoff reported proudly, the men were later buoyed to hear ‘intelligence reports’ from clandestine sources ashore that two of the enemy guns had received ‘direct hits’, while two others had been ‘near-missed’. Viewing the vacated enemy battery position the next day, the crew were inclined to take an optimistic view of the results of their fire, considering that the ‘entire area’ had been ‘reduced to rubble’, with the ‘whole square mile [2.6 square kilometres] of the area that contained the battery position reduced to ploughed up and scarred soil’. Bataan’s ship’s company had been lucky. With no-one hurt and the ship effectively undamaged, Bracegirdle could afford to record a typical understatement in his deck log, making the whole thing sound more like a book-keeping anomaly than a combat action: One hit was sustained in Commanding Officer’s Day Cabin. This shell, believed to be of 75mm calibre, ricocheted, piercing the bulkhead between the Day Cabin and the Sleeping Cabin. The following naval store items on charge to the ship were damaged beyond repair: One raft, cellular, four blankets, five sheets. The raft was secured to the after screen outboard of the Day Cabin, and the bedding was stored in the Sleeping Cabin, being on charge to the Commanding Officer.28 13

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

Bracegirdle’s gentle mockery of the navy’s parsimonious stores system was in the best naval tradition, but so had been his handling of the ship and so was his ship’s company’s behaviour in methodically serving the ship’s guns in action. As Geoff said, Bataan and her crew had come through their ‘trial by fire’. If there had been any doubt that the North Korean gunners were competent and dangerous, the 13 February incident had served as a salutary warning to the men of Bataan. And a later case involving the frigate HMS Mounts Bay would also serve as a sobering reminder of what could have happened to them: similarly straddled by a shore battery on 10 August of that year, she was struck on the bridge wing by a shell that exploded downwards in the arc of its trajectory and hit the gun crew on the exposed deck below. One man was killed and four seriously wounded.29 Even cruisers were not immune: HMS Belfast was shelled and hit by the Amgak Peninsula gunners opposite Cho Do on 1 August 1952, and one man was killed and four wounded.30 The lesson was clear: vigilance and prudence were required when steaming inshore off the enemy coast. This would be the case right through to the end of the war. Geoff later referred to a similar incident during Bataan’s tenth patrol, when a destroyer ‘got a bit too cheeky’ by steaming close to the Chinnampo approaches in daylight and was taken under fire and straddled, but luckily not hit. Geoff noted, ‘[This] only goes to show that they’ve got patience, these Red gunners, and don’t mind waiting their chance’. In this instance, Bataan steamed inshore to provide assistance, but the enemy ceased fire. ‘We prowled around for awhile close inshore but they’re not fools ashore and don’t believe in giving away their position when there is more than one ship.’ It appears that little changed in the enemy’s capabilities between the beginning and end of the tour.

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2 | Australia and the Korean War Bataan’s presence in the war zone in 1952 was the product of a complex chain of events, starting with one of the biggest crises in US grand strategy since Pearl Harbor, and also involving the mundane problems of a ship with a mechanical fault and a navy with a manpower shortage. Bataan was caught up in Australian alliance politics at a time when the United States needed a friend, even a small one. The Korean War was a US-led intervention, under UN auspices, in defence of the Republic of Korea (ROK), commonly known as South Korea, against invasion by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea. In June 1950, the North Korean army, the so-called Korean People’s Army (KPA), launched an impressive blitzkrieg-style campaign, routing the ROK army and conquering the whole country except the south-eastern corner around the port of Pusan. Supreme commander of UN forces General Douglas MacArthur then mounted an amphibious ‘left hook’ at Inchon in September 1950, which destroyed the bulk of the North Korean army and ejected its remnants from the South. Unfortunately, ‘victory disease’ then led the UN commander to attempt the total conquest of the North, sending his troops on an ‘end run’ beyond Pyongyang to the Yalu River (the border with Manchuria). This provoked a Chinese intervention towards the end of 15

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1950 and a consequent headlong UN retreat back to more or less the prewar start line. Two years of static defensive operations ensued, with the armistice confirming both Koreas in more or less their original territories. Three years of war had merely confirmed the prewar status quo. At the time, the war was seen in the West as a case of outright North Korean aggression, and therefore fulfilled the conditions of a just war. This retention by the West of the high moral ground was buttressed by the fact that the war was conducted under the auspices of the United Nations and validated by UN resolutions. When the armistice was finally signed, it could be said that South Korea had been saved, and that Communist aggression had been defeated by a show of Western military solidarity and political resolve. Inevitably however, this convenient script has been contested. Historians have long pointed out the undeniably dubious character of the authoritarian and corrupt South Korean state of that time, led by the odious dictator Syngman Rhee. The United States had chosen a thoroughly unpleasant and inauspicious proxy state to support (there is a pattern here: Nationalist China during the 1930s and 1940s, South Vietnam between the 1950s and 1970s, and Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the present era, were and are all thoroughly dubious states). There was strong evidence at the time of Stalinesque atrocities committed by ROK forces and functionaries, particularly of mass executions of prisoners, civilians, refugees and ‘traitors’.1 A Japanese source estimated that during the UN forces’ brief and ill-fated occupation of North Korea, Syngman Rhee’s men conducted 150 000 executions. When the KPA re-entered Pyongyang following the successful Chinese counteroffensive, they found 2000 dead prisoners in the jail, and 15 000 bodies in mass graves.2 Such blatant atrocities did not endear the South Koreans to the UN soldiers ostensibly sent to save them from Communist aggression. For example, finding themselves unwitting witnesses to the work of Rhee’s killing squads in Kaesong during December 1950, men of the British 29th Brigade had to be restrained by their officers 16

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from firing upon their ROK ‘allies’.3 Even sailors who never set foot in Korea developed a jaundiced opinion of the regime they were defending; aboard Bataan, Geoff Cooper referred bitterly to Syngman Rhee as ‘that trouble-maker’, after he had apparently sabotaged peace talks. US generals found that ‘it was difficult to inspire the average US soldier to die for the Republic of Korea’.4 General Matthew Ridgway, commanding 8th Army, found in early 1951 that one of the biggest questions in his men’s minds was, ‘Why are we here?’5 Another factor that muddied the waters of the Korean intervention was that MacArthur’s post-Inchon invasion of the North in October 1951 had turned the conflict into a war of conquest. This was a moral stain that the ‘sanctification’ of UN involvement could not hide.6 It was only the ultimately successful defence of the ROK against the initial Communist aggression that partially redeemed the Generalissimo’s grotesque strategic blunder. Indeed, the Korean War tended to produce a certain moral declension among its participants. For example, there are some well-supported allegations of atrocities by US forces, particularly the appalling incident at No Gun Ri in July 1950, when the US 7th Cavalry fired upon fleeing civilians, resulting in an estimated death toll of 400 refugees, 80 percent of whom were women.7 Reginald Thompson, a cultivated and perceptive war correspondent (who had earlier witnessed and reported on the Allied campaign in northwestern Europe in 1944–45), was driven to despair by the casual and inhumane destructiveness of the American way of war, in which everything and everyone in the way of an advance were indiscriminately shelled, bombed and napalmed.8 As a result, it was difficult to find anything inspiring about the conflict at all; the high moral ground seemed out of everyone’s reach. Some American commanders tried to address the issue of their soldiers’ dubious attachment to the cause by escalating the propaganda rhetoric. General Ridgway attempted to stiffen the motivation of his 8th Army troops by answering his own rhetorical question, ‘What are we fighting for?’, as follows: 17

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The real answer lies in the resolve of the free world to fight communism, a regime in which men shot their prisoners, enslaved their citizens, and derided the dignity of man; a regime which sought to displace the rule of law and to do away with the concept of God.9

Many listeners must have reflected that their general seemed to be describing Syngman Rhee’s ROK! However, recent Korean War scholarship has benefited greatly from the post–Cold War opening of the Soviet archives, producing an impressive wave of new scholarship.10 This has confirmed what was believed at the time, namely that both Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong knew about, approved and supported Kim Il-sung’s attempted conquest of the South. In the prewar period, North Korea openly boasted about its infiltration and insurgency operations across the border, claiming that it had mobilised 77 000 guerillas inside the ROK, had attacked 125 police stations, had had 1184 ‘encounters’ with the ROK enemy, had killed 1272 ROK and had taken 832 ROK prisoners.11 North Korea was already an outright Soviet satellite, utterly dependent on Soviet material support.12 By using the Chinese intervention to drive a wedge between China and Washington, Stalin sought to assert Soviet leadership over the newly independent revolutionary regime in Beijing.13 That achieved, he hoped to acquire additional clients by fomenting revolutionary movements further south in Asia, such as Vietnam.14 In the event, the Soviets utterly failed to impose this hegemony upon their Communist brothers, but this does not invalidate the then very real Western fears of a global Communist movement engineered from Moscow. It is now clear that the three Communist states were pushing different agendas: Kim Il-sung’s was to forcibly unify Korea under his own leadership, Stalin’s was to assert Soviet leadership over the Communist nationalist movements in Asia (including over China), and Mao’s was to save North Korea as a buffer state to keep US forces at arm’s-length from China’s north-eastern frontier.15 After China’s 18

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entry into the war, the subtle power plays between the three Communist states continued. Stalin sought to exploit the Chinese intervention in order to prevent a normalisation of relations between China and the United States, thereby throwing China into subordinate dependency upon Moscow.16 China’s involvement also served Soviet interests by keeping US forces away from the Soviet Union’s Manchurian border.17 Although knowledge of Kim’s invasion plans was withheld from the Soviet Central Committee, and even from the Soviet head of secret police18, Stalin himself had not only approved the plan in concept, but had also ironed out its details with Kim personally.19 Soviet staff officers and technical advisers were present in numbers before and during the offensive, but were kept scrupulously out of harm’s way in rear areas. The Soviet military mission to Pyongyang in 1949–50 provided the tanks, aircraft and logistics for an offensively configured force of ten infantry divisions and one powerful tank brigade.20 The prewar KPA was self-evidently equipped and prepared for offensive operations, with modern Soviet T34/85 tanks and a high state of training, the result of frequent regimental and divisional manoeuvres. In contrast, and despite Syngman Rhee’s bellicose blusterings in favour of an ROK invasion of the North, the ROK army was in no fit state to attack.21 It was deployed defensively, and had not made logistical preparations for offensive action. These were the findings of a pair of Australian officers, Squadron Leader RJ Rankin and Major FSB Peach, who conducted a tour of the ROK border areas just prior to the KPA invasion.22 Although the leaders of both Korean governments evidently lay awake at night fantasizing about forcibly uniting Korea under their respective suzerainties, only one of these states had developed the capability to deploy its armed services on strategic-level offensive operations across the 38th Parallel in June 1950: the DPRK. However, Kim Il-sung made a grievous miscalculation, complacently assuming that the war would be over in three days, before the United 19

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States had time to act. Instead, his offensive launched three years of misery for the Korean people, resulting in untold destruction of urban and industrial infrastructure and an estimated two million Korean dead.23 By comparison, in spite of their own miscalculations, the Americans had had few illusions about the calibre of the ROK leadership, considering Rhee’s clique to be ‘demagogues bent on autocratic rule’.24 Accordingly, they consciously tried to minimise the offensive potential of their unreliable client state, turning down Rhee’s continual demands for tanks, artillery and combat aircraft and limiting the ROK Army’s heavy weapons to armoured cars, puny 37-mm antitank guns and short-range airborne 105-mm howitzers.25 The side effect of this policy was that ROK forces were left tragically undergunned when it came to defending against the North Korean tanks. However, the relevant point here is that in spite of its mismanagement of ROK affairs and its gross misreading of North Korean intentions, the United States had tried to avoid precipitating a war. This is not to say that the United States was blameless, but its guilt lay in incompetent management rather than aggressive intentions. Persistent poor US judgment dogged the whole lead-up to the conflict, and contributed significantly to the gross miscalculations of Kim Il-sung. The insensitive post–World War II US occupation authorities in South Korea alienated the Korean nationalists by favouring former pro-Japanese collaborators for government posts, and were powerless to halt the rampant corruption and incompetence of the ROK regime. The result was a near-fatal loss of legitimacy for the Seoul government in the eyes of Koreans, and a destabilising nationalist armed uprising that consumed a large share of the ROK Army’s manpower right up to the outbreak of war. The parallels with later US-sponsored client states in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are clear and telling. Mismanaged symbolism and diplomacy also served to send the wrong signals to Kim, Stalin and Mao. US occupation forces pulled out of Korea in 1949, leaving the defence of the nation in the pat20

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ently unsteady hands of the dysfunctional ROK armed services. Secretary of State Dean Acheson then infamously excluded Korea from the main concerns of US foreign policy in a January 1950 speech.26 It was mixed signals like these that emboldened Kim Il-sung to press his case for invasion before Stalin and Mao, finally securing his patrons’ support.27 Thus, on 25 June 1950 it was the KPA rather than the ROK Army that launched a well-organised strategic offensive across the border. The North’s campaign was well-enough planned and the logistics and tactical phasing well-enough executed as to decisively defeat the ROK army and its supporting US formations. Indeed, this was achieved so effectively that by September the KPA had pushed its opponents back to a last-ditch defensive perimeter around the port of Pusan. A sustained offensive of this scope and magnitude was clearly no improvised, spur-of-the-moment undertaking (indeed, the plan had involved phased lines of advance all the way to Pusan and the putative end of the war28). International recognition of this obvious fact meant that once hostilities commenced, the United States could justifiably claim to be fighting a war to defeat blatant Communist aggression, and do so under internationalist UN auspices. So it was understood at the time. Historians since have recognised that the successful UN defence of South Korea validated ‘the response of the international community to cross border aggression’, and that it spared South Korea from the worst of Kim Il-sung’s and Kim Jongil’s excesses.29 After Korea, the Soviets knew they would have to be a lot subtler than Kim Il-sung had been if they were to advance their cause internationally.30 The widespread belief in the justice of South Korea’s cause was underlined by the fact that 49 nations ended up supporting the ROK in the conflict. Of these, 15 nations supplied fighting units.31 Together, these non-ROK and non-US forces would suffer 17 260 casualties in the service of the UN cause.32

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

Australia’s Korean commitment When the North Koreans initially launched themselves across the 38th Parallel in June 1950, the United States was caught quite unprepared, having suffered an intelligence failure to rank with Pearl Harbor in 1941 or September 11, 2001. US Naval forces were in a poor state of preparedness after post–World War II demobilisation, with low manning levels and hence a poor standard of combat readiness. Thus when President Truman authorised his Naval Forces Far East to blockade North Korea, help from other sources was sorely needed. Fortuitously, two Australian warships were available for service in Korea when ‘the balloon went up’: HMA Ships Shoalhaven, a modified River-Class frigate just finishing her tour of duty as the sea component of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) in Japan, and the Tribal-Class destroyer HMAS Bataan, her replacement. These two were placed at the disposal of the UN forces in Korea. 33 While broadly sharing American concern about Communist expansionism, Australia had a more selfish strategic agenda behind its commitment to Korea: the formalisation of a security pact with the United States. With the ‘great and powerful friend’ (as Norman Harper has since dubbed the United States) casting about for allies in her time of need, the Australian government saw its opportunity. Prime Minister Robert Menzies was quick to follow up the offer of the two warships with the commitment of No. 77 Squadron RAAF (flying Mustang fighters as the air component of BCOF). Going into action on 2 July, 77 Squadron was the first non-US foreign unit to join the war.34 The 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR), also in Japan as the land component of BCOF, was committed too. The timely and cooperative Australian response had the desired effect on attitudes towards Australia in Washington.35 At a meeting with the Australian Foreign Minister, Percy Spender, in Canberra in February 1951, the US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, agreed to the Australian-drafted ANZUS Treaty. Australian military support 22

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for the United States in Korea had thus paid dividends for Australia’s foreign and security policy in the Pacific region.36 It must be said, however, that ANZUS failed to deliver on expectations. Spender’s purpose in securing the treaty had been to provide Australia with influence in Washington37, yet the Menzies government was almost immediately disappointed by the treaty’s failure to secure Australian involvement in global military strategy.38 This had been a consistent goal of Australian policy going back to Prime Minister John Curtin’s ‘we look to America’ speech of 27 December 1941. The ‘fine print’ of this speech had declared Australia’s aspiration to have ‘the fullest say’ in the democracies’ war strategy. This hope was dashed, both in World War II, where the US asserted monopoly control over the Pacific War, and in Korea, where General Douglas MacArthur unilaterally escalated the war to include China39—the big decisions were clearly made in America. A widening of the war and the ultimate stalemated conclusion were the result. In spite of this self-evidently unequal power relationship between major and minor allies, it must be emphasised that Australia had not just slavishly followed the Americans into the war, as is so often assumed in popular political discourse. Rather, rational calculation and self-interest had been at work in determining Australian alliance policy. As Glen Barclay put it in relation to the Vietnam War, Australia had in effect taken out an insurance policy40, and Bataan, Shoalhaven, 77 Squadron and 3RAR were placed in harm’s way to secure the cover. The premium was the deaths of 293 soldiers, 41 air force pilots, and five naval personnel (including two naval pilots).41 Besides defending South Korea against Communist aggression, these men, in effect, died for Australia’s putative future security—Australian Realpolitik at work. In the event, all three of Australia’s armed services would be at full stretch just providing the token forces that were sent42, and so Australian units would have to compensate in quality for what they lacked in quantity.43 It was fortunate therefore for Australia that 3RAR acquitted itself with distinction from its very first battle, emphati23

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cally upholding the Anzac tradition.44 Moreover, 77 Squadron was on one occasion recognised by MacArthur as ‘the best fighter squadron in Japan’45, and likewise fought a hard and effective war as a groundattack squadron (the shocking death toll of 41 pilots is indicative of the zealousness with which they performed that service).46 These two services bore the brunt of the war, becoming involved in intensive and deadly combat from the first day of their involvement. The naval war, by comparison, was almost bloodless, offering less scope for the overt recognition of Australian martial prowess. Nonetheless, the same strictures applied. There was, therefore, a lot riding upon the RAN’s ability to provide a meaningful contribution to Allied naval forces in the Korean theatre.

Bataan’s first tour of duty It was in this context that Bataan served out her first tour of duty in Korean waters, under Commander WBM Marks RAN. She became a fixture in the west-coast blockade forces, serving in company with RN cruisers (Ceylon and Belfast) in fire support operations, and screening the carriers HM Ships Theseus and Glory, and USS Bataan, in company with RN, USN and RCN destroyers. It seems that Bataan specialised in getting ambushed by enemy artillery in the early stages of her tours of duty! On 1 August 1950, at the start of her first tour, Bataan found herself unintentionally in the centre of the first RAN naval action of the war. Seeking to intercept some suspicious junks heading for the shore of the Haeju Gulf, she was cautiously steaming inshore, advancing stern-first in an attempt to avoid going aground on uncharted shallows. Suddenly, she was taken under fire and straddled four times in 13 minutes by a North Korean artillery battery, the closest shell landing 20 metres away.47 Indeed, Bataan served out much of her first tour in a strategic situation of crisis for the UN command, during both the initial North Korean invasion, and the rapid retreat from the Yalu at the end of 1950. It was during this alarming phase of the war that she 24

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took part in one of the riskiest operations conducted by UN naval forces: a passage up river to the port of Chinnampo on the night of 4 December 1950, in order to evacuate troops fleeing before the Chinese offensive. Warramunga and HMCS Sioux went aground on uncharted shallows, but Bataan, the USS Forrest B. Royal and the Canadian Tribals Cayuga and Athabaskan all kept water under their keels, and shelled the waterfront the next day.48 Bataan also saw more action on Korea’s east coast on her first tour than she did on her second, serving in company with Warramunga during the blockading of the North Korean port of Kunsan in September and October 1950. It was during this period that the Communist forces introduced mine warfare into the naval conflict, severely damaging the US destroyers Brush and Mansfield, and sinking the minesweeper USS Magpie.49 Bataan finished her first war cruise on 24 May 1951, after 11 months in the war zone. If it was essential for the credibility of a small nation like Australia that her armed forces acquit themselves well in joint operations with the ‘great ally’, then the nation could rejoice: Bataan returned home secure in the enjoyment of her Allies’ admiration. Rear Admiral Allen E Smith USN, commanding Task Force 95 off the coasts of Korea, congratulated Marks on the ‘splendid’ performance of his ‘fine fighting ship’. Smith’s superior, Vice Admiral Harold M Martin USN, commanding the US 7th Fleet, commended Bataan on her multirole versatility and ‘dependable service’. The British joined the Americans in expressing their satisfaction with the Australian ship’s professionalism. Admiral Scott-Moncrieff evidently shared the Australians’ recognition of the importance of impressing the Americans: he signaled, ‘Bataan’s work for the Commonwealth Fleet has been above praise’.50 The political situation not only demanded that individual units perform well, but also that the two-ship commitment be maintained. However, Bataan’s replacement by HMAS Murchison, a modified River-Class frigate, was a sign that the RAN was running out of destroyers. At the start of the Korean War, the active RAN destroyer 25

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

HMAS Tobruk steaming across the Great Australian Bight against a Force 5 breeze.

force had been downsized to the point of irrelevance, consisting of two ships only, Bataan and Warramunga. Every one of the Q-Class ships had been decommissioned51, awaiting modernisation, while the Tribal-Class Arunta too had been placed in reserve for similar reasons. Thankfully, two Battle-Class ships had been ordered, but Tobruk was only completed in 1950 and Anzac the year after, and even then they were plagued with teething problems. Murchison would have to do for now. Manpower was also a major problem for the RAN, one that had been greatly exacerbated by the post–World War II creation of an aircraft-carrier force.52 The Chifley Labor government’s 1947 naval re-equipment program had called for this ambitious expansion of Australia’s naval capability. Two light fleet carriers were to form the heart of the force, armed with the aircraft of a new Australian Fleet 26

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Air Arm.53 The manning of the first carrier, HMAS Sydney, therefore took first claim upon men and resources.54 Consequently, as Robert O’Neill notes, when the carrier was being readied to be sent to Korea in late 1951, crewing her with her full war complement made even more difficult the task of maintaining the full war complement of destroyer crews for rotation back to Korea.55 Australia’s commitment to support the United States in Korea was thus inconveniently made at a very difficult time for the navy. The RAN found itself with too few battle-ready ships and too few men; as in the other two services, the sudden breakout of hostilities severely exposed a lack of depth in force structure and manning levels. The need of the hour was for destroyers, but the RAN had only two available: Bataan and Warramunga. Given the fact that ships would have to be rotated, with crews serving a maximum tour of duty of one year, it was immediately obvious that this was not enough. Bataan and Warramunga were going to be very busy.

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3 | HMAS Bataan   and the RAN’s Tribal Class HMAS Bataan, like her two RAN Tribal-Class sister ships, Arunta and Warramunga, was always regarded as a powerful ship: comparatively large, fast, a good sea boat and, most importantly, heavily armed, with an eight-gun main armament. Indeed, on paper she was one of the most powerful destroyers afloat. This had been the British Admiralty’s intention when it drew up the technical specification for the class in the 1930s. Bataan was also a very handsome ship. John Alliston, one of the wartime captains of her sister ship Warramunga, waxed lyrical: Whichever way you looked at a Tribal class destroyer, she was not just handsome—she was beautiful. The balance between hull and superstructure, and the proportions of her two funnels were perfect. Add to this the strong clipper bow with a graceful sheer, running back to the break of the fo’c’sle, and you have a word picture that does not do justice to the actuality of the best looking destroyers ever built.

As Alliston said, these ships had charisma.1 However, the hard fact is that the class was obsolescent by the time of the Korean War, and, surprisingly and disappointingly, not 28

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HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

even state-of-the-art during the Second World War. Conceived in the mid-1930s, the Tribal Class incorporated fundamental design weaknesses that were typical of all British destroyers of the World War II era: namely, a weak anti-aircraft (AA) armament and obsolescent fire-control technology. This was a result of flawed Admiralty doctrine, which stressed the role of destroyers in combating surface ships and submarines rather than aircraft.2 In spite of their inherent limitations, the Tribals were nonetheless a big advance over previous British destroyers, being the first class to fit the quad 2-pounder pompom anti-aircraft mounting, and the first with hydraulic gun mountings—for training, elevating and ramming.3 The Tribals were chiefly distinguished from earlier British destroyer classes by their twin-gun mountings, boasting an eight 4.7inch gun broadside. This naturally required that the new class be of greater size and displacement than the earlier four-gun classes: thus the early Tribals’ standard displacement of 1870 tonnes, up from the 1380 tonnes of the previous I Class. Even at this displacement, significant shortcomings remained. Firstly, the heavy gun armament meant a reduction in the torpedo battery to a single quadruple mount (the previous norm had been two such mountings). Secondly, the Tribals remained highly vulnerable to hits in their machinery spaces, as their steam plant was not ‘unitised’.4 Unitisation means the separation of the boiler rooms from one another by the interposition of engine rooms. This helps prevent total loss of power from a hit in the machinery spaces. In the Tribals, as in other British destroyers, the three boilers adjoined one another, and hence a hit on one would likely knock out the others. The powerful armament of the Tribals was never to be repeated, with subsequent classes reduced to a six-gun standard before reverting to the prewar four-gun standard for all war-built ships. The Royal Navy had quickly come to the view that an eight-gun main armament was overkill, and hence the Tribals represent something of a cul-de-sac in the evolutionary development of the British destroyer. The British Admiralty regarded destroyers as expendable units, and 29

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

hence under wartime conditions it was indefensible to waste limited resources on an overgunned design—it was more economical for smaller and cheaper four-gun destroyers to be lost as Stuka or U-Boat fodder! In any case, from the Admiralty’s point of view in deploying its limited assets across the globe, having a larger number of smaller and cheaper units was more advantageous than a smaller number of larger and more expensive units. The Tribal Class therefore became an extravagant aberration, stemming from the Admiralty’s realisation that its destroyer designs did not ‘cut the mustard’ by international standards. By 1932, the Japanese Navy had built twenty-four of the Fubuki class, with six 5-inch (127-mm) guns and nine torpedo tubes, while Hitler’s Kriegsmarine was also developing a very powerful and heavy class of destroyer with 5.9-inch (150-mm) guns, a calibre normally reserved for light cruisers. A larger destroyer with a heavy gun armament was required to counter such threats, and thus the Tribal Class emerged as a deliberate attempt to match superior foreign designs.5 However, the RN’s acceptance of the 4.7-inch, low-angle gun committed the wartime generation of British destroyers to an obsolescent armament system, because it was incapable of high-angle AA fire.6 By contrast, the US and Japanese navies had had dual-purpose guns—gun mountings able to elevate to 80 degrees, and therefore suitable for AA as well as surface-to-surface use—for years. It was the US Navy, however, that had redefined the state of the art, beginning with the Farragut Class, built and commissioned as early as 1932–34, before the Tribal-Class design had even been finalised.7 The US Navy’s 5-inch DP/Mk. 37 weapon system of the 1930s set a fire-control standard that no other navy was able to match for more than a decade. Firstly, it enabled high-angle AA fire with the entire main armament, rather than, in Bataan’s case, just the sole 4-inch mount. Secondly, the system’s gyroscopic stable platform and remote power control (RPC) on the gun mounts enabled the guns to follow the director’s firing solution automatically, unlike in British ships where the gun layers and trainers had to manually follow 30

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HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

the director. In time, this automation enabled radar-controlled blind fire, a capability that no British destroyer would match until the postwar Battle Class. The British Admiralty was aware of such technological possibilities, but had elected to proceed with a simpler system in order to save time, weight and expense. Accepting such inherent limitations, the Admiralty finalised the Tribal-Class design in 1936 and ordered 16 ships, all of which were completed prior to the outbreak of war in September 1939. Shockingly, all but four of these were lost in action during the worst years of the war, 1940–42. This was an appalling loss rate, unequalled by any other Allied destroyer class. There were many reasons for this, the chief one being that the class saw hard service in the most dangerous waters and was often forced to operate without air cover. Moreover, as the most powerful of all destroyers in service, the Tribals tended to be placed in harm’s way in preference to older, smaller and less formidable ships. The 75 per cent loss rate was the result, brutally confirming the Admiralty’s view that destroyers were expendable.8 (One RN destroyer captain later noted ruefully that the RN lost about 130 destroyers during the war—approximately the same number with which it had started it.9) The six wartime Canadian and Australian Tribals10 had much better luck than their British sister ships, with one loss only, that of the unlucky HMCS Athabaskan in 1944. This disparity in loss rates between the British Tribals on the one hand and the Dominion Tribals on the other is attributable to a matter of timing and utilisation. Whereas the British Tribals, completed prewar, saw service through the worst part of the war, neither the Australian nor Canadian vessels were completed until mid-war, thereby seeing out their shorter war service in a much more favourable environment.

Bataan’s protracted gestation While justifiable from the point of view of maintaining an indigenous shipbuilding capacity, the decision to build the RAN’s Tribals 31

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

in Australia imposed much delay. Whereas all 16 of the British Tribals were ordered and laid down in 193611, and completed by the outbreak of war, it was not until 1939 that work was even authorised to commence on the new Australian Tribals at Cockatoo Island in Sydney. The first two, Arunta and Warramunga, were not laid down on the slipways until November 1939 and February 1940 respectively, and they were not completed until 1942.12 By this time, British destroyer production had adopted stronger and lighter longitudinal construction.13 This meant that the Australian 1942 production embodied a design standard about half a decade behind contemporary British practice (bearing in mind that British riveted construction was still a decade behind American welded construction). The Tribals’ less than cutting-edge technology at the time of design was compounded by the fact that the three Australian ships also took longer to build, and hence entered service late; MJ Whitley ascribes this to ‘inexperience’ on the part of Cockatoo Island staff in manufacturing modern warships, and to delays in shipping necessary items from Britain.14 Cockatoo indeed lacked experience in modern warship construction. The only warship constructed recently at Cockatoo had been the obsolete seaplane carrier, HMAS Albatross, commissioned more than a decade before, in 1929. The three Australian vessels were nonetheless completed to an improved standard, incorporating modifications stemming from the RN’s war experience to date. This was chiefly a matter of the fitment of radar and of a beefed up AA armament, namely the retrofit of 20-mm Oerlikons, and the replacement of the twin 4.7-inch mounting in X-gun position with a high-angle twin 4-inch mounting. This latter modification was an attempt to obviate the 4.7-inch guns’ lack of high-angle AA capability. Although the first two Australian Tribals, Arunta and Warramunga, were completed in reasonable time (commissioned in 1942), the construction of the last ship, Bataan, was greatly delayed. Laid down as the Kurnai, she was ordered in February 1940 but not commenced until November. Construction then proceeded at a snail’s 32

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HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

pace. The keel occupied Cockatoo’s Number 1 slipway for more than a year, before being removed and relaid on Number 2 slipway, in order to make way for the first Australian A-Class merchant ship. The ship was eventually launched in January 1944, and finally completed in June 1945, just in time to see service at the very end of the war.15 Bataan had taken almost five years to build, and had occupied one of Cockatoo’s three slipways for three years! It must be said, however, that this was not excessively slow by Australian standards: the ships of the successor Battle Class took four years to build, for similar reasons.16 It is instructive to consider that by 1943 US shipyards were taking only five months to build each destroyer.17 One reason why progress on Bataan was so slow was that the RAN’s pressing need for more destroyers had been met by taking recourse to the RN’s stocks during the crisis period of 1940–42. RAN ship’s companies were thereby able to man new destroyers loaned direct from the RN, comprising five N-Class ships, HMA Ships Napier, Nizam, Nestor, Norman and Nepal, and two Q-Class ships, Quiberon and Quickmatch. The loan of new British-built ships solved the destroyer shortage much more quickly than if the RAN had relied upon local production, and also freed up Australian dockyards’ wartime capacity for other types of higher-priority vessels, such as corvettes, frigates and merchant ships. As a result of this policy, the third Australian-built Tribal was rendered superfluous to wartime requirements. Another reason for the delays was that urgent repairs to existing ships had to take priority. While Bataan’s keel lay unfinished on the slipway, Cockatoo was saddled with more than 40 major repair jobs, including the crippled cruiser HMAS Hobart, which required extensive rebuilding after its stern had been blown almost completely off18, as well as the damaged US cruisers Chicago, Chester, Portland and New Orleans, all victims of the Japanese navy in the Solomons. Precedence had also been given to the construction of new cargo ships, which likewise diverted resources away from Bataan.19 The RAN’s manpower shortage was another reason for Bataan’s 33

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

low priority. Nine frigates and five corvettes were under construction in Australia. Manning these ships upon completion would be a major challenge for a small service already manning 4 cruisers, 10 destroyers, 3 sloops, 3 landing ships infantry (LSIs), 49 corvettes and 20 minesweepers.20 Why push Cockatoo to rush Bataan’s completion when it was not entirely sure that spare officers and men would be available to crew her?

The origins of the name ‘Bataan’ Unsurprisingly, Tribal-Class destroyers were named after loosely defined ‘tribes’, for example HMS Ashanti, HMCS Haida, HMAS Arunta. In adherence to this theme, the third Australian ship of this class was slated to be named Kurnai. This would have been highly suitable, as the Kurnai had been a warlike Aboriginal people from the Gippsland area, who had fought hard battles against the invading whites in a fruitless bid to retain their land. However, politics took a hand in the naming of the ship after the arrival of General Douglas MacArthur in Australia and his elevation to supreme commander of the South West Pacific Theatre. To honour the famous general, the third Tribal was renamed Bataan, after the site of MacArthur’s forces’ last stand in 1942. Thus the ship’s name had been expatriated. This was a quid pro quo for the USN’s naming of one of its cruisers Canberra—which is ironic considering that, according to Bruce Loxton’s meticulous research, it was the USN itself that had sunk HMAS Canberra, in a classic friendly-fire incident!21 The Bataan Peninsula formed the western edge of Manila Bay on Luzon, and formed the site for the US forces’ major battle in their failed 1942 defence of the Philippines. Through ill-conceived dispositions, MacArthur’s Philippine and US forces on Luzon were dispersed and made vulnerable to defeat. After the Japanese invasion, they were withdrawn from their forward positions and retired into the peninsula. There they found gross supply shortages, for 34

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HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

MacArthur’s abortive war plans had ensured that supply dumps were left behind in forward areas, where they were quickly lost to the Japanese upon the Allied forces’ withdrawal. As a result, the US force in Bataan quickly became debilitated through malnutrition and tropical diseases. MacArthur, meanwhile, had established his headquarters to the rear in the fortified island of Corregidor, from which he visited the defenders of Bataan but once, on 9 January, giving rise to the contemptuous epithet of ‘Dugout Doug’. He offered his sick and exhausted men the false hope of imminent reinforcement from the United States, knowing that no such relief was in prospect, issued grandiloquent communiqués, and then left the Philippines by order of President Roosevelt, leaving his army to their bitter fate in Japanese captivity.22 It seems that the name of ‘Bataan’ should by rights have had similar negative connotations as ‘Singapore’ acquired, as both were ignominious defeats bearing the grubby fingerprints of inept leadership and flawed strategy and tactics. In spite of this, MacArthur’s shameless self-promotion invested the name with heroic qualities that actually added to the lustre of his reputation: his public relations men made him the ‘hero of Bataan’. The third Tribal-Class destroyer, HMAS Kurnai, was accordingly renamed HMAS Bataan, in honour of the great man and his recent exploits. This was pure politics, and as a result Bataan became the only one of the 27 Tribal-Class destroyers to bear a nontribal name. Meanwhile, the name Bataan had become iconic. The US Navy launched a light fleet carrier by that name, which served in Korea and which was screened by its Australian namesake. Moreover, during the Korean War, MacArthur’s personal C-54 VIP aircraft proudly bore the same name.23 Mrs Jean MacArthur duly launched HMAS Bataan with the traditional bottle of champagne on 15 January 1944. However, it was not until 25 May 1945 that the ship was finally commissioned. By then, she had been substantially altered compared to her original Tribal class sisters. 35

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

Bataan’s modifications The Tribals were reputedly a fast class, with recorded top speeds of 36 knots (67 kph) during builders’ trials. These figures applied to the original RN Tribals of 1938–39, which displaced only 1880 tonnes, carried a complement of just 190 souls and mounted no radar and no supplementary AA weapons. The magic 36-knot figure continued to be quoted in relation to later Tribals such as Bataan, but was unlikely to have been achieved by these heavier, war-modified ships. By the time Bataan finally went to sea, her mess decks and cabins were packed with 300 souls, she carried three different radar sets and a heavy lattice mast to support the aerials, and she mounted a beefed-up 40-mm secondary armament. Moreover, all this additional top-weight required the addition of ballast in the keel, in order to preserve the ship’s centre of gravity within safe limits—the lattice mast alone had necessitated the deposit of 30 tons of ballast.24 Thus a fully developed, war-improved Tribal like Bataan drew half a metre more water than did its elegant prewar RN sisters, and in reallife war service displaced almost 2800 tonnes in a fully loaded state. Unfortunately, no increase in installed power was made to compensate for this extra weight: the turbines still produced the original 44 000 shaft horsepower (shp). Therefore, some reduction in speed from the publicly quoted figure was unavoidable. This was confirmed by the fact that when Bataan was put through her paces during her June 1945 acceptance trials, she managed to maintain only 32.59 knots (60.36 kph) over a four-hour full-power run (fullpower runs required at least two runs through a measured course, in opposite directions). Her two Cockatoo-built turbines worked hard enough to produce this speed, creditably developing 44 271 shp.25 A 1949 trial by the ship’s company (probably at a lighter displacement) produced a similar 32.5 knots (60.2 kph), so this appears to be representative of Bataan’s top speed on an average day. The magic 36-knot top speed was in everyone’s minds, however: the Naval Board’s supervisor of naval construction was clearly 36

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HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

unhappy with 32 knots, and emphasised that in order to obtain maximum speed, it was necessary to have an ‘externally clean boiler’ and a clean hull.26 With both preconditions met and lightly loaded, Bataan managed to achieve 34 knots (63 kph) in post-refit trials before her 1952 Korean War cruise. This can be regarded as her top speed in ideal conditions: lightly loaded, with a clean hull and with newly refurbished power plant. As she neared completion, Bataan received the latest armament upgrades. Arunta and Warramunga had received 20-mm Oerlikons to supplement the quad pompom, and had had these partially supplanted by 40-mm guns during the Philippines campaign (at the behest of Lieutenant Commander Bracegirdle, then squadron gunnery officer aboard HMAS Shropshire). By late 1944, Kamikaze attacks upon USN and RAN ships in the Philippines campaign had proved the superiority of the 40-mm Bofors quick-firing gun, as its 1-kilogram shells were able to break up the airframes of diving aircraft, unlike those of the lighter 20-mm Oerlikons. Bataan would therefore be fitted with six single 40-mm upon completion.27 Moreover, in her 1951 refit, the quad 2-pounder pompom was also replaced by two additional 40-mm weapons, in a twin Mk. 5 mounting. Bataan’s augmented AA armament, both 4-inch and 40-mm, did not do much for the ship’s stability. The twin 4-inch mounting weighed more than 15 tonnes28, the twin 40-mm weighed 11 tonnes each and the single 40-mm mountings weighed more than two tonnes.29 All this weight was mounted relatively high on the ship’s superstructure, necessitating compensatory weight reductions elsewhere. A range of modifications was made in an attempt to remove top weight or to relocate high-mounted items lower in the ship. This included the elimination of splinter shields from around the gun decks, leaving the gun crews totally exposed in action. Other weightsaving measures which departed from the original ‘stock’ configuration of Arunta and Warramunga included the elimination of the (after) mainmast and of the searchlight mounted high on its platform abaft the pompom, and the relocation of the auxiliary steering 37

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

platform from its original position atop the after deckhouse to its new location under the quarterdeck in the steering flat.

Improved living conditions The RAN’s exposure to the USN during joint South West Pacific operations in World War II had been something of a culture shock, revealing not only the US ships’ generally greater size and firepower30, but also their superior amenities. Although the perennial RAN stories about American ice-cream machines might have been a little overdrawn, it was certainly true that the US Navy pioneered such naval creature comforts as cold rooms, refrigerators, freezers, laundries with washing machines and clothes dryers, coldwater fountains, cafeteria messing and forced-air ventilation in the mess decks. By comparison with this, the British-designed ships of the RAN looked primitive in their domestic arrangements, and this made the service itself look miserly. It was not until the first postwar class of RAN destroyer, the Battle Class (Tobruk and Anzac), that RAN ships started to incorporate USN-style facilities into their designed layout.31 US ships’ superior amenities reflected the recognition within the USN that ship habitability and decent working conditions were essential to morale and efficiency. As early as 1909, the service had acted on this approach in order to improve manpower retention. The legendary ice-cream machines were a fact on the bigger ships, having been installed on larger ships as early as 1905. Centralised food preparation in the hands of professional cooks was introduced prior to World War I—an obvious path to an improvement in food quality. By the 1930s, the US Navy had achieved a deserved international reputation for its onboard facilities, introducing ship’s libraries, movie projectors, cafeteria messing and bunk-beds instead of hammocks.32 Although lagging behind the USN, by World War II the Australian Naval Board was also starting to realise the importance of the sailors’ 38

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HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

comfort and welfare. Indeed, it appears that it was already moving ahead of British practice in the provision of improved living conditions aboard ship. John Alliston, an RN officer who served aboard HMAS Shropshire and Warramunga in World War II, thought that the RAN catering was better, as were the RAN’s civilian-run shipboard canteens. This was not unrelated to the fact that on RAN ships provisions were managed by a dedicated supply officer, rather than on a part-time basis by the ship’s executive officers, as in the RN.33 Nearing the end of the war, a lack of manpower was already becoming a problem and this helped focus the Naval Board’s minds on living conditions. Belatedly, it was realised that improving the human habitability of the British-designed warships, along with raising pay, might help entice men to serve aboard His Majesty’s Australian ships.34 Although it was not until 1957 that the Naval Board finally recognised officially that ships’ habitability was as much a ‘military characteristic’ as its armament or sea-keeping35, this type of thinking was prevalent among officers and dockyard officials by the time of Bataan’s belated completion and she was consequently given superior crew facilities. Before considering the improvements made to Bataan, it would be useful to look at just how bad conditions had been aboard earlier British destroyers. A prewar destroyer officer later recalled that RAN ships had had no laundry as such; individual ratings washed their clothes by hand, bent over a bucket on the deck and scrubbing away with a cake of soap that never produced suds—they usually washed in salt water. Having washed their gear, they then faced the problem of where to dry it. Ad-hoc solutions included draping trousers, shirts, underwear and socks over gratings, stays and other upperdeck fittings. Predictably enough, such articles of clothing would often be blown overboard.36 Surprisingly, Bataan’s comparatively modern sister ships were little better: they too had no laundry. Sailors still washed their clothes on deck, using a bucket and a cake of soap. Rinsing the items was very difficult because of the strict rationing of fresh water, and there 39

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

was again no dedicated place to dry them. This situation became an embarrassment to the service during the South West Pacific campaign, when the men went aboard USN destroyers and found dedicated laundry compartments with washing machines, spin dryers and electric irons. The crew of Warramunga improvised a solution by ‘scrounging’ these items from the Americans and setting them up on the weather deck, between the funnels, under an awning.37 This makeshift arrangement was perpetuated on Bataan, where the laundry was set up between the funnels under the midships 40-mm platforms. During World War II, the RN Tribal-Class ships were found to be almost uninhabitable in tropical conditions, mainly as a result of inadequate refrigeration and ventilation. Rotting food in the unrefrigerated provision store in the fo’c’sle stank out the sailors’ mess decks. Ventilation in the mess decks relied upon turbine-driven fans moving a stream of already hot air forward through the passageways, and was inhibited by the scuttles being shielded by weather screens (to keep sea spray out while underway). The sick bay, situated one deck above the gearing room, was rendered ‘deplorably’ hot by heat radiating through the lagging of an exhaust vent which passed right through the compartment. The radar office above No. 1 Boiler Room was also excessively hot. Temperatures in the galley under darkenedship conditions (when blackout screens over doorways and scuttles cut off ventilation) reached 71 degrees Celsius. Sailors seeking relief from the heat and sweat down below had to slake their thirsts with hot water—there being no water coolers, it was impossible for anyone to get a cool drink.38 The RAN Tribals were no better. Aboard Arunta and Warramunga in the amphibious campaigns along the northern coastline of New Guinea, the men’s shoes ‘quickly rotted on the alternatively blistering and soaking decks’, and the lack of refrigeration meant that the men’s nutrition suffered—vegetables were practically nonexistent on the menu.39 John Alliston, Warramunga’s CO, found that in the tropics, the ship became a ‘hotbox, crammed with men’.40 Arunta’s cap40

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HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

tain, Commander AE Buchanan, reported to the Naval Board on the living conditions aboard his ship through the long New Guinea and Philippines campaigns, noting that 300 men had been: shut up in a crowded steel box in conditions of tropical heat for almost a year … I emphasise these conditions because they represent, I believe, a fine instance of the uncomplaining staying power of both officers and men.41

There were of course limits to what could be achieved in a crowded, machinery-filled steel ship, but the Naval Office’s chief of naval construction pushed for all practicable modifications and improvements to be made to Bataan in the light of such experiences. Working conditions in Bataan’s machinery spaces, like those in any other steam-powered ship of that time, were always going to be challenging, especially when operating at full power. Forced-draft induction-fans continuously sucked a flow of air into the boiler rooms. If there was arctic weather up above, then a gale of arctic temperature roared through the rooms; conversely, in the tropics, the stokers might have to work in an enervating blast of air at 40 degrees Celsius. Conditions in the engine room were worse: even in mild British weather, the temperature there could rise to 42 degrees.42 The worst temperatures of all were in the gearing room, where hot metal gears spun at thousands of revolutions per minute; the resultant friction radiated heat from the steel gear-housings as from an oven. Such high temperatures were unsurprising given the temperatures produced by the steam, which ranged from around 330 degrees Celsius in the boilers and high-pressure turbines to 155 degrees in the low-pressure turbines and a mere 43 degrees as the steam condensed prior to its return to the feedwater tank. Even the fuel oil was hot, being sprayed into the boilers’ combustion chambers at 81 degrees.43 Fed by the boilers’ furnaces, a temperature of 470 degrees could be attained in the funnels.44 With working temperatures like these, it is unsurprising that the trials of Bataan’s main machinery at Cockatoo Island during April 41

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

1945 revealed ‘serious deficiencies’ in engine-room ventilation, with air temperatures at the exhaust vents reaching 62 degrees Celsius. In the light of these trials, the Naval Board was advised that ‘conditions in the Engine Room were such that it would be impracticable to take the vessel to sea and carry out trials with ventilation in its existing condition’. Accordingly, 40-centimetre [cm] axial flow fans were fitted in the ventilation supply intakes port and starboard at the fore end of the engine room, fed by 60-by-40-cm vertically arranged hinged doors on an intake trunk standing proud above deck level. This work alone caused 14 days’ delay in the ship’s completion.45 Such modifications as these were good news for Bataan’s stokers and ERAs, but the navy was also giving a great deal of thought to living and messing conditions for the ratings crowded into the

To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Bataan’s upper works, during a turn to port. Note the newly installed twin 40-mm atop the after deckhouse, the two T-shaped engine-room ventilation trunks at the forward edge of the gun deck, and the kangaroo windvane atop the wireless aerial mounting.

42

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HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

fo’c’sle. Rear Admiral Sir Victor Crutchley RN, Commander of Task Force 74 in the Philippines campaign (comprising, at full strength, the RAN’s entire line of battle in the South West Pacific theatre: Australia, Shropshire, Arunta and Warramunga), had been aboard the US ships and had witnessed first-hand the privations and hardships suffered by the men serving in these ill-adapted British ships in tropical waters. He wrote to the Naval Board, suggesting that changes be made. Recognising the Napoleonic truism that ‘an army marches on its stomach’, he recommended the adoption of a USN-style cafeteria messing system.46 There was some precedent here, as this had already been done on HMAS Shropshire.47 This, Crutchley argued, would produce more attractive meals for the men, and these would be better cooked and more nutritious—he observed the obvious point that young seamen cannot cook—by virtue of being planned and prepared by trained galley staff. Moreover, there would be efficiency gains in relation to the running of the ship, through fewer men being involved in meal preparation, and through removing the incentive for men to leave their stations early in order to get first helpings from the common mess dish.48 The Naval Board agreed and Bataan’s galley was modified accordingly. In this, she became the envy of her sisters, Arunta and Warramunga, which retained a ‘stock’ galley layout until their modernisations in the early 1950s. Bataan’s cold room was expanded from the Tribals’ usual 5.6 cubic metres to 10.2 cubic metres, allowing extra stores of perishables to be accommodated.49 The galley’s storage and preparation arrangements still retained some antique features, however: meat was kept at ambient temperature, out of reach of vermin, in a beef screen, a wooden and wire-mesh cabinet that was fitted against the port side of the forward funnel, with a chopping block next to it.50 Under the traditional ‘broadside’ messing system, whereby each mess had a common serving dish, mess-deck lockers and cupboards had been used to store kitchen equipment. On Arunta and Warramunga, for example, the inventory of each of the 20 messes included 43

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

a wooden food locker, a bread locker, a drying rack, a tea urn, a tea pot, a tea and sugar canister, a salt jar, a bread platter, a meat board, a carving knife, four mess dishes, two jugs, two butter dishes, two mess kettles, 15 ceramic plates and much more. With the introduction of cafeteria messing, such equipment was held centrally by the galley rather than the messes. As a result, hygiene improved and cupboard and deck space was freed up. This extra space allowed for additional lockers—decked with cushions, these were perfect for catching some sleep during the day (when hammocks were not permitted to be slung up). Two refrigerators and two cold-water units were also fitted in the mess decks, and additional showers and stainless-steel washing basins incorporated elsewhere.51 Instead of the men dishing out their own food around the table from the common mess dish, the entire meal was now issued at a servery just across the corridor from the galley, right aft in the rear of the fo’c’sle on the starboard side. It featured an item of equipment familiar to patrons of buffet dinners ashore, but an innovation for the navy: a bain-marie serving unit.52 Men went aft along the port corridor to the servery, received their meal on a tray, and returned forward to their mess tables via the starboard corridor. The multirecessed and multipurpose metal trays were stored at the servery and returned there after being washed up. With the galley cooks keeping a close eye on the portions, late-coming watch-keepers were now assured a proper individual meal, and this fairer distribution could only have a positive effect upon morale. Furthermore, fewer men were now involved in the whole process: instead of the 20 ‘cooks of the messes’ under the old system, the whole lower deck now needed only one duty mess-deck sweeper and about five hands to assist in the servery and wash up.53 And even the tedium and drudgery of washing up was reduced, courtesy of a dishwashing machine, located in a scullery compartment, against the aft bulkhead in the upper mess deck.54 The individual messes still received their respective issues of basic food and beverage consumables—staples such as bread, butter, 44

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HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class

jam, tea, sugar and condensed milk—and each mess retained a foodstorage cupboard for these basics, allowing hungry men coming off watch between mealtimes to make themselves a jam sandwich and a cup of tea. Each man also retained his personal mug, which he took with him to action stations for those welcome moments when the galley staff brought urns of hot cocoa or tea. More routinely, a hotwater boiler in the galley was always accessible via a tap in the hallway for tea-making purposes (tea being essential to the morale and effectiveness of the Australian fighting man!). Fresh white bread was baked in the galley every night.55 Improved ventilation of the densely peopled mess decks was achieved by open scuttles and by turbine-driven fan-fed ventilation trunking. The Tribal-Class design was too old for any consideration to be given to airconditioning, which might have been a mixed blessing even if it had been possible—in the 1960s the RAN found that the airconditioning on three new US Charles F. Adams–Class guidedmissile destroyers merely moved stale air around the ship’s stuffy and closed-off compartments.56 It is likely that living conditions aboard the Bataan were actually healthier than they were aboard these later vessels. Certainly, the crews remained healthy during their tours in Korea, with a low incidence of colds, flus and associated upper-respiratory infections.

Bataan begins active service After trials, Bataan belatedly proceeded to the war in July 1945, joining her sister ships just in time for the Japanese surrender. Hobart too, finally repaired after the torpedo damage suffered in 1943, was able to rejoin the active fleet. Thus when the Australian squadron within Task Force 74 (TF74) assembled in Subic Bay for the Japanese surrender on 15 August, it included the cruisers Shropshire and Hobart and the destroyers Warramunga and Bataan. At the end of August, the same four-ship Australian contingent entered Tokyo Bay as a tiny component of the mighty US 3rd Fleet, and was present when the

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final surrender took place aboard the battleship USS Missouri on 2 September (HMA Ships Napier and Nizam were also present, serving with the British Pacific Fleet, as well as the corvettes Pirie, Ipswich, Ballarat and Cessnock57). After the cessation of hostilities, Shropshire and Bataan remained as the sole RAN presence in Japanese waters.58 The first priority became the location and repatriation of prisoners of war and internees, and Bataan and Warramunga became involved in this, transferring men, women and children from hospital ships in regional ports to Tokyo Bay for further on-shipment home.59 In September, Bataan undertook a further occupation tour of duty in Japan, relieving Quickmatch in Sasebo, thereby commencing a cycle of shuttling between Sydney and occupation duties in Japan that was to last through to the outbreak of the Korean War. Occupation duties tended to revolve around ‘showing the flag’ during short patrols (of about two days’ duration). Initially, the emphasis was on enforcing the demilitarisation of Japanese naval forces, but by 1946 many patrols were devoted to the search for illegal immigrants from Korea. The two RAN destroyers in Japanese waters usually operated separately, with one patrolling the east coast and the other the west.60 A break in this routine of shuttling between Japan and Sydney came in April and May of 1947, when the RAN’s senior destroyer commander, Captain JC Morrow, captain (D) of the 10th Destroyer Flotilla, took Bataan on a diplomatic cruise through the South Pacific with Rear Admiral Harold Farncomb and 12 staffers on board. Bataan showed the flag among the island states and dependencies to Australia’s immediate north-east: stops were made in Suva, Norfolk Island, Noumea, Lord Howe Island and Vila.61 Bataan was just commencing her final occupation tour in Japan when the Korean War broke out in June 1950. She and the ship she was replacing, the frigate HMAS Shoalhaven, were both sent to supplement the undermanned ships of the thinly stretched US 7th Fleet. The RAN had been pitched into the Korean War. 46

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4 | Bataan ’s mechanical problems Having completed her lengthy (11-month) first war cruise in Korean waters in May 1951, Bataan was replaced by HMAS Murchison and sailed for Sydney. The Naval Board intended that she undergo a quick refit at Cockatoo Island and be back on-line in time to replace Warramunga in August.1 Munga’s company was very keen to go home, approaching the end of the longest war cruise of any RAN ship in the Korean War—nearly 12 months. Bataan was the only candidate to replace her, as not one of the RAN’s other destroyers was combat ready. Neither of the two newly completed Battle-Class ships, Tobruk or Anzac, had yet overcome technical difficulties with their ‘hightech’ fire control equipment.2 The Naval Board therefore wanted an expeditious refit at Cockatoo. Arriving in Sydney on 6 June, Bataan went straight into dry dock, with the refit due to be completed by 19 August.3 The work included the replacement of her worn-out main armament by the full suite from Arunta.4 It was unfortunate, however, that Bataan’s boilers were ‘only partially’ retubed5, as the ship’s power plant was already carrying undiagnosed faults—which would soon lead to a major mechanical breakdown. Bataan’s steam machinery had started giving trouble towards the end of her first tour. In June, seawater contamination of her

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boilers’ feedwater had ‘increased alarmingly’ when her speed was increased to 25 knots (46 kph), and one boiler had had to be shut down. When the starboard condenser then started leaking, Bataan had to be withdrawn to Kure for repairs. On passage back to Japan, the two remaining boilers had to be constantly changed over, making the maintenance of a constant speed very difficult. Fortunately, the Harima dockyard did a good enough job to get her back to Sydney.6 Back at Cockatoo, the usual personnel upheavals ensued. These included my father, Able Seaman Geoff Cooper, who joined the ship two days after her docking. He was a former ‘hostilities-only’ Royal Australian Navy Reserve rating who had joined HMAS Murchison before the end of World War II, but too late to see action. He had therefore rejoined the navy in April 1951 for a ‘bit of adventure’. After a brief refresher course at the navy’s training establishment, HMAS Cerberus, Geoff may have congratulated himself on a lucky first posting. Bataan’s imminent return to Korea was common knowledge, offering the prospect of adventure with a minimum of delay. Although Geoff and the rest of Bataan’s skeleton crew were sensibly accommodated off the ship (first on HMAS Penguin, then on the LST, HMAS Lae), they gained an intimate view of the refit in progress. Within a month, things were coming together; having watched the engines being reinstalled and the keel plating renewed, Geoff reported that the ship would be ready to leave the dock within a week. The crew was sick of being isolated at Cockatoo, and looked forward to moving to Garden Island, a short distance away on the south side of Sydney Harbour, near Woolloomooloo. Meanwhile they were kept busy with the ‘sailor’s favourite pastime’—chipping and scraping rust off the ship’s plating to prepare it for a fresh coat of paint. The men noted with approval that changes and improvements to the ship’s domestic arrangements had been made during the refit: the extra lockers in the mess decks meant there were now two per man, and, with service in the frigid Korean winter in mind, extra insulation 48

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

The men go over the side of the fo’c’sle to scrape the ship’s side in preparation for painting. Note the standard summer working dress of shorts and sandshoes.

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had been added to the mess decks and bulkheads. The skipper briefed the men on their upcoming activities and movements: after the completion of post-refit sea trials, they would be joining Sydney in Jervis Bay in mid-August for a ten-day exercise, and then leaving for Korea at the end of that month in company with the carrier, which was proceeding to Korea in order to replace HMS Glory as the duty Commonwealth carrier off the west coast. Coming out of dry dock at the end of July (after almost a month on the chocks), Bataan was towed to her berth on Garden Island. Geoff had been given the job of cleaning and repainting the ship’s three provision stores, in preparation for her upcoming voyage. He was proud of his work, considering that the finished job looked ‘extra good’. Once Bataan had been tied up alongside the cruiser wharf, the men were predictably sent over the side to ‘paint ship’ again. Meanwhile the torpedo tubes and Bofors mountings were being refitted, followed by the radar aerials and the second funnel. Minor setbacks were encountered when dockyard workers inadvertently caused a fire in the officers’ galley aft. More seriously, cracked blades were belatedly discovered in one of the reinstalled turbines. Though it threatened the tight schedule upon which so much expectation had been placed, the offending turbine had to be rebladed.7 The men were relieved to move back aboard their ship after their inconvenient and uncomfortable sojourn aboard the ‘hopelessly crowded’ Lae. However, besides getting the ship ready for sea, they had one extra hurdle to cross before sailing north to the war zone: the medical officer had to administer eight needles prior to departure. ‘There’ll be a lot of stiff arms about that week’, Geoff observed. Stiff arms or not, there was heavy work to do; the men spent two full days ammunitioning ship, emptying four lighters which came alongside in turn (with an eight-gun broadside, a Tribal-Class destroyer could go through a lot of ammunition). The job was finally completed at 4 pm on the second day, and ‘there were a lot of tired men around that night’, with, unusually for sailors in port, practically everybody in bed by 8.30! 50

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Then came the chores of storing ship and finishing the painting, by which time the men were proud of their ship and obviously keen to get away. Geoff considered that she was ‘looking extra good’, and was even anticipating making her ‘very flash’ by polishing her brasswork. The raising of steam brought the ship alive again after the long weeks as an inert hulk, but the hazard of working around live steam was a novelty to recently joined men who had spent a long time ‘on the beach’, as Geoff wrote on 15 August: About 4 of us got hell scared out of us this afternoon. We were up on top of the after funnel painting same, when suddenly without warning a terrific roar burst forth from the forrard funnel, and twin columns of compressed steam shot 20 feet [6 metres] into the air. Actually there was no cause for alarm as the stokers were letting off the pressure from the main boilers through the twin steam valves, which are two big pipes 6 inches [15 cm] in diameter attached to the after end of the forrard funnel. … The startling unexpected roar would be inclined to shake the steadiest nerves and there were quite a few sailors getting about with sheepish looks after it happened. However it raised a few laughs if nothing else.

The ship seemed as eager to get away as the men, and the new CO, Commander Richard Peek, tantalised the ship’s company with details of their upcoming sailing schedule: commencing dockyard trials on Monday 18 August, departing Sydney in company with Sydney on the 31st, and, especially alluring, a day at liberty in Hong Kong on 20 September (last stop before the war zone). The announced schedule had slipped only slightly when the refit was completed early on 20 August and the ship proceeded to sea for trials. Outside Sydney Heads, Peek gradually rang up the engine telegraphs to full power, accelerating in 1-knot increments. Geoff was on the upper deck as 19 knots (35 kph) was attained, ‘when suddenly with a roar of compressed steam the main boiler “blew up”’. 51

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A tube had burst in No. 1 Boiler, and the trials were immediately abandoned. Bataan returned to Cockatoo on two boilers. The dockyard hurriedly replaced the offending boiler tubes, but the repairs still took six days. The sea trials were resumed on 27 August; however, as Geoff related, the same boiler ‘stacked on a repeat performance’, forcing the Naval Board to review its plans—the captain was advised by wireless not to fire up the defective boiler, and that the workup was cancelled.8 Reduced to steaming about on just two boilers, Bataan spent the rest of the day conducting antisubmarine exercises with the Royal Navy submarine, HMS Telemachus. As though to rub salt into the wound, Bataan proved to be a good target, being ‘hit’ by three torpedoes, all of which passed directly under her, and was then given the tedious task of retrieving the practice torpedoes. They were chased to the end of their run, but only two were located and hoisted aboard; of the third there was no sign, despite the search continuing till dark. Thus, after a disappointing, wearying and frustrating day, Bataan returned to harbour and moored in Farm Cove opposite Man-o-War Steps at the head of Bennelong Point. That evening came the news that the Naval Board had signalled for Tobruk to sail to Korea in place of Bataan, which was to return to Cockatoo for a month for a full boiler refit. The mere thought of this was enough to make the men ‘spit chips’, as they had already ‘seen too much of the place’ over the previous two months. Morale took a further plunge when the navy started siphoning men off Bataan and drafting them onto Tobruk, in order to man that ship to full war complement. The men had been keyed up to go since July, and had been lately identifying strongly with ‘their’ ship and its imminent war cruise, but now they were suddenly left in limbo. Even Commander Peek was taken off the ship, having been given the command of Tobruk; Commander Morrison was appointed in his place as caretaker captain.9 In exchange for the outgoing drafts, 50 men were drafted off Tobruk onto Bataan. 52

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For a ship’s company that had grown proud of its ship and become socially cohesive, the Naval Board now became an object of derision, as Geoff recorded: Not content with this change about in plans, they’ve now taken about two thirds of our crew off and transferred them to the ‘Tobruk’ and sent about fifty of the ‘Tobruk’s’ crew over here to the ‘Bataan’. Quite a mix up … and everyone is quite anxious to get to grips with the Navy Board and punch a few heads.

The men seem to have been determined to view the situation subjectively, and to lay proprietorial claim to their ship; indeed, they were truly oblivious to the navy’s manpower problem and to the Naval Board’s desperation to find a ship with which to meet its commitments in Korea. However, there were understandable reasons for their indignant response: mates had been separated from mates, leaving men with a social void to fill and strangers in their mess. This was a perennial fact of navy life, with men being drafted from ship to ship at the conclusion of cruises and commissions, and friends often scattered throughout the fleet. Nevertheless, the deteriorating morale of the rump of the ship’s company was soon expressed in petty hostility towards the officers. The friction was somewhat ameliorated by early notice of generous—three weeks—Christmas leave entitlements. It had become apparent, even before returning to Cockatoo, that there was no prospect of sailing until the New Year of 1952.

Old hands and new faces During late August and early September, the men left on board went through the motions in weekly exercises outside Sydney Heads, sailing about on two boilers. With no obvious focus or purpose, the men quickly lost their previous high pitch of motivation, ‘spinning their jobs out’ and using their newfound time to harbour resentments against their now fashionably unpopular first lieutenant. Returning to dry dock again at Cockatoo on 24 September, the 53

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hands found themselves underemployed and were left to spend their days tidying the ship up after the dockyard workers and playing cricket in the bottom of the dry dock. The latest CO, Commander Warwick Bracegirdle (the fourth CO in four months—the topsyturvy manpower situation affected the officers too), also arrived on 24 September. He began taking steps to address the morale issues, one of the most immediately popular being the installation of a ‘picture show’ on the ship, with a film being shown every night on the fo’c’sle, free of charge. The first showing, of Noel Coward’s In Which We Serve, certainly helped revive the men’s jaded spirits—but not exactly in the way that was intended—following projector (or projectionist?) problems: The first reel went off well but the remaining two developed palsy or something and the result was a slow-motion show with the women talking in deep bass voices and the men even more so. We’ve never laughed so much in our lives, especially as it was a Naval picture. Naturally there were quite a few humorous comments from the sailors to add to the show.

During the day, as the dockyard attacked the defective boiler, the more technically curious sailors received an exposition of the inner parts of the ship: The boiler is totally dismantled now and 1500 pipes were in it so that’s why steel piping is so hard to come by.10 They hoisted the big steam drum out of it last Monday with the big floating crane and the dockies are cleaning up the fire-box at the bottom of the boiler room, getting everything ready for the new boiler … They’re doing a big job in a remarkably short time so no one’s worried. All this has been very interesting to me as I’ve never before seen the inside of a ship’s boiler.

Meanwhile, the ship had assumed the character of a revolving door, as the Naval Board continued to move large drafts of men on and 54

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off the ship. In mid-October, Geoff noted about a dozen new hands arrive on board, at which point only about 30 of the old hands were left. Bracegirdle noticed the extent of these manpower upheavals soon after taking command. He reported the fact that in the course of Bataan’s troublesome first refit, abortive sea trials, and second refit, there had been a total of 1397 personnel ‘disturbances’. Observing that this number constituted five entire ship’s companies, he was quick to draw out the implication that the remaining crew could hardly be expected to be in best spirits: ‘The ship’s company have been keyed up to concert pitch and then, unavoidably, had the wind blown out of their sails’.11 Here was an implicit appeal for some personnel stability and continuity. Bracegirdle attempted to keep the bored, underemployed crew busy through the creation of a program of warlike make-work schemes, and was soon reporting some success in maintaining morale: As an immediate counter measure to these upheavals, and to foster a fighting spirit under present harbour conditions, a Ship’s Small Raids Section has been formed and training in Demolition, Shallow Water Diving, Weapon Training, Unarmed Combat and Surf Landings has commenced. In addition a Rendering Mines Safe Party is also to be trained. The formation of this Raiding section (on Royal Marines Small Raids wing Lines) has created an amazing amount of interest amongst the Ship’s Company in a short space of time.12

Geoff ’s part in this was to be trained as a shallow-water diver. He and two others were taught how to use the diving apparatus, albeit for more prosaic purposes than those announced by the fire-eating captain. Their tasks included the cleaning of inlets in the ship’s side below the waterline, checking the condition of the hull, shafts and screws, and clearing away ropes and wires that entangled the latter. The old hands returning from their ‘advanced Christmas leave’ found plenty of new faces in the mess decks. Geoff ’s old messmates 55

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(all self-avowedly old hands) were forced to accept six newcomers into their mess, four of whom they noted in mock alarm were ‘kippers’—RAN slang for British sailors, ex RN. Nevertheless, Geoff ’s messmates had soon to admit that their new shipmates were ‘all right’, and even grudgingly acknowledge that they too were old hands. Within a month, things had progressed so well between the kipper and nonkipper messmates that they now looked upon themselves as an exclusive group, a mess composed entirely of ‘hard-bitten characters’. This was doubtless in large measure mere bravado, but Geoff did note with satisfaction that one entire draft in late October had been exclusively composed of fellow old hands. The repeated references to old hands are evidence that the ship’s company was reacquiring a positive collective self-perception—the esprit de corps had survived the disorientating and disruptive period of the refits and redrafting. Geoff now conceded that ‘the new crew will probably develop into just as good a crew as the last one was’. Indeed, in spite of its stretched resources, the Navy had done a good job in remanning Bataan with experienced men: when the ship sailed for the war in the New Year of 1952, only 40 ordinary seamen out of her full war complement of 325 had never crossed the equator before—meaning that the remaining 285 souls had seen substantial naval service. Such depth of experience seems to have been typical of the RAN, notwithstanding its manpower difficulties. Despite expanding its force from about 5000 in 1939 to 38 000 in 194513, the RAN maintained a strong cadre of prewar and long-service men in its major units. This was very different from the USN, where fantastic wartime expansion meant that prewar expertise was thinly spread among wartime ship’s companies14 (though this was hardly surprising given the fact that the USN expanded to 50 times the ship strength of the RAN, and 87 times its manpower15). The same applied in Korea, where RAN ships went to war with relatively well-experienced crews. On leave in Sasebo, Geoff would notice that the US sailors were a lot younger than their Australian opposite numbers, suggesting that the 56

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much smaller Australian service was able to maintain a more cohesive cadre of old hands. This was perhaps one benefit that the RAN derived from being such a small service.

Preparing to set sail At the end of November 1951 it was announced that Bataan had been scheduled to sail for Korea in January, and by December 1951 Bracegirdle was able to report that the two-month refit was completed. With a new steam drum, new tube plate and all new tubes fitted to the offending No. 1 Boiler, and new superheater tubes in No. 3 Boiler, Bataan was mobile again, and the new ship’s company almost complete after a final flurry of drafting.16 The intended 60-day turnaround of Bataan had ended up taking half a year, with Anzac plugging the gap in a short one-month tour, followed by Tobruk’s four-month tour. However, better late than never, Bataan was now nearing combat-ready status at last, with only a trials program ahead of her before setting off to Korea to replace Tobruk. With the new boilers fitted and the dockyard workers adding finishing touches, the crew were set to work again on the ‘sailor’s favourite pastime’, painting ship. They scraped and painted below the waterline, then moved upwards to apply the grey paint to the sides and superstructure. Of course, once painted, steel ships at sea did not stay painted: thenceforth the hands were to spend many days in port cleaning and repainting.17 At least the men now had a clear focus for their work. A big day came five days before Christmas, when the ship departed from Cockatoo under her own steam, mooring at No. 1 Buoy opposite Man-o-War steps. However, the moment was spoiled by an officer’s miscalculation: 100 tonnes of ammunition had been manhandled aboard the day before, but now the crew was ‘politely informed that 80 tonnes of it had to go off again’. The men sweated in the summer sun as they lifted the heavy (34-kilogram) 4.7-inch powder cases out of the magazines and back over the side into the ammunition lighter,

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their work eased perhaps by the therapeutic satisfaction of muttering ‘blistering remarks’ about officers as they did so. Replenishing ammunition always meant ‘hard yakka’ for the crew as the overgunned Tribal required four lighters of ammunition. Two days after Christmas, the program of sea trials commenced: the ship’s company prepared for war while the rest of Australia enjoyed summer holidays on the beach. Most of the crew had just returned from leave (Geoff had found the surf at Bondi ‘extra good’), but they now had a lot of work ahead of them. There were gunnery drills on 27 December, and the next morning the surfers at Bondi looked on as Bataan practised antisubmarine exercises just offshore; in the afternoon, the sunbathers on Manly Beach were treated to the sight and sound of her firing full eight-gun broadsides out to sea (‘a round or two for a pound or two’, as Geoff put it). Geoff thought it must have been ‘very impressive from Manly, but as far as the sailors were concerned it’s too much row at one time’. Sailing north, the short journey to Palm Beach was enlivened by firing the close-range (40-mm) armament. Sea trials in Broken Bay followed in the days before New Year, during which the new boilers proved themselves handsomely, marred only by a temporary breakdown when dozens of jellyfish were sucked into and blocked the condenser inlet. After the men had had ‘a good laugh’ and the divers had cleared these ‘communist jellyfish’ from the inlets, trials were resumed, the ship proceeding south to Jervis Bay at 25 knots (46 kph) into ‘filthy weather’. Bracegirdle might have been allowing his enthusiasm to get the better of him, for at that speed the ship was ‘thrown about all over the place’, with inevitable results: Geoff wrote that ‘ninety percent of the crew were soon lying around on the upper deck as sick as dogs (including the officers—Haw! Haw!)’. The seasick were given a respite in the protected waters of Jervis Bay, where the crew spent a quiet New Year’s Day fishing and catching mackerel over the ship’s side. On the 2nd, the main armament engaged a tug-towed target over a range of 5–6 kilometres; the GCO, 58

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Jock Yule, his director crew, and the individual gun crews were all a bit rusty to start with, including Geoff at Y gun, though he recorded with satisfaction that ‘towards the finish we were doing rather well, getting a “straddle” with each broadside’. After returning to Garden Island for minor adjustments, the great moment came on 4 January, when after one hour’s acceleration to full power between Port Kembla and Broken Bay, Bataan reached her maximum speed of 34 knots (63 kph) and maintained it for two hours, no doubt much to the relief of the captain, engineering officer and dockyard. The ship was not far out to sea as she worked up to this speed, and the proud (and vain) ship’s company was conscious that, as Geoff noted, she ‘must have looked good from ashore’. Bracegirdle too must have been enjoying himself and was probably not averse to a little showing off as he ‘shot past numerous merchant ships and trawlers in a lather of foam’, according to Geoff. The old hands from the ship’s previous sea trials had still been a bit nervous, however: Geoff and others watched with some concern as ‘number one boiler blew off a bit of steam’, the sailors greeting the sight raucously by laughing and cheering. However, ‘it was a false alarm, merely the safety valve doing its job’. Relieved by the trials’ success, they returned to the fleet base at Garden Island for provisioning. The blistered paint on the funnels was worn briefly as a badge of pride, before the men were predictably put to work repainting it. Bataan was finally deemed to be ready for operations, more than four months late. On Tuesday 8 January 1952, the moment of departure came with a crowd of people at Garden Island to see the men off, plus a contingent of newspaper photographers. The men had been given an overnight leave, from which four men failed to reappear, while six more recalcitrant seamen had to be flushed out of various dives by the base shore patrol. Delivered to the wharf ‘blind drunk’ half an hour before departure, they staggered aboard, one disingenuous soul among them retaining enough presence of mind and physical control to shake the provost marshal’s hand and slap him on the back in 59

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appreciation for his ‘good turn’ in finding the sailor and getting him back onboard. So Bataan’s ship’s company took leave of their home port. Their steel home for the next nine months steamed out through the heads, where she encountered rough seas with a sou’easter blowing from the beam. Tribal-Class destroyers had a high centre of gravity due to their heavy gun armament, which meant they tended to roll in such conditions. On this occasion, the rolling produced much seasickness, and many found their nautical bravado quickly deflated. Ratings and officers discovered that, old hands or not, they had yet to regain their sea legs. As Bataan turned her bow to a more northerly course, however, the rolling ceased and the ship moved easily with a following sea, cruising at a very economical speed of 13 knots (24 kph). She made short work of the Australian coast, passing Moreton Island lighthouse at 1 am on 10 January—the watch-keepers on the bridge saw the lights of Brisbane reflecting on clouds as they sailed north. The ship was off Sandy Cape by the afternoon, passing inside the Great Barrier Reef and steaming north into heavy tropical rain. Geoff stood watch as lookout on the bridge, delighted to be so dry underneath his oilskin and doubly delighted to watch a school of dolphins moving alongside the ship. Bataan stopped for fuel oil at Townsville and Darwin. Leaving Darwin on the 16th, it soon became evident that the crew had still not found their sea legs: as Bataan sailed into a cyclonic 60-knot (111-kph) gale, the resultant high seas in the Arafura Sea played havoc with the men’s stomachs. Even the skipper and six out of the other nine officers succumbed. With so few men unaffected, the bulk of the watch-keeping and other work fell to the ‘good sailors’ (including Geoff) blessed with strong stomachs. They took comfort in the fact that second helpings at meal times would be freely available. Within a fortnight of leaving Sydney, Bataan reached Borneo, where she anchored at Tarakan Island for watering, having covered more than 9000 kilometres. She then hurried on northwards to refuel 60

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at Hong Kong and proceed to Kure. Meanwhile, Warramunga had been turned around very rapidly to replace Tobruk, permitting the two Australian Tribals to serve out most of 1952 together in Korea. Bataan entered Kure harbour in Japan on 4 February, a little less than a month after leaving Sydney. The first day in port was spent alongside Murchison. It was a highly charged meeting, with one crew keyed up to see some action, and the other counting down the days to Sydney. The destroyer’s ship’s company discovered that the Australian frigate was held in high esteem for her Korean War service, and, when Murchison got under way, they lined the rails and cheered her.18 Warramunga beat her sister to the first operation, beginning her first patrol on 6 February, screening the carrier HMS Glory. Bataan began her first patrol two days later, the first of the 11 war patrols she undertook in the course of this, her second and final tour of duty in the Korean War.

Bataan’s ongoing maintenance problems Although the boiler breakdown of August 1951 had been quite unexpected, records show that it was by no means the first time Bataan had experienced such problems. Furthermore, niggling boiler problems would continue to dog the ship during her 1952 tour. While she was operating as part of the Commonwealth 10th Destroyer Flotilla in August 1948, her captain, Commander AS Storey, had been forced by the failure of her turbo auxiliary machinery to abandon fleet exercises and return to Yokosuka; upon entering harbour, the ship had suffered a total loss of vacuum, leading to a forced shutdown of engines, and had to be towed to her mooring. The failure was caused by an undiagnosed corroded water tube in the starboard condenser, which had contaminated the boiler feedwater with seawater.19 Steam turbines were designed to run on dry, superheated steam; seawater contamination cooled and slowed down the steam, thereby slowing down the auxiliary machinery, choking 61

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air ejectors, flooding condensers and causing loss of vacuum in the main turbines. The problem was referred to at the time, in layman’s terms, as ‘condenseritis’.20 The evidence suggests that in Bataan’s case it was the consequence of inadequate maintenance; indeed, this had been noted the previous April in a damning inspection report by Rear Admiral Harold Farncomb and would be highlighted again in a subsequent inspection report that condemned the ill-kept machinery spaces and filthy bilges.21 The manpower issue, the RAN’s postwar bugbear, was at the root of this problem too. Engineering departments were badly understaffed, as Captain WH Harrington, CO of Warramunga and Captain (D) of 10th Destroyer Flotilla, noted: The amount of work to be carried out in modern destroyers is well beyond the capacity of existing [that is, depleted] complements, resulting in the accumulation of actual defects which have to be made good to the detriment of proper maintenance.22

Bataan’s Commander Storey agreed, referring to ‘the impossibility over periods of years of executing routine inspections in addition to normal maintenance with depleted staffs’.23 In other words, staff were forced to favour short-term fixes over preventive maintenance. Bataan’s problems were exacerbated by her punishing schedule in 1948: she had steamed 24 000 kilometres in the two and a half months prior to the breakdown.24 It seems likely that the maintenance failures of the late 1940s contributed to Bataan’s later mechanical problems. Though there was to be no repeat of the total failure she experienced off Yokohama, niggling boiler problems resurfaced repeatedly during the 1952 tour. For example, on the outward passage from Kure through Japan’s Inland Sea en route to her third war patrol, on 21 March, Bataan embarrassed herself in front of HMCS Cayuga (another Tribal) by suddenly losing vacuum. She lay dead in the water, rocking in the swell, while her companion steamed on over the horizon. Vacuum was restored almost one and a half hours later, whereupon Bataan 62

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rejoined her Canadian consort, but it was lost twice more as the two ships neared Korea’s west coast.25 The following month, during her fourth patrol, Bataan was leading the heavy cruiser USS Rochester (with Vice Admiral GC Dyer USN, Commander TF95, aboard as a witness) at 25 knots (46 kph) running north to the Yalu when a fire broke out in No. 2 Boiler Room, forcing speed to be reduced to 10 knots (18.5 kph). She hauled out of line, allowing Rochester to steam majestically past. The engineers quickly extinguished the fire and restored steam pressure, permitting Bataan to resume station after 22 minutes, but four hours later No. 1 Oil Fuel Pump failed, forcing a reduction in speed to five knots (9 kph). Once more the engineers worked furiously, restoring the pump to functionality swiftly enough to regain 24 knots (44 kph) eight minutes later.26 Similarly embarrassing was a failure of the steering during March. This was caused by the pounding of the seas during the typhoon season; the incessant helm corrections proved too much for the steering gear, causing the rudder’s starboard telemotor system to break down. Bracegirdle reported ‘steering trouble’ initially, followed by the ‘complete failure’ of the system after effecting apparent repairs while anchored off Taechong Island. Geoff was on the bridge during the middle watch (2400–0400) when the gear broke down, looking on as ‘mild panic’ broke out on the bridge: ‘You couldn’t move for officers all talking at once’. Sent aft to the emergency steering position in the Tiller Flat, he rejoiced in the fact that: At least the only noise there was from the screws and steering motors, which was quite peaceful by comparison. Some of the acts put on by the Officers of this ship are better than the Tivoli shows, and unbeknownst to them afford the sailors some rare comedy.

The temperature extremes of the Korean Winter also imposed maintenance problems. Ice floes caused trouble when the ship was underway, for the heavy chunks of ice scraped along the underside of the ship and struck the propellers, the propeller shafts and the A brackets 63

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that held them clear of the hull. Berthing in Sasebo harbour in mid-March after Bataan’s second patrol, the engineering officer (‘Engines’) had the ship’s divers to call upon. They went into the freezing water to check for damage. Geoff was the first over the side. Being new to naval diving, he was inclined to take a positive view of this opportunity to practise his new craft; he described the day as ‘perfect’ for diving in spite of the cold water, and spent long enough under the ship to ascertain the extent of the damage and to allay Engines’ fears: ‘after showing the Engineering Officer with the aid of blue-prints and photos what the damage consisted of, he apparently decided the ship wasn’t in immediate danger of falling to pieces’, he noted, and so off they proceeded on the third patrol. However, a second dive while anchored off Taechong Island was more arduous, with both divers ‘damned near frozen’ and given a generous tot of rum for their trouble. The

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A Japanese diving party go over the side to inspect Bataan’s ice-damaged A brackets, Kure, April 1952.

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result this time was that one week’s repairs in dry dock were judged necessary. The A brackets that held the propeller shafts were particularly susceptible to ice damage. A pressurised line protected by a steel sheath carried lubrication oil to each of the shafts. These sheaths could be ripped off when chunks of ice were caught between the prop and the A bracket. The loose, flapping pieces of sheet steel were an operational liability, as they caused false echoes on the ship’s ‘Asdic’ sonar equipment, thereby rendering her antisubmarine detection equipment inoperable. At prudent intervals, therefore, divers were sent over the side during harbour visits, in order to inspect the condition of brackets, shafts and props, and to take measurements of shaft wear.27 Between the steering gear, propellers and A brackets, and the ongoing steam problems, Bataan was very much in need of repairs and maintenance by the end of her fourth war patrol, by which time she had been out of dockyard hands for only four months. Accordingly, the ship went into dry dock in Kure for five days towards the end of April.

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5 | The war of the islands Bracegirdle and his officers were well informed on the west-coast situation and operating procedures by the time they finally embarked on Bataan’s first patrol on 8 February 1952. They had participated in a ‘turnover of information, publications and orders’ with the officers of HMAS Murchison. The officers of HMS Belfast had also briefed them on ‘current operational policies and situations’. Having arrived off the Korean coast, Bracegirdle had then received a final briefing from HMS Mounts Bay’s Captain John Frewen RN, who was serving as Captain (D), in effect the inshore flotilla commander.1 The strategic situation in 1952 was far more secure than it had been during Bataan’s first war patrol in 1950–51, when, following the intervention of the Chinese army in late 1950, the overextended UN army had had to retreat in disarray from the Yalu, and Bataan had operated to support its flanks in a military situation of tactical and strategic crisis. By the time of her second patrol, the front line had been pushed back by Allied counteroffensives to approximately the present border between North and South Korea, and army operations had been downgraded to something like a World War I–style stalemate. In spite of this de-escalation of the tactical environment, however, the navy’s mission was little changed. The task of the west66

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coast blockade force, as Commander Marks, Bataan’s CO during her first tour, had noted, was to shut down all enemy coastal movement as far north along the coast as possible.2 This included land-based movement along the coasts as well as water-borne movement— anything moving within gun range was subject to ‘interdiction’ by naval bombardment. During Bataan’s second tour, this mission still applied. By then, however, the emphasis had shifted to operations in support of the ROK garrisons of the west-coast islands. Bracegirdle explained that: This duty consists of providing naval support for the defence of nearby friendly islands, enforcing the blockade of enemy ports, bombardment of shore targets, [and] providing escort as required.3

It is inevitable that small navies such as the RAN will have to integrate with larger formations such as those of the USN, and so in order to fulfil their mission in Korea the Australian ships had to operate as part of a multinational force. All Commonwealth vessels operating off the west coast joined Task Group 95.1, a formation of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet.4 Such ad-hoc grouping of disparate naval elements does not always work out well; however, by the end of Bataan’s first tour, the bugs had been ironed out. Marks had reported at that time that the navies in Korea were working together with common procedures and doctrines, in ‘mutual confidence’ as parts of an ‘efficient and happy team’.5 This is not to say that the experience of joint operations under US command was frictionless. The Canadian, Australian and New Zealand ships, sharing as they did a common tradition through their organisational and cultural descent from the Royal Navy, could always operate seamlessly with the British, but the USN was different. US commanders micromanaged to a far greater extent than was customary in Commonwealth navies, where orders were briefer and allowed for more initiative on the part of each CO. The Americans also produced and required a much greater volume of paperwork than the Commonwealth COs were used to, and the latter inevitably 67

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found this irksome.6 These cultural differences had already been manifest during World War II.7 Such problems were mitigated by British admirals obtaining commands within the American 7th Fleet organisation. Admiral Sir Alan Scott-Moncrieff commanded the west-coast blockade force throughout Bataan’s second tour in 1952. Fortunately for Bracegirdle and the other Commonwealth commanders on the west coast, this officer would perform his duties admirably through his 17 strenuous months in command, protecting his commanders from unfamiliar or uncongenial American methods and evolving a procedural modus operandi acceptable to both parties.8 Placed thus at the disposal of the British commander of Task Element 95.12, Bataan was drawn into the battle for the maze of islands that lies close off the west coast of Korea. Theoretically, these islands offered either side the opportunity to use them as a series of stepping stones and thereby outflank the opposing army’s main battle line, present a threat to his rear, and disrupt his coastal supplies and communications. In reality, however, control of this string of islands was from day one vested in the side with overwhelming naval power: the United States and its Commonwealth allies. Neither the North Koreans nor the Chinese were ever in a position to challenge Allied naval dominance of either the Yellow Sea or the Sea of Japan. Throughout the war, the Allies controlled the west-coast islands all the way from Seoul in the South to Chinnampo, the port of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Consequently, Allied navies were able to reinforce and resupply UN forces on the Korean Peninsula at will, secure the seaward flanks of the UN army, impose a sea blockade upon the Communist coast, and raid enemy coastal installations. Furthermore, UN forces were present in the enemy’s rear from the time the battle line stabilised into static positional warfare in early 1951 right through the protracted period of the peace talks and the eventual armistice. Korea’s geography was both a blessing and a curse for the Allied navies. On the one hand, the long, narrow peninsula and its numer68

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ous offshore islands facilitated naval control through patrolling, bombardment and special-forces raids. On the other hand, operations off the west coast were beset by a host of navigational and tactical hazards, imposed by that coast’s characteristic shallow waters, extensive sandbanks, rapid tidal currents and narrow channels.9 The Haeju Gulf, roughly midway between Inchon and Chinnampo, proved to be Bataan’s particular ‘snorting ground’ during her second tour. This waterway forms the sea approach to the port city of Haeju and to the Han River, which runs to Seoul, and became the main theatre of operations during the 1952 campaign of island warfare. The enemy’s naval inferiority did not preclude the possibility of sampans and other small craft being used to effect surprise landings upon Allied-held islands, nor the use of such craft to lay mines in the inshore channels. Haeju Gulf ’s topography permitted this type of microscale, island-hopping warfare, as Bracegirdle explained: On relieving Nootka, Bataan assumed the duties of Commander Task Unit 95.12.4. This task unit is responsible for the defence of the friendly islands in the HAEJU estuary, and for the co-ordination and deployment of United Nations vessels, working in close cooperation with the Island Commanders of Republic of Korea Guerilla and Marine forces. The most important and valuable of the islands in this area is TAEYONPYONG DO, which island it is essential to hold. To achieve this aim it is thus important to hold all islands in the estuary, as these would form a chain by which to approach TAEYONPYONG DO, a stepping stone to other island objectives.10

The task, from the navy’s point of view, was to maintain surveillance over the water approaches to these islands, alerting threatened South Korean garrisons and using the ship’s firepower to forestall or repulse any attacks. However, this had to be done in a patch of water where hundreds of South Korean fishing boats plied their trade. The North Korean forces might easily use this fleet as cover. Once again, 69

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A chart of the Haeju Gulf, produced aboard Bataan, showing the frequently bombed town of Haeju; the island of Yongmae Do, a scene of regular action; the major base of Taeyonpyong Do; and the Ponggu-Myon Peninsula (opposite Yuk To), which was the scene of Operation Round-up. 71

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Bracegirdle provides a good explanation of the system of de facto fisheries patrol that evolved to keep this threat in check: The most difficult aspect of the task ahead was the control of junk traffic in the area; some 800 fishing junks had been granted licenses to fish south of latitude 37°45’N. The HAEJU estuary is considered to be one of the world’s best fishing grounds … It was obvious that if rigid discipline was not enforced to control junk movements, enemy craft would have little to prevent their infiltration. A plan had been evolved whereby all junks proceeding south [out of the estuary ports] must call at either SOSUAP TO or TAESUAP TO for inspection and clearance by R.O.K. guerillas. When investigated and found to be concerned only with fishing, the junks were to be given a white flag and registered numbers for overall control. At night the boats were to be anchored in groups throughout the dark hours, and any junk underway would be considered enemy. At the same time, friendly junks manned by [ROK] guerillas were to form part of the fishing fleet to keep a watchful eye on its activities.11

This regime of monitoring and inspection meant that both of Bataan’s motor cutters were away from dawn to dusk boarding and examining junks.12 The task of keeping an eye on this immense fleet of anchored junks was aided by the US 5th Air Force’s provision of ‘flare ships’, large transport aircraft with the endurance and loadcarrying capacity to orbit overhead throughout the night while dropping parachute flares.13 This control system amounted to a no-movement-at-night rule for all Korean fishermen—without doubt a considerable burden upon their ability to maximise their catch and make a living. It also boiled down to a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ policy when the no-movement-at-night rule was violated. For the men aboard the destroyers in the Haeju approaches at night, anchored immobile in the middle of a vast foreign fleet, the dividing line between friendly fishermen and cutthroat Communist infiltrators was fine. Consid72

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erations of self-defence played at least as prominent a role in their minds as the defence of the islands, as Geoff related: This area contains one of the finest fishing grounds in the world and at present is lousy with hundreds of junks, which are allowed to fish during daylight, fish being the mainstay of the Korean diet. At the peak of the present fishing period there were no less than 700 junks on the fishing grounds and we were literally hemmed in by them. Quite a sight as you can imagine. A few of the local ‘friendly’ Koreans have the job of policing this herd in power-driven junks to make sure no North Korean slips in to the act. They fool about inspecting fishing licences and making sure all the ‘friendly’ junks fly the South Korean flag as well as their ‘fishing licence’ which consists of a small yellow pennant flying below the S.K. flag. However we don’t believe in taking chances with the coves and they’ve all been warned not to move about after dark, but to stay at anchor. Some of them have to learn the hard way of course and any that we do see moving after dark promptly get a burst of bofors whacked over them. If that fails to stop them, the next burst goes into them with rather permanent effects. We’ve been obliged to sink a few after this fashion, brutal as it may seem, but they’ve been known to carry 3 inch motors [guns] which is no joke when used against a warship at anchor as other ships have discovered to their sorrow.

Officially the 40-mm rounds were directed at the junks’ sails in such situations, but the final deadly recourse was aimed shots into the hull. Bracegirdle reported that almost every night Bataan opened fire with the 40-mm. Generally, the offending junk anchored immediately.14

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The Wolfpack guerillas The Korean naval war was a ‘gunner’s war’15, and so one of Bataan’s major roles was to provide gunfire support to ROK island garrisons. For the Allied ships committed to the naval campaign on the west coast, the presence of bands of friendly Korean guerillas on the islands added an unconventional element to their operations. The genesis of this situation was the Inchon landing in September 1950. MacArthur’s audacious surprise counteroffensive had enveloped the hitherto victorious North Korean army. The subsequent UN offensive had ejected it from South Korea and pushed its remnants northwards, all the way to the Yalu. As the UN forces advanced through liberated enemy territory, they ‘were surprised to encounter entire communities of fervent anti-Communists’ in areas they passed through.16 Thinking that this was the final phase of the war and that the Communists were gone for good, these networks of resisters in the liberated towns and villages of North Korea unwittingly ‘burned their bridges’ by persecuting their Communist tormentors and openly cheering for the advancing UN forces. Unfortunately for them, the Chinese counteroffensive then erupted into Korea, sending the UN Army back into a headlong retreat beyond the 38th Parallel. This rout in effect abandoned these opposition groups, leaving them isolated, conspicuous and vulnerable: ‘Unavoidably left behind in their liberator’s wake, the now-exposed anti-Communists could choose only between hiding in the local mountains to await the next UN offensive or fleeing for their lives’.17 It is estimated that between six and ten thousand North Koreans fled, those near the coast using fishing boats to escape to offshore islands.18 The mostly uninhabited islands running along the west coast north of the 38th Parallel were almost tailor-made refuges for these desperate people. Many of the islands could be reached across mudflats at low tide, or by short boat journeys using whatever sampans and junks were to hand. By January 1951, the Americans were receiving reports that thousands of abandoned anti-Communists were 74

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making a fighting retreat to North Korea’s western shoreline. These refugees were described by the US Army as ‘desperate, hungry, poorly armed … and mad as hell’.19 The US Army’s Far East Command was quick to appreciate the potential usefulness of the islands and the refugees. Too many in number for the Communists to retake and control, the islands were ideal jumping-off points for small special-operations parties to go ashore into North Korean territory for reconnaissance, observation or sabotage.20 The refugees might easily become ideologically compatible guerrillas. Soon, the US 8th Army was transporting them to suitable islands. Paengyong Do, about halfway along the chain between Haeju in the south and Chinnampo in the north, was the key to the whole chain of garrisoned islands. It was 200 kilometres behind enemy lines and a safe 24 kilometres from the nearest enemy-held shore, the Hwanghae Peninsula. That province had been the centre of proSeoul, anti-Pyongyang resistance prewar, and many of its inhabitants had collaborated with the UN occupiers at the end of 1950.21 Those who had moved to the islands therefore had good knowledge of the mainland and contacts for covert intelligence work. The refugees occupied their islands and organised themselves into clannish groups based upon local networks and family relationships. Their headmen became the guerilla leaders. The tragedy of their situation was that they believed they were contributing directly to the liberation of their North Korean homeland and the ejection of their Communist enemies. Knowing this, the US Liaison Officers at first held out hope of a coming UN offensive that would once again push the Communists back to the Yalu, this time for good.22 However, there would be no such major UN offensive, and thus the partisans were always going to be left high and dry. This did not stop the 8th Army from organising the various bands and placing them under the newly created CCRAK (pronounced ‘sea crack’) organisation, standing for ‘Covert, Clandestine and Related Activities—Korea’. CCRAK divided up the island-based partisan 75

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bands into two operational groups: ‘Wolfpack’, in the Haeju Gulf, and ‘Leopard’, running thence west and north along the coast to Cho Do.23 Bataan would operate in both operational areas, although she would specialise in operations in support of Wolfpack. Each guerilla unit in effect had to compete against its fellows for very finite supplies of rice, ammunition and other goods from a calculatedly parsimonious American supply train. The 8th Army appointed liaison officers to the main islands, and used these US staffers to supply the guerilla bands with guardedly limited supplies. A clear line was drawn between guerilla activity and supply: the supply tap was turned on or off by the particular group’s US minder on the basis of the number of offensive raiding operations conducted by the unit and the results obtained. It was therefore in the interests of the guerilla bands to make a good impression and to show results in their operations. Thus motivated, they used a motley array of sail-powered and motorised sampans and junks to place raiding parties and reconnaissance and observation teams upon the enemy-held mainland. Unsurprisingly, this competitive system engendered a built-in bias towards the overstatement of results—anything to please the American masters and keep the supply flow running. One of the US advisers has admitted this: As the partisan numbers grew, so did the frequency of their raids, the number of weapons and Chinese fishing junks captured, and the number of casualties claimed. Since the amount of rice and supplies the partisans received depended on their combat performances, and since Americans did not accompany the partisans on their mainland raids to verify the actions, the system gave rise to what undoubtedly were terribly inflated body counts.24

From the moment the Americans started feeding, supplying and organising the partisans, an irresistible trend developed to regularise them into de facto ROK army units. Abandoning the motley collection of civilian clothing and North Korean army uniforms they 76

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wore initially, they increasingly took to dressing in US-supplied military uniform. At first, only about 10 per cent were armed25, with an assortment of Japanese and Soviet weapons for which ammunition was not always available; however, as the various units ‘earned their pay’, their armouries became more extensive and increasingly US in origin. The US policy of regularising the guerilla units involved not only the supply of US uniforms, weapons and supplies, but also the provision of US military advisers. Starting off with two officers and two enlisted men in the early days, the advisers were expanded into an umbrella unit called the 8086th Army Unit, which had swelled to 21 officers and 44 enlisted men by late 1951.26 Many of the advisers were not so much combat leaders as administrators and logistics managers, their days taken up with administering the process by which the guerilla units were granted their supplies on a month-by-month basis. This was not always an edifying process, as shown by the following transcript of a squalid interview in November 1952 between Major Tom Dye, the US commander on ‘Leopard Base’, and an interpreter for the Korean commander of ‘Donkey-16’: INTERPRETER: He [Donkey-16] wants a squad tent. DYE: Where’s he going to put it up? INTEREPRETER: Naksong. DYE: How many people does he have up there? Doesn’t he have any tents? INTERPRETER: He has about 30 people there this week. He says they are having a difficult time. DYE: They aren’t having a difficult time. I’m having a difficult time. And what did 16 do last month? Nothing. Why should I give you tents when you do nothing? I think I should give them to people who do something, don’t you? INTERPRETER: He says, yes. He says he’ll do much better now that he has a boat.

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DYE: He’s had his boat two months. I have heard the same excuse before. If he doesn’t operate this month, he’s through. I won’t feed them all winter and nothing done all summer. INTERPRETER: This month he’ll do something. DYE: If he doesn’t he needn’t come in next month. He’s through! Another party would love his territory.27

Although many of the US personnel attached to the guerillas were genuinely helpful and ‘on-side’ with their irregular charges, the loss of dignity involved in this transaction is patent. The guerillas were also treated demeaningly by their ROK brethren, who generally regarded them as draft dodgers out for US rations.28

Operation Round-up Although the Wolfpack units were patronised by the Americans, it was predominantly Commonwealth warships that provided them with their heavy-weapons support, and this proved to be of inestimable value to them. The firepower of a frigate or destroyer was an invaluable force multiplier for the partisans and their US advisers, as it sat there offshore ‘like a protective mother’.29 There were many times when warships like Bataan were reduced to stationary offshore artillery batteries, the patrol taking the form of an immobile picket anchored within gun range of a friendly island. At the end of a day’s steaming, a ship would proceed inshore to anchor at its appointed night station. By the time of Bataan’s eighth patrol, such picket duty in the Haeju Gulf had become routine to the point of mundaneness, as Geoff related: There is very little doing at this particular spot now and we invariably have a quiet night at anchor. Actually all we go there for is to prevent any attempted invasions of our ‘friendly’ island in the area by the enemy and also to silence any artillery that shows itself. Nothing has happened here for weeks so tonight will be no exception. I guess our sleep should be undisturbed.

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However, at other times Bataan saw plenty of action from such static positions in support of the Wolfpack. The best example was Operation Round-up, perhaps the most famous action of Bataan’s career, which took place on 19 May during her fifth war patrol.30 The catalyst for Operation Round-up was a 16 May signal from Admiral Scott-Moncrieff to undertake more active inshore operations, in order to collect intelligence and to ‘spread alarm and despondency’ among the enemy. Accordingly, Bataan was directed to proceed into the Haeju Gulf to ‘cut out’ enemy junks. This sort of thing was allegedly being done on the east coast, so it was up to the west-coast forces to match this new standard of aggressiveness.31 As a recent historian of the war observed, ‘The naval blockade of the west coast gave unlimited opportunity for bold handling of frigates and destroyers in a way that would have delighted Nelson’.32 This will be evident in what follows. Bracegirdle, however, thought that the chances of ‘bagging junks’ with ship’s boats in the prevailing 5–7-knot (9–13-kph) currents were ‘nil’, and, therefore, that any such operation as outlined by the admiral was simply ‘not on’.33 He had to modify his superior’s order for aggressive action into something that was achievable ‘on the ground’, using all the intelligence available to him as commander of CTU 95.12.4, the Haeju inshore patrol forces. Fortunately, an appropriate plan lay to hand. Bracegirdle had already been approached by Captain George Lamm, US Army, the Haeju area Wolfpack adviser. (In action, the advisers functioned as the commanders of the units they ‘advised’34; the subordination of the Korean guerillas to their US masters is shown by the fact that mere US privates would command nearcompany-strength raiding forces during Operation Round-up.35) Lamm had suggested a plan for assaulting the troublesome PongguMyon Peninsula, a plan conceived originally by another adviser, Lieutenant Frank Dunn.36 Intelligence suggested that the peninsula harboured sizeable enemy forces of two battalions supported by ‘75-mm guns’ (actually 76 mm) and at least two of ‘120 mm’ (actu80

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From left to right, Bracegirdle; an unknown US major; Captain George O Lamm and Lieutenant JF Dunn, US Army; Lieutenant JW Golder RAN (Bataan’s first lieutenant), and Commander WF Cook RAN, a staff officer. Lamm, Dunn, Bracegirdle and Golder were the architects of Operation Round-up. (Australian War Memorial Negative 305192)

ally 122 mm). Lamm’s need for fire support could be met by Bataan’s guns and the aircraft of HMS Ocean.37 With this plan in hand, Bracegirdle followed his instincts to mount the operation in his ‘local parish’, signalling HMS Ocean, ‘From observations today consider this operation has more chance of prisoners and intelligence in my area than ordered [in Scott-Moncrieff ’s 16 May signal]’. He formally requested air strikes from Ocean to support an amphibious landing.38 The carrier agreed to provide these from 14 Firefly aircraft, eight of them rocket-armed and six bomb-armed. The whole operation was reconnoitred and prepared within three days, with the details ironed out through intensive 81

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A map of Operation Round-up, showing the landing site on the north of the peninsula, the routes to be followed by the three groups of infantry, moving south to the evacuation beach.

conferencing between Bracegirdle, his departmental officers and the Wolfpack ‘advisers’. The plan was to land a near-battalion-strength force of guerrilla infantry on the north side of the peninsula in daylight. It would then sweep through the peninsula in three groups, striking enemy positions along the way, before rendezvousing with a smaller holding force on the south side of the peninsula and departing in motor junks. Bataan would provide covering fire from her own guns and control of the support aircraft from HMS Ocean. The murky waters and tangled inshore waterways of the Haeju Gulf were an ideal location for Bracegirdle’s campaign of deception and surprise, fire and movement. In order to obtain maximum tactical advantage and to inflict the maximum damage with the least loss, the Communist defenders had to be kept in the dark about Allied 82

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intentions. Bracegirdle signaled mischievously to Ocean, ‘My next recreational round up the coast is definitely on as planned. We must take care not to scare the ducks before the season opens’.39 Rapidity of execution was also essential, so the operation would have to be launched without a rehearsal.40 Operation Round-up commenced at 10.33 am on the 19th, when Bataan opened fire. Two minutes later, the first wave of Wolfpack infantry landed to secure the evacuation beaches on the southern shore. The operation’s success in surprising the enemy was shown by the fact that this entire 400-strong force landed unopposed, and subsequently advanced easily to its objectives. The main assault force was landed along the northern shore in three waves from 12.40 onwards. Sweeping south, it encircled and destroyed the enemy’s garrison forces, acting as the hammer to the southern force’s anvil. It also drew in a Communist infantry counterattack, which was duly smashed by Bataan’s bombardment. The Wolfpack advance also drew fire from mortars, artillery and machine guns, which revealed the enemy positions, permitting air strikes and counterbattery bombardment. By 17.30, the last of the Wolfpack troops had withdrawn from the beach as planned, in good order. The element of surprise helped ensure success—and keep Bracegirdle’s own commander guessing. Early in the operation, ScottMoncrieff signaled, ‘Report what is happening’.41 As the Official Historian has observed: Bracegirdle had not informed Admiral Scott-Moncrieff of the operation and the first the latter knew of it was through reports that morning of an unusual amount of radio traffic in the Haeju area. He called Bracegirdle by radio and asked what was happening. When Bracegirdle told him, he gave Bataan’s participation in the raid his blessing.42

Regular quarter-hourly situation reports from Bracegirdle ensued, such as ‘All going strong’.43 Praise for other elements was also passed on, such as ‘air strikes very good’, or ‘shore spotter very good’.44 83

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Bataan’s guns were very busy throughout the seven-hour engagement, firing 411 rounds of 4.7-inch and 4-inch shells. An operational plot board was set up on the bridge, atop the temporarily redundant antisubmarine cabinet. It was covered in talcum paper, and the Wolfpack forces’ movements were plotted with chinagraph pencils, colour-coded for each of the four raiding forces. These positions were established via prearranged radio checks, as well as by the firing of coloured-coded flares. Enemy forces were plotted and their positions passed on to gunners and pilots. Firing, either from Bataan’s guns or Ocean’s aircraft, was co-coordinated (with the US Wolfpack advisers ashore) from the operations room, one deck below the bridge, using the navigation plotting table as an improvised gun plot. By the end of the operation, this rather cramped space was said to resemble the

HMS Ocean’s busy flight deck during flying operations. Three of 825 Squadron’s Fireflies head the queue, with the massed Sea Furies of 802 Squadron aft. The empty bomb racks on the aircraft suggest a nonoperational launch: probably the air group was flying off to Iwakuni airbase upon the ship’s return to Kure from a war patrol.

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‘black hole of Calcutta’.45 Sub Lieutenant JL Jobson was picked out for special praise for working so well in these conditions. He ‘ran from one side of the ops room to the other all day, giving bearing and ranges for indirect targets and briefing air strikes. He was superb’.46 Functioning as it was as a joint-service observation post, Bataan’s bridge was crowded: US and Korean radio operators here used three army SCR300 radios for communications with the parties ashore. One network was for communications with the US Marine gunfire support team on Cho Do island47, which acted as forward observer, with a direct line of sight onto the target area from the north-east. Another net was an English-language link to the raiding forces ashore, while a third was for Korean-language communications.48 Bataan’s bridge was also the ‘air control’ post for Ocean’s air strikes.49 A vital component of this was air-spotting for the destroyer’s gunnery by the carrier’s aircraft. The air support from Ocean’s aircraft was coordinated from overhead by the Commanding Officer of 825 Squadron, Lieutenant Commander ‘Chico’ Roberts RN. When the CO’s aircraft radio failed, Lieutenant Harry Hawkesworth RN took over and began directing the ship’s gunfire onto enemy positions.50 The fire-support plan was not overly complex, entailing four main phases. Firstly, barrage fire covered the area just inshore from the beach for the initial landing, after which suppressive fire was directed at machine-gun and mortar positions to the north of the landing area, and then upon enemy infantry positions to the south of it. These two fire missions were, in effect, aimed at preventing the enemy from firing on the assaulting infantry from both flanks. Next, fire was shifted further to the west, in order to prevent interference from enemy mortars and infantry positioned in depth beyond the objective. The enemy forces in each of these locations were estimated to be of section or platoon strength.51 The local garrison troops were already greatly outnumbered by the raiders52, but Bataan’s suppressive fire pinned them down and in effect removed them from active participation in the battle. The air strikes were used to thicken up this suppressive fire by strafing, 85

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A Wolfpack casualty being brought into Bracegirdle’s day cabin, there to be operated upon by Surgeon Lieutenant WM Thomson RAN. Note the wicker basket used by the Koreans to carry casualties.

firing rockets and dropping bombs ahead of or along the exposed landward flanks of the assault parties. Again, the intention was to limit the enemy’s ability to manoeuvre, reinforce or counterattack.53 The plan worked and the enemy could do little to halt the southward advance of the assault parties, which suffered only three casualties.54 Only once, in mid-afternoon, did an enemy force, variously reported as being in company or battalion strength55, mount a significant attack, from the west, driving to the south-east and holding up the main Wolfpack force. This was the crisis of the battle. 86

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However, the attack was ‘neutralized’ by Bataan’s gunfire, and the advance continued.56 This was where Bracegirdle’s attention to detail in command, control and communications arrangements paid off. The fire was called for on the Korean net, evaluated by the joint staff on Bataan’s bridge and spotted by a US army private acting as forward observer with the guerrillas, who used the English-language net to provide the fire adjustments to Lieutenant Yule, the ship’s gunnery officer.57 The Official Historian considered that Round-up ‘could have gone seriously astray at many points had it not been for the effectiveness of Bracegirdle’s control’.58 The American spotters and advisers reported that 150 casualties had been inflicted on the Communist troops. In the bag were one ‘live’ Chinese prisoner, 15 cows, 20 bags of rice, 100 sacks of foodstuffs, one rifle and 40 hand grenades.59 Spotters concluded that the gunnery and air strikes had destroyed several command posts, one 75-mm gun, four mortars and three machine guns.60 It is very likely, however, that the casualties and damage inflicted were overstated.61 The Wolfpack infantry had taken other prisoners, but unfortunately they placed little store in the Geneva Convention: less than an hour before the withdrawal of the last troops, Bracegirdle had had to signal that the prisoners were reported killed. He responded by threatening not to evacuate the Wolfpack guerillas from the beaches if they did not bring off live prisoners, but meanwhile reported to Scott-Moncrieff, ‘regret few prisoners taken’.62 These killings were most unfortunate, not only from a humanitarian perspective, but also from an operational one. After all, the capturing of prisoners was one of the main objectives of Roundup. Indeed, the intelligence upon which Bracegirdle relied in planning such operations—such as the locations of targets—was usually gleaned from the interrogation of prisoners obtained by Wolfpack raids. A single Chinese captive represented slim pickings for the intelligence officers. This was an instance where the otherwise very convenient use of irregulars worked against the achievement of mission objectives. 87

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A 14-year-old Wolfpack soldier brings ‘one communist calf’ aboard as Bataan’s share of Operation Round-up’s loot. The boy was purportedly a veteran of 20 parachute jumps behind enemy lines.

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Moreover, the low ratio of US advisers to Korean irregulars over a dispersed battlefield would have made it difficult for the former to retain control over their charges. When Bataan returned to Sasebo at the end of the patrol, Bracegirdle went to see Admiral Dyer USN, Commander of UN naval forces on the west coast. He made official representations on Scott-Moncrieff ’s behalf, requesting that Dyer pressurise the South Korean government to end such atrocities.63 Despite this unfortunate event, Bracegirdle, typically, tried to amuse his superiors, reporting ‘large numbers of cattle rustled’.64 After the operation, the Wolfpack troops brought one of these cows aboard Bataan, where it was presented to the ship as a thank-you offering and tied up to the torpedo tubes. Bracegirdle made a joke of this too, referring in his after-action report to ‘1 C.C.’, one communist calf.65 The ship’s company later quietly released the calf upon a suitably grassy offshore island. All in all, the commander, officers and crew of Bataan could be pleased with their ship’s and their own performance. On top of the personnel, infrastructure and hardware damage that Bataan’s gunfire and air control had undoubtedly caused, she had successfully suppressed enemy fire and kept friendly infantry alive. Bracegirdle had cleverly exploited the specialist knowledge of the various members of his team to maximise the chances of success. Moreover, his amendment of the original plan had minimised the risks by, firstly, limiting the operation to a shallow penetration of the peninsula only, rather than a deeper attack on inland waterways as Scott-Moncrieff had desired, and, secondly, employing Korean boats and irregular forces for the landing parties, rather than RAN ships’ boats and coxswains. His plan, in essence, was more prudent, more auspicious and more mindful of human life—especially, it must be said, the human life in Bataan’s ship’s company! Round-up had been an especially busy day for Bataan’s gunners and ammunition workers. The ship’s magazines had almost been emptied by the firing, requiring two and a half hours’ of hard work alongside a replenishment ship to reammunition.66 It had been busy 89

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A Wolfpack motor sampan coming alongside Bataan during Operation Round-up. Note the unit flag, and the traditional dress of the boatman. Boats like this provided the Wolfpack guerillas with their own amphibious capability. 90

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too for the command team, which had run the seven-hour battle. Indeed, everyone must have been quite tired, as the ship’s company had survived on an average of four to five hours sleep a day over the whole twenty days of the patrol.67 The action itself must have come as a release of tension.

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The crew of Y gun clear away empty 4.7-inch cordite cases after Operation Roundup. The cases were lashed together, tied to the guardrails and returned to the ammunition lighter in port for reuse—an early instance of recycling. 91

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Furthermore, Bracegirdle had had to push hard to get everything planned and prepared before H-Hour, and to ensure that the performance of every part of the team was up to scratch on the day. Bataan’s ratings remember him with affection, but he had put tremendous pressure on his officers before and during Round-up. A personal letter of thanks and apology, circulated to all officers after the operation, provides eloquent testimony to Bracegirdle’s humility and humanity, as well as to his strong task orientation during an action: Support given by this little ship … has been of a very high order; it would not be so if you did not go flat out. You are held in high esteem by all the [Wolfpack] organisations in the Haeju area because you back them up … It doesn’t matter how tired you are … it is what you continue to do for them that counts. You should feel tired … I know I do. When you have the responsibility of command, and many lives are at stake, you will realize how silly, trivial mistakes mar good planning. I make them every day, but … it’s the attention to all details that goes for good results. A stage manager, before the dress rehearsal, sometimes becomes almost impossibly intolerant—rude and sharp. I very frequently have treated you in this manner. If it hurts at the time I’m sorry, but it is all for the one aim. The show must go on. Hurt feelings are small things to excellent results.68

It was with personal touches like these that Bracegirdle maintained his relationships with both subordinates and superiors.69

Improvised control and the chain of command Round-up represented a pattern of initiative and vigour in support of Wolfpack that was repeated a number of times during Bataan’s tour. A further example came during Bataan’s eleventh and final war patrol, in August 1952, when things had started to hot up again in 92

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the Haeju ‘parish’. Bracegirdle observed an increase in enemy artillery activity, focused in particular upon the exposed forward garrison of Yongmae Do. The enemy had moved more 76-mm guns onto the mainland coast opposite. A captured North Korean army officer had confirmed the hypothesis that a fresh attack upon Yongmae Do from the eastern peninsula was imminent.70 Allied-held islands such as Mu Do and Cho Do in the Haeju Gulf were now being shelled frequently. Enemy batteries bombarded them quite intensively, firing between 20 and 50 rounds at a time. Wolfpack parties were their favourite targets, usually while underway in junks, attempting to land on the enemy coast, or just coming and going from their own islands. Naval shore fire control parties were also targeted. Although most of this incoming fire was from 76-mm guns, there was a worrying trend towards the use of 122-mm guns as well.71 Bataan’s consort, USS Strong, was taken under fire by 122-mm guns from a range of 13 kilometres.72 The Communist gunners were challenging UN dominance of the area, interdicting Wolfpack junk traffic and threatening the Wolfpack’s security of tenure over the more shoreward islands. As the Haeju Task Unit commander, Bracegirdle was in no doubt about the seriousness of the situation. He reported that the increase in enemy activity was ‘most marked’, and declared that only ‘prompt and vigorous action’ by Bataan and the Haeju guerilla organisation would be able to ‘prevent this interference’.73 Disruption of the enemy’s nocturnal movements and redeployments could be assisted by flare drops and night bombings by the USAF, and by careful photo reconnaissance during the day.74 The trouble was that the enemy artillery positions were very elusive. Bataan and Strong bombarded suspected locations, but Bracegirdle admitted that: It was impossible to confirm the existence of guns in the reported positions. Intelligence reveals that the North Koreans are adept both

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at camouflage and shifting their weapons under cover of darkness; reconnaissance aircraft have rarely been able to detect the presence of guns unless the guns are actually firing.75

Some of the offending guns were located by Wolfpack intelligence on the Ponggu-Myon Peninsula—the very location of Operation Round-up only three months before. This underscores the strictly limited and temporary effects of even the most successful operation on the enemy-held mainland coast. An American adviser to a guerilla unit based further north on Paengyong Do provided eyewitness testimony to the sophisticated standard of some of these North Korean artillery positions, which suggested why such targets were so elusive. In a company-strength raid upon a particularly troublesome 76-mm position on the Changson-Got Peninsula, he had found a hillside bunker complex. The gun was being fired from a recessed gallery protected by armoured doors. It could be advanced to the aperture to fire, or withdrawn deep into the gallery.76 The extensively engineered facility that this officer described must have represented a ‘Rolls Royce’ solution, which could certainly not have been replicated everywhere. Nonetheless, it seems likely that such hardened underground sites were one reason for the Communist artillery’s ability to persist in the combat area and to conceal their positions. On 20 August, the situation came to a head when the defended island of Sosuap Do was fired upon by 122-mm guns. It was caught in a crossfire between three guns on the western shoreline of the gulf, and another three on the eastern shore. Sosuap Do was the most northerly island in Wolfpack hands, and therefore in a most vulnerable position. USMC Corsair aircraft from USS Bataan had been orbiting in the area when the 122-mm guns commenced firing. Bracegirdle diverted them and used an improvised air-control network to direct them onto these new targets. A Korean observer on top of a hill on the nearby island of Yonpyong Do radioed corrections to an SCR300 radio aboard Bataan, operated by a Korean. The spotting data 94

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was then radioed to the USMC Corsairs via USS Strong. This cobbled-together system operated ‘perfectly’: the air strikes struck their designated targets, and the shelling stopped.77 However, that was not the end of the matter. Bracegirdle was criticised by senior guerilla commanders for not going through the correct channels prior to assuming tactical control of the Corsairs. It seems that a new, more centralised command policy was being asserted by Lobo 6, the guerilla organisation controlling the Haeju area. Bracegirdle’s response was predictable, arguing that improvised control at the local level was quicker than relaying requests to higher authority, and that there was no time to ‘refer matters back further than’ CTE 95.12, the west-coast patrol force commander (aboard the cruiser HMS Newcastle).78 Furthermore, he repudiated Lobo 6’s attempt to assert control, and challenged his own superiors to back him up: ‘I am in no way answerable to Lobo 6 for air mission requests. Request you take this matter up with CCRAK and 95.1 [respectively, the US Special Forces Command and Admiral ScottMoncrieff]’. He appealed to the command prerogatives invested in him as CTU 95.12.4, the commander of the Haeju Gulf naval forces (radio call sign ‘Abuse 4’): These strikes were requested by me as Abuse 4 as a result of night’s shelling and by close tie-up with Lobo 7 [the local Wolfpack unit]. But I insist on being permitted to do this as Abuse 4 without interference from Lobo 6.79

But even that was not the end of the ‘frank exchange of views’ going up and down the chain of command. He had also been critiqued by the naval command for excessive ammunition expenditure. This too reflected a new policy; in this case, that of Rear Admiral JE Gingrich USN, who had taken over from Admiral Dyer as commander of blockade forces. All ships had been instructed to exercise greater care in ammunition consumption, especially in blind or unobserved fire.80 95

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In view of the enemy batteries’ recent ammunition expenditure, Bracegirdle was having none of it: Unless orders are received to the contrary I intend to continue my set plan of using a reasonable proportion of ammunition in direct, indirect, or air spot (when available) to neutralize these positions.

Moreover, Bataan’s imminent return to Australia, and the looming ‘use-by dates’ of World War II surplus ammunition were further factors adduced in Bracegirdle’s defence: I have almost a thousand very old 4.7-inch cordite lot numbers that must be got rid of, and it is my last patrol.81

As it turned out, Bracegirdle’s desires were thwarted by bad weather associated with Typhoon Karen, but he still asserted himself by engaging an enemy gun position in ‘blind bombardment’ the day after, planning a fire plan for a platoon-strength Wolfpack raid that night (which had to be cancelled due to bad weather), conducting a calibration shoot, and then ordering two further blind bombardments of enemy batteries north of the vulnerable garrison of Yongmae Do. Of the last of these shoots, the results were apparently good in spite of it being merely map fire: Observers on YONGMAE-DO later reported that BATAAN obtained 14 direct hits and 6 near misses out of 40 rounds fired, and that all enemy troops had dispersed. The ship illuminated the mudflats North of the Island with Starshells during the night.82

It was not for nothing that Bataan was known along the coast as the ‘big top’.83 It was fortunate for Bracegirdle that Scott-Moncrieff approved of the use of initiative by the commanders of Commonwealth ships. Indeed, he observed with some pride that ‘this matter of initiative by junior officers never fails to surprise the US Navy’.84 Nevertheless, Bracegirdle’s free use of initiative must have borne close watching from his superiors, even from a congenial man like Scott-Moncrieff, 96

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who seemed to have understood Bracegirdle well and genuinely liked him (judging by the tone of their correspondence and the amount of times Bracegirdle enjoyed the Admiral’s hospitality aboard HMS Ladybird in Kure85). From the perspective of a Wolfpack commander such as Captain Lamm, it must have been a lot easier dealing with an officer like Bracegirdle than having to send his operational plans up and down through the cumbersome chain of command. Bracegirdle and the other inshore destroyer captains were, in effect, like a ‘one-stop shop’ for the guerilla commanders. The ship was able to provide naval gunfire support, air support (through HMS Ocean), operational planning resources (through preoperation conferences aboard Bataan), command-post facilities (the ship’s operations room and bridge) and communication networks (the ship’s radios). This could all be done on the spot, on a short timeline, with a minimum of paperwork. A guerilla leader like Lamm lacked a regular unit’s administrative and planning staff, and was too junior to pull strings. Naval officers like Bracegirdle must therefore have come as a godsend. Bracegirdle’s aggressive action in support of Wolfpack units was moreover fully in the spirit of the west-coast naval forces’ operational policy. A meeting early in the war on board HMS Belfast had specifically secured Commonwealth naval support for the west-coast guerillas. A historian of US special operations sums it up: In repeated instances … this naval support proved vital to the survival of the island bases and was a major player in the partisan raids on the mainland. Especially noted for outstanding performance and repeatedly praised with unusual emotion in the American advisers’ wartime reports were the Commonwealth and Royal Netherlands warships.86

This must certainly have been true of the relationship between Bracegirdle and Lamm and Dunn. When they came aboard Bataan before Round-up, Lamm and his two US Army radio operators were presented with a ‘warriors’ welcome’ on the bridge—a double tot of 97

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rum on a silver salver.87 This was another advantage of working with Commonwealth ships: the USN was dry. The strength of the professional relationship between the US Wolfpack advisers and their supporting Commonwealth warships was seen in some surreal moments on the partisan-held islands, when genteel hospitality was offered in the most inauspicious places behind enemy lines. Bracegirdle provides a report of one such convivial gathering, when, anchoring off Taeyonpyong Do, he accompanied Admiral John Collins RAN ashore to give him an impression of the islands off the enemy coast: Colonel WILBUR USMC … and his staff, met us at the village beach, and au jeep we commenced a tour of ‘Greenpark’ (Code Name). On the emergency-landing beach were two crashed Corsairs and a Firefly. Whilst we were ashore a pilot made an emergency landing—was conveyed to a First Aid Post by helicopter, and evacuated by air transport. We then visited ‘Chalet de Ballet’, a neatly framed Nissen hut (Colonel Wilbur’s), and to our enjoyment were treated to Dry Martinis concocted by the hand of a master— even the white pearl onions were present. With the sun just setting we returned to the village beach, bade farewell to our kind host, and returned onboard.88

Most of the US advisers attached to the guerilla units, however, enjoyed less salubrious lifestyles than the estimable Colonel Wilbur, as is suggested in an anecdote provided by Archie Johnston, one of the American advisers to a partisan band on a smaller island: One day when I went aboard [HMAS] Condamine dressed in my usual wool sweater, field trousers, field cap and jump boots, Captain [Lieutenant Commander RC] Savage said ‘Care for a bath, Johnny?’ I replied, ‘No thanks. I’m in a bit of a hurry.’ He then sniffed the air and repeated ‘Care for a bath, Johnny?’ I took the well-placed hint and the welcome bath.89

While lacking opportunities for large-scale combat operations, the 98

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west-coast blockade provided an adventurous war for both the US Wolfpack advisers and for the ships that supported them. Moreover, classified Soviet documents released since the fall of the USSR show that the destroyers’ and frigates’ inshore blockade was even more effective than realised at the time: in the end, one of the telling reasons the Chinese sought an armistice was the high casualties suffered by their army due to the Communists’ inability to provide flank support from the sea.90 There seems little doubt that Bataan’s war off the west coast was a military success. In addition, the west-coast war was a political success for the Commonwealth countries in their relationship with the United States. Commonwealth forces demonstrated not only operational proficiency, but also administrative self-sufficiency. Of all those who sent forces to join the Americans in Korea, only the Commonwealth forces provided their own independent logistics ‘tail’.91 Moreover, the Commonwealth naval dominance of the west coast was diplomatically useful to the United States: the enclosed geography of the Yellow Sea meant that UN ships necessarily operated close to Chinese territory to the west and north. The United Kingdom’s diplomatic recognition of Communist China (unlike the United States) meant that any diplomatic incidents could be settled expeditiously through normal channels.92 It was for this reason that the west-coast blockade was more or less run by ‘the British’, and the Americans had little cause to regret this delegation.

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6 | Shore bombardment Bataan’s role in support of Wolfpack units underscores the importance of the task that would dominate her tour of duty in Korea: acting as ship-borne artillery against military targets along the North Korean coastline. This required extended inshore patrols and nightly bombardments. For the gun crews, this meant that about 12 hours per day could be spent on the guns, leaving barely enough time for eating, sleeping and normal watch-keeping. These routine fire missions were carried out by the cruisingwatch gun crew. A typical ‘interdiction-fire’ task against road junction targets was conducted with a single gun mounting, with four rounds fired per hour at the designated junction in order to discourage the enemy from using that route for nocturnal troop movements or resupply.1 Other missions included firing starshell over island trouble spots and conducting desultory nocturnal harassing fire. Although Bataan possessed four main armament gun mountings, it was standard practice to fire one mounting only during nocturnal bombardments. For routine tasks such as interdiction fire or harassing fire, the full broadside was simply not required. All this meant that those off watch down below were often prevented from sleeping by the firing. What they thought of this requires little imagination. Vince Fazio, who served aboard HMAS 100

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Y gun’s crew after nine hours on the gun during Operation Round-up. They are in action dress: ‘Number Eights’ (long-sleeved cotton working dress), flash-protection hoods, steel helmets and gloves—burns were the greatest killer in action. The man front-centre wields a 4.7-inch shell, weighing 22 kilograms. Geoff Cooper is at front left.

Condamine, provides a vivid perspective on these ‘nights of nuisance shooting’: I don’t know if the North Koreans thought it was a nuisance, but it certainly was to us, as having been jolted awake by the gun firing, there was the interminable wait for the shell case to be picked up and tossed from the gun deck to the upper deck and roll down to the sick bay skylight on the port side.2

Earlier in Bataan’s 1952 tour, B gun was used as the duty gun by the cruising-watch gun crew. However, the chief petty officers’ and petty officers’ mess was in the forward deckhouse, directly underneath this gun. As a result, the noncommissioned officers were kept awake at 101

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night not only by the firing, but also by the ‘penguin parade’ of the cruising-watch gun crew, stomping around the open gun deck in the darkness in an attempt to keep warm. This problem was resolved early in the tour by moving the nighttime cruising-stations gun crew right aft to Y gun (on the quarterdeck). Although this was the gun furthest removed from the ratings’ accommodation areas, it was now inconveniently close to the commissioned officers’ cabins. Bataan’s layout was old-fashioned in this regard; as a prewar design, the officers’ cabins and wardroom were located right aft, while the men’s mess decks were ‘forward of the mast’—all very Nelsonian. It was certainly a fine piece of work on the part of the senior noncommissioned officers to cause the commissioned officers to bear the brunt of nocturnal sleep disturbance, while they themselves slumbered (relatively) peacefully up for’ard. Y gun was, however, a good choice, as it was the most protected from the weather, and the cruising-watch gun crew could spend their watch sheltered in the lee of the after deckhouse. Sometimes the nocturnal fire missions involved only a few rounds. At other times, the cruising-watch gun crew got a good workout. After spending most of her sixth patrol uneventfully screening HMS Ocean, Bataan stole inshore on a Worthington patrol. She closed the coast during the morning watch (0400–0800) and Geoff Cooper’s ‘Blue Watch’ gun crew ‘cracked away’ forty rounds of rapid fire at enemy positions ashore. They ceased fire only upon emptying the last of Y gun’s ready-use ammunition lockers. As Geoff said, it was ‘an abrupt way to awaken the enemy troops’, and, having emptied her ammunition lockers, Bataan ‘cleared off before the smoke had cleared’. This was the only action the men saw in the whole patrol. However, other patrols were busier. Bataan carried out three Worthingtons on her second patrol, each time being assigned her patrol area and targets by the frigate HMNZS Taupo. The targets included ‘troop concentrations’, ‘gun positions’, ‘an ammunition dump’ and ‘80-mm mortar positions’. In every case, the fire 102

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was directed, blindly, at grid squares on a map. Not surprisingly, no results or reactions were observed in any case.3 Before conducting a nocturnal fire mission, it was usually necessary to ‘register’ the guns onto the target. This was achieved by anchoring offshore (in order to be able to establish a fixed firing position), whereupon X gun (the 4-inch mounting) lobbed starshells into the sky above the calculated target position (a map reference). One of the 4.7-inch mountings then commenced a program of ranging shots4, the position of the bursts in relation to the target being revealed in the shifting light of the magnesium flare swinging down to earth underneath its parachute. With the aid of this illumination, the GCO in the director tower observed his own guns’ shell bursts ashore and adjusted the fall of shot onto the target. Once the ranging shots were straddling the target, the target was ‘registered’ (in other words, the required range and azimuth settings were established), and the GCO could use the arrived-at dial settings to ‘fire for effect’, bringing the full broadside onto the target if required. This system of registration depended upon having line of sight between ship and target. However, this was often not possible due to intervening high ground. In such cases, indirect fire was employed, with, it must be said, highly questionable results. The guns were registered onto the hidden targets by a simple expedient. An identifiable terrain feature was established along the line of bearing between the ship and target. The guns were registered onto this point (through the process described above), and then the distance was measured off the map between this point and the target, the GCO thereby determining the extra gun elevation required to hit the calculated target position.5 A bizarre example of such blind map fire was the ceremonial 56-gun salute fired on 15 February to mark the funeral of King George VI. Single shots were fired on the minute at ‘the Queen’s enemies in the vicinity of Wolsa-Ri’ (north east of Cho Do), the first 28 rounds by the frigate HMS Cardigan Bay, whereupon Bataan took over to fire the remaining 28. The firing was done off the map: 103

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‘Before each salvo the gyro bearing of the line of fire was altered slightly to cover a particular area known to contain enemy mortar positions’.6 What the enemy ashore thought of this unusual procedure is of course unknown! Naturally enough, there was a much better chance of hitting targets in clear line of sight, even when the ship was moving. On Bataan’s first patrol, while steaming at 15 knots (28 kph) past enemyoccupied coastal villages, she fired 48 rounds in ‘harassing fire’ over more than 8000 metres range, observing hits upon the houses targeted.7 Accuracy could be further improved if carrier aircraft were able to perform air-spotting for the guns. In such cases, even targets located in dead ground could be engaged accurately with registered fire. During the first patrol, Sea Fury aircraft from HMS Glory spotted for Bataan as she shelled storehouses north-east of Pungchon over a range of more than 12 kilometres. Once the pilots had registered the guns onto the target and the target was engaged, they observed four direct hits ‘and numerous near misses’, albeit with a largish ammunition expenditure of 75 rounds.8 It was much easier for the air-spotter if the ship’s map fire was accurate in the first place.9 However, even air-spotting could be inefficient if the initial ranging shots fell very wide of the target, particularly at long range. For example, on 24 February, when Bataan engaged supply dumps located 14 kilometres away at the village of Munhyon Ni near Cho Do, Corsair pilots from Bairoko were unable to observe any fall of shot from Bataan until such time as they ordered a six-gun salvo. The resultant mass of flash and dust was duly observed and found to be correct for range. Once ‘fire for effect’ was ordered, 46 rounds were fired, broadsides fell in the target area and three buildings were reported destroyed.10 Both the 4.7- and the 4-inch guns could fire starshells, although this duty fell principally upon the latter, in order to reserve the heavier 4.7-inch shells for the actual bombardment. Starshells were also used as a means of early warning, going some way towards making 104

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up for the shortcomings of Bataan’s surface search radar. It was found that the ship’s SG radar set failed to provide sufficient discrimination at short ranges. In the war of the islands off the west coast, with many Allied-controlled islands accessible to the enemy by short-water crossings across narrow straights, or even by marching across the mudflats at low tide, early warning was essential. Starshell therefore provided a lower-tech form of nocturnal early warning of hostile enemy movement. For example, in the somewhat fraught circumstances of the island warfare in the Haeju Gulf, Bataan maintained an early-warning watch by firing a starshell every 12 minutes to illuminate the vulnerable crossing point to Ho Do island.11 Shore bombardments sometimes relied upon silent inshore movement of the ships in the night, and coordinated blind firing upon previously located targets. This gave the bombardment the element of surprise. During Bataan’s first patrol, she operated in company with the frigate HMS Mounts Bay, commanded by Captain Frewen RN, commander of Task Unit 95.12.1. This was the inshore patrol force covering the Cigarette Route, which ran up the west coast inside Cho Do, from Choppeki Point to Chinnampo. The two ships were steaming towards their night anchorage when Mounts Bay was taken under fire by shore batteries. Turning back to support the British ship, Bataan opened up in the direction of the shore batteries with unobserved fire—that is to say, the bursts of the ships’ shells were not in line of sight from the bridge—as they were obscured by the terrain. This fire failed to suppress the enemy battery, however, for more shells splashed into the water astern of Bataan, evidently fired from extreme range. Retiring to safety, Captain Frewen fixed the shore battery’s position on his chart and planned a coordinated response.12 Accordingly, Mounts Bay, Bataan and the destroyer USS Gurke assembled at 1600, received their fire orders, moved into position in the darkness, anchored, and at 1805 were called to action stations. Using the plot board in the operations room, Bataan’s range and bearing to the enemy battery were established, and then passed to 105

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the transmitting station, which produced a firing solution for the guns. The gun layers and trainers set the pointers on their dials to conform to the director, and the GCO commenced broadside firing. The settings were good, for one shell from the first eight-gun broadside burst within the target area. Another six broadsides followed. Having completed the fire plan, the director checked fire, after an expenditure of 56 rounds. The ships, now joined by the cruiser HMS Ceylon, then moved to different mooring positions and renewed their fire onto the target. Bracegirdle thought the coordinated bombardment plan, relying upon stealthy assembly offshore and prearranged timings, was likely to be a highly effective way of suppressing troublesome batteries.13 Night firing produced a spectacular gun flash that could play havoc with the vision of unwary watch-keepers. If a man was looking at a gun as it fired, he would be blinded by the sudden flash, because his pupils would, until that millisecond, have been dilated to gather in as much starlight as possible. Plunged into total darkness, even with his eyes wide open, he would need to sit down on the deck for safety and would be useless for any kind of work for the next 20–30 minutes while he waited for his night vision to recover.14 In practice, the only people on the upper deck during night shoots were the gun crews and the bridge party. Bells were sounded before firing, warning bystanders to look away from the gun. Concentrating as they were on their loading and firing drills, there was little opportunity for the men to enjoy the spectacle of their own firing. However, working with cruisers could provide opportunity for witnessing the sound and fury of a bombardment with some sense of detachment. During her third patrol, Bataan escorted the powerful American cruiser Rochester, with Admiral Dyer aboard, on a 28-knot (52-kph) nocturnal dash northwards to the Yalu. Arriving off the mouth of that river at 0100, Bataan had little to do but maintain a lookout as Rochester bombarded a small offshore island (for the admiral’s benefit). Geoff had the middle watch as bridge lookout, and so had a ‘ringside seat’, observing from about 1000 metres 106

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Geoff Cooper, positioned by the right-hand gun. He has just laid the 4.7-inch shell and cordite case into the loading tray. Beyond Geoff, within the gun shield, is the trainer, responsible for maintaining the required azimuth setting on the pointer dial.

away as the cruiser fired her nine 8-inch guns, with one tracer shell per broadside: First of all we’d see the terrific flash burst forth from her guns and the tracer shell was distinctly visible from the time it left the gun till it reached its target, describing an astonishingly long and high arc in the process … A few seconds after the flash, the explosion would crack across our ears and the distant thud of the exploding shells would follow about 80 seconds later.

Worried about MIG air attacks at dawn, the powerful American cruiser contented herself with ten broadsides, before getting under way again, turning about and heading back south ‘at a great rate of knots’. 107

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Bataan had a similar experience three months later, when she escorted the British cruiser HMS Newcastle past Cho Do on a foray into the approaches to Chinnampo. The cruiser conducted a longrange shoot (from 26 000 metres). Bataan was tasked with counterbattery fire, but ‘not a spoon stirred’, and so her upper-deck parties got to enjoy the spectacle at their leisure. Bataan’s ninth patrol saw her regularly conducting high-speed nocturnal runs known as ‘Jaguar patrols’.15 These were run every second night up to the Yalu and back. Geoff describes the process: A destroyer would be dispatched during the late afternoon to proceed at top speed during the night to the mouth of the Yalu River where a few salvoes would be fired at a target ashore and thence a speedy return to Cho Do, arriving early forenoon. This sustained top speed for approximately twelve hours cooked the paintwork on the two funnels which turned a nasty brown colour and fell off in patches.

The limitations of such long-range unspotted fire upon distant targets is obvious, but even when the ship had line of sight to the target, the position of the shell bursts in relation to the target was not always clearly discernible. Towards the end of Bataan’s 1952 tour of duty, the ship anchored in the Haeju Gulf to fire over 200 rounds of 4.7-inch at various enemy positions ashore over a range of 11 kilometres. Geoff was philosophical about the effectiveness of the bombardment, noting that the puffs of dust ashore from the exploding shells were barely discernible, but that ‘even if we did miss, I’ll bet we gave the reds a headache’. Another cause of inaccuracy was that in spite of the centralised system of gun laying there was considerable spread of shot in a sixor eight-gun broadside. When the opportunity was taken to carry out a calibration shoot at the uninhabited target island of Ari Do, the shots fell within a nominally rectangular space approximately 200 metres deep for range and 100 metres wide for line.16 Given that the firing range in this case was only about 1 kilometre (considered 108

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point-blank), and that such errors would amplify themselves with increasing range, it is clear that, given worn rifling and the resultant variations in muzzle velocities between the guns, long-range broadsides would tend to scatter themselves around the target area in a broader and broader spread. Rocky outcrops on the coast provided useful practice targets for radar-calibration of the guns. In this procedure, the individual guns were set to ranges provided by the Type 285 gunnery radar. Each gun was fired individually and its fall of shot adjusted for range onto the target. This was because each gun had its own ballistic peculiarity, and thus its shots might fall left or right and behind or in front of the target by varying distances at given settings on the laying and training dials. The calibration process took account of this by applying the correction required to zero each individual gun onto the target, effectively ‘tuning’ each gun’s elevation and azimuth settings in order for the broadside to achieve a consistent fall of shot at whatever range was indicated by the director.17 After such a calibration, the guns were capable of great accuracy: a post-calibration bombardment of Keitki To proved that the guns had been zeroed-in (adjusted to ‘present corrected muzzle velocity’) by achieving a mere 50-metre spread for line, with direct hits in the target area from all six 4.7-inch guns.18 There was no doubt about the effectiveness of naval gunfire when the guns were calibrated, the targets were clearly identified by competent observers and the gunfire was registered onto the target. This was illustrated during Bataan’s fourth patrol, when, soon after midnight on 13 April, the Wolfpack garrison on the island of Yongmae Do (in the Haeju Gulf) spotted enemy troops crossing the mudflats from the mainland at low tide. Situated as it was in an isolated position at the easternmost extremity of the chain of Allied-held islands in the Haeju Gulf (see the map on pages 70–71), Yongmae Do was often the scene of action. Forewarned by intelligence sources of an impending assault, Bataan had covertly anchored off Taesuap To after nightfall on 12 April. 109

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This position provided an excellent firing angle, allowing the guns to enfilade the mudflats between Yongmae Do and the mainland and ensuring that stray rounds could not imperil the safety of the ROK garrison. When the enemy infantry were seen moving across the exposed mudflats, the garrison fired an alarm flare just after midnight and radioed the target coordinates, as per arrangements made with Bracegirdle in advance. Bataan firstly illuminated the gap with starshells, and then commenced a preplanned creeping barrage across the mudflats, carried out by Y gun alone, manned by the cruising-watch gun crew. The fire was directed upon the grid squares indicated by the plot board in the operations room. This barrage followed the movements of the enemy infantry, which reportedly numbered about 360. Fire was, however, checked when the Korean radio net became ‘overcrowded and hysterical’.19 Once contact was established with Mr Lee, the English-speaking Wolfpack commander, and with the help of the ROK Navy liaison officer aboard Bataan, order was gradually restored on the airwaves. This all took about half an hour, during which time the battle continued ashore unsupported. Once Bracegirdle had regained enough confidence in his ROK contact ashore, he called the rest of the crew out of their hammocks to action stations. The enemy position had been re-established on the plot, and fire was resumed, now with full broadsides. The guerilla forward observers thereafter were able to pass the positions of the leading enemy infantry on a minute-byminute basis, helped by the 4-inch starshells’ illumination of the mudflats. By this means, Bataan’s gunfire repelled the Communist infantry’s assault and harried them back to their starting positions on the mainland.20 The attack had started at 0005, and by 0140 ‘had been completely frustrated’.21 All of this had depended upon effective battle-management systems aboard Bataan. The wireless office received the enemy grid references from the Korean garrison and passed them to the operations room. There, they were plotted on the ARL (Admiralty Research 110

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Laboratory) plotting table. The ship’s anchored position on the chart was indicated by a spot of light projected from underneath the plotting table. The enemy infantry’s position was marked onto the table, and the range and bearing from the ship’s position were read off the plot and fed into the ship’s gunnery computer (in the transmitting station), which computed the dial settings for the guns. This improvised blind-fire system evidently worked well enough: the Communist infantry had started retreating back across the mudflats after little more than five minutes of firing. The ROK forward observers reported shells falling right among the enemy.22 The officer of the watch (OOW) wrote a succinct account of the engagement in the ship’s war diary. Bataan took up her night station near Patrol Baker … about 2200 a call for fire was received for Wolfpack 3. Illumination and H.E. were accordingly arranged for every approximately 15 minutes. At midnight a sudden increase in tracer fire from Horse’s Neck indicated trouble. Soon after we were requested to provide illumination on the mudflats between mainland and island. The enemy advance was from the peninsula Son-Do in a south-westerly direction using the smaller islands as stepping stones. A line of fire was laid across their advance and illuminants kept the gap lit. By 0130 the attack had waned and enemy were reported to be retreating. In all about 70 shells were fired. [The] Moral being that the intelligence reports can be added up to give a satisfactory answer as to the enemy’s movements.23

The OOW refers to the fact that it had been intelligence obtained from a North Korean officer captured in a Wolfpack raid that had yielded the warning of increased enemy pressure upon Yongmae Do.24 Bataan had more or less single-handedly defeated an infantry assault upon the ROK-held island, stretching the ship’s low-technology fire control system to the limit of its potential by developing a defacto blind-fire capability. This had only been possible because of 111

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the ship’s static position during the battle. Had she been moving, the plotting table would have had to be used for its usual purpose, as a navigation plot. Indeed, Bracegirdle complained to the Naval Board that the ship would have been quite unable to fight this battle if she had been moving.25 This problem was inherent to British fire control systems. Bracegirdle, with his extensive experience serving alongside US ships in the South West Pacific during World War II, was quite aware (as noted in chapter 3) that US ships were equipped with more advanced tachometric fire control computers, providing gyroscopic stabilisation and remote power control (RPC) for gun mounts.26 In short, US ships had a capability that Bataan and other British destroyers lacked, namely the ability to run a navigation plot and a blind-fire gunnery plot simultaneously, using a dedicated navigation plotting table as well as a fire control table; they could manoeuvre and fire blind. The Naval Board was a little piqued by Bracegirdle’s complaints, objecting that the RAN Tribals were ‘not fitted for Blind Fire at moving targets’27, with the imputation that Bracegirdle was attempting to push the ship’s gunnery system beyond its designed capabilities. However, they must have conceded that he had a point, for they noted that upon modernisation (such as Arunta was then receiving, with Warramunga to follow), the Tribals would have two ARL plotting tables, enabling the ship’s officers to run both a navigation plot and a gun plot simultaneously. The Canadian navy’s more extensively modernised Tribals already had two ARL tables, so it may be that Bracegirdle had got his idea when visiting one of their ships— Athabaskan, Cayuga and Nootka were all in Korean waters during Bataan’s second tour.28 Notwithstanding the limitations of his ship’s fire control apparatus, Bracegirdle had exploited the ship’s systems to produce good results in this action. The men were pleased to hear of the positive feedback from the Wolfpack garrison. According to post-action reports, all of their shells had landed on the exposed neck of mud112

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flats. Geoff expressed cautious satisfaction afterwards: In fact the CO of the land forces there informed our Captain that ours was the best gunnery of any destroyer he’d witnessed … So apparently there must be something in this rumour going around that we are a good gunnery ship.

However, there were definite limitations to the effectiveness of gunfire in circumstances where the enemy refused to show himself. Even when the correct map position was successfully shelled, damage to enemy forces and infrastructure often could not be confirmed. The presence of enemy troops in the target position remained largely unverifiable. In effect, the ship was obliged to carry out its fire mission in faith that the enemy was likely to be present in the target area. This problem underlined the importance of intelligence in establishing that a bombardment directed into a particular grid square might inflict actual casualties and damage. An example of such use of intelligence was Bataan’s bombardment of a coastal village opposite Mu Do island on 20 August. Local guerrilla intelligence indicated the presence of 80 enemy troops, so the houses were targeted and struck by many direct hits, causing fires. Bracegirdle had been told that such coastal villages had had their original civilian populations evacuated, and that they were now only used by North Korean troops.29 Human movement was therefore a reliable indicator of enemy presence. Such was the case also on 27 August, when a party of troops was observed running for cover behind nearby hills.30 There was no substitute for an efficient army observation post in clear visual contact with enemy ground forces. For example, on 24 August, Lieutenant Hale USMC directed Bataan’s fire from Mu Do island. Hale was able to observe several parties of enemy troops, adjusting fire upon each group in turn in an evidently highly effective manner.31 Sometimes, however, it was sufficient merely to provide an accurate map reference for the position of enemy troops. For example, over two consecutive nights, 26 and 27 August, Wolf113

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pack observers on Yongmae Do were able to report the position of a party of enemy troops ‘massing on the South-Western tip of the Chongyong Myon peninsula’, just across a narrow strait from the Allied-held island. On the first night, moored to a charted buoy, Bataan commenced blind fire against the indicated map-grid square, with surprisingly good results: 14 direct hits on the enemy position were reported, out of 40 rounds fired, causing the enemy troops to disperse. A repeat performance the next night, with only ten rounds, produced a report of 15 enemy dead and five wounded.32 Although some scepticism is required with regard to such reports, it was undeniably more effective to fire upon locations at which enemy activity had been actually observed. The crews of the 4.7- and 4-inch guns conducted the bulk of Bataan’s firing in Korea. However, there were occasions when the 40-mm crews too had the opportunity to fire a few hundred rounds in earnest. During Operation Beat-up in May, the ship proceeded along inshore channels between Taesuap To and Yuk To, and between Mu Do and Choma Do islands, engaging Wolfpack-reported enemy positions with both main and AA armaments. In the course of a busy (and very noisy) night, the gunners fired off 316 rounds of 4.7- and 4-inch, and 735 rounds of 40-mm shells.33 During Bataan’s sole eastcoast patrol, she used new USN armour-piercing ammunition to fire on shore targets with the 40-mm battery at 9000 metres range—the guns were elevated to 32 degrees to achieve this.34 Trafalgar Day was celebrated by firing the 40-mm guns at a ‘mainland target’.35 It is obvious that with all of this bombarding, service off the coast of Korea produced unusually high ammunition expenditure. For example, Bataan fired off 1009 rounds of 4.7- and 4-inch during one patrol (the sixth, from 28 May to 7 June).36 With a significant proportion of this ammunition being fired blind, or at least against unseen targets on a map reference, the men had adopted a somewhat bemused attitude to such prodigal consumption of shells by the end of their tour, looking upon bombardments as ‘more quid gone up in smoke’. The prodigality of Korean War firing was demonstrated 114

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during Bataan’s last Korean patrol, when ammunition was fired at the enemy simply to empty two of the ship’s magazines and thereby create luggage space for the trip back home.

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7 | Supporting Allied air power From Bataan’s second patrol onwards, the ship’s officers and men were introduced to a type of operation that would become very familiar to the RAN’s destroyers over the next few decades: screening aircraft carriers. Bataan was assigned to the protection of the USS Bairoko, which, together with her destroyers, formed Task Element 95.11. Bairoko was a World War II escort carrier, and thus a modest enough vessel: she was slow for a carrier, at 19 knots (35 kph) maximum speed, with a modest aircraft complement of about 20 World War II–era Vought F4U Corsairs.1 She nonetheless provided most of Bataan’s ship’s company with their first experience of carrier operations, arousing admiration for the intensive sortie rate that she sustained throughout daylight hours. Bataan’s ship’s company was soon thoroughly habituated to the routine of repeatedly executing high-speed turns in close company with the carrier and the other screening destroyers. Geoff found the whole scene novel and highly entertaining. The pleasure was, however, soon spoiled by the loss of his camera! As he stood at the guardrail taking a photo of the carrier, Bataan did a sudden hard turn, and the camera fell overboard as he lurched to maintain his footing on the now sharply inclining deck. For the destroyer’s ship’s company, fresh from the rigours of 116

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their first patrol’s intensive inshore patrolling and bombardment (they had fired 683 rounds of 4.7- and 4-inch2), the days spent in the carrier’s screen, steaming about at 20 knots (37 kph) without having to fire the guns, were as good as ‘a real rest cure’. According to Geoff, this was the ‘fruitiest job of the lot’, for the off-duty watches were rarely disturbed by action stations, and during cruising stations men had time to take in the view, settle back and enjoy some sightseeing. Fortuitously, they also enjoyed a change in the weather. After the freezing conditions experienced during the earlier patrol, the weather was almost warm: it snowed only on a couple of days, and the temperature climbed to –12 degrees Celsius! Screening aircraft carriers was a staple duty for destroyers in Korea. The three carriers with which Bataan worked during her 1952 tour were USS Bairoko, HMS Ocean, and her namesake, USS Bataan. On the first day with Bairoko, Commander Bracegirdle must indeed have been concentrating hard on performing the prescribed manoeuvres safely and efficiently, for he was quite inexperienced in carrier screening. This was because he had served aboard cruisers rather than destroyers during World War II, and his 1951 appointment to the command of Bataan was his first sea posting since that war. He was nonetheless thrust into carrier screening duties right from the first day of Bataan’s second war patrol. Moreover, upon effecting the rendezvous with the Bairoko at midday on 7 March, Bracegirdle was designated as commander of the multinational force of destroyers screening the carrier. Besides Bataan, the screen comprised HMCS Cayuga (a Canadian Tribal) and USS Munro. With only three destroyers in the screen, there was no possibility of anything more elaborate than the three destroyers forming a nominally L-shaped ‘bent line screen’3 ahead of and to one flank of the carrier—whereas the big US fleet carriers off the east coast could have 18 or more destroyers in a circular screen.4 Carriers were able to extend the reach of tactical air power along the entire length of both coasts of Korea. While the US Navy provided a fleet of up to four large fleet carriers for operations in the 117

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deep water off the east coast, usually only a single light carrier was deployed in the shallow and confined waters off the west coast. This division of resources reflected the geography of the Korean peninsula. On the east coast, ports, towns and transport infrastructure were situated closer to the coast due to the high ground rising close inland. Moreover, that coast was more heavily defended by artillery and mines, and the Soviet fleet base of Vladivostok was only a short distance along the coast, north of the Korean border. As a consequence, the more powerful and numerous US naval forces ‘looked after’ the east coast, leaving the more modest naval forces of the Commonwealth navies to patrol the west coast (supported, however, by numerous US ships to ‘make up the numbers’). The carriers’ operating areas were quite close to the enemy shore. For example, during Bataan’s time with Bairoko, the carrier group operated from a ‘datum point’5 about 30 kilometres southwest of Taechong Do.6 This was just far enough out to sea to be invisible, below the horizon from coastal vantage points.7 Such proximity to an enemy-held coast would have been inconceivable in a less benign tactical environment, but it provided major operational benefits. Firstly, the piston-engined aircraft of the day, loaded up with bombs or rockets, could operate over a maximum radius of no more than about 150–300 kilometres from the ship, and carrier aircrew, for obvious reasons, preferred to minimise the time spent flying over water in their single-engined aircraft. Also, in order to get maximum tactical effect from the carrier’s modest complement of aircraft, relatively short flights into and out of the target area produced the highest possible sortie rate. This was helped by the fact that the offshore datum point was conveniently close to the carrier aircraft’s principal operating zone, in the area between Haeju and Chinnampo.8 During the night, the carrier group stood out to sea and cruised in the relatively open waters of the Yellow Sea. It then closed the coast in time for first launch at dawn, thereafter maintaining position in the operating area by doubling back into and out of the wind 118

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throughout the day. At nightfall, it retired again out to sea. The destroyers’ protective task required them to keep station on the carrier throughout all of this, forming and reforming their defensive screen ahead and to the flanks of the carrier with each change of course. The rhythm of carrier operations set the tempo for the screening destroyers. Aircraft were launched in twos, fours or eights, according to the day’s scheduled flying program. The record daily sortie rate for a light fleet carrier at the time of Bataan’s cruise stood at 899, achieved by HMAS Sydney on 11 October 1951, but Ocean’s average of 73 was more typical.10 The west-coast carriers worked a 15-hour flying day, with a launch and recovery cycle every hour and a half.11 Every 90 minutes, the ship would turn into wind for several minutes in order to launch and recover a formation of aircraft. When the carrier turned into wind and settled onto a steady course for flying operations, one of the destroyers stationed herself close astern and just to one side of the carrier as an ‘air-guard’ vessel—known colloquially as a ‘crash boat’. Manoeuvring at speed so close to other ships was of course inherently dangerous, requiring captains and watch-keepers to maintain vigilance and fine judgment as the ships crossed one another’s bows during the turns: The manoeuvre that a destroyer captain is most likely to be called on to perform when the carrier is flying its aircraft is to take up the plane guard position astern of her. If he is ahead of the carrier when the order comes, he has to execute a potentially very dangerous movement to get into position without at the same time getting too far behind the carrier. If he miscalculates, he will either bring the ships dangerously close together or put the destroyer far out of station.12

Underlining the risky nature of such manoeuvring, it was in just such operations as this that Australia’s unlucky third (and last) carrier, HMAS Melbourne, collided with and sank two screening destroyers, first HMAS Voyager in 1964, then USS Frank E Evans in 1969.13 119

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While Bataan was serving as air-guard destroyer, her ship’s company had a front row seat as they watched Bairoko catapult-launch F4U Corsairs from Marine Attack Squadron VMA-312. Geoff noted that the Marines achieved a launch rate of one aircraft per minute. When returning aircraft arrived overhead, the carrier group again turned into the wind, and the recovering aircraft commenced their circuits, circled the carrier and approached to land. Each aircraft followed the one in front through the circuit at intervals of 1 nautical mile (1.85 kilometres), and most landed successfully at their first attempt. Others got waved off by the batman and went round again. Overall, the watchers were impressed by the Americans’ efficient operation, finding it ‘very slick work’. As ‘crash boat’, Bataan was tasked with the recovery of the pilots of any aircraft that went into the water while attempting to take off or land. For that purpose, her 27-foot (8.23-metre) whaler, stowed

To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Bataan’s whaleboat recovering a practice torpedo in Jervis Bay, prior to her departure for Korea.

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to starboard alongside the forward funnel, was used. This vessel was similar to Australian surf-lifesaving boats, but bigger and broader, able to take a dozen passengers as well as the five-man crew.14 Throughout flying operations, the whaleboat was swung over the side on its davits ready to be lowered at a moment’s notice, while the boat crew stood by ready to take their places at the 5-metre oars. Their task was to row to the pilot and fish him out of the water. Unlike the USN, which used powered boats only, the RN and RAN persisted in maintaining this display of Nelsonian seamanship. However, given the strength of the currents off the west coast, this practice had its limitations, to say the least. On at least one occasion, Bataan’s boat crew had to watch as the ditched airmen drifted away on the 6-knot (11-kph) current. If the whaleboat represented the past as far as air-sea rescue technology was concerned, the helicopter represented the future. As Geoff put it, ‘helicopters proved to be the answer to a downed pilot’s prayer’. It was therefore highly significant that the Bairoko introduced Bataan to this latest American technological innovation, as Geoff reported: The carrier also had a helicopter of its own15, mainly used for fishing pilots out of the drink and rescuing any forced down ashore. They’re a marvellous invention and come in very handy. It’s also used for transferring mail from one ship to another, and looks for all the world like a big dragon-fly when it’s hovering over a ship’s quarter-deck.

It is important to emphasise here the novelty of helicopter flight at the time. To a 1952 observer, those first-generation, piston-engined helicopters must indeed have presented a strange (but wonderfully practical) sight. Ditched aircraft were no hypothetical matter: during both Bataan’s second and third patrols, two Corsairs from Bairoko ditched while the carrier was in company. Bataan’s whaleboat boat might have been up to the task of recovering pilots whose aircraft ditched 121

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A ditched pilot is returned to USS Bairoko via a jackstay transfer. US Marines Corps F4U Corsairs are visible on the flight deck.

close to the ship, but the destroyer’s response time to rescue downed airmen further away was problematical, especially if the airmen drifted into shallow water, or if the low water temperature threatened their survival. When a pilot was in the water close off the enemy coast, and the rescue destroyer still far away, separated from his position by kilometres of mudflats, the destroyer crews were even more impressed by usefulness of what Geoff called ‘that invaluable contraption—the helicopter’. The Wolfpack island garrisons also came in handy for search and rescue purposes, as in the case of one of the ditched pilots, Major Walker of the US Marine Corps (USMC), who was fished out of 122

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A bedraggled Major Walker USMC, from Bairoko, is brought aboard and ushered aft to the captain’s day cabin, attended by Bracegirdle (in the white jumper) and Lieutenant Golder, the first lieutenant (in blues, on Walker’s right). Walker had been fished out of the water by Korean boatmen, transferred to USS Chevalier and thence to Bataan.

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Major Walker USMC is winched off the top of Y gun’s gun shield on his way back to Bairoko. He is now warm and dry, dressed as an RAN Commander (wearing Bracegirdle’s best blues), and much the worse for wear after suffering the hospitality of Bataan’s wardroom.

the water by Koreans and brought aboard Bataan by boat. He was at length hoisted aboard a helicopter for return to his carrier. His misfortune in ditching was at least partially compensated for by the treatment he got in Bataan’s wardroom: plied with drink, he was then dressed in Bracegirdle’s formal uniform and sent off dangling from the helicopter’s winch, undoubtedly drier but arguably less sober than when he was initially brought aboard in his damp flying overalls!16 Working in the carriers’ zone of operations regularly gave the destroyer crews close-up views of Allied carrier aircraft in trouble. 124

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One of Ocean’s Firefly fighter-bombers ditched in the Haeju Gulf, inshore from Bataan, during her fifth patrol. Geoff watched fascinated as the flak-damaged machine glided in. It hit the sea, bounced 3 metres back into the air and then splashed down finally upon its belly. As the two-man crew clambered out into their dinghy, the aircraft tipped its tail into the air and sank beneath the brown water, dragged down into the mud by its heavy engine. The plane was too far inshore among the shallows and mudflats for the destroyer’s almost 5-metre draught, so Bataan had to call up an SAR flying boat to pick up the airmen. Another Firefly from Ocean ditched nearby after luckily surviving being surprised (‘bounced’ in airman’s parlance) by MIG-15 jet fighters.17 Having lost its engine coolant after a hit in the radiator18, the shot-up aircraft ditched into the water only 200 metres from the destroyer. The crew, Lieutenants Watkinson and Fursey RN, were rescued by Koreans, brought aboard Bataan, transferred to a tanker and thence dispatched back to Ocean (via their next refuelling ‘appointment’). Bracegirdle thought that the bedraggled flyers’ morale needed a boost, so he presented them with two bottles of whisky, also giving some Sydney KB beer to the Korean boatmen who had fished them out of the water. He personally smuggled the bottles ashore by concealing them inside an Admiralty briefcase.19 Many of the Allied-held islands off the enemy coast had emergency landing strips for crippled carrier aircraft. For example, when Bracegirdle went ashore on Paengyong Do (an island providing a well-used safe anchorage for the frigates and destroyers of the inshore patrols), he found two Corsairs and one Firefly that had belly-landed on the strip. Another Corsair put down while he was there, the pilot being taken to the first-aid post by helicopter as Bracegirdle watched.20 Having been introduced to carrier operations by the USS Bairoko, Bataan’s crew were able to make comparisons with RN carrier operations in later patrols. Steaming astern of the carrier HMS Ocean as ‘crash boat’ during the sixth patrol, the officers and men 125

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watched the performance of their Royal Navy cousins and took a personal interest in timing their launches and recoveries. Ocean, as a light fleet carrier, was a better class of ship than the US escort carrier: faster, and with a larger aircraft complement.21 Geoff was impressed with the British ship’s quicker rate of launching and landing. If Bairoko was ‘slick’, Ocean was ‘slicker’: she launched two aircraft per minute and landed three aircraft per minute. When Bataan was in the air-guard position, just astern of Ocean on her port quarter, the men obtained a very close view of the Sea Furies and Fireflies as they made their final approaches overhead to the carrier. As they passed down the starboard side, wheels, flaps and hook down, there was some friendly interaction between the ‘goofers’—the audience of off-duty officers and men—on Bataan’s upper deck, and the pilots: ‘One of our lads had a humorous idea … and stood on the stern giving the hitch-hikers’ sign to every plane that flew over.’ It must be said, however, that a pilot on final approach to land on a moving carrier, was certainly too busy to pay much attention to what the sailors were up to. Nonetheless, while the novelty lasted, the men admired the mettle of the pilots, looking upon them as ‘a breed apart’. The British pilots seemed to have displayed more bravado than their American cousins (conversely, from a modern perspective this might be seen as a less professional attitude to flight safety!). Returning from operations, the Sea Fury and Firefly pilots delighted the watching destroyer men by performing four-aircraft formation rolls and loops, and by doing the obligatory low level ‘beat-ups’, as Geoff recorded: Of course they revel in seeing how close they can go to the destroyers’ mastheads. This morning one of them came whistling past and cleared the masthead by every bit of ten feet. When it first happened we were quite startled but soon became used to them diving on the ship from all angles.

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RNVR, one of Ocean’s fighter pilots, recalled, ‘Doing a few aerobatics on the way back you just didn’t realize how lucky you were to have that amazing aeroplane [the Sea Fury]’.22 After all this flamboyant showing-off, it seemed somehow unsurprising when in one afternoon two pilots ‘piled up’ on landing. Both aircraft missed the arrestor wires and flew into the crash barrier. Commander Bracegirdle watched all this from the bridge, and drew his own conclusions. He responded by offering an airmanship prize to Ocean’s pilots, in the form of ‘Wallace Wombat the Wave Off Wizard’. This was a toy constructed on board Bataan, described as a ‘hideous wombat covered in red spots’. The captain, as usual, was being thoughtful as well as ‘whimsical’.23 Prize-giving appears to have been part of his standard repertoire while screening carriers, for he had previously given a similar airmanship award to USS Bairoko’s Marine pilots, the prize in that case being a dozen bottles of Australian beer.24 However, in Ocean’s case, the airmanship prize seems to have stemmed from genuine concern regarding her air group’s accident rate. After having worked previously with Bairoko, Bracegirdle intimated to an American colleague that Ocean’s flying operations were ‘very slick, and their landing-on times are terrific. (They give me the shudders!!)’.25 He also admitted in a private letter to Admiral Collins that Ocean ‘goes through a lot of aircraft’. John Lansdown’s history of the Fleet Air Arm in Korea bears this out: his account shows that during the carrier’s seven war patrols concurrent with Bataan’s tour, fully 17 aircraft were lost on operations, with a further 16 lost or damaged in deck accidents. This may have been related to the character of her CO: according to Bracegirdle, Captain Charles Evans RN, although seemingly ‘effeminate’ (presumably in his personal demeanour) by American standards, was in fact a ‘real fighting Britisher, and if need be his whole air group is expendable’.26 Thus it seems that Bracegirdle’s evident concern about the flying safety of Ocean’s air group was not entirely without foundation. It appears that a certain ‘press-on regardless’ culture did exist: 127

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HMS Ocean, with aircraft ‘spotted’ forward, waiting to be struck down into the hangar or pushed aft for relaunching. The after flight deck is clear for recovering aircraft. Dreadful accidents occurred when landing aircraft floated over the arrestor wires, missed the crash barrier and crashed into the forward deck park.

802 Squadron’s landing intervals were so ‘slick’ (down to 18 seconds) that insufficient time was given for the crash barrier to go up between landings—pilots were landing while the barrier was down and the forward deck park27 unprotected.28 That this was unnecessarily ‘slick’ is shown by the fact that even the USN’s large fleet carriers off the east coast maintained a more prudent 30-second landing interval.29 In this context, Bracegirdle’s airmanship prize was therefore meaningful, substantive and well intended. It was duly awarded to Lieutenant CM Jenne RN, a Sea Fury pilot of 802 Squadron30, who wrote to Bracegirdle in a manner that provides strong evidence for the warm personal relations that Bataan’s CO was able to cultivate amongst this floating society of officers: Jenne thanked him, and declared Wallace Wombat ‘delightful’. The toy was destined for his 22-week-old daughter back in the UK: ‘She will love Wallace—she 128

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better had’. Jenne also thanked Bracegirdle for the airmanship badge, which he stated he was wearing on his flying overalls. The accompanying gift of rum, Jenne found, was ‘a well-chosen, thoughtful gift’, and what was left of it was still being used ‘to sustain and fortify’ the pilots. All the aircrew appreciated the interest Bracegirdle had shown ‘in this very practical manner’. Sub Lieutenant DLG Swanson31, who had been shot down and ‘burnt nastily’, was included in Jenne’s thanks; he had been well enough to come down to the quarterdeck from sick bay in order to claim his rum.32 Of course, the destroyer men were mostly left to imagine what the pilots were up to during the time between disappearing eastwards after launch to reappearing in the circuit for recovery an hour or two later. Separated from the enemy coast by 30 kilometres or so of sea, the screening destroyers were normally in no position to observe ‘their’ carrier aircraft in action. However, there were times when destroyer ships’ companies were first-hand witnesses to Allied air power in action. During Bataan’s fourth patrol, in April, while anchored close inshore off Yongmae Do, the watch-keepers were treated ‘practically every night’ to the sights and sounds of the US Air Force (USAF) bombing the port city of Haeju, 19 kilometres up the channel. The US bombers (either Douglas B-26 Invaders or Boeing B-29 Super Fortresses) first dropped parachute flares from about 15 000 feet, after which they commenced their bombing runs. Geoff described the scene: The flashes of the exploding bombs as well as the enemy ack-ack fire was distinctly visible to us from our night position and the glow from the resultant fires would light up the sky above the town.

The bombers would exit the target area by heading south out to sea, passing over the destroyers’ anchorage and flashing their navigation lights to identify themselves as friendly to the watching ships below. Bataan’s men were able to watch the USAF at work in daylight too. During her eleventh patrol, the men watched 24 F-80 jet fighters dive-bombing the city of Haeju. On another occasion, an unusual 129

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task was allocated to Bataan: that of searching for the offshore wreckage of a crashed USAF F-94 night-fighter. The objective was the recovery of the aircraft’s top-secret radar equipment, in order to prevent its discovery by the Soviets. However, in spite of underwater investigations of sonar contacts by divers, the wreckage was not found.33 On the east coast, dominated as it was by the US Navy, naval airpower was provided on an altogether grander scale than in Bataan’s west-coast ‘parish’. Her 1952 tour included only one eastcoast patrol, but this single experience served to introduce her to the bigger (American) scale of operations. The US Navy operated as many as four fleet carriers there, rather than the single British or American light carrier operated off the west coast. This meant that the east-coast carrier force could put over 300 aircraft into the air, compared with the west coast carrier force’s 30. Thus naval air operations were conducted on a scale sufficient to provide the Bataan with an impressive demonstration of air power in action. Geoff provides a vivid account: What we are unable to reach [with naval gunfire], the Air Forces look after and we’ve seen upwards of forty planes fly over us at the one time heading inland. (Carrier-based.) Practically every day and night we can distinctly see and hear the bombs and rockets bursting on targets in the mountains ashore. The sight of a deep red flash turning immediately into a climbing column of dust and smoke is no longer a novelty to us. One day in particular the planes gave the town of Sonjin a terrific hiding. The town itself is hidden from us by a long ridge running down from the mountains and ending in a headland jutting out into the sea. A few buildings right on the water’s edge are just visible to us on the opposite shore of the said headland. The planes dived down into this valley one after the other disappearing behind this ridge for a moment before sailing up in a steep climb after dropping their lethal loads. Some ten seconds later the detonation of the exploding bomb would hit us followed by a 130

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sharp ‘pat’ from the surrounding air which would be the concussion reaching us. Approximately a minute later we would see a terrific column of dust and smoke slowly climbing into the air behind the ridge. After the planes had finished, the entire valley (approx 2–3 miles [3–5 kilometres] long) was completely covered with a long low blanket of smoke and yellow dust which appeared to hang in the air and slowly filter out of the valley like a long motionless streamer. It was still burning there two days later so it must have been a severe job.

Sometimes the ship’s company saw Allied air power brought to bear for their benefit. The navy’s experience of being ambushed by Communist shore batteries at last light, after the departure of the last carrier-borne air patrol, had led to an extension of the flying program: a dusk TARCAP (Target Combat Air Patrol) was now laid on in order to suppress hostile artillery action against ships operating inshore. Thus, in May, during Bataan’s fifth patrol, while the destroyer crew spent a number of quiet days anchored off Cho Do, enjoying the 26-degrees-Celsius warmth, they were able to watch, basking in the last of the sunshine, as the TARCAP aircraft bombed and strafed likely battery positions on the mainland. Bataan regularly saw Corsairs, Sea Furies and Fireflies in action during her inshore patrols, when she served as a control ship in the Haeju Gulf for carrier fighter-bombers. During the eleventh patrol, Bracegirdle, after bringing his own ship’s guns to bear upon artillery positions ashore opposite Yongmae Do, called in an air strike, watching from out to sea as the USMC Corsairs from USS Bataan ‘bombed, rocketed and napalmed the known enemy gun positions’.34 During the same patrol, while engaging enemy positions near Mu Do with observed 4.7-inch fire, three 76-mm shell splashes fell astern of Bataan. Opening the range and returning fire, Bracegirdle ascertained that the guns were positioned behind a reverse slope, and so requested an air strike. Four of Ocean’s Sea Furies arrived almost immediately and were briefed by radio: 131

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On receiving the co-ordinates of the gun positions [they] commenced a low flying search. From 1800 until 1830 these aircraft bombed and strafed the enemy positions, scoring direct hits on likely positions.35

Bracegirdle was clearly doing something right, because Ocean later paid tribute to the excellence of Bataan’s forward air control: When you were inshore your handling of OCEAN’s aircraft was invariably First Class, and every target you gave them was a winner.36

The objective of all this air activity was the ‘strangulation’ of the enemy transport network, and thereby the strangulation of the Chinese and North Korean armies’ logistics tail. This can be illustrated by some statistics from the period of Bataan’s 1952 tour: of the 5877 aircraft sorties generated by HMS Ocean from May to October, 4143 were ground attacks, either against prebriefed targets or targets nominated by Allied ships operating offshore. Bridges were the main target, attracting 65 percent of their bombs, while 25 percent were directed against troop positions and stores dumps.37 A Royal Air Force observer was probably correct in concluding that although Allied aircraft were making life ‘hell’ for the enemy, it did not prevent the Communists from supplying their armies and making life distinctly uncomfortable for the Allied armies.38 The brute fact therefore is that in spite of enormous damage that carrier aircraft inflicted upon bridges, rail lines, tunnels, roadways, buildings, vehicles and rolling stock, the interdiction effort failed to cut the enemy armies’ supply lines. Moreover, the economics of the naval air war was dubious, from a pure profit-and-loss standpoint: a 1951 intelligence report found that the cost of the US Navy’s shotdown aircraft was more than the cost of all the rolling stock, vehicles and supplies they had destroyed.39 This was certainly an air war without glory. As a US Navy jet pilot observed, ‘lucrative targets soon became scarce’.40 This is confirmed 132

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by the prosaic roll-call of targets attacked by Ocean’s aircraft: they bombed, rocketed and strafed huts, radio stations, warehouses, sampans, trenches, flour mills, supply dumps, coastal villages, batteries of guns, road bridges, oxcarts, railway yards, electrical substations and machine-gun posts.41 The west-coast air war in which Bataan participated was therefore only partially successful; Communist supply lines were not ‘strangled’. Nonetheless, it is certain that without Allied air power, as represented in this case by the light carriers that Bataan screened, the UN armies would have faced a far more dangerous foe, and suffered far worse casualties. Indeed, it is incontestable that the naval air war saved many UN soldiers’ lives, and helped prevent UN defeat, and Bataan certainly contributed to this.

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8 | The air and subsurface threats Whether or not the air campaign was ultimately effective, for the ‘Bataans’ it was of course comforting to reflect that all of this air power was on their side. Conditioned no doubt by the navy’s unhappy experience of air attack in World War II, including many very vivid memories of Kamikaze attacks during 1944–45, the officers and men of the Allied blockading fleet remained nervous about aircraft contacts. There had indeed been some alarming air-attack incidents earlier in the Korean War. HMS Comus had been caught napping in August 1950, when two IL-10 Shturmovik planes made the first air attack of the war on Allied naval forces in the Yellow Sea. One 100-kilogram bomb burst in the water close by, blowing a 2.4-by1.2-metre hole in her side, flooding one boiler room, killing one man and wounding another.1 Comus’s AA guns failed to hit either aircraft as they beat their retreat, but the ship was ultimately able to get up enough steam to limp back to Kure at 15 knots (28 kph).2 A similar incident occurred the next month during the Inchon landings, when, once again, two North Korean aircraft succeeded in making a firing pass at Allied warships. This time it was a Yak-3 fighter and another Shturmovik, which attacked the cruisers of the Gunfire Support Group as they lay at anchor offshore. The planes 134

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made a low pass, dropping bombs without effect on the heavy cruiser USS Rochester (one bomb hit the ship’s aircraft crane but did not explode), and then making a strafing run on the light cruiser HMS Jamaica. Having been forewarned by the bomb attack on Rochester, the British ship’s pompom gunners shot the Shturmovik down into the sea before it could make its escape.3 These attacks certainly proved that the air threat was real: if these powerful ships had only with difficulty been able to hit a 250-knot (463-kph) Shturmovik, what chance did they have of defending themselves against 500-knot (926-kph) MIG-15s? The navy knew that it had even had difficulty in shooting down the piston-engined Kamikazes of 1944–45. Moreover, the west-coast operating area was quite close to the MIG bases along the Yalu. The resultant nervousness could produce false alarms, as happened while Bataan was anchored one fine April day off Cho Do. The men’s enjoyment of some welcome sunshine on deck was broken by an anxious moment, as Geoff recalled: We had a little scare when eight jets appeared over us at about 40 000 feet, but they were American Sabre jets doing a bombing run on the coast. By crikey those jets can travel.

A USN ensign aboard the destroyer USS Ozbourn provided a similarly revealing account of the rapidity of jet-aircraft movement: Suddenly a pair of blue navy Panther jets slipped over the mountains and roared out of the setting sun, passing over us at little more than masthead height. They were on us and gone in a climbing turn in seconds. No one on the bridge had seen them, nor had the CIC [Combat Information Centre, the operations room] spotted them on radar; we had been caught flatfooted. Had it been a real attack, we would have been dead meat. No MIGs ever attempted anything similar, but we were certainly vulnerable to such an attack.4

Geoff provides an example of a similarly anxious moment on the bridge of Bataan: 135

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Fortunately we were never attacked by aircraft although a constant lookout was maintained. I recall one occasion on the east coast when I was port lookout on the bridge. I sighted what at a distance appeared to be a group of planes flying at sea level heading our way. I immediately reported the sighting to the O.O.W. [officer of the watch]. He after a good long look, said, ‘Relax, Cooper, they’re snow geese’.

Although Bataan’s AA armament had been modernised during her lengthy refit in Sydney, it remained inadequate to cope with modern air attack. She mounted six single 40-mm Bofors Mark 7 mountings, fitted port and starboard in three pairs. The Bofors was a quick-firing anti-aircraft gun, fed by four-round clips to produce a theoretical (though unaimed!) rate of 120 rounds per minute. Its 1-kilogram high-explosive shells were optimised for engaging attacking aircraft at relatively short range.

To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

One of Bataan’s six single 40-millimetre Bofors guns, during a practice anti-aircraft firing in July 1952. The four-round ammunition clips are clearly visible.

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The obsolete quadruple pompom on the after deckhouse had thankfully been replaced during the 1951 refit by a more modern twin 40-mm Bofors Mk. 5 mounting. The Bofors, although still a visually aimed weapon, was longer-ranged, harder-hitting, lighter and more reliable than the quad pompom. All of the Bofors guns were in power-operated mountings5, and featured efficient and modern gyroscopic gun sights.6 This was a visual sighting system that automatically calculated the amount of ‘aim-off ’ or deflection required to hit a moving aircraft target, and doubled the chance of getting a hit.7 However, the Mk. 14 sight fitted to Bataan’s single 40-mm mountings had only a 300-knot (556-kph) deflection limit8, which was inadequate for jet targets. Indeed, experience showed that Bataan’s Bofors gunners were unable to follow low-level jet targets. During Bataan’s fifth patrol in 1952, while close inshore in the lee of Cho Do, the destroyer crew had the pleasure of observing Australian jet fighters in action for the first time, when 77 Squadron RAAF provided the dusk TARCAP. Bracegirdle must have been delighted to hear the Australian voices over the radio, for he requested and received control of the fighter direction radio circuit in order to request a fly past. The two Australian pilots, flying Gloster Meteor jet fighters, needed little encouragement, and promptly beat up the ship ‘in a most spectacular manner, flying very low’, as Geoff observed. While enjoying the spectacle from the bridge, Bracegirdle noted with unease that the ship’s gun crews were unable to hold and track the speeding jets.9 The sunbaking crew, however, enjoyed ‘the whole show, especially when they whistled over us at masthead height’, as Geoff testified. Coincidentally, 77 Squadron’s ‘stamping ground’ was much like Bataan’s: the Haeju area and the strip of country running northwards to Pyongyang.10 If the Bofors guns had difficulty holding their targets, the twin 4-inch AA mounting (X gun) would have been even more sorely tested against a 1952 air threat. This weapon was optimised for high-angle AA fire, with a maximum elevation of 80 degrees (much better than the 4.7-inch guns’ 40 degrees).11 It could fire a 16-kilo137

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gram shell out to an altitude of 38 000 feet, achieving this height if fired directly above the ship.12 However, it could traverse at a maximum rate of only 10 degrees per second.13 When firing in AA mode, a fuse-keeping clock in the fire control room (the transmitting station) was used to calculate the fuse settings, based on visually estimated range and rate data inputs from the high-angle director. Although this fuse-setting solution was automatically transmitted to the guns on a continuously updated basis, the loading numbers still had to manually set the fuse. This was done by placing the tip of the shell into fuse-setting clocks at the gun position, whereupon, the fuse being set, the shell could be loaded and fired. If all went to plan, it exploded right in front of the offending aircraft! This might have worked adequately against high-level targets flying straight and level at moderate speeds, but such an attack profile was hardly realistic in 1952. The 4.7-inch guns were even worse, needing their fuses to be set by the men’s fingers prior to loading.14 These process shortcomings were obviated somewhat by the introduction of VT or ‘proximity’ fuses. These were, in effect, miniature radar sensors which detonated the shells automatically when they sensed the proximity of the target.15 US Navy trials concluded that VT fuses produced a seven-fold increase in the effectiveness of 5-inch naval gunfire.16 They were used by the 40-mm guns as well, but were only being introduced to Bataan during her 1952 tour; trial firings were still going on as late as August17, only a month prior to the end of the tour. Therefore, the antique fuse-keeping-clock system was still being practised in Korea-era exercises.18 Bataan’s fire control radar was no help at all. The British Type 285 set was only usable against surface targets; its nonelevating aerials and manual traversing meant it was entirely incapable of tracking aircraft targets. As a result of all this, the ship’s AA gunnery was entirely visually aimed, and all AA target ranges were visually estimated. Given the fast and low attack profile to be expected from any 1950–53 air threat, only fast-firing Bofors guns could provide the ship with any practical AA defence. 138

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In view of all these technological shortcomings, it was indeed fortunate that the Chinese MIGs confined themselves to air-toair combat at 40 000 feet, north of Pyongyang. Naval commanders were very aware of their ships’ vulnerability to these fast, cannonarmed aircraft. Commander Marks, Bataan’s CO during her first Korean tour, was always anxious about operating his ship in daylight to the north, near the Chinese air force’s MIG airbases across the Yalu River.19 By the time of Bataan’s second tour in 1952, the MIG threat meant that Allied ships only approached the Yalu in darkness, departing the area at about 0300 to steam back south ‘at a great rate of knots’, as Geoff put it, so as to be out of the jet fighters’ striking range by daylight. Bracegirdle readily concurred with this, explaining the necessity of getting south by daylight in jocular terms that only partly hid his traumatic personal experience under air attack in 1941:20 The early departure from this patrol area was ordered to ensure that ships were south of 39°10’N before dawn, and thus not under the ‘Ailerons of Antung Airfield’ with a possible visit from MIG the Merciless with your marmalade. Anybody with an old Crete-onians Tie or Jersey would readily appreciate remaining too long (35’ only from the YALU River) at Silly Mid-on.21

Bracegirdle is referring to the Mediterranean Fleet’s unhappy experience without air cover during Churchill’s bungled Greek campaign of 1941. The technological gap between the MIG threat and the ships’ AA systems was underlined by the disappointing results of practice AA firings. At the end of Bataan’s third patrol, while returning to Sasebo in company with USS Bairoko and HMCS Cayuga, the opportunity was taken to provide the 40-mm gun crews with a close-range AA target—one of Bairoko’s aircraft towed a sleeve target back and forth overhead. In spite of being taken under fire by all three ships’ 40-mm guns, the sleeve was not hit.22 With practice, the gun crews’ marksmanship did improve, 139

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however: in May, during a close-range shoot in competition with the carrier HMS Ocean, Bataan won, shooting down two sleeve targets to Ocean’s one.23 The next month, while under way in company with Ocean and the destroyer USS Carpenter, Bataan shot down her first two targets in quick succession.24 Though this was encouraging, the results had been achieved not against MIGs but against slowmoving drogue targets; these fabric sleeves were dragged behind piston-engined aircraft at no more than 250 knots (463 kph), and their weight and drag greatly impeded the tow aircraft’s manoeuvrability, limiting it to sedate passes and gentle turns. The US Navy’s drones presented a somewhat more realistic target. Effectively small radio-controlled aircraft, they were able to complicate the gunners’ firing solutions by tight turns and sudden manoeuvres. However, technical mishaps could present them in a somewhat comic light. The USS Genessee, an Avgas carrier (a refuelling tanker for the carriers’ thirsty aviation fuel bunkers), had a secondary task of providing drone targets for AA practice. Unwittingly, she provided the destroyer crews with some gratuitous entertainment during practice firings on 6 March. The first drone went out of control as soon as it left the launching rail, and fell into the sea beside the ship. The second one went a bit better, but the strong wind blew it back aboard; it ended up draped over the Genessee’s radar array.25 However, when the drones functioned correctly, the gunners had to work very hard to follow them. During August, Bataan was in company with the cruiser HMS Newcastle when the ships undertook a close-range AA exercise against a drone target. Bracegirdle reported the results: The very violent manoeuvring which the drone was capable of executing gave the close range weapons crews a most difficult target. Both ships exercised several firing runs, but the drone was not hit.26

Another, far less realistic way of practising AA gunnery was to launch starshells from the 4-inch, then have gunners fire at the flares as they drifted to earth beneath their parachutes.27 This was hardly a cred140

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ible substitute for an attacking aircraft, but at least had the virtue of providing a live AA firing opportunity for the gun crews. It is clear that although the navy was assiduous in its attempts to maintain skills in AA firing, the effectiveness of Allied ships’ defences against real attacks by jet aircraft must be doubted. Allied sailors must have considered themselves very fortunate that the Communists did not train and deploy their jets for strikes against naval forces. This would apply in particular to the mainly Commonwealth forces off the west coast, hemmed in within a relatively narrow sea bounded by enemy-held coast to the east, west and north. Lacking jet fighters aboard the light carriers, they would have been quite unable to defend adequately against attack by MIGs. In the event, the Communists used their air forces neither to attack UN ships nor to attack the UN ground forces. They did this because Stalin had prudently imposed a ‘no feet wet’ rule, in order to prevent the embarrassing capture of shot-down Soviet pilots.28 As a result, UN forces gained very considerable operational freedoms: truck convoys drove with headlights on29, while both warships and tankers sat safe at anchor right off the enemy coast. According to Jeffrey Grey, the Soviet refusal to use their air forces in these offensive air-to-surface roles ‘was a conscious imposition of limitations’ in order to prevent ‘the war from getting dangerously out of hand’.30 The RAN seemed to have understood the enemy’s self-imposed limitation, for it took calculated risks by sending noncombatworthy ships to Korea. Indeed, the Official Historian makes the startling suggestion that when Bataan broke down in 1951, the Naval Board was so bereft of alternatives that it knowingly despatched technically deficient ships. Gambling on the fact that the Communist air threat was unlikely to be realised, it sent Anzac to the war zone, despite the fact that she was regarded as an ‘untried prototype’31, for the Battle Class had problem-plagued (read ‘unserviceable’) fire control systems in anti-aircraft mode. Rear Admiral Guy Griffiths, who served as gunnery officer aboard Anzac, confirms this. He found the Flyplane Mk. 2 radar fire control system for the Battles’ twin 4.5-inch 141

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‘consistently unreliable’ and a ‘maintenance nightmare’, pronouncing, ‘thank goodness we were not exposed to air attack’.32

Danger from the deep The aircraft carriers that Bataan screened made excellent targets for torpedoes. So did the tankers moored in the anchorages off the west-coast islands. It was doubly lucky therefore that the Soviets did not supply the North Koreans or Chinese with submarines and submariners for use in the war against the US and its allies. They had already done something like this for the Communist air war, providing not just MIG-15 fighter jets and trained pilots, but whole Soviet fighter units.33 The captain of the carrier HMS Theseus, Captain AS Bolt RN, reflected upon the unrealised Soviet submarine threat with the clarity of someone who had fought a long and hard campaign to defeat the German U-boats during 1939–45: There were many times when I wondered what would have happened if a few well-handled [Soviet] U-boats had been in the vicinity. Three destroyers on a closed concentric circular screen, screening two carriers on a steady course at 12 knots [22 kph] was the situation on more than one occasion when replenishment was being carried out by members of the screen.34

A US Navy destroyer officer drew a similar conclusion: ‘Any challenge by submerged Soviet submarines would have significantly changed the character of the war, to say the least’.35 The dangerous possibility of the eruption of Soviet submarines into the war, even if their activity had been confined to more covert than overt roles, had been recognised from the start: in the operation order for the September 1950 Inchon landing, Bataan’s CO, Commander BM Marks, must have read the following passage with some interest: ‘Foreign submarines may be encountered on reconnaissance or mining missions’.36 The Soviets certainly had a respectable submarine warfare capability, for the Soviet Pacific Fleet based in Vladivostok and 142

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Petropavlovsk (on the Kamchatka Peninsula) included a significant force of submarines. However, Vladivostok was at the tail end of a long and inefficient supply chain from the Soviet Navy’s home base in the Baltic. In addition, the Soviet Pacific Fleet had weak surface forces, dominated by mine warfare, patrol and coastal vessels. This demonstrates that the Soviet Pacific Fleet’s essential posture was one merely of coast defence. It had not yet built the capacity for engaging in strategic maritime warfare that it would develop later on in the Cold War. Additional geographical handicaps were imposed upon the Soviet Navy’s ability to intervene: firstly, both of the Soviet Pacific Fleet bases were iced-in during winter, while the Allies enjoyed the use of more southerly ice-free ports in Japan. Secondly, Vladivostok was only 50 kilometres north of the border with North Korea, and thus vulnerable to Allied blockade and, in a worst-case scenario, air attack (particularly while iced-in over winter). An additional severe tactical constraint was that any submarines attempting to move south would be forced to negotiate the choke-points of the La Perouse and Tsushima Straits, rendering them vulnerable to concentrated Allied antisubmarine (A/S) patrols.37 For all these reasons, it is plain to see why no submarine attack eventuated, or why Stalin baulked at the notion of escalating the war by resorting to undersea warfare. Nonetheless, the Allied navies had to take seriously the potential threat offered by the Soviet submarines, and tried to forestall complacency by insisting upon round-the-clock sonar watches and regular A/S exercises to maintain crews’ currency in sub-hunting. Indeed, as noted in chapter 4, during Bataan’s first 1951 workup for Korea, she had conducted exercises using Asdic sonar equipment with a ‘live’ submarine target, HMS Telemachus (at that time, the RAN was yet to establish its own submarine force, and hence RN submarines remained based in Sydney until the 1960s).38 The results of the exercise may have had ambiguous effects upon the crew’s confidence in their ship’s imagined invulnerability, as all three practice torpedoes 143

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fired passed directly underneath the ship! This emphasis upon A/S exercises continued during Bataan’s second 1951 workup, when she spent the day after Boxing Day outside Sydney Heads ‘going around in circles and zigzagging about all over the place’ during A/S exercises with two of the RN submarines; Geoff thought she must have looked ‘damned silly’ to onlookers on the beach at Bondi. However, Bataan’s antisubmarine armament was by no means state-of-the-art. Her standard attack was a pattern of five depth charges, delivered by firing one charge each from the single depthcharge throwers mounted port and starboard, plus a sequence of three charges rolled into the water from the stern depth-charge rack. By comparison, US destroyers were able to fire a seven- or ninedepth-charge pattern, as they had a heavier battery of depth-charge throwers.39 Moreover, many contemporary ships were also fitted with antisubmarine mortar systems such as Hedgehog, Squid or Limbo.40 For

To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Bataan depth-charging a towed underwater target while screening Bairoko off the west coast, March 1952. The port depth-charge thrower is visible behind the men, fully extended, having just flung out its depth charge.

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example, the RAN’s Anzac and Tobruk had the Squid system fitted from the start. These weapons had the advantage that the charges could be fired into the water ahead of the ship. By comparison, a depth-charge attack by Bataan required her to steam right over the submarine’s position in order to fire the pattern of charges over her stern. A/S exercises were regularly scheduled during operations off the Korean coasts, including live depth-charge attacks upon towed underwater targets.41 In the course of hour-in, hour-out Asdic watches, it is not surprising that there were false alarms. The vagaries of ocean conditions meant that ships wasted time on nonproductive hunting of spurious underwater sonar contacts, as recalled by Geoff: We had a couple of submarine alarms, but after racing about for a while and losing contact with same, they decided it must have been large schools of fish.

During her ninth patrol, Bataan was called away from screening the cruiser HMS Newcastle to race off at 26 knots (48 kph) on an ‘emergency mission’ to hunt down a submarine reported on the surface off Fukae Shima (off the west coast of Kyushu). Joining HMS Comus and a USAF Albatross flying boat, she conducted a methodical square search and after four hours of extending the search area, Bataan ‘fired a pattern of five depth charges at a possible submarine contact’. However, the contact was deemed to be ‘non-Sub’.42 Geoff describes the incident: We chased around for the best part of an afternoon and all night and only got one contact on our under-water sound detection apparatus, so we dropped a pattern of depth-charges just for stamps. When we circled back over the spot we were unable to pick up any contacts on the object, so I daresay it was some poor inoffensive whale or something in the fish line.

Besides maintaining a ceaseless vigil against the entry of Soviet submarines into the conflict, Asdic was also useful for mine detection as 145

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Bataan depth-charging a ‘suspect Russian sub’ off the south coast of Korea, July 1952. This contact was evidently believed to be a real submarine, judging by the body language of the men crowded all over X and Y decks.

the mines used were large enough to produce an echo. This capability was practised routinely during World War II.43 Sonar detection alone, however, was not an adequate answer to the threat. Mine warfare caused a lot more anxiety in Korea than did the hypothetical submarine threat. The North Koreans had had no maritime warfare capability in 1950, having expected that their quick, blitzkrieg-style ground campaign would lead to a swift and suitably ‘glorious’ victory. Therefore, they were initially not well prepared to contest the UN forces’ imposition of the naval blockade around their shores. But by September 1950 this had changed; in that month, Allied ships approaching the entrance to the port of Chinnampo encountered Soviet-supplied mines. Ominously, it was concluded that ‘they … could have been laid by any reasonably sized junk’.44 The problem for the Allied navies was that, in order to effectively blockade the enemy coast, their ships were obliged to patrol close inshore. Under the navigational conditions of the west coast, this meant repeatedly traversing a finite number of channels. These the 146

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Allied navies had sounded, charted and buoyed. It would clearly have been a relatively simple operation for the Communists ashore to observe this and, once the patrolling destroyer or frigate had passed by, take advantage of darkness to lay mines in those channels. Fishing junks therefore had to be viewed with suspicion by the Allies, as it was quite likely that the North Koreans would press them into service as covert auxiliary minelayers. Mines, moreover, could achieve a strategic objective for the enemy without sinking or crippling a single Allied ship: they could simply deny to the UN naval forces the use of inshore waters, thereby defeating the blockade. Naval anxiety about this threat gave rise to a certain tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. During Bataan’s first tour, in accordance with instructions, she fired upon a junk suspected of mine-laying45, only to discover later that she had fired upon a friendly junk operated by Wolfpack troops.46 Mines were a powerful weapon against smaller warships like destroyers. Ensign Charles F Cole USN viewed the mine-damaged hull of USS Brush while she was dry-docked in Sasebo: Resting on blocks was Brush with her starboard side exposing the extensive damage from running into a contact mine. She had a hole beginning at the waterline and just forward of Mount #51 [in RAN terms, A gun, the forward twin 5-inch turret], large enough so one might drive a jeep in one side and out the other.47

USS Mansfield provided another example of devastating damage from a mine. She lost her entire bow forward of Mount #52 (B gun).48 Both of these ships were large modern Sumner-Class destroyers, with state-of-the-art damage control. In contrast, the Tribals were built upon old-fashioned constructional principles: riveted plating and transverse framing, which was inferior to the more modern US system of welded plating and longitudinal framing.49 Riveted Britishdesigned ships had poorer damage-control characteristics once the hull was damaged by underwater explosions, as the shock wave propagated itself through the plating and popped seams and rivets 147

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far from the localised impact point (Titanic-style). As noted in chapter 3, Bataan’s power plant moreover lacked the unitised50 layout of these more modern American ships, making her yet more vulnerable to battle damage —a hit in only one of the four machinery compartments would likely disable her steam power plant and leave her dead in the water. It was therefore lucky for the Commonwealth navies that the USN proved effective in sweeping the channels of mines. The sudden (but surely hardly surprising?) irruption of North Korean mine warfare into the Allied naval blockade in September 1950 produced a desperate scramble on the part of the USN to mobilise all available minesweepers, but these were few and far between at the time.51 As the US Navy Historian explained: In June 1950, [only] one steel-hulled sweep and six wooden sweeps were in commission in the Far East. A second steel-hulled sweep was in standby condition in Japan. Four high-speed minesweepers … arrived in WestPac by October, but these still were not enough to sweep three major invasion sites. In addition to needing more ships, the Navy had few trained people. Nearly all officers and men in mine warfare during the Second War had been reservists and by 1950, they were long gone. Mine-sweeping had nearly become a lost art.52

This unglamorous chore was left entirely to the unsung minesweeper crews of the US Navy, the ROK Navy and Japanese civilian subcontractors. The Commonwealth navies deployed no minesweepers to Korea and the RAN played no part whatsoever in this vital work. Like the USN, the Australian service had put its mine-warfare capability into mothballs in the short half-decade of peace, despite the RAN’s 21st and 22nd Minesweeping Flotillas having made a large contribution to the Allied navies’ minesweeping mission in the earlier conflict. Minesweeping was apparently regarded as a career dead-end for professional naval officers, and thus the Western navies’ minewarfare capabilities had been the subject of the deepest cuts in the post–World War II demobilisation. The assumption seemed to be 148

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that mine-warfare capability could be run down in peace but reacquired quickly in war. The threat posed by junk-launched floating mines could never be discounted, and such mines were furthermore unsweepable; they had to be located individually, which, given that they drifted with the currents and tides, could be problematic. Other types of mine, however, moored or seabed, could be defeated by sweeping. This involved minesweepers towing cutters to slice through the moored mines’ cables, electrodes to trigger magnetic mines and noisemakers to set off acoustic mines.53 By the time Bataan arrived for her second Korean War tour in 1952, the American-, South Korean- and Japanese-manned minesweeping force had succeeded in keeping the channels clear for Allied navigation. Indeed, Geoff did not see a single mine during the whole tour, and had drawn the conclusion that there were, in fact, no mines out there. So well had the crews of the unglamorous small ships done their job that, by 1952, Allied ships could patrol inshore almost as if the Communists had never had any mine-warfare capability.

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9 | Navigating in hazardous waters Destroyers were ‘blue-water’ vessels, conceived for operations on the open sea, whereas off Korea they were often used for patrols close inshore more befitting a gunboat. Commander Monroe Kelly USN described the inherent navigational and operational hazards of the west-coast operating area: It had a very high tidal range, of more than 30 feet [9 metres], with a continual tidal stream in the channel of 7 or 8 knots [13–15 kph]; there were large areas of mud flats at low water; there was very little sea-room for turning or manoeuvre.1

Operating in this environment with more than 4 metres of draught2, Bataan had to be steered with the utmost care during her patrol and bombardment duties. The skills of Bataan’s navigation officer, or ‘pilot’, Lieutenant RB ‘Dicky’ Nunn RAN, were vital to the ship’s safety. The pilot’s traditional preserve was the charthouse, situated under the bridge’s flag deck, where during routine blue-water voyages he could be found bent over his chart table with his parallel ruler and dividers. In Korea’s inshore tactical environment, however, he worked in the operations room under the bridge. The ops room was furnished with a radarscope for the SG sur150

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Bataan’s bridge party, on the voyage to Japan, February 1952. The pilot is updating the chart, Bracegirdle is standing in front of the captain’s chair at right, and the two officers of the watch are conferring in the centre, in front of the compass platform. A seaman watch-keeper stands behind the clear vision screen on the left. Note the Union Jack atop B gun, a recognition feature for Allied aircraft.

face-search and navigation radar, and an Admiralty Research Laboratory (ARL) plotting table. Linked to the gyro compass and the transmitting station, the ARL plot was a primitive form of moving map display. With a chart secured on the transparent tabletop, the ship’s calculated position was indicated automatically by a light that shone through from beneath, the spot of light moving slowly across the chart in accordance with the ship’s movement. This automatically calculated navigation plot always had to be manually checked and corrected, but in the ‘narrow tide-bound 151

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channels’ of the west coast, it was essential that the navigating officer fix the ship’s position anew every two minutes.3 As Admiral Collins noted on his orientation voyage up the west coast aboard Bataan in August 1952, this was a far more onerous navigational requirement for watch-keeping officers than was customary.4 Among the mudbanks and islands off the west coast, even this level of meticulousness availed little at night, in snowstorms or under the lashing of hurricane-driven rain. In these conditions, radar came into its own, providing ranges and bearings on prominent landmarks such as headlands, islands and mountains. Such data was traced onto the chart table, enabling the navigation officer to plot the coastline and then match this to his charts in order to fix the ship’s landfall. This could, of course, be done in complete darkness or in conditions of nil visibility such as in fog or rain squalls. Radar was thus a navigational godsend, so much so that, when operating in inshore waters at night, the navigating officer never strayed from the operations room, so that he could continuously monitor the radar screen. Bataan’s SG radar was an American surface-search set, obtained by the RAN through USN channels during the ship’s World War II– era gestation, at a time when the RN was having problems supplying up-to-date British radar apparatus to Australia (Bataan’s SC-4 air-search radar was also supplied by the United States). SG was the first American surface-search set with a wavelength of 10 centimetres, and the first microwave search set to use a PPI (plan position indicator)5 display. It transmitted in an S-band wavelength, emitting a ‘pencil beam’ for precise target discrimination at sea level, and was the standard US Navy surface-search radar on destroyers and larger warships. Its detection range was 24 kilometres against either a destroyer-sized vessel or against a large aircraft approaching at an altitude of 500 feet.6 Radar was self-evidently useful in providing reliable navigational fixes among the convoluted inshore sandbanks and winding channels of the west coast, but it also helped with the taking of soundings. Water depth was a known value if the ship was steaming in marked 152

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Bataan’s three radars are visible in this fine portrait, taken from HMS Ocean off the coast of North Korea: from top to bottom, the large ‘bedstead’ aerial of the SC-4 air-search radar is atop the mast; the small ‘cheese’ aerial of the SG surface-search radar is just forward of the mast at the level of the crosstree; and the insect-like array of the Type 285 gunnery ranging radar is atop the rangefinder director aft of the bridge.

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channels, but thorough soundings were required if the ship was to proceed up any new channel. On 18 April, for example, Lieutenant Golder embarked in a USN LCVP (landing craft, vehicle, personnel)7 with a radio set and a party of signallers. Using the borrowed landing craft, he took four hours to take 200 soundings for a new channel. He radioed in each sounding, which was then fixed on the ops room chart by the pilot. The 285 gunnery ranging radar provided the soundings’ ranges from the ship, while the bearings were provided by visual fixes upon the LCVP taken from the bridge.8 By this procedure, a new channel almost 6 kilometres long was sounded, enabling the ship to obtain an advantageous bombardment position in order to forestall an expected enemy assault upon the island garrison of Yongmae Do the next day (see pages 109–10). As the channel had a depth of four fathoms (7.3 metres) at low tide, the ship was able to negotiate it so long as the pilot took care to stay within the 2½ cables (about 450 metres) width.9 Radar’s ability to provide fixes for the navigational plot was nowhere more clearly demonstrated than on those occasions when it provided the ‘electronic eyes’ for the passage of the infamous Shimonoseki Strait. This narrow passage of water separated the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu from the main island of Honshu, and thereby gave access to Japan’s Inland Sea and the approaches to the naval ports of Kure and Yokohama. The strait was subject to vigorous tidal flows, causing a turbulent race of inflowing or outflowing water eastwards or westwards through the strait, according to the tides. As Kure lay on Honshu’s southern shore, about 150 kilometres east of Shimonoseki, a double passage of the strait was required every time Bataan went into port at the Commonwealth base. The rushing tidal flows in the strait were sufficiently powerful to dictate that passage of the straits be timed to take advantage of a favourable flow. As Bracegirdle reported, ‘Even at slack water strong eddies were encountered, and difficulty was experienced in turning into the narrow straits, emphasising the importance of stemming the tide when making this passage’.10 154

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However, the strong currents were not the only navigational hazard: the strait was 16 kilometres long but less than 1 kilometre wide at its narrowest point, and this narrow stretch of water was subject to a constant flow of north–south Japanese boat traffic, with coasters, ferries and fishing boats plying continually between the town of Shimonoseki11 on the Honshu shore and Moji on the Kyushu shore. During Bataan’s first tour, Commander Marks had been quick to notice the inherent hazards of this waterway: At 1400 on 30th March ‘BATAAN’ sailed from Kure for the Korean West Coast via Shimonoseki Straits; it would be untrue to say that the passage was uneventful as no passage of these straits can be without incident. On this occasion the combination of heavy shipping and low visibility made the trip ever more adventurous than usual and several times I was forced to go astern to avoid collision. Perhaps the greatest hazard is the complete disregard shown by Japanese vessels of all sizes of the elementary principles of ‘Rule of the Road’.12

A year later, Bracegirdle found that nothing had changed: The ship reached the western approaches to SHIMONOSEKI at 1700 on 21st April. As always, there was an abundance of small vessels in the straits, and the usual number of these tempted Providence by closely crossing BATAAN’s bows, heedless of any Rule of the Road, and without any regard for their own safety.13

It was standard practice to muster the cable party on the fo’c’sle for the duration of any passage of the strait.14 This was a contingency against the possibility of having to suddenly drop anchor in order to arrest the ship’s motion. The value of radar in such traffic conditions is self-evident. It was therefore a cause for considerable consternation when, during Bataan’s tenth patrol, both the SG surface-search radar set and the gyro compass failed while approaching the Moji Light at the run-in to the Shimonoseki Strait—all in conditions of 5 kilometres visi155

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bility. The gyro compass was the master compass, maintaining a stabilised north reference through all seas and manoeuvres, and providing consistent and accurate compass indications in all key positions, such as the bridge, chartroom, ops room, transmitting station, director tower and wheelhouse; magnetic compasses provided emergency backup only. Moreover, all three radar sets (surface-search, air-search and gunnery sets) were aligned to the gyro compass.15 In what Bracegirdle described as a ‘rather diverting approach’ to the straits, the bridge crew were forced to go ‘low-tech’, relying upon buoys, soundings, magnetic-compass courses and keen lookout to make the passage through the usual hustle and bustle of vessels crossing Bataan’s bows.16 When everything worked, however, radar was a great boon to safe navigation. An example can be cited from Bataan’s first tour, when Commander Marks had opportunity to thank his lucky stars for it. In April 1951, Bataan, operating off the east coast for a change, had to proceed inshore into Wonsan harbour in order to refuel. Thick fog reduced visibility to about 100 metres, which was a little alarming in view of the fact that the approach to the port could only be made along narrow swept channels through a field of North Korean-laid sea mines. Marks reported: Instead of an interesting sightseeing trip, the passage proved somewhat of a nightmare as it entailed keeping well within a long and narrow swept channel with Radar the only guide.17

Bracegirdle too showed his appreciation of radar as a navigational aid. After the tenth patrol, he complimented Lieutenant Nunn for his ‘fine piece of work’ in using radar to guide an LSM (landing ship medium)18 into an anchorage off Cho Do in thick fog.19 Indeed, SG could sometimes provide startling performance as a navigation aid. If mountainous terrain was close inland, landfall could be obtained at impressive distance from the shore: for example, during Operation Torch in 1942, SG radar provided the cruiser USS Augusta with a radar landfall of the high-lying Algerian coast 156

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at a range of 190 kilometres.20 A more usual radar landfall would, however, be that obtained by Bataan approaching Hong Kong on 25 January 1952, on the way to Korea: 52 kilometres.21 In spite of SG’s obvious utility, it nonetheless had limitations. During Bataan’s first cruise in Korean waters, Commander Marks had reported on the shortcomings of the ship’s SG radar for inshore navigational purposes. Able to track small surface targets out to nearly 13 kilometres in favourable conditions22, it was less dependable at short range. As the range decreased, the radar returns from surface vessels, islands or other contacts would disappear into the clutter around the minimum range rings on the PPI. This technical limitation was a serious problem in precisely those conditions encountered off Korea and Japan. Operating in company with Bataan’s Canadian sister ships, Marks had seen the performance of those vessels’ superior Sperry HDWS (High Definition Warning Surface) radar. Unlike SG, HDWS provided a clear radarscope down to very short ranges. As a specialised navigational radar (rather than a surface-search set), it was short ranged but high resolution, using low power and a short wavelength.23 Unlike SG, its aerial did not rotate constantly, but was trained on any forward bearing at the operator’s direction. The Canadian historian Edward C Meyers explained HDWS’s advantages: Nootka, like all the RCN ships, was particularly effective in night operations because she had the great advantage of HDWS Sperry Radar. HDWS was capable of detecting even very small objects on the surface of the water, such as rubber rafts and low-riding boats. It gave the Canadians a distinct edge over other UN ships.24

The RCN’s set was superior not only to the RAN Tribals’ SG, but also to the RN ships’ Type 293 search radar. This became evident in many instances where ships operated in company. One such instance was in November 1951, when hundreds of Communist infantry used a small fleet of boats and sampans to assault the Allied-held island of Taewha Do. HMS Cockade had relieved HMCS Cayuga only 30 hours 157

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previously, but the British ship’s 293 set could not match the highresolution detection capability of the Canadians’ radar. As a consequence, when the Communists were ferrying their assault troops across the strait by sampan, Cockade’s radar operators failed to identify any indication of the boats plying to and fro only a few kilometres away across clear water.25 Cayuga’s HDWS would have spotted the invasion fleet the moment it left the shore, allowing the alarm to be raised.26 Instead, the defending troops were not warned, and Taewha Do fell to the enemy. Such was the fine discrimination of the Canadians’ radar set, that during December 1951 HMCS Sioux’s radar operator picked up ‘a series of tiny blips moving towards the island of Ung Do’, which turned out to be infantrymen crossing the mudflats. The ROK Marines on the island were informed and, with the aid of Sioux’s starshells and 4.7-inch gunfire, the assault was repulsed.27 Mostly the RN and RAN ships could only look on with envy, while RAN COs like Marks made pointed comments to the Naval Board about the inadequacy of their own ships’ SG set in the westcoast operational environment: The vital importance of efficient and reliable Seaguard Radar was emphasised as destroyers were operating by night in narrow swept channels and complete reliance had to be placed on Radar not only for navigation but also for detection of surface craft in poor visibility often reduced by inshore fogs.28

There were occasions when the Canadians’ radar could be exploited for everyone’s benefit. Returning to Kure with HMCS Cayuga at the conclusion of her second patrol in 1952, Bataan had to run the gauntlet of the Shimonoseki Strait at night and in fog. Bracegirdle, as the senior officer, could have gone ahead as a point of honour, but he was too good a seaman to stand on ceremony: During this passage and through the Inland Sea CAYUGA was placed ahead in order to take advantage of her superior surfacewarning radar. (The radar used by CAYUGA is a commercial set 158

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manufactured by SPERRY, and gives exceptionally good definition, particularly at short ranges.)29

The radar aboard USN cruisers was also superior to the RAN’s SG set. During a night-time high-speed run up the west coast to the Yalu in company with the cruiser USS Rochester, Bataan’s radar was not trusted to detect floating mines. So, in a reversal of roles, the Australian destroyer ‘was stationed astern to enable Rochester to lead with her superior surface-warning radar’.30 Of course, steaming in conditions of good visibility obviated the need for reliance upon SG, calling for more old-fashioned shiphandling skills. During the sixth patrol, while proceeding in daylight to Taechong Do to refuel, Bataan encountered no fewer than 580 junks: Excellent practice at ship handling was provided by these all too numerous craft, and countless wheel orders were required to snake a path through their midst.31

Under conditions of reduced visibility, even the ship’s muchmaligned SG radar provided an aid to collision-avoidance: Owing to a thick fog which reduced visibility to 50 yards [45 metres], the fishing fleet was negotiated at 10 knots [18.5 kph] by radar, sound signals, and various other queer noises from the anchored junks—surprisingly, it seemed, without mishap to any of the fishermen, their boats, or nets. (This passage was an experience one would not like to repeat!)32

The radar’s shortcomings at short range meant that the ship had to be lined up to pass between the boats ahead. It was established on a nominally safe course before the blips ahead disappeared into the clutter on the PPI. Once they had done so, the ship’s successful negotiation of the gap between the boats ahead had to be confirmed by the sailor’s time-honoured expedients of the hooting of steam whistles, ringing of bells and so on. 159

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In spite of its shortcomings, the SG radar could nonetheless be used to effect a rendezvous with other ships in minimal visibility; it was even possible to con the ship alongside a moored tanker without visual references, as Bracegirdle reported: To rendezvous with the two replenishing ships and escort, Bataan proceeded to sea at 0400 … once more in thick fog with the visibility restricted to 100 yards [90 metres]. Other ships of the Task Element were converging on this body from all directions, and the manoeuvre of proceeding alongside one of the three echoes proved a good test of nerve. Directed by the Navigator (Lieutenant R.B. Nunn RAN) monitoring S.G. radar from the operations room, Bataan was brought right into the final approach until U.S.S. Vesuvius appeared, fine on the Port bow, about one cable [185 metres] distant.33

SG radar had limited ability to assist in station-keeping at night, because of the set’s minimum-range limitations (again, the blip of the ship ahead would disappear into the clutter on the scope). Station-keeping on a clear night was not so difficult, as the vague shape of the ship ahead could often be perceived above the luminescent ‘turmoil of white foam and wake’; a shaded stern-light also helped the ship astern to maintain contact and to correct its relative position.34 On a foggy night, however, with visibility reduced to a few cables, extra illumination was required. While accompanying Rochester into Inchon, Bataan was able to maintain station behind the cruiser by means of two signalling projectors, which Rochester trained in her wake. Perceiving the patch of illuminated phosphorescent water through the fog ahead, Bataan’s bridge party was able to maintain her station four cables (740 metres) astern of her larger consort, in conditions of virtually ‘nil visibility’.35 Once a ship proceeded inshore, even a routine coastal patrol was navigationally complex. The Worthington patrols were typical: when the carrier retired southwards away from the enemy coast at nightfall, only two of her consorts would accompany her, while the third 160

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reversed course to close the coast and join Task Unit 95.12.2. This was the inshore patrol force based on the island of Taechong Do, one of several islands offering safe anchorages and refuelling bases off the enemy coast. It patrolled the enemy coastline from Fankochi Point, the western extremity of Haeju Gulf, to Choppeki Point, the most westerly point on the west coast, and controlled the only deepwater inshore channel near the 38th Parallel. Upon arrival, the Worthington patrol destroyer obtained instructions from TU 95.12.2’s commander, and then closed the coast for inshore patrolling and bombardment of the section of coast between Choppeki Point and Sunwi Do, just north of Fankochi Point. When the Worthington patrol was over, the duty destroyer refuelled from the tanker at the Taechong Do anchorage and steamed back out to sea to rendezvous again with the carrier screen. Geoff provided a below-decks summation of all this nocturnal rushing about: Every third night we’d buzz off by ourselves and slip in close to the coast under cover of darkness, throw 90 shells at enemy positions and shoot through out of it.

Once the Worthington destroyer rejoined her consorts after daylight, she would spend the day screening the carrier during that day’s flying operations. The navigation officer’s task during these inshore patrols was vital to the safety of the ship, of all those aboard her, and, perhaps last but not least, for his own career prospects—and those of his CO! Indeed, it was the commanding officer himself who bore the final responsibility for the ship’s safe navigation. This is reflected by letters sent by Bracegirdle to the captain of USS Carpenter, Commander EF Baldridge USN36, which provide evidence of the seamanship demands placed upon destroyer captains operating in Korean waters, and of the navigational routines of inshore operations. Bracegirdle briefed Baldridge, who had just arrived on the west coast, before the American ship’s first Worthington patrol. Proceeding inshore to the ‘Players’ anchorage off Cho Do, Carpenter was to leave 161

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Sei To (the ‘small island with the lighthouse and white buildings’) on the starboard hand, and to enter Players via the ‘Capstan’, ‘Bond Street’, and ‘Cherrywood’ channels37, arriving in Players at 1850. This gave time to be briefed by signal on the ship’s assigned night station, or to go by boat to see Captain Marsh RN of HMS Crane, in command of the inshore frigate flotilla, for a verbal briefing.38 The ship was not to move from Players anchorage to her night station further inshore until after dark, ‘as you get fired on sometimes’. Particular caution was needed south of Cho Do, where batteries of mobile 75-mm guns lurked; Bracegirdle admitted that he had got hit there, ‘and so have a score to settle’.39 Because of this, Carpenter was not to move until 2030. Then, proceeding south from Players to the Cho Do night station, she was to maintain her position in the channel by radar, steaming at a recommended 15 knots (28 kph), then to turn and stem the tide before anchoring. While anchored at her night station, Carpenter was to maintain an SG radar watch, with the PPI display on the short-range setting, and to keep the watch gun crews closed up. On moonless nights, she was to fire one starshell every 20 minutes over the gap between the island and mainland, then a round of HE ‘to keep them quiet’; however, while thus anchored, she was to have her cable ready to slip at a moment’s notice.40 Bracegirdle emphasised that ROK patrol craft operated in the area; therefore, in order to prevent further friendly fire incidents, Carpenter was to ‘treat all craft as friendly’.41 The movements of small craft like this could be monitored by radar once they were picked up on the SG at 5000 yards (4570 metres). Preparatory to rejoining the carrier screen at dawn, Carpenter was to weigh anchor by 0400, clear the anchorage by 0415, and proceed south-west either the long way around Cho Do via ‘Hubble Bubble’ and Capstan, or the inshore short cut, the latter being preferable as gun crews could be relaxed as soon as the ship cleared the anchorage. Bracegirdle warned: Nothing much happens in the area (but it can—and so on the way 162

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down between Chodo and the mainland keep your batteries on the port beam ready to go—range fed in from your fire control table— and 40mm crews alert in the narrows).42

Once clear, Carpenter was to proceed to Taechong Do to fuel at about 0800, collect incoming mail for the screen and drop the screen’s outgoing mail. Finally, Bracegirdle advised that the water from the tanker anchored at Taechong Do was brackish—‘beware’43—and that Carpenter would likely be able to rejoin the screen by 1100.44 Bataan’s captain conscientiously fulfilled a similar mentoring role among the watch-keeping officers on his own ship. Bracegirdle was solicitous of his watch officers’ professional development, supportive of their judgments, yet available to provide backup. The captain’s Night Order Book corroborates the soundness of his seamanship and his conscientious exercise of command responsibility. Following custom, the captain would sleep in his sea cabin under the bridge through the night watches. However, even under benign navigational conditions, such as Bataan’s initial voyage up the New South Wales coast from Sydney, the officers of the watch (OOWs) were to call him whenever stated land points were sighted (such as Port Stephens lighthouse), whenever a surface contact was judged likely to pass within less than 4 miles (6.4 kilometres), at 0500, or whenever the watch officer needed assistance.45 On passage up the Queensland coast, he was also to be called after each change of course, once steady on the new course.46 Additional conditions were prescribed for more challenging navigational conditions, or for more critical stages of the passage. This amounted, in effect, to a sliding scale of alertness, and therefore a sliding scale of captain’s wakefulness—it is clear that a conscientious destroyer captain scarcely ever enjoyed a solid night of unbroken sleep. For passage of the Torres Strait, steam was to be maintained on the capstan, the anchor kept ready, the echo sounder kept running, and a hand line placed and a leadsman made available to take soundings; the coxswain and chief quartermaster were to do alternate ‘tricks’47 in the wheelhouse (thereby keeping the best 163

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seamen aboard at the helm), and additional damage control precautions were to be taken.48 Approaching landfall at Tarakan, Bracegirdle was to be called at the first radar contact, at any land sighting, if the weather deteriorated or if any shipping was sighted. He urged a sharp lookout and careful attention to course steering.49 On passage north from Tarakan, the gyro and magnetic compass were to be checked frequently, and he was to be called if the gyro alarm rang (indicating that the gyro compass had failed).50 Approaching Hong Kong, he was to be called if fog was encountered, and he prescribed the actions then to be taken: additional lookouts to be positioned, a man with a megaphone placed on the fo’c’sle, absolute quietness maintained on the bridge, radar operators to maintain continuous sweeping, and sounding and position-fixing to be carried out frequently. A sharp lookout was to be kept for junks and fishing boats, and if these were detected, Bataan was to be steered wide.51 On passage to Kure and the war zone, the ship was to be darkened and radar watches maintained on both the SG surface-search and SC air-search sets. Bracegirdle told his junior officers, ‘Call me in any doubt whatever’.52 Approaching the Sea of Japan, he warned the OOWs to expect aircraft contacts on the SC radar, advising that they would likely be USN Neptune patrol aircraft. He admonished his officers, ‘Take care of binoculars and encourage others’.53 Alertness was to be balanced with consideration for the sleeping men off watch below: aircraft contacts were to be plotted and observed, but ‘don’t alert the whole ship or use the intercom too much after pipe down’.54 The men were also to be protected from unnecessary privation due to adverse weather. Under war-cruising conditions in Japanese waters, X gun was to be manned by the cruisingwatch gun crew55, but in bad weather the crew could be stood down in the ammunition lobby, except for the communication number and the trainer. The bridge-wing Bofors crews were similarly to be kept under cover but handy to the alarm bells. The twin Bofors crew aft were ‘fairly snug’, sitting in their shielded mounting, but if the weather deteriorated, they too could be stood down in the lobby. 164

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Bridge lookouts were to shelter behind the protection of the clear view-screens either side of the bridge.56 During the typhoon season later in the year, Bracegirdle instructed the OOWs to look out for signs of the weather worsening, and, if so, to send the petty officer of the watch around the upper deck to check that the men were sleeping in safe places, and not likely to be washed overboard.57 Extra vigilance was required for the passage of the busy Shimonoseki Strait. On passage to Kure, Bracegirdle was to be called on raising all lights, and 5 miles (8 kilometres) before alterations of course. SG contacts were to be plotted on an ‘ID trace’, in order to distinguish contacts and courses. Here too, Bracegirdle provided his usual prudent seaman-like advice to the OOWs: Bear in mind that at 20 knots [37 kph] it is far easier to avoid craft ahead by early alteration of course. Do not crash on at speed into a fishing fleet. If you cannot skirt round, reduce early.58

For passages of the strait, special sea duty men and the cable party were kept at the ready on the fo’c’sle.59 Proceeding to Korea on Bataan’s first war patrol, in company with the tankers, RFA Wave Premier and Wave Barrier, more warlike precautions were taken: the Asdic cabinet was to be operating, the depth charges manned and the cruising watch closed up. The guns’ de-icing gear was to be rigged but ready for dismantling before firing, the gun heaters were to be inserted but not turned on. The captain was to be called if any operational signals were received, as well as at 0630, an hour before dawn, in preparation for dawn action stations.60 Bracegirdle’s characteristic humane consideration for his men showed through even in war conditions at the ship’s inshore night station. He advised the OOWs not to take the ship to action stations unless it was essential, and to get him up first if in doubt.61 The duty gun crew was to be fallen out when land was cleared.62 When using the TBS tactical voice radio, the OOWs were to use a code known as ‘Shackle Code’, but in an emergency they were not to hesitate to use plain language.63 165

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This principle of prudence in navigational matters was extended to tactical precautions when operating close off the enemy coast. The gunners were not to fire in moonless conditions except in emergencies.64 In moonlit conditions, they were to fire immediately at enemy gun flashes. No matter what, the guns were to be kept trained upon likely enemy battery positions, and the ranges set on the fire control table.65 In the more dangerous tactical environment of the east coast, speed was to be varied between 8 and 19 knots (15 and 35 kph) in order to upset enemy firing solutions. Turns were to be made towards the land, with the 40-mm guns kept trained upon the shore. Upon moonrise, the ship was to withdraw further offshore to the moonlight patrol area.66 Bataan’s Deck Log provides further evidence of this seamanlike culture of caution. On the voyage from Australia north to Korea, Bracegirdle reduced speed from 17 knots (31 kph) to 12 knots (22 kph) upon encountering half-mile (0.8-kilometre) visibility in a tropical storm.67 The speed was further reduced to 12 knots (22 kph) in Force 7 conditions68, and to 9 knots (17 kph) in Force 8.69 The ship’s course was altered by 16 degrees to avoid a stationary and unidentified radar contact ahead.70 In busy Japanese waters out of Sasebo, the ship was slowed to a full stop to allow a merchant vessel to pass clear.71 The Asdic dome was raised when approaching shallows.72 On the ocean passage between Sasebo and Hong Kong, navigational fixes were obtained by LORAN bearings.73 Clearly, the captain was very aware that things can easily go wrong in a marine environment, and was intent upon avoiding damage to and injury on his ship as a result of rough seas. The significance of all this is shown by what happened when captains, OOWs and navigators got it wrong. During a difficult nighttime approach to Chinnampo in 1950, both Warramunga and Sioux went aground at low water upon uncharted mudflats in a channel (while Bataan managed to keep water under her keel).74 Similarly, HMS Constance went aground near Yang Do, north of Songjin on the east coast, and badly damaged her screws and rudder in June 1952, 166

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forcing Bataan to curtail her port visit to Sasebo and hurry out to sea to replace her.75 Much more seriously, the Tribal-Class HMCS Huron, with her 293 set switched off so that she was undetectable by enemy radar receivers, ran straight into the same island at 12 knots (22 kph), smashing her stem and bow as she went hard aground against a rocky shoreline.76 This violent collision with the land put her out of action for the remainder of the war. Her HDWS operator only ‘saw’ the island ahead as the ship turned onto a new heading, but his warning came too late for the OOW to take avoiding action.77 In this instance, it had been shown that HDWS too had its limitations: by being trained ahead, it lacked peripheral vision. Under the sharp supervision of Bracegirdle and Lieutenant Nunn, Bataan was operated with seamanship of a very high order throughout her 1952 tour. This was not merely good luck, but good management.

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10 | Refuelling and ship-handling Bataan’s patrols during her 1952 tour lasted from a minimum of 4 to a maximum of 21 days, with an average duration of 13 days.1 For her to remain on station off the coast over this period, multiple refuellings were necessary—on average once every three days. Fast steaming consumed vast quantities of fuel oil. When Bataan was screening the light fleet carriers USS Bataan and HMS Theseus during her first tour, she needed four refuellings in six days.2 If a ship missed a refuelling rendezvous, she would be obliged to steam about prudently at an economical 15 knots (28 kph) until such time as another refuelling opportunity could be arranged. The west-coast blockade force was supplied by Royal Fleet Auxiliary Wave tankers, which although British-officered, were often crewed by Chinese seamen. The development of this class of ship reflected the intention of the RN to acquire an underway replenishment capability similar to that pioneered by the US Pacific Fleet during World War II. The British Pacific Fleet had suffered much by comparison with the USN in 1945, and was eager to make up the logistical deficit. In Korea, the Australian ships depended entirely upon other navies’ tankers for underway replenishment; indeed, it was not until 1962 that the RAN acquired its first fleet tanker, HMAS Supply.3 By contrast, the capability of the USN was such that their 168

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Bataan and Ocean alongside one of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s Wave tankers, refuelling underway off the west coast of Korea. The RAN in Korea was entirely reliant upon the RN’s logistics system.

carrier task force off the east coast conducted all of its resupply and replenishment underway, at sea; virtually none of this was done in Sasebo or Yokosuka.4 At times, destroyers like Bataan were asked to perform refuelling duties, filling their own bunkers alongside the tankers and then proceeding towards the coast to refuel smaller warships of the inshore patrol. An example was Bataan’s topping up of the frigate HMS Mounts Bay with 150 tonnes of oil, near Sok To on 29 July.5 Bataan’s 450-tonne fuel bunkerage was divided into eight tanks, four forward and four aft. The forward tanks were immediately ahead of No. 1 Boiler Room, occupying the space beneath the stokers’ mess deck, five decks beneath the bridge. Aft of the gearing room were the after tanks, immediately below the officers’ cabins and offices. Fuel oil could be pumped fore and aft between these tanks, in order to balance the ship’s weight distribution, or to redistribute fuel for damage-control purposes. 169

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Destroyers, over-endowed as they were with horsepower, were fuel guzzlers. Moreover, they gulped fuel oil whether they were underway or not, for they were not merely ships, but mobile power stations. All of Bataan’s electrics and hydraulics were powered by steam turbo-generators in the engine room. Everything on board— steering, radar, radio, sonar, intercom, telephones, guns, pumps, torpedo tubes, lighting, cooking, heating—was powered ultimately by steam. To produce a constant jet of high-pressure steam, Bataan burned tonnes of fuel oil every day. The oil bunkers gave Bataan a theoretical range of 8300 kilometres, if she maintained a constant economical cruising speed of 15 knots (28 kph). This yielded a theoretical maximum endurance of 12 days’ constant steaming. At her maximum speed of 32.5 knots (60 kph), however, the theoretical steaming range was dramatically reduced, to about 1760 kilometres, at which scorching pace she would theoretically run out of fuel after about 29 hours.6 However, theoretical fuel consumption performance was rarely replicated under real war conditions. A typical Korean War patrol involved some economical steaming at 15 knots (28 kph), usually when on inshore patrol, steaming warily between the surrounding mudflats; but also included some fast transiting at, say, 24 knots (44 kph), for example when dashing inshore at the end of the day to start a Worthington patrol or rushing to catch a favourable tide in the passage of Shimonoseki Strait, as well as some sustained periods at a similar speed when operating in the carrier’s screen (during flying operations). But there would also be many hours spent anchored off one of the Allied-held islands, with the ship stationary yet burning oil to maintain steam pressure and be ready to weigh anchor and get underway at a moment’s notice. Thus, actual fuel consumption off Korea was usually much higher. An insight into the profligate oil usage of mid-twentieth-century steam power plants can be gained by looking at Bataan’s figures for May, her busiest month, when she spent 26 days at sea. Oiling seven times, she took on a total of 1345 tonnes of fuel oil. That constitutes 170

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nearly 300 per cent of her bunker capacity, yet she steamed ‘only’ 5700 kilometres—less than 80 per cent of the ship’s theoretical range with full fuel bunkers. Thus, her actual fuel consumption was nearly four times worse than the theoretical figure. No wonder then that Jerry Proc, an RCN veteran, says that ‘Tribal class destroyers proved to be the tankers’ best customers’.7 Such poor fuel economy is mostly attributable to the stop-start nature of west-coast war steaming, with hours on end spent burning oil to maintain steam pressure while moored or anchored. It was not because ships were tearing about at 30 knots (56 kph)—in fact, Bataan’s average speed during the month was 13.7 knots (25.4 kph), which is a figure very close to her speed for best fuel consumption, 13 knots (24 kph).8 Despite this, instead of returning fuel economy figures of 9 nautical miles (14.5 kilometres) per ton (0.9 tonnes) of fuel, she was actually delivering a mere 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometres) per ton on average9, providing an actual underway distance on full tanks of a mere 1300 kilometres, rather than the theoretical figure of 8300 kilometres cited above. This is in no way to suggest that her officers and engineers were running her inefficiently, but merely to point out the vast gulf between theoretical figures and actuality. Even under trials conditions, Bataan’s fuel consumption usually disappointed. At the start of her first Korean War tour, Commander Marks was already complaining about her ‘fuel economy’; he considered her demonstrated fuel burn of over two tons (1.8 tonnes) per hour at economical speed to be ‘excessive’.10 In order to take on fuel, a tripod was erected on the forward end of B-gun deck, to which was attached, via a shackle suspended by a cable, a flexible oiling hose that ran aft along the fo’c’sle deck before disappearing below decks to the bunkers. Once the destroyer had been manoeuvred alongside the tanker, a Costin gun was used to get a line across to the other ship. Similar to the grenade-throwing attachment on an army rifle, this device used a blank cartridge to fire a weighted projectile, which paid out a length of fine line as it flew 171

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across the gap between the ships. All the while, the destroyer had to maintain a steady position off the beam of the tanker, maintaining the same heading and speed and a constant distance between the two moving hulls. Edward Meyers, an RCN Korean-War veteran, has described the procedure in vivid detail: The firing of the Coston [sic] gun hurled the gunline across the gap. Attached to the gunline were two lines called messengers: one the light messenger, the other the heavy messenger. Once received, these lines were secured firmly. Then, from the receiving ship, the span line was tossed across to the tanker and secured. These lines were kept taut throughout the operation by the united efforts of a team of seamen deployed along the upper deck. With the span line in place, the tanker released the large oil line, a rubber hose some six inches [15 centimetres] in diameter. This hose was hauled the distance between the ships along the heavy messenger by a second team of seamen. The faster these men moved, the faster the hose could be hauled inboard. Once inboard, the hose was screwed to a receiver pipe and screwed down tightly, at which point a signal was given the tanker, whose crew started the pumps.11

The whole process, from the initial point of closing up alongside the tanker and the firing of the Costin gun, to the commencement of pumping, usually took about eight minutes. However, the Canadian destroyers in Korea took it as a point of honour to break records in achieving this feat, the Sioux’s well-drilled crew completing the process on one occasion in 4 minutes 45 seconds and thereby establishing a record time and claiming the title of ‘Oiling-at-Sea Champion’. Nootka and then Athabaskan (both RCN Tribals) stole the title in turn, the final record being an astonishing 2 minutes 6 seconds (by Nootka). The RAN and RN ships recognised defeat early on and stood aside, leaving the Canadians to battle it out among themselves.12 The Costin gun was also used to rig up a jackstay between two ships steaming along in company. This was a species of ‘flying fox’ 172

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Bataan refuelling underway, alongside a Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker, off Chinnampo, July 1952. The kangaroo cutout suspended on the signal halyards is noteworthy as a means of distinguishing Bataan from other ‘British’ ships.

whereby mail, stores and personnel could be winched across. Personnel—everyone from admirals and staff officers to visiting chaplains and leave-breaking sailors—made their precarious way between the two ships suspended above the heaving sea in a ‘bosun’s chair’. When a ship was serving in a carrier screen or close by the Allied-held westcoast island bases, this awkward and time-consuming process was often replaced by helicopter transfers, with personnel being lowered onto or hoisted off the deck by the helicopter’s electric winch. The refuelling process was likewise simplified when tankers were moored in static positions off Allied-held island bases such as Paengyong Do, Cho Do and Taechong Do. These were the anchorages used by the destroyers and frigates of the blockade patrol, and sometimes as many as half a dozen ships would be moored in line in the lee of these islands, on standby between patrols. The advantages of such prepositioned, moored replenishment 173

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vessels are obvious. Coming alongside a moored tanker was certainly the easiest way of topping up the ship’s fuel bunkers and fresh water supply. The Costin gun could be dispensed with, as the receiving destroyer needed only to come alongside the tanker as it would alongside a wharf, securing herself fore and aft hard up against the tall, black-painted sides of the tanker. With the two hulls separated only by fenders hung over the ships’ sides, the oil hose could be handed down to the destroyer and connected up with a minimum of fuss prior to turning on the taps. Nonetheless, even when the ship was stationary, refuelling was potentially a very messy business if anything went wrong with the attachment of the fuel hoses. On the way north up the Queensland coast on Bataan’s voyage to Korea, refuelling at Townsville was marred by an unfortunate accident, as reported by Geoff Cooper: At 11 AM the big 6 inch [15-cm] oil hose from the wharf to the ship burst and fuel-oil sprayed over everything including sailors. The mate and my self heard the swoosh as it burst and saw a dense black sheet of oil hurtling up towards us on X deck and [we] promptly covered the 10 yards [9 metres] to out of range in ¼ second flat … You can imagine the mess, oil over about 40 feet [12 metres] of the ship’s side, deck and after-screen, and we had to turn to and clean up the mess, which took about two hours solid work. Much swearing and muttering went on needless to say. Anyway the civies on the wharf certainly got their money’s worth.

Besides the oily mess of parted hoses, there were other things that could go wrong in coming alongside the tanker. For all his excellent qualities as a leader and combat commander, Bracegirdle never enjoyed a good reputation aboard Bataan for his ship-handling, and had his share of mishaps. It was a tricky task to con a 108-metre-long ship into position neatly abeam a moored tanker, taking into consideration the destroyer’s momentum, the often-significant leeway due to winds and currents, and the interaction between the two hulls as the mass of water compressed between them created a backwash. 174

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The manoeuvre called for deft judgment in the giving of helm and engine commands. In June, during the sixth patrol, Bracegirdle misjudged his approach to an anchored tanker at Paengyong Do in difficult sea conditions—a passing typhoon had whipped up an awkwardly short windblown chop, while the wind and current swung the tanker on its anchor cable. As a result, Bataan slammed heavily against the slab side of the tanker, as Geoff recorded: ‘We crashed against her rather hard once or twice in spite of the fenders between’. Having reapproached and finally secured alongside, the destroyer commenced refuelling and refilling her water tanks. It was only later that the crew discovered that the impact of the two hulls had sprung the ship’s side plating and contaminated the freshwater tanks with seawater. Bracegirdle had unwittingly sentenced his men to shaving, showering and cooking in salt water for the rest of the patrol. A subsequent refuelling mishap off Cho Do on 24 July added to Bracegirdle’s swashbuckling reputation. Replenishing the oil bunkers came under the departmental responsibility of the engineering officer, and hence as the captain brought the destroyer alongside the tanker, ‘Engines’ stood in the waist of the ship with a party of stokers in readiness for getting the oil hose aboard. Geoff, standing more or less out of harm’s way aft, described the ensuing spectacular crash: Today we went down the coast to the tanker to refuel and what a show we put on. ‘Bataan does it again!’ There was a pretty big ground swell running with a brisk wind blowing off the mainland and ‘old Braces’ (the skipper) fetches her in nice and slow, but forgot or overlooked the breeze which shoved the ship sideways at a reasonable pace. Although, we, down on the quarter deck could see what was going to happen there wasn’t a thing we could do except put out all our fenders over the side and wait for the crash. We weren’t disappointed … Our bows touched first and the stern promptly swung in and dealt the inoffensive tanker a severe blow. Not content with that,

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Braces, in a belated attempt to avert the crash, whacked both engines full astern and the wrecking really started. By the time he’d realized his error, (1) our motor-cutter had been squashed and smashed like an eggshell, (2) numerous guard-rail stanchions had been twisted into crescent shapes, (3) the depth charge rack and thrower had been mangled slightly plus a depth charge which got crushed as it fell between the ships and (4) about thirty sailors had hell frightened out of them. The tanker got off very lightly being higher out of the water than us and we merely sheared off a twelve foot [3.7-metre] section of her guard-rails and stanchions, plus numerous square-yards of paint. Quite a unique performance I thought. Needless to say the skipper of the tanker turns pale every time he sights the ‘Grey Ghost’ now. No one was hurt fortunately in spite of wires and what have you, snapping all over the place. What a turn, I’m only sorry I was too busy to take a photo of the epic event.

From the point of view of a man standing in the waist, the blackpainted side of the tanker would have loomed up as a precipitous vertical wall, while the resounding hull impact ground off stanchions, snapped guardrails and splintered boats—an alarming sight and sound. An anonymous lower-deck poet described the mad rush as men ran forward out of the waist to avoid the impact of the two hulls crashing together: Depth-Charge Regatta We were creeping towards the tanker, Most formidable of foes, In the waist and on the fo’c’sle, We were keeping on our toes. Then it happened unexpected, Though no starter fired a gun, There was a cannon off the Cutter,

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Start for one more Depth-Charge Run. There was ‘Engines’ breaking evens, From a place quite at hand, He would be an odds-on runner, Down in old ‘Stawell’ Land, And one bearded microbe rating, In the hurdles has a show, He cleared the Tube Space flying, Took four torpedoes in a row. Some were almost left at barrier, Said they never heard the gun, But for Sport and not a silver cup, They entered in the run. It was crowded on the fo’c’sle, There were legs still running free, The hair of some was ‘flat-a-back’, Their eyes glued on the sea, While some held firmly to their strides, Ah! For a lavatory. 13

In his report on the incident, Bracegirdle explained that as he had approached the anchored tanker, Bataan’s stern had been ‘set in by the strong tide’, and instead of achieving his ‘usual point of contact’, bridge to bridge, the stern had instead swung out and grazed along the side of the tanker.14 Fortunately, the damage was not serious: Bataan could replace her motor cutter and repair the wrecked stanchions and guardrails. However, that was not the end of it. The problem for Bracegirdle was that the collision had smashed the starboard depth-charge thrower, causing the depth charge itself to plunge overboard between the two hulls and sink 27 metres to the bottom of the sea. Many men had seen the thrower ‘go by the board’, and so the ship’s company became uncomfortably aware that both ships now lay stationary above 136 kilograms of high explosive lying 177

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on the mud below. As Geoff observed, Bataan had thereby mined ‘the only safe anchorage on the west coast, thereby rendering it a hazard to shipping’. Although the depth charge’s firing pistol had been set to ‘safe’, no one was taking any chances with it. Therefore, Bracegirdle used Bataan to tow Wave Chief away from the depth charge to the ‘safe end of the anchorage’. However, returning to the tanker’s original mooring, he compounded his error by attempting unsuccessfully to ‘countermine’. He dropped three more depth charges over the buoyed position of the lost charge, in an attempt to detonate it, but two of the three failed to explode. Bataan therefore had now fouled the bottom of the anchorage with not just one but three unexploded depth charges. Bracegirdle had no choice but to include an account of the whole affair in his next report. Back in Melbourne, the Naval Office was unimpressed by Bracegirdle’s judgment. One senior officer noted: It would have been safer to have left the original D/C [depth charge] alone! It was, presumably, set SAFE [it was; in fact it did not even have the primer fitted15]. They now have one set SAFE, one with a fuse, and one set ‘50 ft’16 on the bottom at Taechong-Do!

Another officer concurred, observing that, ‘Should the correct drill have been carried out, the D.C. would be safe, and could have been left, or dived for.’ As it was, these ‘correct’ options were no longer possible, preempted by the presence of two live depth charges on the mud alongside the safe one. The conclusion constituted an indictment of Bracegirdle’s decision-making on this occasion, and dismissed his countermining as ‘a waste of time, money, and effort’.17 By the time the Naval Board wrote this, Bracegirdle had already faced the music, having been summoned to front an inquiry on Cho Do the next day, led by Captain AFP Lewis RN from HMS Mounts Bay.18 Geoff took a parochial view of his skipper’s errors, considering that the damage inflicted to both ships was ‘not worth worrying over by Naval Standards’, and that the anchorage was large enough for all 178

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shipping to avoid the inadvertently mined area by moving down to the safe end. The court of inquiry broadly concurred, and Bracegirdle emerged having learned a lesson. Geoff was pleased that ‘the old man’s’ colleagues and superiors had taken an indulgent view. This happy ending did not stop the ship’s anonymous poet from enjoying the captain’s discomfort, predicting the CO’s demotion to sub lieutenant, and declaring that, ‘you could hear the sailors’ laughter, all up and down the coast’.19

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11 | At liberty in Japan For replenishment and leave between patrols, Bataan used either the American fleet base in Sasebo, or the Commonwealth logistics base at Kure. The latter was a significant port city on the southern coast of Honshu, in Hiroshima Prefecture. This port had served since 1946 as the main base area for the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) in Japan. The ruins of Hiroshima city were less than 30 kilometres along the coast, and Kure itself had been heavily bombed in the closing phase of the war. Japan therefore had presented an unprepossessing sight when the Commonwealth force first arrived: In contrast to the scenic beauty of the Inland Sea and the coast itself, Kure … was a dispiriting sight. High explosive and incendiary bombing raids had destroyed the naval base, the largest in Japan, together with much of the town. Along the waterfront, in the words of a newly-arrived Australian, ‘the battered remains of half a dozen warships, including two battleships, stood out against the foreshore, itself a tangled mass of churned-up earth and masonry, festooned with twisted steel … Kure is defunct’.1

The US Navy was responsible for the mess: over three days—24, 25 and 28 July 1945—aircraft from the US Pacific Fleet had bombed the Japanese ships lying immobilised in the harbour through lack 180

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Kure’s flattened industrial district in 1946. Reconstruction is evident in the stacks of roofing tiles and the re-emerging framework at left.

of fuel.2 In a symbolic act of revenge for Pearl Harbour, Admiral Halsey’s dive-bombers sank the carrier Amagi, the battleship aircraft carriers Ise and Hyuga, the battleship Haruna and five cruisers.3 Possessed of an excellent natural harbour opening onto Japan’s Inland Sea, Kure had been a naval base since 1886, becoming one of the great home ports of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and a major naval dockyard, as attested by her record of major warship construction. Kure built not only five World War II cruisers—Nachi, Atago, Mogami, Mikuma and Oyodo4—but also the famous fleet aircraft carriers Soryu and Akagi.5 Some of these Kure-built warships hold special interest for Aus181

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tralians. Nachi took part in the battles of the Java Sea in February 1942, which involved the Australian cruiser Perth and which resulted in the distressing loss of four of her consorts—the Dutch cruisers de Ruyter, Kortenaer and Java, as well as the British heavy cruiser Exeter. Later Mogami and Mikuma sank Perth herself along with USS Houston on 1 March 1942. In the same disastrous campaign in the Dutch East Indies, Atago sank the sloop HMAS Yarra. Aircraft from both Akagi and Soryu contributed to the devastating raid on Darwin in February 1942, and sank the destroyer HMAS Vampire in the Indian Ocean two months later (along with the carrier HMS Hermes, which she was escorting). Kure had therefore been behind some of the most damaging strikes against the RAN in the crisis year of 1942. Kure’s shipyards had also constructed three of Japan’s battleships: Fuso, Nagato and Yamato. Fuso was sunk with her sister ship Yamashiro at the battle of Surigao Strait in October 1944. In an intriguing coincidence, one of these two Japanese battleships was repeatedly hit by the 8-inch guns of HMAS Shropshire, the firing of which was directed by none other than Lieutenant Commander Bracegirdle. The greatest achievement of Kure’s shipyards was the mighty Yamato, completed in December 1941. She and her sister ship Musashi were the most powerful surface combatants ever built, monster battleships displacing more than 71 000 tonnes at full load, and the only battleships ever to be armed with 18-inch (457-mm) guns, at a time when the biggest guns within the capability of British industry were 14-inch (356-mm). Yamato too was hit at Leyte Gulf, retiring to Kure for repairs before sallying out in a suicide mission against the US fleet off Okinawa. Predictably, she too was duly sunk by carrier aircraft of the US Navy.6 Going from the macro scale to the micro, Kure was also the centre of the Japanese miniature submarine program. From an Australian point of view, it is interesting to note that both the miniature submarines and the torpedoes used in the 31 May 1942 raid on Sydney Harbour were built in Kure.7 The submarine mother ships were also prepared in the naval arsenal there, and departed from 182

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A derelict Kure shipyard in 1946, the mass of abandoned midget submarines a sign of Japan’s wasteful deployment of desperate expedients in the closing stages of World War II.

there on their fateful voyages to Australia. The commander of the miniature submarine attack force was, moreover, a graduate of the Kure Naval Academy.8 Geoff Cooper had visited Japan with the frigate Murchison in 1946, and took a photo that confirms this strong association with midget submarines: it shows a dockyard floor covered in an acre of partially completed midget submarines. Thus, Kure was a port with a proud tradition of naval power, a power, moreover, that had struck out across the Pacific at Australia. By 1946, however, it was redolent of the utter ruination of that power: capsized and submerged hulks lay rusted in the water. Of course, even as the first BCOF troops stared from the decks of their 183

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An obsolete predreadnought, sunk in Kure harbour by US Navy air raids in July 1945, in symbolic retribution for Pearl Harbor. This ship had been a demilitarised antique, as shown by the missing gun turrets and empty sponsons.

ships at this devastation, the Japanese were in the process of cleaning up the mess and restoring the port to operation. In the period between 1945 and the Korean War, great progress was made, with the wrecked and sunken ships progressively reclaimed as scrap metal. Indeed, this work was still continuing apace as Bataan steamed in and out of harbour between her war patrols in 1952. In the same way as the physical debris of the war was still being cleaned up in 1952, so was the constitutional anomaly of the occupation itself. Japan had been subject to US control since 1945, the personal fiefdom of General Douglas MacArthur as supreme commander. However, in April 1952, during Bataan’s tour of duty, Japan recovered her independence from her US conquerors. The Korean War emergency had provided an incentive to ‘close the deal’ and normalise relations between the wartime foes. Japan 184

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was reconceptualised by the Americans as a forward base for US forces and as a frontline bulwark against Communist expansionism. Japanese companies now prospered under a rush of military orders and contracts, producing goods and providing services greatly useful to the Americans in easing the strain of the United States’s long logistical tail across the Pacific. The scope of the work ran the full gamut from cleaning and garbage-removal services to the manufacture of munitions and aircraft drop tanks, and to contract minesweeping in the war zone. These procurements brought $2.3 billion into the economy, an injection of US dollars exceeding the total in US aid received from 1945 to 1951. This triggered an unprecedented boom in Japan’s economy, kick-starting the transformation of the country into the high-tech industrial power it remains to this day.9 The term used to characterise Japan’s new status was ‘subordinate independence’. Thus, as ratified by the 49 signatories of the Treaty of San Francisco in September 1951, Japan had her national independence restored to her on 28 April 1952. The United States, however, was granted extraterritorial rights, was permitted a network of military bases, and was able to tie Japan to a pro-Taiwan, anti-Beijing China policy.10 Moreover, the omnipresence of US bases and US forces gave the impression of continued US occupation. Indeed, the Americans occupied, controlled and directed policy exclusively across most of the country.11 The exception was Kure and Hiroshima Prefecture, which provided the base areas for the Commonwealth forces. Compared with the more prestigious areas occupied by the Americans, the unfashionable BCOF area in southern Honshu was considered the ‘arse end of Japan’, yet, in spite of that negative impression, the Commonwealth occupation zone in the south controlled an area containing 20 million Japanese in nine prefectures.12 Japanese reconstruction efforts aroused grudging admiration and respect from Commonwealth servicemen. As a trained shallowwater naval diver, Geoff watched the salvaging of the wartime wrecks in the harbour with an interested and informed eye, comparing the 185

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work output in Sydney’s dockyards unfavourably with the ceaseless industry displayed by the Japanese: The Japs are busily engaged (seven days a week, 10 hours a day) in salvaging iron and steel from the harbour bottom here in Kure. They have a fleet of about ten sampans on the go with a diver operating from each and they’re bringing up some gear too. Anything from old tins to sunken barges and midget subs. Naturally steel is at a premium up here which accounts for all the activity. They really work for it though. In one of the biggest dry docks they are building a new ship and a big one too. They’d just laid the keel last time we were in [Kure] seven weeks ago and they’ve darn near got the hull completed already. Give them another four to six weeks and they’ll have it in the water. Now that they are once again an independent nation, believe me it won’t be long before they are seriously competing with Britain and America in world commerce.

Similarly, an RCN CO gave tribute to the efficient and expeditious manner in which Kure workmen effected repairs to HMCS Huron.13 Although the wreckage-strewn harbour and the industrial wasteland of the city were not a pretty sight, Commonwealth servicemen had found some attractive aspects to Kure, besides its good location on the shores of the scenic Inland Sea. As Peter Bates has recounted, its outer suburbs were enlivened by ‘pretty little grey-tiled houses’, and beyond the city boundaries lay ‘a patchwork of villages set in valleys separated by steep hills, each with its neat terraces of cultivation … and a complicated coastline of little inlets and tiny beaches with a string of fishing hamlets.’ The Japanese ability to farm hills with slopes of up to 45 degrees was considered particularly impressive.14 Servicemen took tours of the major cultural sites in the area, such as Itsukushima, the patron shrine of the Heike Samurai clan. Photos of this famous structure feature as stock mementos of men’s visits to Japan during the occupation and Korean War period. This struc186

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ture was not only emblematic of Japanese traditional architecture, but was attractively sited along the scenic coastline of the Inland Sea. The sailors interpreted it, simplistically but appropriately, as a symbolic gateway between land and sea. There were negatives, however, to scenic Japan: wandering servicemen’s nostrils and their acquired sense of aesthetics were offended by ‘the universal use of human excreta as fertiliser in the fields’, carted about on all public roads by wooden-wheeled ‘nightsoil’ carts (called ‘honey carts’ by the Australians).15 When Geoff had visited Japan with the frigate Murchison in 1946, he, like most other Allied occupation troops, had arrived evincing hatred of the Japanese. By then, people were aware of how the Australian prisoners of war had been appallingly mistreated and abused, and Geoff blamed the Japanese for the deaths of boys he had known in Toowoomba. These feelings had been fuelled by recent duties. Prior to steaming to Japan, Murchison had spent weeks moving the disinterred bodies of RAAF airmen from their original resting places on various Indonesian islands to the Australian base at Morotai, there to be reburied in the official Australian war cemetery, and ferrying Japanese officers, one at a time (there was no brig onboard) from Morotai to Singapore, for trial as war criminals. Cooped up in the ‘spud locker’ abaft the funnel, these officers had to endure the men’s malevolent thumping of their fists on the door at every change of watch. By 1952, however, Geoff ’s attitude had adjusted. The relationship between Allied servicemen on leave and the Japanese had long since been normalised. In Geoff ’s experience, there was no talk among his shipmates of ‘gooks’ or ‘slant-eyed swine’, but rather a pragmatic acceptance of the Japanese in their various roles within the service industry. The novelist Tom Hungerford experienced this normalisation of attitude personally. An AIF infantryman who arrived in Japan as an occupier, he was initially full of contempt for his ‘enemy’, the Japanese—he admitted that he ‘hated their guts’ at the time. However, it was very difficult to maintain this attitude once he saw 187

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them going about their lives as normal people, with mothers, fathers, wives and children. Within days of his arrival, he had ‘made peace’ with the Japanese.16 By 1952, most men had an uncoloured matter-of-fact attitude towards the Japanese barmen, waiters, shop assistants, taxi drivers, taxi dancers and prostitutes with whom they dealt. By then, Australian forces had been based at Kure for six years, and thus there was an element of comfortable coexistence between the sailors on leave and Japanese businesses set up to service their needs. It must be said, however, that the relationship was very superficial. This was unsurprising, given that the Australians, like the Americans, made little attempt to acquire more than token Japanese-language ability. Visits to Hiroshima helped in this process of rehumanising the former foe. Curiously, both of the Allied naval ports used by the blockade forces in the Korean War, Sasebo and Kure, were respectively only short distances from each of the two Japanese cities destroyed by the US Air Force’s nuclear attacks—Kure only 30 kilometres from Hiroshima and Sasebo just 50 kilometres north of Nagasaki. Many of Murchison’s sailors in 1946 had been curious to see the devastation caused so recently by the atom bomb, and thus a visit to the flattened wasteland of Hiroshima had been on the top of the tourist agenda. Similarly, when Bataan was operating out of Sasebo during November and December 1945, hourly bus trips had been offered by the US authorities to view the ruins of Nagasaki. Such excursions ‘left a permanent impression’ on the visitors.17 Along with his shipmates, Geoff had joined the tour of Hiroshima, and duly taken photographs of the ruins, but had come away from the place appalled. He felt sorry for the Japanese, and ‘changed his tune’ in his attitude towards them. In many visitors, the sight of the desolation gave rise to depression and doubts.18 One recalled that ‘during each visit I felt as though I desecrated a massive cemetery’.19 It did not take long before other, more cheerful sightseeing localities supplanted Hiroshima. By 1952, hardly anyone went there, and Kure had lost its status as a bomb-ruined city. Its pleasant physical 188

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setting was acknowledged, and it was coming to be regarded by some of the men as being ‘a cut above Sasebo’, the favoured port not only for the Australian sailors but also for their British counterparts, as John Lansdown describes: Currency was in sterling and prices were lower which made their cash go a long way further. For those who liked sport, the facilities were far and away better, especially the tennis courts of which there were any amount of first class clay ones. There was a very pleasant officer’s club run by the Australians which, in sharp contrast to its jazzy American equivalent at Sasebo, was quiet and secluded. Similarly, the sailors much preferred the Australian run canteens and clubs to the American equivalents in Sasebo.20

HMCS Huron’s CO found that ‘the port of Kure was very efficiently policed by Australian patrols, and was a cleaner and altogether healthier town than Sasebo’.21 On the other hand, some Canadians took a different view, seeing it as a ‘far less enticing place’ than Sasebo: ‘British rations of stringy mutton and a serious lack of entertainment seemed to ensure a dreary time would be had by all’.22 The Australian organisational dominance of the Kure port base is explained by the fact that by the time ‘the balloon went up’ in Korea, the British had long since withdrawn their forces from BCOF. By contrast, the Australians were still there; indeed, long before 1950, BCOF had become Australianised. When war broke out in Korea, 77 Squadron RAAF was still based across the bay from Kure at Iwakuni, 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR) still had its barracks at Hiro, 8 kilometres to the east of the port, and RAN destroyers and frigates were still rotating through occupation tours of duty, based on Kure.23 The Australian-run BCOF facilities fortuitously proved to be a great boon to the men of the Commonwealth navies who suddenly found themselves thrown into the war. ‘Kure House’ was particularly appreciated by sailors on shore leave. Run by the Australian Army Canteens Service, this facility provided meals that were a welcome 189

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relief from the canned rations doled out by ships’ galleys, as Geoff acknowledged: The food is beautifully cooked and extremely cheap, a really good meal costing no more than three to four bob [shillings]. All the meats and vegies are fresh and quite a pleasant change to the tinned muck we have on board, so needless to say we believe in ‘making hay while the sun shines’.

On top of these culinary pleasures, the Kure Fleet Canteen provided a range of leisure facilities, including a swimming pool, complete with diving board. The frigid weather of the first part of Bataan’s tour rendered this a dubious attraction, but by June the men could resist no longer. At that time of the year, the water was still cold, and thus the men who braved the water dubbed themselves the ‘Ice-burgers’. It was mostly a case of one leap from the top of the diving platform then quickly out! By August, however, it was pleasant swimming weather, and the men enjoyed cooling off and working on their tans. Besides the large Australian-run servicemen’s and officers’ clubs, there were numerous privately owned beer-halls. These were small pub-like establishments that provided a cosy place for groups of men to sit down out of the weather and relax. The prices for food and beer were affordable, but the management, in time-honoured fashion, employed Geisha-style hostesses who spoke passable English to keep the men drinking. Such girls exacted a fee (a percentage added to the bill) for the pleasure of their company, and in some cases could also boost the establishment’s turnover by dabbling in prostitution. Groups of sailors developed allegiances to particular beer-halls, getting to know the manager and the girls, and, when ashore, returned regularly to their preferred establishment. The Stork Club was particularly favoured by some of the men on Bataan. It featured attractive hostesses, a modest but tidy Art-Deco exterior, a beer garden, and partitioned wood-panelled rooms where groups of sailors could gather. Japanese beer was good, fully up to Australian standards—the justly famous Kirin label was brewed in 190

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.

Bataan’s ‘Ice-burgers’ swimming club at the Kure Fleet Canteen swimming pool, June 1952. Otherwise known as the ‘6 am Team’, they were obviously following the Bondi Icebergs tradition of braving cold water. Geoff is second from right.

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The hostesses of the Stork Club, with the entrance to the club behind them.

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Geoff Cooper, second left, and his shipmates enjoy a quiet beer and a smoke in the Stork Club.

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the outskirts of Hiroshima (and therefore had survived the bomb). Similar beer-houses could also be found beyond the dives in the immediate vicinity of Sasebo harbour, or in the intact parts of Nagasaki (which had been less extensively damaged than Hiroshima). The American-run facilities at Sasebo were certainly flashier than those at Kure, but also more expensive. Many Canadians preferred its more commercialised creature comforts and amenities to the ‘down home’ charms of Kure: Sasebo … was by far the most desirable place to anchor. Steaks, ice cream, first-run movies, not to mention French fries, were tremendous temptations … !24

However, a US Navy destroyer officer was less enthusiastic, describing the town thus: In Sasebo, after you left the two officer’s clubs and then passed the Army PX25, nothing confronted you but a bridge over a dirty river, more muddy roads, thousands of bars, souvenir stands, and worse. The port of Sasebo itself, an important Japanese naval base during the war, was still in poor condition. Parts of the shipyard, fuel docks, and ammunition dock not damaged were now being pressed into use by the growing UN naval forces. Life in town was still primitive and ran to bars and whore-houses. The dock area and the shipyard had been badly bombed during the war and many of the buildings still retained a frazzled look about them.26

With these unsealed roads muddied by the wet Japanese summer weather, going ashore soon lost its attraction; the situation was made worse by the impracticality of the RAN’s blinding-white summer rig. Geoff reported on Sasebo’s faded summertime charms: There’s few bitumen roads in this burg which means that you have to plough about in mud and when you take into consideration that we have to wear our ‘ice-cream-suits’ (whites) ashore now, it’s hardly worth it.

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‘Famous last words in Sasebo’ was Geoff Cooper’s original caption for this photo. This quayside warehouse confirmed everyone’s worst American stereotype with the immodest legend: ‘THRU THIS PORT PASS THE BEST DARNED FIGHTING MEN IN THE WORLD’.

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The Wild West-style ‘boom town’ of Sasebo, July 1952, with its ‘flashy’ signage and expensive nightclubs aimed at US servicemen. Less affluent Commonwealth sailors sought more down-market establishments.

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There were Canadians too who found Sasebo less than salubrious; its harbour ‘had become a sewer’, as reported by one RCN officer on the occasion of a port visit in August 1953: ‘The harbour, which is always a dirty one, surpassed its worst and was literally a sea of fuel oil and garbage’.27 Seasoned British war correspondent Reginald Thompson provided a wry perspective on the Americans’ main port: Sasebo has sprung up like a mushroom almost reminiscent of the Goldrush days, and a fabulous swarm of whores had descended upon it like locusts, so that even the padres had found themselves struggling through the streets with women clinging to their arms. But this hungry herd had been winnowed down to reasonable proportions. Neat rows of shops had been built and opened up with a variety of wares to tempt sailors. Ice-cream parlors and Coca-Cola stands added the finishing touch, and Sasebo was a boom town.28

Although the shore facilities were aesthetically unimpressive and the waters of the harbour murky with the polluted effluent of the town and numerous ships’ bilges, the whole place nevertheless provided an overwhelming impression of American naval power and logistical expertise, as Geoff observed: The number of ships here is colossal, mostly American ones of course but all sorts of ships from big battle waggons and carriers down to little patrol boats. They also have ships here that are literally floating workshops and are capable of repairing or replacing practically any section or part of a ship.

The closest the Commonwealth navies in Kure came to matching this floating workshop capacity was HMS Unicorn, which served as a replenishment ship and repair workshop for the Commonwealth carriers.29 Going ashore in Sasebo, old hands who had been in Japan immediately after World War II noticed the changes that the long US 195

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The US naval base at Sasebo, formally one of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s major bases. Japan’s spectacular coastal topography is evident.

presence had brought. On his first visit ashore in 1952, Geoff noticed the difference at once. Most conspicuous was the ‘US influence’ in shops and women’s clothing, as well as the higher prices. These were particularly evident when compared with prices in Kure. Perhaps typically for an ‘American’ town, Sasebo even offered a range of upmarket American-style nightclubs and cabarets, charging ‘terrific prices’. Further down-market, however, a range of service clubs provided meals, snacks, concerts and other attractions to men on leave. Like many Commonwealth servicemen struggling to afford American prices in Sasebo, Geoff frequented these cheaper establishments, and, as a good dancer, was quick to avail himself of the services of the so-called taxi dancers, Japanese women who hired themselves out as dancing partners: 196

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Jim and I went to one of the dances at the Anchor Club last night and had a really enjoyable time dancing with the Nip Taxi dancers at 9 cents a dance. The majority of them are damned good dancers too. I was rather lucky that there were a few tall (for Japs) girls amongst them.

Many sailors saved up their pay for purchases of ‘bargain’ goods at far below Australian prices in Sasebo’s PX. Geoff found the wares all too tempting. He bought a camera to replace the one he had lost overboard while photographing the Ocean, and gloated that he had paid only £12-7-6 (US$27.50) for a camera which would have cost £30 back in Australia. There was no equivalent to this plenitude in the Australian-run facilities in Kure, forcing the admission that, ‘There’s no doubt about the Yanks, they certainly cater well for their troops’. The officers also were struck by the scale, pace and largesse of the American base. One of the Sea Fury pilots from HMS Ocean provided this impression of how off-duty servicemen experienced the place: The officers’ club was very well run while the food on the ship was terrible. We were just having a good time, shopping, going around and up country. A lot of guys whooped it up … A lot did the town in Japan, which was easy to do because it was dirt cheap. It was martial law, you couldn’t wear civilian clothes ashore … There were servicemen everywhere, jeeps, and American army. They were pouring money into the place … You could buy a set of china for two pounds but most people bought cameras.30

The catch for Australian sailors shopping in the PX was that Australia’s postwar currency-exchange controls limited the amount of US dollars obtainable to $4 per month per man. The US$27.50 for the camera had required thrift and sacrifice to accumulate, and once spent it meant that for a while Geoff could only look, not buy. Other ports, like Hong Kong, had the advantage of accepting sterling, but prices there were so expensive that even COs became concerned 197

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Geoff, in ‘Number Ones’ (best blues), shopping in Kure’s Nakatori markets, Anzac Day 1952.

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about their men’s finances.31 Shopping was a major activity when the men went ashore, particularly towards the end of the tour. Fortyeight hours before Bataan’s final departure from Kure for Australia, Bracegirdle noted the rushed shopping expeditions.32 There was certainly plenty to buy ashore. Geoff admired the very cheap mechanical toys available in Japan (walking dogs and quacking ducks, for example), as well as the excellent homewares, such as china (a 90-piece dinner set cost ‘only’ £20), damask tablecloths, sheets and silks. He ended up finding space in the ship’s by then emptied magazines for a most impressive purchase: a polished teak and camphor wood chest carved with traditional Chinese motifs. Geoff also pursued other, less typical pastimes ashore: he was a Freemason. Although destined to remain a humble rating, his demographic profile was typical of that of the RAN’s officer class, namely Anglo, Protestant, middle class and private school-educated33, and Freemasonry was, for the most part, a middle-class interest, more common among officers than ratings. While ashore in Kure, Geoff attended the Masonic Club, along with 16 other Masons from the ship, mostly officers. As was mandatory, his attendance was a closely guarded secret, and he revelled in the secrecy; he was quite thrilled to be ‘rubbing shoulders with the brass’, and considered that it would create ‘quite a stir’ among the men if known. In Hong Kong on the way home after the conclusion of Bataan’s tour, he had other things on his mind than shopping in Kowloon: he visited a different Masonic Lodge every night.

Recreational hazards Geoff ’s social aspirations and aesthetic disposition during shore leave were perhaps not typical. It was of course inevitable that many men spent their time and money on more immediate pleasures, and this is attested nowhere better than in the ship’s company’s sorry venereal disease (VD) statistics. Sasebo and Kure were rife with syphilis, gonorrhoea and chlamydia, and these diseases were often caught from 199

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girls at the beer-halls, ‘professional’ prostitutes in brothels, or ‘freelance’ part-time prostitutes in the streets. Bracegirdle was irritated and embarrassed by the cavalier attitude towards unprotected sex displayed by so many of his men. The figures speak for themselves: 12 men had reported themselves to the medical officer (MO) by the time Bataan berthed in Sasebo after her first patrol.34 By the time she departed on her fourth patrol, with two visits to Sasebo and one to Kure behind her, the roll-call of VD sufferers had risen to 37, in spite of ‘constant warnings and every organized care’. Bracegirdle admitted that ‘this number is alarmingly high for a destroyer Ship’s Company after such a short time in Japan’.35 Clearly, he understood that such behaviour was understandable after an extended period of time at sea and on operations; however, it had taken his men less than two months to plumb these depths. Worse was to come: after a ‘grave lapse’ in Sasebo towards the end of the ship’s tour of duty in Korea, the number of recalcitrants had swelled to 46. ‘Stringent measures’ were taken against the offending members: repeat offenders had their leave stopped to bring the disease under control (the normal penalty for catching VD was a fortnight’s stoppage of leave). Many men evaded such disciplinary penalties by obtaining treatment from Japanese doctors ashore, rather than presenting themselves to the MO on board. Naturally, only a proportion of the men indulged in this behaviour, but those that did had a standard routine when they went ashore: they went straight to the brothel, and thence to the bar— in that order. Condoms were effective in preventing infection, but this was academic, as so many of the men in question refused to use them, and there was no obligation to do so when they had sex with freelance prostitutes. Although the Australian Army shore patrol attempted to police out-of-bounds areas, men quite clearly succeeded in ‘sampling’ unapproved brothels in these areas.36 The priorities and behaviour of many men suggests that they regarded shore leave as a form of exotic ‘sex tourism’.37 200

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Towards the end of the tour, the captain had his eye upon his ship’s imminent return to Sydney, wanting his ship’s company to go on leave with a ‘clean bill of health’, rather than returning to their wives and girlfriends as carriers of sexually transmitted diseases. For once, the MO’s prerepatriation anti-VD campaign had some success, for Bracegirdle reported with satisfaction prior to departure from Korea that ‘the Venereal Disease rate, with the prospect of the ship’s return to Australia, has fallen considerably’.38 It is probable that this belated success was attributable to the fact that the men finally shared their CO’s concern: they too did not want to arrive back home as carriers of VD, and hence finally started to restrain their instincts and behave responsibly. Indeed, it was normal for ship’s companies to exhibit a higher rate of VD in the first half of their deployment, and falling rates in the second half.39 The most common form of VD diagnosed at the time was gonorrhoea, which is a bacterial infection of the genital organs and urinary outlet. This infection causes swelling of those organs, and can spread to other organs if left untreated. Then only recently introduced, antibiotics were the prescribed treatment, and were administered by injection. However, it is now known that chlamydia was the most common form of VD contracted in Japan. This was then known as nonspecific urethritis, but it was poorly understood by doctors and hence often undiagnosed and underreported in the statistics.40 Chlamydia was clearly regarded at the time as being of minor seriousness, but modern research has shown that serious reproductive problems are associated with this disease. Port visits were thus inevitably followed by a steady queue of men attending sick bay for treatment. An official historian of the RAN in the Vietnam War has expressed the problem in terms equally applicable to the earlier conflict in Korea: The most significant disease problem that arose from port visits, and the one that exceeded all others in the number of men affected, was venereal disease. Each ship, during the course of its deployment,

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made four or more visits to ports in Southeast Asia, giving crew members ample opportunity to contract venereal infections.41

The situation was not helped by the occupation authorities’ abolition of the earlier Japanese system of ‘official’ brothels. This had been done on moral and political grounds, in defiance of sexualhealth considerations, and therefore inevitably had an adverse effect upon disease control. An Australian provost marshal had noted that ‘Kure was an ex-naval base and prostitution had been a thriving industry, but there had been a system of medical inspection and control’.42 Upon taking over the port, BCOF had discontinued this system, with the result that freelancers met the demand. The VD rate had been bad enough during the period of official brothels, with almost 90 per cent of the women infected. But with the prostitutes forced into private-industry-dominated ‘red-line’ districts (socalled because of a line drawn on a map), VD became impossible to control.43 A New Zealand officer with BCOF concluded that freelance prostitutes in Japan were ‘invariably diseased’.44 Japanese sex workers in the early days of the occupation had been recruited to the trade by the government, as a patriotic duty, offering their bodies as a ‘dyke of chastity’ against foreign sexual contamination, and thus protecting the pure blood of the nation.45 Even after the abolition of this official scheme, there were always going to be more pressing reasons why women would take up prostitution. In a ruined economy like that of postwar Japan, sex was one of the few commodities saleable for hard currency. The plight of the typical poor Japanese woman trying to survive amid the ruins of the Japanese economy has been described in compelling terms by John Dower: Military salaries had ceased to arrive, wartime factory jobs had been abolished, and millions of men back from overseas as well as others laid off from defunct wartime industries were competing for scarce jobs … The delivery of food rations had ceased … and she … could not afford to purchase vegetables. By working at home until

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midnight, she was able to bring in 2 yen a day, at a time when less than 4 kilograms of potatoes cost 35 yen … Was there no way … that she could get just one month’s military salary, or some of the war goods … or even a single blanket?46

It is no surprise therefore that a British officer who served with BCOF in the earlier period observed that ‘a large number of women in the Kure area had become accustomed to providing comforts in exchange for food’.47 As time wore on, this form of amateur prostitution became commercial, with services paid for in cash rather than by barter. It has been estimated that prior to the outbreak of the Korean War, between 55 000 and 75 000 Japanese women worked as full-time or part-time prostitutes. The war, with its vast expansion of bases and influx of servicemen, produced a great rise in demand, which was very likely to have increased the number of women active in this industry. Full-time prostitutes working in brothels saw between 15 and 60 clients a day. Sex was cheap: during the period of the prewar occupation, a short visit to a brothel cost 15 yen, or US$1.48 A plague of VD cases among visiting Korean War servicemen was therefore inevitable. Among Commonwealth servicemen, the VD rate per thousand during 1952 was a ‘low’ 286 for the relatively abstemious British, 386 for the Australians, 410 for the New Zealanders, and fully 616 for the Canadians.49 These figures include army as well as navy, and would not necessarily apply to the crew of Bataan. However, John Dower, an authority on the occupation period, suggests that the proportion of men who visited prostitutes was high indeed: ‘Those who chose the path of chastity during their tour of duty were by all accounts exceptional. By one estimate, almost half of the many tens of millions of dollars that occupation personnel spent on ‘recreation’ passed through the hands of [prostitutes]’.50 Some slight consolation might have been derived from the favourable comparison between the Australian and Canadian rates, because Australians had traditionally been the worst offenders. As one historian of BCOF put it, ‘It would be quite wrong to suggest 203

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that VD was invented by Australian troops’.51 That had not, however, prevented politicians from blaming them. A ministerial inquiry into the scandalous Australian VD rate during the early days of BCOF had explained the problem thus: ‘The Australian soldiers were younger than their British counterparts and more irresponsible’. Even after the introduction of a program of ‘control measures’ which included education, prophylactics and disciplinary measures against offenders, BCOF authorities continued in the same vein, observing that ‘the rate continued to be excessively high and it is a natural sequence of having a concentration of troops, many with low moral standards’.52 One exasperated New Zealand officer concluded that ‘total abstinence’ was the only solution to the VD problem.53 However, the statistics prove that such moral persuasion had ‘little impact’54 upon men’s behaviour. Naval MOs recognised this, and hence: Preventive efforts were directed not so much at dissuading men from having intercourse, as at persuading them to take precautions against the disease when they were engaging in sexual activity. All MOs gave frequent lectures to crewmen on the subject, and … condoms were made freely available to men proceeding on leave.55

The prescribed anti-VD measures included the issue of ‘prophylactic outfits’ to men proceeding on leave, and the mandating of a PA (preventive ablution) treatment after sexual activity.56 Aboard Bataan, the latter measure worked out in the following way: coming back aboard after a sexually adventurous leave, men could obtain a so-called blue-light outfit57 from the ship’s dispensary—effectively a two-pack morning-after treatment. There was one small tube of ointment, which was discharged up the urethra, while the contents of the other were smeared over the external surface of the offending member. There was also a vigorous program of anti-VD education, including lectures by MOs on VD and its prevention and control, and ‘propaganda films’.58 One BCOF soldier described the men’s 204

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responses to this ‘entertainment’: We were all warned of the VD rate in Japan well before we got there. There was an unforgettable number of films on the subject, most in glorious technicolor. All showed the gory details and terrible fate which would befall one who wandered into casual sexual alliances. As time went by the movies became so repetitive everyone shouted the messages delivered from the screen … it’s the same old story. Fear and threats can only go so far, if it’s overdone, the message loses impact.59

Thus neither the MOs’ lectures on the dire health consequences of VD nor the free availability of condoms from the dispensary for the liberty men had had the least effect upon some men’s sexual bravado. Although the principle of protected sex was very well understood, the MOs’ injunctions to use condoms were, however, in vain; instead, in a profane allegory, when leaving Sydney, men blew the condoms up as balloons and released them overboard from the mess-deck scuttles as their ship left port. Upon Bataan’s departure for Australia, the customary round of congratulatory signals included this one from HMCS Nootka, the wording suggesting either that Bataan’s reputation for dissolute behaviour ashore was recognised by other ships’ companies, or that her ship’s company’s standard of behaviour was perfectly standard and well understood by her colleagues aboard the other Allied ships: Good luck to one of the finest fighting ships we have ever met … May your trip south be pleasant and your visit to HONG KONG be a real treat, but bearing in mind Proverbs Chapter 6 Verse 18 and its attendant verses.60

The Canadians were probably more conversant with the scriptures than their Australian cousins, but the Bible passage in question declares pointedly that ‘there are six things which the Lord hates’, including, in verse 18, ‘A heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil’.61 205

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In spite of the captain’s official condemnation, officers were not above participating in their share of lubricious activities ashore, as demonstrated by a satirical poetic tribute to an anonymous Australian carrier pilot who served his tour of duty in Korea concurrently with Bataan, one line of which says that all he had ‘seen are Kure whores’.62 In general, however, the officers had less scope for such activities, as they had more duties to attend to in port, both administrative and social. Bracegirdle’s Reports of Proceedings attest to the unremitting round of official social engagements in Kure, Sasebo and Hong Kong. In accordance with naval etiquette and plain good manners, he personally called upon both his superiors and the COs of the ships with which Bataan worked. Bataan’s wardroom in turn hosted both superiors and colleagues at social functions aboard the ship. The tempo of this sort of socialising during the ship’s short port visits could be quite gruelling. Bracegirdle reported that during May the wardroom ‘entertained seven different Commanding Officers of United Nations ships to breakfast, lunch, cocktails or dinner, as well as Wardroom entertainment … I would like to add that we were all exhausted at the end of it’.63

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12 | Shipboard living In-between visits to Japanese ports, Bataan’s ship’s company, like those aboard the other Allied ships, was worked hard. On 10 June, Bataan was forced to cut short her harbour time in Sasebo and rush back to sea to relieve HMS Constance, which had run aground off the east coast of Korea and wrecked her propellers. By then, Geoff certainly considered that the ship’s company was pulling its weight: By the time we get back in harbour after this lot we will have done a lot more than our share of sea-time, as out of the last 54 days, only seven have been spent in port (there must be a war on or something).

Bataan’s captain accepted that his ship, like the other destroyers, was used as a ‘fire brigade’ to respond to operational contingencies in the operational area. However, this did not stop him from providing his brother officers with a satirical interpretation of Bataan’s ubiquitous presence off the Korean coasts. Bracegirdle wrote a poem referring to the Constance emergency, when Bataan had had to return to sea so suddenly that she sailed with an inoperative refrigerating plant. In it, he puts words in Scott-Moncrieff ’s mouth, representing the admiral as having an almost malevolent determination to keep Bataan at sea:

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Been in harbour two days now And never left our flaming brow What to do with her—now let’s see We’ll send the bastard out to sea

As it turned out, although the failed refrigerator meant that the ship left port with only a couple of days’ worth of fresh meat in the beef screen, Bataan’s ship’s company did not suffer the privation of hard rations, for USN ships came to the rescue by transferring frozen meat by jackstay every few days.1 Warships were driven hard in Korea: Bataan’s statistics show that she was at sea 20 days a month on average throughout her 1952 tour. As was often the case, the American destroyers seemed to have had it even harder than Bataan. A member of the ship’s company of USS John J Borland recalls that the ship steamed for 30 days consecutively.2 However, it is likely that ships were driven even harder in World War II: for example, HMAS Quiberon had spent only 3 days in port out of 42 during a spell of Atlantic convoy duty in late 1942.3 Bataan’s ship’s company tolerated the fatiguing tempo of continuous operations, but the subarctic weather of the Korean winter really ‘got on their works’. They had good reason to find the winter weather depressing, as attested by an American army officer who spent months with Wolfpack units on the west-coast islands: The cold of Korea had an ominous bite that was frightening in its intensity. I had never felt cold as hard or as sharp or as penetrating as I felt in Korea.4

Bracegirdle agreed, noting the icy weather even while still safely alongside the pontoon in Kure harbour. Weather conditions were not in any way advantageous to cleaning the upper deck or the ship’s side; snow showers were frequent, and snow, trampled into the deck, quickly became mud. The weather was so cold it even interfered with the hallowed naval routine of scrubbing the deck. The ship had arrived in the war zone in the coldest part of the 208

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Bataan’s fo’c’sle deck, photographed while the ship was steaming off the west coast of Korea, February 1952. Ice collected on guardrails and stanchions, and gathered in dirty heaps on the upper deck.

winter. For men who had sailed straight from the baking heat of an Australian summer, having to operate in this sort of weather had been a brutal introduction to Korea and Japan. It was doubly fortunate therefore that the men could spend their off-watch time down below in the heated mess decks. The engineers must for once have been envied as they went to their watch stations in the hot enclosed spaces of the engine room and gearing room! Meanwhile, the gun crews had to work on gun decks with a slippery film of ice underfoot. At –11 degrees Celsius, the seas breaking over the bows and the spray flying over the upper works turned instantly to ice. Men had to endure the discomfort and drudgery of thawing the ice ‘up topside’ with steam hoses, and chipping ice off between-deck fittings. Below decks, ice coated the bulkheads around the scuppers. It was difficult maintaining the galley and the heads in operation, as water-supply pipes froze solid, as did galley fuel pipes.5 209

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Men model ‘cold-weather rig’ at X gun. Geoff Cooper is in the middle. The uncomfortably high breeches of the twin 4-inch are evident. This was necessary in order to provide 80 degrees elevation for AA firing.

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Coatings of ice would appear over gun barrels and gun breeches, freezing the guns’ moving parts and breech mechanisms. If left untended, this would render the entire gun mounting inoperative. Therefore, prophylactic procedures were employed. Firstly, an electrical heater element was fitted into the base of an empty shell case and inserted into each breech, thereby keeping the breeches operable. Secondly, the ice coating on the guns was dealt with by the use of a cordite cord wrapped around the length of the barrel. This was detonated periodically to blow the ice off, which at least gave the frozen cruising-watch gun crews something to do on their exposed and wind-scoured gun deck. All of this gear had to be removed prior to firing. The crew’s first experience of snow and sleet was a novelty, as, like most Australians of the time, the men had never before seen snow. However, it was a novelty that soon wore off, as practical considerations such as adequate clothing, mess-deck heating and other creature comforts quickly became the prime considerations, as Geoff related: Here at Kure it is very cold, with snow and sleet falling at least once a day. We had a beaut snow fall last night and this morning and it was about six inches [15 centimetres] deep over every thing. Very pretty and quite a novelty for me but damned cold. Anyway I’m wearing my long woollen underwear and, with a jumper or two, plus socks, gloves and balaclava cap, feel quite warm. We’ve also been issued with extra warm clothing including fur-lined great coats and caps so we’re all prepared for the icy weather off the Korean coast … It’s quite warm in the mess-decks, although it cools off in the early hours of the morning, but it’s damned cold on the upper-deck, however there’s invariably a cup of hot tea or ‘Kai’ (navy cocoa) going so we manage quite well actually.

As cold as it was, it would have been colder and more uncomfortable had the navy not modified Bataan’s living spaces during her lengthy refit in Sydney, in an attempt to make some provision for the 211

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extremes of the Korean winter weather. The mess decks were heated by means of steam pipes within the ventilation trunking6, while extra insulation had been installed on deckheads and bulkheads. An additional measure taken to improve the level of creature comfort was the employment of a six-man Chinese laundry firm, which worked on board the whole time Bataan was in Korea, operating the washing machine and dryer that were set up on the deck between the funnels.7 The firm had come aboard from Murchison during the handover in Hong Kong, having evidently provided a good service for the frigate’s ship’s company.8 Geoff was certainly glad to be relieved of those domestic chores: We have four Chinese on board who do all our laundry and ironing for a very moderate fee … We also have two more who are tailors and do all the mending jobs as well, so actually we are being well looked after.

Of course, the bitter Korean winter did not only affect the men’s living and working conditions, but also imposed operational and navigational problems. During winter months off the west coast, ships at anchor became beset with sea ice. Spreading as far as the eye could see, the ice floes pressed against the stationary ships’ sides, creaking, moaning and cracking, the broken edge of each floe working under pressure against the edges of its neighbour. Vince Fazio experienced this in HMAS Condamine, recalling the ‘ocean frozen for miles in all directions, with ice floes of very large dimensions looking very ominous indeed’. The off-watch men lay in their hammocks at night, apprehensively listening to ‘the floes scraping along the side for all the world like a great tin opener’.9 Moreover, the temperature plunged while the ship was stationary in the field of ice, the ice floes turning the ship’s steel hull into a giant refrigerator, so that the bulkheads and side plating of unheated spaces became cold enough for fingers to stick to them. The eerie combination of pack ice and moonlight could play havoc with the imaginations of nervous watch-keepers and look212

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outs, particularly during night watches, when the ship took up station anchored close to the enemy-held shore. With the winter skies often clear, the cold luminescence of the moon shone off the craggy edges of the jumbled sheets of upturned ice. Watch-keepers staring at the surreal scene and listening to the creaking of the ice were apt to hallucinate about cut-throat North Korean commandos creeping stealthily towards them. Even when the ship was steaming in ice-free water, winter weather off Korea made for heavy going. When gales blew up in March, attempting to maintain even moderate cruising speeds in the open sea was an uncomfortable experience. Bataan was caught in a three-day gale in company with the carrier USS Bairoko and the other two screening destroyers, HMCS Cayuga and USS Isbell. Geoff described the experience: Our first three days back here this time were pretty uncomfortable due to a gale that was raging, and although the seas couldn’t have been termed mountainous, the fact of us cruising at 12 to 15 knots [22–28 kph] all the time caused us to bounce and lurch about all over the ‘oggin’. The other two destroyers, like us, were obscured by spray and waves half the time, and even the carrier was rolling and pitching. On the mess decks it was really hectic, as water was seeping in from the ventilator shafts, and every time we rolled badly, mess trays, tea urns, dixies, billies etc., would crash to the deck off lockers and skate back and forth across the deck, whilst the lads asleep on forms and cushions were rudely awaked by violent contact with the deck.

On this occasion, the seas were so bad that Bataan had to abandon her planned inshore nocturnal patrol, heaving-to instead in the lee of Taechong Do.10 It was a physical trial standing watch on the open bridge under such conditions, as Brian Sheedy has described:

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The shrieking noise through the ship’s rigging; the sleet stinging eyes and face over the bridge coaming; … eyes burning, red with salt spray; the heave and roll of deck underfoot; the blackness of night all around.11

Unlike most areas of Australia, Korea is a country that has four distinct seasons. After arriving at the height of winter, Bataan’s ship’s company found the transition to pleasant spring weather a very welcome relief. June then brought the rainy season, a period of increasing warmth and humidity, with daily rains and continuous clammy heat.12 By July, when the tropical weather would have seemed familiar to the Queenslanders aboard, the arctic weather of February was a faded memory. After the rigours of the winter, the stifling humidity was generally taken in good spirit, as Geoff recorded: We are … in the middle of the wet season and it’s been raining every other day. The weather is invariably overcast and very humid so we are feeling quite at home. Furthermore we are all becoming as brown as berries once again and look more like the proverbial ‘bronzed wallabies’.

Nevertheless, by late summer, the steamy heat might have given the men reason to wish for the winter again. The forward mess decks, which had been a home, a food-storage area and an eating area for more than 200 men for eight months, became a perfect habitat for cockroaches. The ship’s mess decks had been sealed off and fumigated at Garden Island before departing for Korea13; however, even DDT had its limitations after half a year of closely packed habitation. Geoff could, initially at least, see the funny side of the vermin infestation: At present we have the best selection of cockroaches I’ve ever seen. There are literally thousands of them all throughout the ship and they come in all sizes and shapes. When anybody wants to open his locker he has to knock and ask very politely before the cockroaches inside will open the lid. 214

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However, by September, when Bataan was in Hong Kong, the cockroaches were beyond a joke. Many men had chosen to abandon the hot, enclosed recesses of their hammocks, choosing to sleep instead on the padded locker tops or even stretched out on the deck. In the morning, such men now discovered that nocturnal cockroaches had taken advantage of them as a food source. Geoff described the crude pest-control measures being adopted: [The cockroaches] were so numerous … that they would eat tiny patches of skin off the exposed parts of any body sleeping either on the deck or on the locker-cushions [those who slept in hammocks appeared to be clear of the problem]. I slept on the deck two nights, before I realized what was causing the numerous small abrasions on my legs and back. Needless to say I don’t sleep within reach of the cows any more. They’ve had a go at practically everybody in the crew, so last Saturday … morning, some fumigating experts came aboard and sprayed the ship from stem to stern with D.D.T. It killed thousands of them, but I notice that a few survived and they won’t take long to multiply, so it will probably be just as bad as ever by the time we reach Sydney. Cyanide gas is the only really effective means of getting rid of any thing like that so roll on Sydney.

Joe Flaherty joked that the cockroaches that plagued Bataan were the biggest he had ever seen, ‘so big that you could see the side numbers on them’.14 By the time the ship’s nine-month tour-of-duty was over, her mess decks were a health hazard. Arriving back in Sydney, the interior spaces were scrubbed down and sealed off before being fumigated, and left sealed for five hours before being opened up for human occupation.15 Whether in the snow, sleet and gales of winter or the steamy heat of summer, living conditions aboard an old ship like Bataan inevitably left a lot to be desired. When not being used as a weapon for the harassment and destruction of the King’s enemies, the ship served as a home to the complement of more than 300 officers and crew. 215

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As Brian Sheedy reminds us, a ship is like a small city or colony, a self-contained and self-sufficient society afloat, comprised of all the trades and callings of a city: painters, joiners, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, clerks, stewards, cooks.16 Naturally, the ship’s routines demanded that all of these men pursue their avocations while the ship steamed about off the enemy coast. As a prewar design, Bataan perpetuated the antiquated living arrangements of earlier British destroyers. Starting at the bow, aft of the paint locker and the cable locker, were the fo’c’sle mess decks; these were on the main deck for the seamen, and on the deck below for the stokers. The living conditions of these men were basic: Ratings, senior and junior, had to sleep in hammocks; the open between deck spaces forward were divided into many small messes of about eight to ten ratings whose off duty life centred round one small scrubbed wooden table fixed to steel bars suspended from the deck above at the inboard end, and to the ship’s side at the other. Two padded benches (mess stools) completed the furniture.17

The seamen’s mess deck was furnished with only eight tables, each accommodating its appointed mess. Half the men sat at table on the padded tops of the kit lockers, running fore and aft along the sides of the ship, while the other half sat on long padded forms, or benches. The tables themselves ran fore and aft between these lockers and forms, four tables end to end in a row running down each side of the mess deck. The forward four were separated from the after four by the interposition of a watertight bulkhead, with access between the two compartments provided via watertight hatchways port and starboard. The main mess deck was only 20 metres long and 10 metres across at its widest point right aft (it narrowed rapidly forward, producing an almost triangular floor space), and this floor area was by no means all usable domestic space. Between the rows of mess tables to port and starboard, the central space was occupied by unproductive impedimenta (viewed from a ‘domestic’ point of view). From 216

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forward to aft, these included the trunking supporting A gun on the deck above; the piled rows of hammock storage racks (hammocks were stowed away at the start of the day and made unavailable until night); the two shell hoists, one each for the left and right guns of A mounting; the two corresponding powder hoists; and, finally, abutting the after mess-deck bulkhead, the scullery.18 A row of scuttles (portholes) ran fore and aft the entire length of both the upper and lower fo’c’sle mess decks, just as they did the officers’ cabins and offices right aft. During World War II, such scuttles had often been plated over as a damage-control measure (in order not to compromise the fo’c’sle’s water-tightness in the event of battle damage). However, Bataan’s scuttles were left untouched in Korea, providing much-needed ventilation to the lower decks in warm weather. The more modern American ships enhanced their battle worthiness by eliminating scuttles altogether, retaining a dubious measure of livableness down below by the use of forced-air ventilation systems. Fresh water was an essential ingredient in maintaining reasonable living conditions in such cramped accommodation. This was rarely a problem off Korea because all ships were able to replenish their freshwater tanks from RFA tankers every few days. In World War II, during long periods at sea, ships’ companies had been forced to resort to saltwater showers, for which nonlathering saltwater soap was required. This had been so unpopular that when the fresh water ran out, the men simply stopped showering. In Korea, Bataan was able to avoid this dire situation except after the incident recounted in chapter 10 (pages 175–79), when a collision with a tanker contaminated her freshwater tank with seawater. Geoff described the consequences on that occasion: Unfortunately there was nothing we could do about it so we had to use it for bathing, washing etc. It made the tea taste pretty crook, but after the first day or two, they arranged for us to draw our drinking water from the distilled supply in the Engine Room.

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This testifies to the relatively ‘cushy’ arrangements that applied in Korean War naval operations. The necessity to wash in salt water, so common aboard RN and RAN ships in the earlier war, was uncommon enough in Korea to be remarked upon. With a water resupply available from the replenishment ships every few days, the men had become accustomed to having sufficient fresh water for drinking, washing, showering and shaving. Men who remembered the hardships of their service in World War II must have been thankful for the comparative luxury. That the water supply was bountiful is also shown by the fact that the men were even given access to the usually sacrosanct supply of feedwater. Naval precedent had it that the boilers came first and the men a very distant second. Korea was different, however, and under certain exigencies feedwater could be drunk by the men. With more than 200 men crammed into the fo’c’sle mess decks, practical provision had to be made for answering ‘the call of nature’.

To view this image, please refer to the print version of the book

Bataan’s crowded shower room in the fo’c’sle. The uncubicled showers were against the outer bulkhead to the left. A line of shaving mirrors runs along the bulkhead to the right, above stainless-steel washbasins, with towel racks above. Judging by the queue, it is clear that showers had to be kept short!

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The men’s ablutions facilities were on the port side of the fo’c’sle, aft of the seamen’s mess decks—through the after-mess-deck hatchway and along the corridor. There were four urinals, ten water-closet toilets and twelve washing tubs (all uncubicled—privacy was nonexistent for the ratings). This allocation might have coped with normal demand, but there must have been quite a crush during the watch changeovers. The stokers, ensconced in their own mess one deck below, had to ascend the companionway to use the same facilities. The officers’ and warrant officers’ facilities were on the starboard side of the fo’c’sle. There was one water closet (WC) for the officers and chief petty officers (the officers, with their cabin accommodation aft, had their main facilities there), and two for the petty officers—all cubicled, of course (with rank came privacy). The CPOs and POs shared a relatively voluminous washplace next to their WCs.19 Like the stokers, they had to ascend and descend a companionway to access their ablutions facilities, as their accommodation space was one deck above, in the deckhouse under B-gun deck. With the men worked hard, kept at sea for three weeks at a time and cooped up all the while in a riveted steel box, maintaining good morale depended upon a lot of small things, such as the regular delivery of mail. The lack of regular and reliable mail during operations in the Pacific during World War II had caused major morale problems on RAN vessels.20 In Korea, it took the RCN some time to sort out a fast and reliable trans-Pacific mail service, in spite of the solid stream of ships and long-range aircraft shuttling between the US West-Coast ports and Sasebo; the resulting long periods without mail were a trigger for much ill-feeling and embittered contempt for the navy aboard the Canadian ships.21 However, the Australian mail service worked pretty well, partly due to the longstanding communications and logistics link between Australia and BCOF, as evidenced by Geoff ’s experience in 1952. Sending and receiving letters on a roughly fortnightly basis, he was able to swap letters with his mother much as he would have been able to do had he still been in Sydney. There was never a case of receiving nothing for weeks or 219

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The destroyer USS Gurke delivers mail via jackstay, in the sea ice off Cho Do, February 1952.

months and then receiving a pile of backlogged mail, as happened to the Canadians. Mail was accorded a high operational priority, the command organisation clearly recognising the dependency of the men’s morale upon it. When an Australian ship was patrolling off the Korean coast, its mail was picked up and dropped off by any other Allied ship returning to Japan or arriving back in the operational area from Japan. Destroyers, frigates, tankers and ammunition ships all served as mail carriers. Destroyers, especially, were routinely detailed to deliver mail to particular task elements off the Korean coast. Once the ship had joined company, an opportune moment was found to go alongside and pass over the mailbag. This was easy enough if the ships were anchored in the lee of one of the islands, but when underway it required the Costin gun and a jackstay. The helicopters won even more friends here. Whether operating from carriers or from key base islands like Cho Do, they were often used to transfer official mail 220

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USS Bairoko’s Sikorsky S-51 helicopter delivering a bag of official mail.

when they could be spared from their plane-guard or SAR duties. Although contact with home was vital to the men’s sense of wellbeing, the actual news from home was not always a source of comfort. Geoff was fed bad news about relatives losing their jobs or falling onto hard times, so his letters are full of worry about the business environment, apprehension about adverse stock movements, and guarded approval for the Menzies government’s deflationary policies (‘longer hours and smaller wages’). Isolated from the Australian media by distance and with his mother’s letters full of economic doom and gloom interlaced with a certain sense of social panic, he acquired the odd perception that Australia was headed for a fullblown depression. He drew some comfort from being in the navy: Seemingly, a man’s in the right racket at the present moment, even though the Navy may reduce wages if things get really grim. Still, we’re assured of our tucker and a place to sleep.

The navy also provided some limited scope for alcoholic solace. 221

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Although the RAN had not adopted the ancient RN tradition of the daily rum issue, Australian ships were not ‘dry’ like American ships. In the wardroom, off-duty officers were able to partake of status-symbol drinks such as martinis or scotch (without ice, of course—that would be a later American innovation). British war correspondent Reginald Thompson, who spent time aboard Allied ships off Korea, observed the cultural difference between the ‘dry’ US Navy and the ‘wet’ Commonwealth navies. Present at a social function aboard HMS Kenya, he related how a USN Lieutenant Commander expressed his astonishment that ‘everyone wasn’t drunk most of the time’ aboard British ships: ‘You mean the bar is open at sea? That you can get a drink before going on watch?’ ‘Of course’, said the British officer, ‘nothing like a couple of pink gins or a stiff whisky on a cold night.’22

The British officer was obviously being provocative, but the anecdote attests to the ready accessibility of alcohol in Commonwealth ships’ wardrooms. However, this was, once again, one of the privileges of rank, for there was no corresponding permanent wet canteen for the men. The RAN attempted to foster good morale by a limited beer issue: every man was supposed to be issued a bottle of beer per day. This was usually sourced from good breweries in Japan or Hong Kong, but Australian beer was also often available. Unfortunately, unlike the RN’s rum, beer could never be stored aboard ship in the quantities required, and had of course to take second place to fuel oil, food stores and ammunition during replenishments. Nor could it be kept cold in summer, given the tiny refrigerated storage space available aboard Bataan. Thus, the beer issue became in practice, as Geoff noted, ‘one bottle per man perhaps’. The RAN recognised the gap between theory and practice, and attempted to compensate the men for the missed beer by the provision of an extra butter ration. Some men took the sailor’s traditional liking for drink a little 222

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too far. It was not unknown for alcoholics to acquire, by whatever illicit means, medicinal alcohol from the ‘sick-bay tiffie’, or alcohol essence (used in cakes and puddings) from the ship’s ‘stores tiffie’. However, most of the serious drinkers in the ship’s company had to wait until port visits, during which excessive drinking was common among sailors on leave. Cooped up together at close quarters, without any privacy, for a fortnight at a time, and in the absence of any onboard entertainment system other than a movie projector and a mess-deck wireless set, the men killed time and preserved inward personal space by ploughing through books from the ship’s library. Books provided a psychological release from the crowded mess-deck environment, a means of ‘tuning out’ and retreating from social contact for an hour or so. All ships had a small onboard library, the books of which went the rounds of the whole ship, passed from hand to hand among readers. The books were mostly popular works, with some classics and nonfiction thrown in. However, in a short time the readers on the ship would find that they had read every book on board. As a consequence, ships’ companies ardently sought library exchanges with other ships, passing sacks of books to one another while underway by jackstay transfer, along with mail, stores, orders, code books and other more strictly naval matter. The men aboard the other ship were usually in precisely the same desperate straits regarding reading material, and thus libraries were avidly and indiscriminately exchanged with tankers, destroyers, cruisers, carriers and minesweepers, of any Allied navy—so long as it wasn’t the Dutch! Given the limitations of the jackstay transfer, however, the libraries had to be exchanged sight unseen. Inevitably, therefore, the eager men opening the bag of books sometimes discovered that they had been sold a lemon. At one time, having sent their own ‘good’ library over to a USN ship, the men on Bataan were disgusted to discover that they had received a load of comics in return. The same comicbook phenomenon was observable in the US Army, which the British war correspondent Louis Heren found to be admirably supplied 223

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with ‘everything … except books. Instead, every unit was inundated with comic magazines’.23 It would appear that there was some difference of perspective between US and Commonwealth servicemen on what constituted adult reading matter! Having been lumbered with a bag of comics, the only remedy for Bataan’s men was to exchange them with the next unsuspecting ship, in the hope of receiving ‘real books’ in return.

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13 | Leadership and morale Commander ‘Braces’ Bracegirdle was a man whom most of the crew remember with respect and admiration. The war correspondent Ronald McKie described him as: a big, ruddy, cheerful looking man with smooth black hair and one of those deceptive innocent English schoolboy faces … Warwick Bracegirdle had been at the Battle of Matapan (where he had won his first D.S.C.), and among the Kamikazes off the Philippines (where he had won his second D.S.C.). And now, in command of the … Bataan … he had what he called his ‘Parish’ to patrol and protect off the west coast of Korea. But because nobody could be too sure what ‘Braces’ Bracegirdle would do at any given moment—he would go in and fight at the drop of a hat—and because of his piratical clothes and likable whimsical manner, he was always the target for goodnatured leg-pulling. The officers of a Canadian destroyer referred to him as ‘The Black Terror’ and his ship as ‘The Grey Ghost of the West Coast’, while the Americans and British called Bataan ‘The Big Top’ or just ‘Braces’ Circus’.1

It would appear that Bracegirdle was a character; indeed some contemporaries considered him to have been an ‘actor’. In any case, his winning personal style contributed to the success of his command 225

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Bracegirdle (centre) on the bridge of Bataan with Admiral John Collins RAN (left) and Commander WF Cook RAN (right), Haeju Gulf, 1 August 1952. Collins was being taken on a tour of Bracegirdle’s ‘parish’. (AWM Negative HOBJ3377)

style in Korea. The captain of a warship sets the tone of his command in many ways, including through the manner in which he addresses the men, the way he imposes discipline and punishment, the example that he sets for the first lieutenant and other officers, the extent to which he is devoted to spit and polish (termed contemptuously ‘bull’ by the sailors) and last, but by no means least, by the degree of competence or flair with which he handles the ship in operations— in short (as the crew inevitably see it), is he the sort who will get them all killed? Bracegirdle’s two World War II DSC’s (he was awarded a third in Korea) show that he was, at the very least, a competent naval officer with extensive combat experience. Forty years old when he took Bataan to Korea, Bracegirdle’s professional naval experience gave him a good background for the war of bombardment that was 226

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fought along the Korean coasts. He had served in action as gunnery officer aboard RAN cruisers throughout World War II: Perth during 1939–41 and Shropshire in 1942–45.2 In Korea, Bataan’s ship’s company gained self-respect from the technical proficiency of the ship’s command team, and enjoyed what Geoff saw as their reputation as a ‘good gunnery ship’. However, it was not just through displays of professional competency that Bracegirdle won the respect and loyalty of his men. Morale was often affected by more domestic issues. Edward Meyers’ book on the RCN in Korea has shown how little things could have a huge impact upon the morale of a ship’s company, citing the near-mutiny aboard HMCS Cayuga on the way to Korea in 1950, triggered by the captain’s orders to wear the heavy ‘Number Five’ uniform while in port in Hawaii.3 Indeed, the issue of onerous dress rules seems to have been a standard cause of resentment and of the men’s consequent alienation from their officers. Having gained extensive experience of operating noninsulated, nonairconditioned ships in Pacific waters during 1943–45, Bracegirdle was unlikely to make the same error. Indeed, he himself set an example by discarding formal uniform when at sea. In summer, he habitually appeared on the bridge in shorts, singlet and sandals, so he had no problem with the men doing the same and even discarding their singlets, or even wearing slippers if they felt like it. He also took a relaxed approach to dressing for action: the journalist Ronald McKie recorded him changing into his ‘action uniform’ prior to Operation Round-up: ‘an old dark sweater and suede shoes’.4 Even when VIPs such as Admiral Collins came aboard, Bracegirdle wore working dress: a US Navy enlisted-man’s blue denim shirt and armysurplus khaki shorts. This informal dress was in no way peculiar to Bracegirdle, but reflected a traditionally permissive approach to naval working dress at sea. For example, Lieutenant Commander Rodney Rhoades RAN, captain of HMAS Quickmatch, while addressing the commissioning crew in September 1942, told them that he required them to be a 227

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Geoff Cooper in the de facto ‘rig of the day’ during the sweltering Japanese and Korean summer, leaning against Y gun. Note the searchlight on X-gun deck.

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‘smart’ ship’s company in harbour and ashore, but that at sea they could wear any rig they liked.5 Similarly, Lieutenant John Alliston RN, later to command HMAS Warramunga, visited HMAS Stuart in Alexandria during 1940, and found her famous CO, Commander Hector Waller RAN, wearing ‘tattered shorts’.6 It must be emphasised that this sartorial informality at sea was typical for the RN too—it would certainly be a grotesque distortion to exaggerate the ‘spit and polish’ character of the RAN’s sister service, or to draw artificial distinctions between British and Australian ‘national characters’. An example will illustrate the point: the working rig of HMS Petard’s ship’s company during World War II was shorts and sandals, which was typical of the RN’s hard-working and hard-fighting Mediterranean Fleet.7 In contrast, there is a Korean War example from USS Ozbourn of an officer insisting upon correct uniform while on watch, and of a captain who held captain’s inspections, whereby the men had to line up on deck in their dress whites, while steaming on war operations off the enemy coast.8 National stereotypes will only mislead here, but certainly Bataan was a lot more like the laid-back British on Petard than the spit-and-polish Americans on Ozbourn. Sailors, especially of a self-confessed hard-bitten character like the re-enlistees aboard Bataan, looked upon all forms of naval ‘bull’ with disapproval and derision, constituting as it did an inconvenience, a waste of spare time and an added burden for already sleep-deprived and fatigued men. ‘Bull’ was of course short for a two-syllable word that the Australian serviceman has always used to describe all the polishing of brass and boots, starching of uniforms, stamping, parading, saluting and shouting characteristic of military ceremonial. A destroyer was considered ‘the lowest denominator of bullshit routines’9, compared with cruisers or carriers. The perception was that the bigger the ship, the more the bull, so destroyer men considered themselves fortunate to be serving in ‘the boats’. Bracegirdle understood this clearly, and seemed somewhat inclined to take a similar view. Thus, bull aboard Bataan in Korea was confined to 229

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those times when it was culturally appropriate or ceremonially unavoidable, such as port visits and admirals’ inspections. It was not only in his choice of work clothing that Bracegirdle exhibited the ‘common touch’. He knew and used the men’s names, and had the gift of being able to exchange small talk, to refer to some common experience, to share a few words, a joke or a greeting. Bataan veterans recall him as a ‘very fine man’, someone who did not talk down to the men, but who indeed treated them as men. Bataan veteran Gerry Shepherd, who corresponded with Bracegirdle in retirement, was touched by his old captain signing off as ‘Your old shipmate’. Part of the thrill for Shepherd was evidently that the great man he remembered had deigned to address him, a former rating, in such egalitarian terms, even after the passage of the years. Yet although he was not arrogant, condescending or overbearing in his exercise of command, neither was Bracegirdle overfamiliar. Like other officers, he was careful to preserve the navy’s traditional command distance, that invisible line between officers and ratings. In this, he was of course playing the part of the English gentleman, a role that came naturally to him in view of his own Anglophile inclinations and in view of the RN culture from which the RAN had emerged. RN officers commonly served alongside their RAN colleagues on Australian ships, and thus the men had to deal with officers of both nationalities, and the Australian officers did not always come out well in the comparison. It would be entirely spurious to make assumptions here about more egalitarian RAN officers, for in another inversion of the easy-going Aussie stereotype, Geoff recalled that it was often the RAN officers who adopted an overly officious and abrupt manner towards the men. Indeed, it is telling that within the RAN one of the standard terms used by the men in reference to officers was ‘pigs’.10 RN exchange officers, by contrast, often seemed able to cross the gap more comfortably in a less strident command style. If this was true, then Bracegirdle was among the RAN officers who had become comfortable with command and with his leadership of men. 230

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Normally, the best that ratings could expect from naval officers, irrespective of whether they were RAN or RN, was completely professional behaviour (as it were, ‘in-role’). Interaction between officer and rating was thereby confined to ‘punctilious, polite, and noncommittal’ exchanges concerning the task at hand, with at most ‘a few quiet words of satisfaction’ as a commendation for a job well done, as Brian Sheedy, a yeoman of signals who stood countless bridge watches throughout World War II reported.11 Sheedy also provides the following testimony of this form of ‘very correct’ officer–rating relations: In several thousand watches on the bridge, in close proximity to many officers, I did not experience what you would call a normal, man to man conversation. The opportunity never arose. An officer was always an officer, conscious of rank, standing across a gulf that no lower deck person dared—or cared—to cross.12

However, maintaining the traditional command distance from the men did not preclude recognition that the men’s cooperation could be ensured by keeping them informed of developments and future movements. Aboard Bataan, the men knew the ship’s program, right down to projected dates for arriving in port and projected patrol durations, because Bracegirdle dignified the men by letting them know in advance. However, once again, this was merely standard practice in RN and RAN ships—Bataan’s captain was simply following service tradition. Although some of her former crew have declared that Bataan was always a happy ship13, she was not—an example could be cited from 1953, when the old hands who were left aboard her bridled under the overbearing rule of a new first lieutenant. However, she certainly seems to have been a happy ship in Korea. The maintenance of a constructive relationship between officers and men while on patrol did not of course ensure that the men behaved responsibly in port, as we have seen. It is unsurprising that 300 young men cooped up in a steel box for a fortnight or more at a 231

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time would be inclined to go on a ‘blinder’ when let ashore in Kure, Sasebo or Hong Kong, and that is exactly what a significant minority of the crew did. Bracegirdle opted to use the ship’s own shore patrols to find miscreants, extract them and get them back aboard before they landed themselves in more trouble. This was far preferable, from his and the men’s points of view, to being dealt with by Sasebo’s US Navy provost marshals or by Kure’s Australian Army Military Police. Bracegirdle used humour as an important element of his command style, in a natural and unaffected way. It helped him maintain positive relationships within teams, to get himself and his men through difficult situations, and to humanise relationships with his subordinates. An anecdote from World War II illustrates this. During HMAS Shropshire’s service in the exhausting conditions of the South West Pacific campaign, Bracegirdle observed Sub Lieutenant Guy Griffiths nodding off during an extended period at action stations. ‘Braces switched on the loudspeaker, turned the volume up to full blast and then bellowed: “GOD IS WATCHING YOU, GRIFFITHS!”’.14 It was doubtless incidents like this that caused the journalist Ronald McKie to describe Bracegirdle as possessing a ‘likeable whimsical manner’.15 Bracegirdle also used humour to heighten shared experiences among his circle of colleagues, and to foster good relationships with superiors. As an example, during the ship’s sole east-coast patrol, while off Chongjin, USS Thomason, Bataan’s consort, espied a small sampan approaching, the occupants of which were waving a white flag. Having picked them up, Thomason signalled that two of them were officers while the third was an enlisted man. Bracegirdle quipped afterwards, ‘This may have been true, as one man did all the rowing, and appeared exhausted at the finish’.16 His audience, his fellow officers, clearly found amusement in the caste-conscious division of labour in the escapees’ boat. Bracegirdle described the scene for the Naval Board, balancing humour with sympathy as he recounted that while the two officers stood ‘wildly gesticulating’ or 232

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‘sitting in the bow waving white flags’, the enlisted man ‘slaved over a single stern oar … this unfortunate oarsman … rowing himself to exhaustion’ as he ‘propelled the craft for a distance of some 10 miles [16 km]’.17 In Geoff ’s account of the same scene, the details vary and the source of humour is quite different; but he clearly shared Bracegirdle’s sympathy for the desperate men: We noticed a sampan close inshore waving a white flag, so … we hove-to and lay off the entrance to the harbour and very cautiously awaited results. Half an hour or so later they were within ‘spitting distance’ and the two [sic] occupants were easily discernable working at the sweep oar as if the entire Russian Army was breathing on the backs of their necks. Our partner-in-crime [Thomason] took them inboard where they were promptly subjected to a thorough ‘frisking’ for possible concealed Atom-Bombs, white-ants etc. They turned out to be a couple of N.Korean civies who were apparently fed-up with their existence ashore (can’t say I blame them).

If Bataan was a happy ship under Bracegirdle, then the RAN of the time was also evidently happy in having a good officer as Chief of Naval Staff (CNS): Vice Admiral Sir John Collins. This officer had a splendid reputation in the service as a fighting captain, having commanded the cruiser HMAS Sydney in the successful action off Crete in July 1941 that had culminated in her sinking the Italian cruiser Colleoni.18 Wounded when the cruiser HMAS Australia was hit by Kamikaze aircraft during the US landings at Lingayen in the Philippines in January 1945, he recovered from his injuries and went on to command the Australian fleet after the war. He had then been groomed by the Chifley Government for the post of Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS). As such he was honoured to become the first RAN officer to command Australia’s navy, all previous incumbents as CNS having been British officers on loan from the RN. 233

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Admiral Collins on the depth-charge rack, under the barrels of Y gun, addressing the ship’s company crammed onto the quarterdeck, off Inchon, August 1952.

Collins was a great success in the role, his war record and combat reputation commanding the respect of the service. Moreover, as Geoff recalled, ‘he spoke to the men, not at them or down to them’. If a navy has to have admirals (and it does), then Collins was the sort in whom the men could have confidence. He came out to Korea in August 1952, and Bataan was detailed to pick the ‘big noise’ up at Inchon and take him on a tour of the war zone. Bracegirdle and Collins knew one another, the admiral having been Bracegirdle’s CO aboard Shropshire in 1943–44. Like Bracegirdle, Collins laid great store in communicating with the men, tantalising them with a ‘vision splendid’ of an enlarged RAN. Geoff was impressed, in spite of himself: We all fell in on the Quarterdeck this morning and he had a short talk to us. The usual ‘bull’ of course plus a bit of information (unofficial) regarding the present state of the RAN … Quite interesting and if what he tells us is true, we’re to have an extremely modern and efficient navy within the next five to six years.

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Sir John has aged considerably since I last saw him, but he is still the same good hand.

Collins was doubtless referring to the upcoming Daring-Class destroyers, which along with the aircraft carriers and the Q-Class destroyer escorts, would represent an immense upgrading of the RAN’s fleet. The CNS had apparently pitched his address at the men’s level, communicating in a way that inspired confidence and provided an implicit acknowledgement of the men’s worth. Thus the official visit had passed off well. Having admirals aboard, even admirals of Collins’s calibre, was nonetheless in principle to be avoided, bringing with it as it did a great deal of bull. Even though the ship’s presence in the war zone spared the crew the worst of this, they did not escape scot-free prior to the great man’s arrival on board, as Geoff related: We have been and are as busy as blazes getting the ship all spic and span for the occasion and we’ll be at it until his visit is concluded, so roll on the 1st of August.

The men were put to work applying extra paint to the ship’s sides, plus the usual polishing of ship’s brasswork. Bracegirdle then turned his ship’s company out in best whites for Collins’s arrival on board ship on 1 August, and again upon his departure on the 5th. Bracegirdle understood the importance of social stimulation and relaxation, and therefore organised a big dinner in the wardroom to mark the CNS’s visit. This presented a logistical problem, for the required culinary items were not obtainable through RAN supply channels; Bataan’s wardroom was forced to rely upon Bracegirdle’s ability to call in favours from USN colleagues. He made a poetic appeal for provisions to Commander James M Robertson USN, CO of the destroyer USS John R Craig: We may live without poetry, music and art, We may live without conscience, and live without heart; We may live without friends, we may live without books; 235

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But civilized man cannot live without cooks! We may live without books—what is knowledge but grieving? We may live without hope—what is hope but deceiving? We may live without love—what is passion but pining? But where is the man who can live without dining?19

Bracegirdle’s wit had the desired response, and the Craig duly sent over a selection of American goodies: tinned ham, frozen boneless turkey, tomato juice, fruit juices and frozen chickens. Robertson thanked him for the verse, and offered condolences for having to host an admiral’s visit.20 It must have been a good dinner, for Admiral Collins wrote afterwards from the comfort of his Qantas flight, thanking Bracegirdle for ‘the ham and other nice things to eat and drink’ and proclaiming, ‘I liked your ship’.21 An astute and experienced officer like this could recognise fuss-free efficiency and constructive working relationships when he saw them. Ships’ officers sought to use competitive sport as a means of fostering esprit de corps among the men. Whenever Bataan had a few days in port, opponents were sought out among other ship’s companies or army units ashore, and many games of rugby, cricket and water polo resulted. This robustly physical approach to group cohesion was nowhere more typically Australian than in Bracegirdle’s formation of the ‘Nan-Do Swimming Club’ behind North Korean lines at a latitude of 40 degrees north, during Bataan’s sole east-coast patrol. In spite of the fact that the water in the Sea of Japan was a chilly 13 degrees Celsius, fully 30 ‘die-hards’ (in spite of Bracegirdle’s breezy generalisation that all ‘Australians are keen swimmers’) responded manfully when ‘Hands to Bathe’ was piped. The effect of the water temperature can be gauged by the observation that the brave 30 ‘swam strongly but briefly’ before clambering shivering up the scrambling nets into the waist.22 The officers were by no means exempt from such demonstrations of rude good health. When the officers of the submarine HMS 236

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Tactician challenged those of Bataan to a whaleboat race during a port visit to Sasebo in May, the latter rose to the occasion and saw off their competition. Under the terms of the challenge, the loser had to play host to the other wardroom. Bracegirdle provides a typically amusing account: After a grueling struggle over an exhausting course of (luckily) three cables [555 metres], BATAAN emerged victorious; but there were ten very sorry participants who slumped into the submariners’ Wardroom after the race! The whaler race was pulled in tropical rain and the look of amazement on the faces of many U.S.N. power boat coxswains as they passed us lining up for the start was quite something to remember.23

While such events doubtless provided a source of some amusement for the nonparticipants, other more conventional forms of entertainment were laid on to fill up the time off duty. The movie projector saw sterling service while the ship was at her night stations in protected anchorages such as Cho Do and Taeyonpyong Do. This turned the fo’c’sle deck into an improvised cinema, with the screen set up at the bow and the men perched wherever they could on A- and B-gun decks. Amazingly, the films were run openly on the upper deck. The flickering light of the projector must have been visible from the enemy coast (although presumably out of artillery range!)—blackouts were evidently not always strictly applied in the naval war. Bracegirdle even kept count of the number of sittings, noting that the ship was running 21 ‘cinema performances’ per week.24 While the movies shown were not always new releases (as reputedly shown on ‘Yank ships’), they provided a link with ‘normal’ life, and triggered thoughts of home. The wireless in the mess deck was often tuned into Radio Australia—the men listened enviously to the report of the welcome-home festivities afforded to their mates in Warramunga upon her return to Sydney from Korea. Sometimes there were more tangible contacts with the community back home: organisations such as the Melbourne RSL, the Sydney 237

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Telegraph, and Hoyts’ Theatres of South Australia sent comforts parcels for the homesick ship’s company. Geoff ’s family in Toowoomba sent him a stack of Courier Mail newspapers, and he and his fellow Queenslanders took delight catching up on local (albeit by then outof-date) news from home. However, there is no doubt that the most popular gift parcels were cases of Australian beer.25 All these tokens of the distant homeland were powerful triggers for nostalgia.

War-weariness and cultural identity After half a year in the war zone, thoughts had certainly turned homewards, with rumours and information regarding Bataan’s relief a staple both of mess-deck conversation and of letters home. The prospect of lengthy Christmas leave was tantalising, and was confirmed in July when Bracegirdle passed on the Naval Board’s plans to the ship’s company: Anzac would replace them, and the changeover would take place in Hong Kong in mid-September. The crew was consequently ‘counting the days’ by the time Bataan slipped her buoy for her last patrol in August. Bracegirdle too had been looking forward to getting away from Korea. He penned and distributed a satirical poem that not only lampooned the British naval commanders’ alleged tendency to use Bataan as a ‘fire brigade’, but also expressed a flippant sense of warweariness: Let’s buzz off and leave the lot! Who cares about Sok To and Choda? It’s May,—bring on the Whiskey and Soda.26

By this stage of the ship’s tour of duty, the men regarded their relief at the appointed hour as a sacred right, responding jealously to any sign of other ships being treated with favouritism. Warramunga’s relief had been postponed at the last moment, providing an object lesson to the men on Bataan, as Geoff noted: Our sister ship the ‘Warramunga’ sailed on her last patrol of this 238

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commission last Friday much to the crew’s disgust. Normally she would have headed for Hong Kong to meet her relief the ‘Condamine’ but as she was delayed in leaving Sydney, the old ‘Munga’ was skidded into another patrol. However they’ve been up a month less than us and will be getting home a damned sight sooner, so they’re not doing too badly.

This reveals the incorrigible self-interestedness of a ship’s company aching to finish with the war and get home, as well as a truly wilful disregard of facts: Warramunga had arrived off Korea within a couple of days of her sister ship, certainly not a month later, and had actually beaten Bataan to her first war patrol. Bataan’s ship’s company had passed through a sharp morale cycle in the course of the war cruise. The men had evinced great keenness to get away on their ‘big adventure’ prior to departure from Sydney, but once on operations in the war zone they soon thought of nothing else but getting home. After the novelty of war service had worn off, they counted down the days to their relief, and adopted a tone of fashionable cynicism towards the war, the navy and their duties. The men were increasingly given to mocking any sign of keenness in others, as illustrated by the attitude taken by Geoff in one of his letters from August: The ‘Anzac’s’ time is getting short now with three days to go, (If they’re delayed I’ll swear) and I’ll bet there’s a lot of last minute ‘skidding’ (swap-drafts) going on down there. One of the lads received a newspaper clipping in which one of the ‘Anzac’ veterans (?) allegedly stated he was keen to get back up here (they spent a whole 26 days up here last time on carrier patrols—the fruitiest job of the lot), so we all laughed (Ha! Ha!) and reckoned he was the best bastard to be up here.

The evolution of the Bataan’s esprit de corps can be traced in this ridicule of the overkeen hand from Anzac. Cynical or not, their acerbic mockery of Anzac implies their own vaunting of themselves— they knew that Anzac had done a war cruise of more or less a month 239

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in late 1951, whereas Bataan had done two entire full-length tours. According to the lower-deck version of the situation going the rounds aboard Bataan, the brand new Anzac, moreover, had had the cushy job of carrier screening during her short tour, whereas they themselves had performed the full gamut of operational tasks in their old ship, getting into the thick of action, being saddled with many unglamorous jobs in the ‘real war’ and coming under fire. The men did not allow their righteous indignation to be spoiled by the fact that the only reason Anzac had been sent to Korea at all the previous year had been to cover for Bataan’s absence during her boiler breakdown, nor the fact that Anzac, like them, had done her share of inshore patrolling, including patrols off the more perilous east coast.27 Such factual quibbles did not matter: the point was that the men of Bataan were, in their own estimation, clearly the real sailors. Contributing to this hard-bitten self-perception, the men derived a perverse sense of collective identity from the ship’s company’s relaxed dress code. It and their increasingly antinaval esprit de corps were highlighted in a poem openly posted on the ship’s notice board following the notorious depth-charge incident of 24 July (recounted on pages 175–79). Captain Lewis RN had come aboard with a retinue of RN officers to investigate Bataan’s collision with the tanker. An anonymous spokesman from the lower deck provided an acerbic response to the intrusion of these British officers. He focused upon the issue of dress, and the alleged disparity in standards between Bataan and the RN ship. Traditional national stereotypes were freely invoked in a common sailor’s visceral protest against naval bull and against the purportedly imperious demeanour of the British officer class: MOUNTed ABUSE We welcomed ‘His Immaculacy’, All dressed in blinding white, With downcast face he gave a scowl, Traditional R.N. sight.

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The Host was dressed in No.8s, His sandals old and worn, His portly manner saved the day, Though it was yet still-born. They viewed the damage slowly, From the Thrower to the sounder, His thoughts of us were lowly, Misappropriated bounder. The outcome we have yet to hear, His knowledge was the book, Far be it us to shed a tear, For this lowly outcast crook. He wined and dined and had his fill, Of good old Aussie Beer, The Bludger then turned around, And tried to tell us what to wear. We could heap abuse upon him, At conclusion of this lot, That dumb demented misfit, That ill-begotten sot.28

The apparent cultural conflict with Captain Lewis RN had endeared Bracegirdle to his men, by his having, in effect, defended their right to dress casually in a war zone. Eccentricity can add to the glamour of a leader, and the stubborn sartorial eccentricity of Bataan’s captain gave the men something with which to identify, uniting them across the fixed gulf of rank, position and social class. If such a captain would keep the ‘brass-hats’ off their back, protect them from unnecessary bull, keep them informed through regular briefings and even address them politely, then the men in turn would gladly follow him. Bataan’s ship’s company displayed effective discipline—the discipline required to conscientiously stand watches, maintain the ship, 241

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serve the guns in action and, when necessary, turn on the bull in port. The rest of the time, however, they appreciated being liberated from the irksome artificialities of naval life. The response to the depth-charge investigation also revealed a strong thread of the Australian identity. Even though, as always, the national stereotyping is highly dubious, it is clear that the men were reacting against a perceived RN-style spit-and-polish approach to shipboard discipline. Bataan’s men saw themselves as fighting sailors, and their implication was that no self-respecting fighting captain would worry about such trivial matters as dress regulations in a war zone. The fact that they were in a separate national service, the RAN, allowed them to feel they could thumb their noses at an RN senior officer’s admonishments. According to them, they were Australians; they did things differently. Photos of Bataan show an interesting means of differentiating the ship from her British equivalents: a kangaroo cut-out (presumably made from sheet-metal) flew from the signals halyards behind the bridge. Given that the RAN of the time flew the British White Ensign, this was one way to show the ship’s Australian identity. The kangaroo symbol has since become a permanent recognition feature on RAN ships, usually in the form of a painted red outline on the side of the superstructure. Thus, Bataan was helping to pioneer a form of Australian military heraldry. Their perception of their Australianness did not, however, stop the men of Bataan from adopting American sartorial innovations. Pragmatically, with the connivance of the officers, the ship’s company of Bataan (like those of other RAN ships in Korea) unofficially introduced new working dress to the RAN. The men arrived in Korean waters with the then-standard ‘Number Eight’ working dress: badly cut cotton trousers and shirts, which Geoff found to be produced on the basis of ‘one size fits all’, with the result that in his case ‘the crotch was down between the knees’. Quickly noticing the well-cut blue-cotton denim dungarees and cotton drill shirts worn by their cousins in the USN, the men wasted 242

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little time in upgrading their wardrobe. Unlike the Commonwealth navies, which only provided clothing stores ashore, the US ships had clothing stores on board. The Bataan men availed themselves of these whenever they berthed alongside a US ship. Within three months of their arrival in Korea, the US style had become almost universal: coming aboard in May, Ronald McKie noted that the ship’s company was so attired.29 Ships returning from the war zone appeared at the Sydney Fleet Base with unexpectedly well-dressed crews, and those drafted onto other ships found that the US gear was in great demand. The RAN Supply Branch must have realised that they could not turn back the clock and, postwar, they introduced

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The Blue-Watch gun crew take in the sunlight in the lee of Y gun, in June 1952. The men obviously came on watch expecting to be underemployed – Geoff Cooper (centre) has brought his camera.

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RAN-issue blue-cotton working clothes for the men. Although the men might have preferred ‘dressing down’ in shorts and sandals in the heat and humidity of summer, in the cool weather of spring the acquisition of the smart American gear produced a contradictory sartorial craze. Popular items included not only the prized US Navy denims, but also blue berets bought from British Army stores in Hong Kong. Photos of the men taken off-duty in the temperate months show a very dapper turnout indeed, with berets, US army peaked caps, woollen jumpers draped artfully over shoulders, US army ‘jump-boots’, and trousers tucked neatly into gaiters. Such eclectic gear met the navy’s action-stations safety requirements (protection against gun flash and fire), which required longsleeved shirts and trousers in action. However, in the rush of getting to action stations, seamen arrived there in various states of dress or undress; indeed, it was not unknown for men to arrive at their gun completely nude, having been in the shower when the actionstations bell was rung! Obviously, this sort of thing was best avoided, however. Bracegirdle tried to anticipate the contingency of action stations and allow the men sufficient time to don appropriate gear, including antiflash hoods and steel helmets for the gun crews. This was particularly important in cold weather; one of the lessons the navy had learned in World War II was that it was better to allow more time to close up to action stations, otherwise the ill-dressed crew would turn into ‘cold and wet automatons’ at their stations.30 In spite of the evident sense of a separate Australian identity, the RAN’s Australianness was in 1952 still grounded in a thoroughly British cultural milieu. There could be no doubting that Bataan, and the other ships in the RAN, were His/Her Majesty’s ships. This was seen clearly upon the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth II. While anchored off Cho Do on 15 February (only two days after being shelled there), the ship’s company were mustered on the quarterdeck to hear the new queen’s proclamation to HM Fleet around the globe. The new monarch referred to the RAN and the other Commonwealth navies as ‘my other naval forces’.31 244

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It is not surprising that within a conservative service like the RAN, and especially within its conservative and Anglophile officer corps32, a lingering sense of a British identity persisted. Commander Marks, Bataan’s CO during her first Korean war cruise, referred unconsciously to his ship as a ‘British Ship’33, and, when he went ashore in Hong Kong, rejoiced to find himself standing once again on ‘British territory’.34 There was also a sense of collective identity among the Commonwealth navies: after handing over to HMCS Iroquois at the end of the last patrol, Bracegirdle mused that this made the Haeju inshore patrol a ‘Commonwealth Co-Operative Combine’.35 Despite this broader British Empire identity, the men of Bataan were always thrilled to meet another Australian ship. The RAN was a very small service—every ship was known to the others, many men had former shipmates aboard the other vessels, and many had memories of themselves serving on the other ships—and this sense of familiarity made it a very cohesive service. Coming alongside another RAN warship was therefore a social occasion as much as anything else. In Korea, opportunities for such encounters were rare—the RAN of course had only a two-ship presence, and Bataan and Warramunga rarely operated together—making them all the more rewarding. While in Hong Kong on her way to Korea, Bataan had met Tobruk as the latter returned from the war, and the ships’ companies had taken the time to visit one another and renew acquaintances. The same thing had occurred when Murchison handed over to Bataan in Kure at the start of the latter’s tour. Geoff was ex-Murchison, had many former shipmates and at least one good friend aboard Tobruk, and would later serve in her himself. After this start to the tour, however, contact with other Australian ships was very fleeting. Bataan saw Warramunga on her first patrol, but both ships were busy going alongside their respective tankers to refuel, and this, as Bracegirdle noted regretfully, had not ‘permitted any social intercourse’ with the sister ship.36 245

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

It was not until April, in Kure, after Bataan’s fourth patrol, that the two ships caught up with each other. Besides fortuitous meetings in the bars and clubs ashore, parties of men visited each other’s mess decks to resume contact with old shipmates. Bracegirdle was clearly delighted to see his colleague, Commander JM Ramsay, and the other officers aboard Warramunga: ‘This was the first occasion that the two Australian destroyers met since reaching the area, during the present commission; many happy reunions took place in both ships’.37 Two months later, the friendship was renewed when ’Munga berthed alongside Bataan in Kure38; in July, both ships’ companies doubtless enjoyed some distant waving, or other, less complimentary, sign language, when they served together in screening the carrier USS Bataan. On that occasion, knowing it was Warramunga’s last patrol before returning to Sydney, Bracegirdle did not let the moment pass when ordered to detach Bataan from the screen to join the inshore patrol force:

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HMAS Warramunga departing for Australia, her upper works crowded with men waving their goodbyes to their less fortunate comrades on Bataan.

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After farewelling our namesake [the carrier], I proceeded alongside Warramunga to enable both Ships’ Companies to wave au revoir; Warramunga was cheered by Bataan, after which this tribute was returned by our sister ship.39

The upper works of both ships were crowded with men waving their farewells. It was a significant moment, as the Official Historian has perceived: These two ships, above all others of the RAN, had been the work-horses of the Korean War, serving in operations for thirtyseven months between them. This service had produced a strong bond between their companies and it was with real feeling that Bataan’s men lined the rails to cheer Warramunga on the way they themselves looked forward to taking five weeks hence.40

Although there was evidently a special ‘freemasonry’ between the two Tribals, the men on Bataan were pleased to see any Australian ship at all. When Condamine made her belated appearance in the operational zone after relieving ’Munga, she passed Bataan on a reciprocal course during their respective passages of the Shimonoseki Straits, as recorded by Geoff: We have just passed ‘Condamine’ and we all gave her three cheers and all that jolly old rot, still it’s always good to see a ‘fellowcountryman’ in out of the way places like this.

It was, of course, sweetest of all to meet one’s fellow countrymen when they were one’s relief. Thus, even the much-maligned Anzac was welcome when the two ships finally met in Hong Kong in September for the officers’ ‘turnover of information and material concerning the Korean area’.41 As has been seen, the men had been itching to go home for months already, and it seems the officers were little different. Bracegirdle expressed this in the final stanza to his poem ‘The Last Bracegram’:

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

North of Quelpart, East of Mackau Never again, it’s southward now No more Bumping into Wave Chief Our egg-laying season is very brief No more beat-ups of Haeju We’ve less belligerent things to do Provided we do not come to grief Upon our favourite coral reef Anzac can have the open season And we’ll be at Bondi while she’s freezin’!42

Bataan was indeed going home.

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14 | The end of the line At the end of her final patrol, on 31 August, Bataan handed over to HMCS Iroquois in a Force-7 gale off Taechong Do before heading back to Kure for the last time. A quick call into Sasebo was then necessary for Bracegirdle to take his leave of Admirals Scott-Moncrieff and Gingrich. Bataan finally departed Japan on the afternoon of 4 September, her navigation team having to shape course carefully to avoid a typhoon north of the Philippines. The bad weather continued in Hong Kong, but in spite of the high winds and heavy rain, the ship’s sides and superstructure were successfully painted in preparation for her imminent return to Sydney. In a popular move, this was done with the help of the ‘HMAS Bataan Side Party’, namely four Chinese sampan girls (they remained a fixture of the Hong Kong naval base for decades). This move was doubly popular in that meanwhile the men had had nine days leave in Hong Kong. During that time, Bracegirdle had conducted his usual intensive round of social visits, calling on, dining with and hosting a range of personages, including not only the COs of other warships in port, but also the Australian Trade Commissioner and the master of a steamship refitting in the docks. Bataan finally set out on the 19 September, proceeding via Tarakan towards Darwin, now clear of the typhoon and sailing in, as 249

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Geoff commented, ‘beaut weather and flat seas’. After a rapid refuelling in Darwin, she set off again within six hours, thence heading across the Gulf of Carpentaria. It was a ‘rough trip’ because of a ‘big Sou’easter’ blowing across the shallow waters of the gulf. Things settled down once inside the Great Barrier Reef for the run to Cairns, but there was still a good deal of chop and spray from the same unrelenting sou’easter. In Cairns, ever the diplomat, Bracegirdle wined and dined both the harbour master and the subcollector of customs. A customs official then boarded the ship for the run south to Sydney, spending three days ‘advising’ the ship’s company on customs clearance and settling all payments before the arrival in Sydney. Finally on 3 October, the great day arrived. As the big moment approached, the ship’s company dug deep into their kit lockers for their best uniform; according to Geoff, the men were ‘all done up to the knocker with medals, ribbons and what have you’. Bataan entered Sydney Harbour and secured alongside the fitting-out wharf at Garden Island; she was greeted by a crowd of up to 500 relatives and friends, including a contingent of both newsreel and newspaper photographers. Three-quarters of the ship’s company proceeded on leave immediately. Geoff was one of the unlucky ones who had to stay on board and clean up the ship. Meanwhile, he freighted home to Toowoomba the carved teak and camphor chest that Bataan had brought home from Hong Kong. He would not see again most of the men who went on leave ahead of him. As always happened, the Naval Board commenced the next round of drafts and postings. Among those to proceed on leave and on to their next posting were a number of officers, including the medical officer and first lieutenant. When the men returned in January from their long leave, they found that fully half the crew had been drafted off. The war was finished for Bataan and her 1952 ship’s company.

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In 1953, Geoff was drafted off Bataan and onto a radar course. He subsequently served in the radar offices of the carrier Vengeance; the frigate Hawkesbury, during her extensive South Pacific cruise of 1954–55; and the destroyer Tobruk, during her deployment to South East Asia as part of the Commonwealth’s Far East Strategic Reserve, when he got to renew his acquaintance with Japan, visiting Tokyo and Yokohama (the old BCOF base in Kure had long since been closed down). Meantime, in 1954, he married Marie Knight, from Murwillumbah in New South Wales, whom he had met during his preKorea Christmas leave. Soon, the long partings made navy life less appealing; furthermore, Geoff turned down all offers of promotion, explaining later that he did not wish to take responsibility for other men’s lives, and this inevitably placed a ceiling on his career and job

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Geoff Cooper and Marie Knight, in November 1953, on the last night of Geoff’s leave before joining HMAS Hawkesbury for an extended South Pacific cruise.

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satisfaction within the navy. At the expiry of his period of enlistment in 1956, therefore, he left the service. He and Marie started a family in 1959; I am their second son. Geoff applied his seamanship skills to a new role, operating launches for the Australian Customs Service, and saw out his working life driving boats for the Queensland Environmental Protection Service. After retirement, the service honoured him by naming one its large sharkcat boats the Geoff Cooper. Since 1960, Geoff has lived in Moorooka, Brisbane. Bataan’s 1952 Korean War tour remains one of the most memorable experiences of his life. For Commander Warwick Bracegirdle, the Korean War was the highlight of his naval career, for it was his first and last ship command. Once the ‘adventure’ of the war was over, he appears to have become disaffected with the routine of peacetime service. He was posted off Bataan in 1953, and appointed to desk jobs, first at Naval Office in Melbourne, then with an Australian Joint Service Staff in London. After his stimulating combat service in two wars, the change was evidently not to his liking, and so he resigned from the service at the end of 1956. He retired with his family to Suffolk, living there until his death in 1993. It seems appropriate for this Anglophile man to have chosen to live in England. He had thoroughly enjoyed his four previous sojourns in the ‘home country’ while undergoing professional training and exchange postings with the Royal Navy. Bracegirdle’s second son, Nicholas, followed his father into a naval career, serving as a gunnery officer on the destroyer HMS Antrim1, including an alarming stint under air attack in the Falklands War of 1982. This maintained the family tradition, as Warwick’s father, Leighton, had been a distinguished naval officer who served at Gallipoli with the RAN Naval Bridging Train. Like Bracegirdle, Bataan was retired early. Considered the Cinderella of the Australian Tribal Class because of her neglected wartime gestation and belated entry into the fleet, she was ironically the first of the three sister ships to be retired. Whereas Arunta and Warramunga served almost two decades in the active fleet, from 1942 252

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to 1959, Bataan served less than a decade, from 1945 to 1954—far less than the economic operating cycle intended for her by the navy. Like her sisters, she had been slated for a modernisation refit. Arunta had received her refit during 1950–52, while Warramunga was taken in hand immediately after her return from Korea in 1952. Bataan should have been next, but the navy’s perennial funding problems forced the cancellation of the refit and her relegation to the reserve. As had happened before, other priorities took precedence, and so the third Tribal was sidelined once more. The decision not to refit her was financially convenient for the Naval Board and Treasury, stretched as they were to make the navy budget cover not only the construction of the Daring-Class destroyers and the River-Class destroyer-escorts, but also the completion of the carrier Melbourne and the acquisition of her suite of expensive turbine-powered aircraft—Fairey Gannets and De Havilland Sea Venoms. There was, however, another reason for Bataan’s early relegation: an April 1954 collision with the carrier HMAS Vengeance, while under the command of Commander GL Fowle. Bataan’s bow was severely damaged: the stem was split and the port-side plating and framing were so distorted that the water-tight doors in the fo’c’sle bulkheads could no longer be closed. The forward superstructure, which had been crushed against the carrier’s overhanging sponson, was severely damaged, with the port bridge-wing Bofors platform being almost crushed flat. Both of the fo’c’sle 4.7-inch mountings were crushed and bent, their gun carriages distorted. Of these, only A gun was repairable.2 Fowle did not come out of the matter well, the court of inquiry finding that responsibility lay wholly with him, by reason of his serious error of judgment in ship-handling. He was accordingly censured: An officer of his rank and seniority would have been expected by the Naval Board to have possessed better judgment in ship handling than he displayed on this occasion.3

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

The incident shows that poor ship-handling, although the cause of much mirth throughout the fleet, was something that could mar a naval officer’s career. Fowle was therefore Bataan’s last captain, having in effect reduced the RAN’s order of battle from five fleet destroyers to four. Instead of following her sister ships into the modernisation refit, Bataan was paid off into reserve in an unrepaired and therefore unserviceable state, and later listed for disposal and sold in 1958 for scrap. Her RAN sister ships later followed her into the same oblivion, although Arunta was uncooperative and sank on her voyage to the scrapper in Japan.4 Fortunately, one Tribal-Class ship still exists—in Canada. Thanks to an impressive grass-roots preservation and restoration effort, HMCS Haida was preserved and turned into a museum ship. Now located in Hamilton, where she floats on the fresh water of Lake Ontario, this superb historical artefact is operated by Parks Canada as a national historic site.5 Only one other British destroyer from the era is still extant: HMS Cavalier, one of the C Class met with so often in Korea, is similarly preserved in the Chatham Dockyard historical precinct, on the Medway River in Kent.6 Although Bataan came to a sorry end, South Korea came out well postwar. MacArthur’s war in its defence could certainly have been better managed, but at least the country had been saved from Kim Il-sung’s annexation plans, and was therefore free to pursue its own course as a separate, non-Communist nation. However, the war had cost the Koreans greatly, with an estimated one million fatalities each from North and South (an appalling 20 per cent of the population), and with immeasurable destruction to property and urban infrastructure.7 However, aided by massive and beneficent US economic aid, South Korea outgrew the bad start of Syngman Rhee’s regime. As Stanley Sandler has noted: By the mid-1960s the ROK was making impressive economic strides and within another decade its booming automobile

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industry would be competing with the Japanese within the United States, a development that would have seemed impossible to any observer of the 1950s.8

The 1988 Seoul Olympics were perhaps a symbolic validation of the ROK as a modern state; South Korea had made good. In that sense, the war had been worth the effort.9 For the Wolfpack, however, the peace terms meant giving up their offshore island refuges to the North Koreans and entering an unhappy exile in South Korea, where they remained separated forever from their towns, villages and ancestral lands. There was never to be any final ‘big push’ to sweep the Communists away and to restore them to their original homes. Bracegirdle’s Haeju Gulf ‘parish’ thus became North Korea’s frontline west-coast defended zone, and remains an area of continuing strategic and symbolic sensitivity to both sides. Meanwhile, North Korea took a self-destructive trajectory. In 1994, Kim Il-sung was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-il, the monarchical succession making a mockery of the idea of a ‘People’s Republic’. The economy has collapsed, and the nation has been surviving on food aid from its traditional enemies: the former imperial master, Japan, the ‘imperialist’ United States, and its so-called puppet, the Republic of Korea. By the late 1990s, North Korea was the most militarised nation on earth, and it has continued to play its role as a ‘rogue state’ by engaging in nuclear brinkmanship and ballisticmissile provocations. Stanley Sandler’s summation seems justified: ‘Whatever the failings of the Rhee regime and its immediate successors, South Korea was spared the worst of the Stalinist regimes and eventually emerged with something far better’.10 Despite the fact that they never set foot on the Korean peninsula and had gained a limited and, it must be said, generally unfavourable impression of that land, the officers and men of Bataan had played a highly significant part in this. By blockading coastal traffic and supporting carrier operations, they had helped the UN impose 255

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such restrictions on the Communist armies that North Korea was ultimately forced to accept an armistice. As inefficient as the Allied campaign had been at times, the reckless expansionism and ruinous military policies of Kim Il-sung were defeated, and at least one of the two Korean states secured a brighter future for its people.

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Appendix | Signals of congratulations The following messages were all sent to HMAS Bataan in September 1952 to mark the end of her tour. From Wolfpack 3, the unit on Yongmae Do (see chapter 5): WOLFPACK 3 wish to express their sincere gratitude and appreciation to the Officers and Seamen of BATAAN for their comradeship in arms. We will certainly miss the Naval counterparts of the ‘Haeju Herders’. Your aggressive spirit and fighting ability we so much admire is indeed a credit to the famed combat reputation of the Aussies.

From Lobo 7, the senior guerilla commander in the Haeju Gulf, based on Taeyonpyong Do: It has been an honour and a privilege to have served with you. Wish to thank you for the many services and courtesies you have extended to Wolfpacks and to civilian populace of the HAEJU GULF. This, with your combat operational performances, has made this zone of action highly effective.

From HMS Ocean: [1.] We will really miss our ‘Wombats’. 2. When you were inshore your handling of OCEAN’s aircraft was invariably First Class, and every target you gave them was a winner. 3. Thank you a lot for a great deal.

From HMCS Nootka: [1.] Good luck to one of the finest fighting ships we have ever met,

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and who well deserve the return in safety to enjoy the blessings of the fine land, and the fruits of her labours. 2. May your trip south be pleasant and your visit to HONG KONG be a real treat, but bearing in mind Proverbs Chapter 6 Verse 18 and its attendant verses.

From Admiral Sir Alan Scott-Moncrieff RN, Flag Officer Secondin-Command of Commonwealth Far East Station (and senior commonwealth naval commander in the theatre): The West Coast of Korea will miss your angry bite, and we shall feel lost without your cheerful bark. Your cards at TAECHONG-DO will keep your memory evergreen.

From Admiral JE Gingrich USN, Commander Task Group 95.1 (Commander UN Blockade and Escort Force, Korea): For Captain Bracegirdle … My sincere congratulations to H.M.A.S. BATAAN on the completion of her second tour of service in Korean waters. You, your officers, and your men, have performed splendidly in combat off the Coasts of North Korea.

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Notes Chapter 1 | Trial by fire 1

Robert O’Neill, Australia in the Korean War, 1950–53: Volume II, Combat Operations, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1985, p. 498. 2 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 494. 3 HMAS Bataan, Reports of Proceedings, dated 1.3.1952, AWM 78 Items 58/3 and 58/4; henceforth abbreviated as ‘ROP’. The Cigarette Route took its name from the series of channels that formed it, which were individually named after cigarette brands, including Players and Capstan. 4 ROP, 1.3.1952. 5 Michael Hickey, The Korean War: The West Confronts Communism 1950–53, John Murray, London, 1999, pp. 305–306. 6 As the Soviets employed the 76-mm calibre rather than 75-mm, the guns that engaged Bataan and other ships were most likely 76-mm guns, probably the M-1942 field gun. 7 Bracegirdle, quoted in Daily Mirror, undated, in AWM 346 Item 5, and ROP, 1.3.1952. 8 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 498. 9 Bracegirdle in Daily Mirror. 10 HMAS Bataan, Report of Patrol, 26.2.1952, AWM 78 Item 58/4. 11 HMAS Bataan Deck Log, 13.2.1952, Series SP 551/1, Bundle 86, National Archives of Australia (NAA). 12 Bracegirdle in Daily Mirror. 13 Conversation with author, August 2004. 14 ROP, 1.3.1952. 15 Bracegirdle in Daily Mirror. In the 26.2.1952 Report of Patrol he styled it as ‘violent weaving’. 16 Deck Log, 13.2.1952. 17 Deck Log, 13.2.1952. 18 Report of Patrol, 26.2.1952. 19 GG Connell, Fighting Destroyer, Crecy, Manchester, 1994, p. 20. 20 Connell, Fighting Destroyer, p. 18. 21 This archaic term denoted the RN/RAN equivalent of a USN ship’s executive officer or XO. 22 Daily Mirror. 23 Report of Patrol, 26.2.1952. 24 Connell, Fighting Destroyer, p. 19. 25 Brian Sheedy, The War at Sea, Brian Sheedy, Dromana, Victoria, 1998, pp. 153–54. 26 Deck Log, 13.2.1952. 27 ROP, 1.3.1952. 28 Deck Log, 14.2.1952. 29 Fifty rounds of 76-mm shells were fired at her, and she was hit three times. 30 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 507.

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Notes to pages 16–22

Chapter 2 | Australia and the Korean War 1 Gavan McCormack, Cold War Hot War: An Australian Perspective on the Korean War, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1983, pp. 128–29. 2 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, p. 87. 3 Reginald Thompson, Cry Korea, Macdonald, London, 1952, pp. 273–74. 4 Stanley Sandler, The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished, UCL Press, London, 1999, p. 64. 5 Sandler, No Victors, p. 132. 6 Edwin P Hoyt, The Day the Chinese Attacked: Korea 1950. The Story of the Failure of America’s China Policy, Paragon House, New York, 1993, pp. 73–74. 7 Tim Piggott-Smith, ‘The bridge at No Gun Ri’, BBC Timewatch TV documentary, 2002. 8 Thompson, Cry Korea, pp. 163–64, 197, 293. 9 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, p. 167. 10 Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996; Sergei Goncharov, John Lewis & Litai Xue, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1995; William Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004; Richard C. Thornton, Odd Man Out: Truman, Stalin, Mao, and the Origins of the Korean War, Brassey’s, Washington DC, 2000. 11 Kim Chum-Kon, The Korean War: The First Comprehensive Account of the Historical Background and Development of the Korean War (1950–53), Kwangmyong Publishing Company, Seoul, 1973, p. 204. 12 Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, p. 71. 13 Thornton, Odd Man Out, p. 316. 14 Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, p. 77. 15 Thornton, Odd Man Out, p. 317. 16 Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, pp. 81, 316. 17 Sandler, No Victors, p. 109. 18 Goncharov et al., Uncertain Partners, p. 130. 19 Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, p. 76. 20 Chum-Kon, Korean War, pp. 260–62. 21 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, pp. 19, 29–32. 22 McCormack, Cold War Hot War, pp. 77–78. 23 Sandler, No Victors, pp. 30–31, 264. 24 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, p. 18. 25 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, pp. 19, 27. 26 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, pp. 10–21. 27 Sandler, No Victors, pp. 28–29. 28 Sandler, No Victors, p. 31. 29 Sandler, No Victors, pp. 169, 270. 30 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, p. 362. 31 Sandler, No Victors, pp. 154–55. 32 Brian Catchpole, The Korean War, Robinson, London, 2001, Appendix II. 33 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, pp. 416–17. 34 Norman Harper, A Great and Powerful Friend: A Study of Australian and American Relations between 1900 and 1975, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1987, p. 225. 35 RN Rosecrance, Australian Diplomacy and Japan, Melbourne University Press,

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Notes to pages 23–31

Melbourne, 1962, quoted in Harper, Great and Powerful Friend, p. 226. 36 Harper, Great and Powerful Friend, p. 245. 37 David Lowe, Menzies and the ‘Great World Struggle’: Australia’s Cold War 1948– 1954, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999, p. 78. 38 Tom Frame, No Pleasure Cruise: The Story of the Royal Australian Navy, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2004, p. 207. 39 Catchpole, Korean War, pp. 96–97. 40 Glen St J Barclay, A Very Small Insurance Policy: The Politics of Australian Involvement in Vietnam, 1954–1967, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1988. 41 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, pp. 479, 476, 710. 42 Harper, Great and Powerful Friend, p. 235. 43 David Horner, High Command: Australia’s Struggle for an Independent War Strategy, 1939–45, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992, p. xxv. 44 See Jack Gallaway, The Last Call of the Bugle: The Long Road to Kapyong, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1999. 45 Harper, Great and Powerful Friend, p. 225. 46 See Doug Hurst, The Forgotten Few: 77 RAAF Squadron in Korea, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2008, p. 1. 47 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 421. 48 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, pp. 432–35; and DHD Smyth, ‘The last days of Chinnampo’, in Norman Bartlett (ed.), With the Australians in Korea, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1954, pp. 204–209. 49 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 427. 50 Signals appended to ROP, 1.6.1951. 51 It was not intended to pay all these ships off, but there were no men to man them—see Trevor Weaver, Q Class Destroyers and Frigates of the Royal Australian Navy, Naval Historical Society of Australia, Sydney, 1994, p. 122. 52 Colin Jones, Wings and the Navy 1947–1953, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1997, p. 11. 53 Jones, Wings and the Navy, p. 10. 54 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, pp. 464–67. 55 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 467.

Chapter 3 | HMAS Bataan and the RAN’s Tribal Class 1 John Alliston, Destroyer Man, Greenhouse Publications, Melbourne, 1985, pp. 136–37. 2 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 108. 3 Hodges, Peter & Norman Friedman. Destroyer Weapons of World War 2, Conway Maritime Press, Greenwich, 1979, pp. 23–24. 4 MJ Whitley, Destroyers of World War Two, Cassell, London, 2002, p. 116. 5 Whitley, Destroyers of World War Two, pp. 114–115. 6 Hodges & Friedman, Destroyer Weapons, p. 34. 7 Whitley, Destroyers of World War Two, pp. 139, 260. 8 Whitley, Destroyers of World War Two, p. 118. 9 Roger Hill, Destroyer Captain: Memoirs of the War at Sea, 1942–45, Mayflower, London, 1979, p. 181. 10 HMAS Arunta and Warramunga, and HMCS Iroquois, Athabaskan, Huron and Haida—see Vince Fazio, Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, Naval Historical

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Notes to pages 32–41

Society of Australia, Sydney, 1999, p. 74. 11 Whitley, Destroyers of World War Two, p. 116. 12 John Jeremy, Cockatoo Island: Sydney’s Historic Dockyard, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1998, p. 86. 13 Christopher Langtree, The Kelly’s: British J, K & N Class Destroyers of World War II, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2002, p. 12. 14 Whitley, Destroyers of World War Two, p. 19. 15 Jeremy, Cockatoo Island, pp. 87–88. 16 Jeremy, Cockatoo Island, p. 93. 17 Tom Frame, Pacific Partners: A History of Australian-American Naval Relations, Hodder & Stoughton, Sydney, 1992, p. 66. 18 Chris Coulthard-Clark, ‘The contribution of industry to Navy’s war in the Pacific’, in David Stevens (ed.), The Royal Australian Navy in World War II, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996, p. 57. 19 Coulthard-Clark in Stevens, Royal Australian Navy, pp. 58–59. 20 G Hermon Gill, Royal Australian Navy 1942–1945, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1968, p. 466. 21 Bruce Loxton, The Shame of Savo, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1997, and ‘Savo in retrospect’, in David Stevens (ed.), The Royal Australian Navy in World War II, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996, pp. 84–86. 22 Ronald H Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan, Cassell & Co., London, 2000, pp. 106–19. 23 Catchpole, Korean War, p. 13. 24 Chief of Construction, Cockatoo Island, to Engineering Manager, Garden Island, 12.2.1945, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/75, NAA. 25 Correspondence in MP138/1 Item 603/286/184, NAA. 26 Minute by Supervisor of Naval Construction, 30.6.1949, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/232, NAA. 27 Signal, CCAS to ACNB, 20.2.1945, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/72, NAA. 28 Hodges & Friedman, Destroyer Weapons, p. 37. 29 Signal, Naval Board to CCAS, 12.2.1945, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/72, NAA. 30 John Collins, As Luck Would Have It, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1965, pp. 130–31. 31 David Stevens, The Royal Australian Navy: The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Vol. III, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2001, p. 166. 32 Ronald H Spector, At War at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century, Penguin, London, 2001, pp. 131–33. 33 Alliston, Destroyer Man, pp. 124, 137. 34 Jeremy, Cockatoo Island, p. 95. 35 Robert Hyslop, Aye Aye, Minister: Australian Naval Administration 1939–59, AGPS, Canberra, 1990, p. 155. 36 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 145. 37 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 145. 38 Edgar J March, British Destroyers: A History of Development 1892–1953, Seeley Service & Co., London, 1966, p. 339. 39 Martin H Brice, The Tribals: Biography of a Destroyer Class, Ian Allen, London, 1971, pp. 33–35. 40 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 144. 41 Iris Nesdale, Action Stations! Tribal Destroyers of the Royal Australian Navy, South Australian Branch of the HMAS Warramunga Veterans’ Association, 1989, p. 86.

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Notes to pages 41–61

42 March, British Destroyers, p. 335. 43 Correspondence in MP138/1 Item 603/286/184, NAA. 44 March, British Destroyers, p. 335. 45 Cockatoo to Chief of Construction, Naval Office, 14.4.1945, 603/286/79, NAA. 46 Crutchley, TF74, to Naval Board, 7.6.1944, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/286, NAA. 47 Collins, pp. 142–43. 48 Crutchley, TF74, to Naval Board, 7.6.44, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/286, NAA. 49 Cockatoo to ACNB, 7.9.1944, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/286, NAA. 50 Correspondence in MP138/1 Item 603/286/286, NAA. 51 ROP, 3.9.1951. 52 Minute by Third Naval Member, 26.2.1945, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/55, NAA. 53 Warrant Supply Officer Godfrey, HMAS Kuttabul, Garden Island, to Naval Office, 22.12.1944, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/286, NAA. 54 CO Bataan to Cockatoo, 31.1.1945, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/286, NAA. 55 Minute by Third Naval Member, 26.2.1945, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/55, NAA. 56 Brendan G O’Keefe, Medicine at War: Medical Aspects of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asia 1950–1972, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994, pp. 264–65. 57 Fazio, Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, p. 34. 58 Gill, Royal Australian Navy 1942–1945, pp. 656, 676, 681. 59 Brice, The Tribals, p. 86. 60 Weaver, Q Class Destroyers, pp. 103–105, 119. 61 Correspondence in MP138/1 Item 603/286/145, NAA.

Chapter 4 | Bataan’s mechanical problems 1 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 461. 2 Guy Griffiths, ‘The Second World War, Korea and Vietnam: a personal perspective on naval warfare’, in John Reeve & David Stevens (eds), The Face of Naval Battle: The Human Experience of Modern War at Sea, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2003, p. 158. 3 ROP, 3.9.1951. 4 The latter was then in the process of an extensive modernisation to convert her into an antisubmarine destroyer. 5 ROP, 3.9.1951. 6 ROP, 1.6.1951. 7 ROP, 8.8.1951. 8 ROP, 3.9.1951. 9 ROP, 3.9.1951. 10 The pipes were actually brass alloy, not steel, but the joke is still a good one. 11 ROP, 3.10.1951. 12 ROP, 3.10.1951. 13 Hyslop, Aye Aye, Minister, p. 156. 14 Stevens, Centenary History, p. 134. 15 Hyslop, Aye Aye, Minister, pp. 215–216. 16 ROP, 19.12.1951. 17 Deck Log, 1 January 1952–31 December 1952. 18 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 497.

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Notes to pages 61–79

19 See correspondence in MP138/1 Item 603/286/197, NAA, especially the 25 November 1948 Board of Inquiry Report. 20 Fazio, Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, p. 50. 21 See Anthony Cooper, ‘HMAS Bataan’s 1951 “condenseritis”’, Journal of Australian Naval History, Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 17–20. 22 Report by Capt. (D) 10th Destroyer Flotilla, 24.9.1948, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/197, NAA. 23 Signal, Bataan to D10, 1.9.1948, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/197, NAA. 24 Report, 25.11.1948, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/197, NAA. 25 Deck Log, 21–22.3.1952. 26 Deck Log, 7.4.1952. 27 Deck log, 17.3.1952.

Chapter 5 | The war of the islands 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

ROP, 1.3.1952. ROP, 5.1.1951. ROP, 1.3.1952. O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 426. ROP, 1.6.1951. O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 436. For example, see Adrian Mitchell, ‘An assessment of the circumstances, conduct and consequences of the Battle of Savo Island, 8/9 August 1942’, Journal of Australian Naval History, No. 1, Vol. 2 (2005), p. 68. 8 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 508. 9 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, pp. 413–15. 10 ROP, 10.5.1952. 11 ROP, 10.5.1952. 12 ROP, 1.4.1951. 13 ROP, 5.6.1952. 14 ROP, 5.6.1952. 15 Edward C Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm: The Royal Canadian Navy in Korea 1950–1955, Vanwell Publishing, St Catharines, Ontario, 1997, p. 182. 16 Michael E Haas, In the Devil’s Shadow: UN Special Operations during the Korean War, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2000, p. 32. 17 Haas, Devil’s Shadow, p. 32. 18 Sandler, No Victors, p. 216. 19 Haas, Devil’s Shadow, p. 32. 20 Haas, Devil’s Shadow, p. 30. 21 Sandler, No Victors, p. 216. 22 Ben S Malcom, White Tigers: My Secret War in North Korea, Brassey’s, Washington, 1996, p. 17. 23 Haas, Devil’s Shadow, pp. 39, 55. 24 Malcom, White Tigers, p. 24. Hence there was a ‘body-count’ mentality, well before the term entered common usage during the Vietnam War. 25 Malcom, White Tigers, p. 21. 26 Malcom, White Tigers, p. 22. 27 Malcom, White Tigers, pp. 115–116. 28 Sandler, No Victors, p. 219. 29 Malcom, White Tigers, p. 96.

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Notes to pages 80–87

30 Ronald McKie, ‘Operation Round-Up’, in Bartlett, With the Australians, pp. 270–79. 31 Signal, CTG 95.1 [Admiral Scott-Moncrieff] to CTF 95.12 (R) [carrier screen commander], 95.12.4 [Bataan] etc, 16.5.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 32 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, p. 306. 33 Bracegirdle’s annotations on CTG 95.1’s 16.5.1952 signal, as above. 34 Haas, Devil’s Shadow, p. 64. 35 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 504. 36 ROP, 5.6.1952. 37 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, pp. 502–503. 38 Signal, CTE 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12 (R) & CTE 95.11 [Ocean], in AWM 346 Item 5. 39 Signal, CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.11 & 95.12, 18.5.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 40 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 503. 41 Signal from CTG 95.1, in AWM 346 Item 5. 42 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 504. 43 1430 Sitrep [Situation Report], in AWM 346 Item 5. 44 1400 Sitrep. 45 Letter, Bataan to FOC Far East Station, HMS Ladybird, 1.6.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 46 Letter, Bracegirdle to Admiral Collins, 3.6.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 47 Confusingly, there were two Cho Do islands. This one is in the Haeju Gulf. The other, close to which Bataan was ambushed by the 76-mm guns on 13 February, lay further north, outside the Taedong Estuary and the approaches to Pyongyang. 48 1.6.1952 ‘Report on Operation “Bataan” Appendix D; Communications and Frequency Plan’, in AWM 346 Item 5. 49 CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12 (R), 95.11, CTG 95.1, sent under the names of Commander Bracegirdle, Captain GO Lamm, Lieutenant JF Dunn, undated, in AWM 346 Item 5. 50 Graham Thomas, Furies and Fireflies over Korea: The Story of the Men of the Fleet Air Arm, RAF and Commonwealth Who Defended South Korea, 1950–53, Grub Street, London, 2004, p. 96. 51 Annex A, Naval Gunfire Plan, in AWM 346 Item 5. 52 If the two-battalion intelligence estimate of enemy strength on the peninsula was correct, it would appear that only subunits of these units were deployed in the actual area assaulted, which was the tip of the peninsula, not the peninsula as a whole. 53 Annex B, Air Strike Request, in AWM 346 Item 5. 54 Report, ‘Damage Summary Round Up’, from CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12 (R) & CTE 95.11, 20.5.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 55 CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12 (R), 95.11, CTG 95.1, in AWM 346 Item 5. 56 1400 Sitrep. 57 CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12 (R), 95.11, CTG 95.1, in AWM 346 Item 5. 58 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 505. 59 This loot may seem petty, but food supplies, weapons and ammunition were serious issues for the island-bound Wolfpack groups. Looted goods gave them a measure of independence from their US masters. See Malcom, White Tigers, pp. 115–16. 60 Report, ‘Damage Summary Round Up’, from CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12 (R) & CTE 95.11, 20.5.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5.

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Notes to pages 87–104

61 Malcom, White Tigers, pp. 24, 26. 62 1615 and 1645 Sitreps; and McKie in Bartlett, With the Australians, p. 278. 63 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 505. 64 1615 Sitrep. 65 ROP, 5.6.1952. 66 ROP, 5.6.1952. 67 Letter, Bracegirdle to Admiral Collins, 3.6.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 68 Letter, Bracegirdle to First Lieutenant, Engineering Officer, Supply Officer, Electrical Officer, Medical Officer, Lt Murray, Lt Yule, Lt More, Lt Nunn, Lt (E) Spong, Sub Lt Jobson, Mr Guest, Sub Lt Low, Sub Lt Clapp, 21.5.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 69 As seen in Letter, Bracegirdle to Admiral Scott-Moncrieff, 5.8.1952, and Letter, Bracegirdle to Admiral Collins, 3.6.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 70 ROP, 1.9.1952. 71 Bataan to CTE 95.12, 21.8.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 72 ROP, 6.9.1952. 73 CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12, 21.8.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 74 ROP, 1.9.1952. 75 ROP, 6.9.1952. 76 Malcom, White Tigers, pp. 89–95. 77 CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12, 21.8.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 78 ROP, 6.9.1952. 79 CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12, 21.8.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 80 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 506. 81 CTU 95.12.4 to CTE 95.12, 21.8.1952. 82 ROP, 6.9.1952. 83 McKie, in Bartlett, With the Australians, p. 270–71. 84 John RP Lansdown, With the Carriers in Korea: The Sea and Air War in South East Asia, 1950–1953, Crecy, Manchester, 1997, p. 167. 85 Letter, Bracegirdle to Admiral Scott-Moncrieff, 5.8.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 86 Haas, Devil’s Shadow, p. 48. 87 Letter, Bataan to Ladybird, 1.6.1952. 88 ROP, 6.9.1952. 89 Haas, Devil’s Shadow, p. 48. 90 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, p. 307. 91 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, p. 92. 92 Sandler, No Victors, p. 158.

Chapter 6 | Shore bombardment 1 ROP, 6.3.1951. 2 Vince Fazio, ‘HMAS Condamine’, in Maurice Pears & Fred Kirkland (eds), Korea Remembered, South Wood Press, Sydney, 1998, p. 316. 3 ROP, 1.4.1952. 4 ROP, 6.3.1951. 5 ROP, 6.3.1951. 6 ROP, 1.3.1952. 7 ROP, 26.2.1952. 8 ROP, 26.2.1951. 9 ROP, 1.3.1952.

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Notes to pages 104–19

10 ROP, 1.3.1952. 11 ROP, 1.3.1952. 12 ROP, 1.3.1952. 13 ROP, 1.3.1952. 14 Sheedy, War at Sea, pp. 165–66. 15 ROP, 13.8.1952. 16 ROP, 6.9.1952. 17 ROP, 20.6.1952. 18 ROP, 20.6.1952, Appendix, p. 3. 19 Bataan to CTE 95.12 (R), and CTG 95.1, in AWM 346 Item 5. 20 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 500. 21 ROP, 10.5.1952. 22 ROP, 10.5.1952. 23 ‘War Diary and Operational Log HMAS Bataan’, 12.4.1952, in AWM 346 Item 6. 24 ROP, 6.9.1952. 25 ROP, 10.5.1952. 26 David Hamer, Bombers versus Battleships: The Struggle between Ships and Aircraft for the Control of the Surface of the Sea, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998, p. 41. 27 Handwritten note on Naval Board Minute, dated 14.8.1952, in response to ROP dated 5.6.1952. 28 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, p. 223. 29 ROP, 6.9.1952. 30 ROP, 1.9.1952, Appendix. 31 ROP, 6.9.1952. 32 ROP, 6.9.1952. 33 ROP, 5.6.1952. 34 ROP, 20.6.1952. 35 ROP, 10.7.1952. 36 ROP, 7.6.1952.

Chapter 7 | Supporting Allied air power 1 2 3 4

Roger Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers, Brockhampton Press, London, 1988, p. 248. ROP, 1.3.1952. ROP, 1.4.1952. Charles F Cole, Korea Remembered: Enough of a War! The USS Ozbourn’s First Tour 1950–1951, Yucca Tree Press, Las Cruces, New Mexico, 1995, p. 73. 5 Lansdown, With the Carriers, pp. 59, 67. 6 ROP, 1.4.1952. 7 James L Holloway, Aircraft Carriers at War, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2007, p. 74. 8 Thomas, Furies and Fireflies, p. 78. 9 HMS Ocean ended up smashing the record, achieving 123 sorties—see Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 273. 10 Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 273. 11 Holloway, Aircraft Carriers, p. 74. 12 Timothy Hall, HMAS Melbourne, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1982, p. 124. 13 Hall, HMAS Melbourne, chapters 6 & 8.

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Notes to pages 12–37

14 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 66. 15 The helicopter type was the Sikorsky R-5. 16 ROP, 1.4.1952. 17 Lansdown, With the Carriers, pp. 268–70. 18 Thomas, Furies and Fireflies, p. 110. 19 ROP, 13.8.1952. 20 ROP, 6.9.1952. 21 Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers, p. 129; Bairoko carried a mere 20 aircraft, and therefore did very well generating sometimes 80 sorties per day—see Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 232. 22 Thomas, Furies and Fireflies, p. 82. 23 McKie, in Bartlett, With the Australians, pp. 270–71. 24 ROP, 1.4.1952. 25 Letter, Bataan to USS Carpenter, 31.5.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 26 3.6.1952 letter, in AWM 346 Item 5; Evans sported an impressive beard (Sir Francis Drake-style) and judging by the photo in Lansdown (p. 240), was something of a dandy—hence adverse American reactions. 27 After an aircraft landed, the barrier was dropped, and the aircraft was pushed forward and ‘spotted’ on the flight deck forward. The barrier was then raised for the next arrival. The whole purpose of the barrier was to prevent aircraft that missed the arrestor wires from ‘piling up’ into the parked aircraft forward. 28 Lansdown, With the Carriers, pp. 242–78. 29 Holloway, Aircraft Carriers, p. 77. 30 Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 475. 31 See Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 475; Swanson was shot down twice but survived—see Thomas, Furies and Fireflies, p. 82. 32 Letter, Lt Jenne, HMS Ocean, to Bataan, 12.6.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 33 ROP, 5.6.1952. 34 ROP, 6.9.1952. 35 ROP, 6.9.1952. 36 ROP, 6.9.1952, Appendix B. 37 Jeffrey Grey, in Alan Stephens, ‘The war in the air 1914–1994: the proceedings of a conference held by the Royal Australian Air Force in Canberra, March 1994’, RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1994, p. 154. 38 Grey in Stephens, ‘The war in the air’, p. 150. 39 Sandler, No Victors, p. 178. 40 Holloway, Aircraft Carriers, p. 102. 41 Thomas, Furies and Fireflies, pp. 64–65, 67, 71–72, 94, 96–102.

Chapter 8 | The air and subsurface threats 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 422. Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 27. Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 39. Cole, Korea Remembered, p. 199. ROP, 3.9.1951. Report, 28.4.1945, 603/286/80, NAA. Alfred Price, World War II Fighter Conflict, MacDonald & Jane’s, London, 1975, p. 92. 8 Report, 28.4.1945.

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Notes to pages 137–47

9 ROP, 5.6.1952. 10 Hurst, Forgotten Few, chapter 6. 11 Fazio, Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, p. 78. 12 Barry M Gough, HMCS Haida: Battle Ensign Flying, Vanwell Publishing, St Catharines, Ontario, 2001, p. 206. 13 Hodges & Friedman, Destroyer Weapons, p. 20. 14 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 65. 15 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 136. 16 ‘Proximity Fuze’, Wikipedia, accessed 31.3.2009. 17 ROP, 1.9.1952. 18 Edward Madgwick, Tribal Captain, Blue Island Books, Helston, Cornwall, 2003, p. 131. 19 ROP, 5.1.1951. 20 Anthony Cooper, ‘A gunnery officer’s journey: Commander Warwick Bracegirdle RAN: a case study of a professional naval officer’, Journal of Australian Naval History, Vol. 5, No. 2, September 2008, pp. 47–78. 21 ROP, 13.8.1952. 22 ROP, 1.4.1952. 23 ROP, 7.6.1952. 24 ROP, 10.7.1952. 25 ROP, 1.4.1952. 26 ROP, 13.8.1952. 27 ROP, 12.8.1952. 28 Sandler, No Victors, p. 185. 29 Sandler, No Victors, p. 183. 30 Grey in Stephens, ‘The war in the air’, p. 147. 31 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, pp. 461–63. 32 Griffiths, in Reeve & Stevens, The Face of Naval Battle, p. 158. 33 They deployed the Soviet 64th Fighter Aviation Corps—see Sandler, No Victors, p. 185. 34 Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 111. 35 Cole, Korea Remembered, p. 76. 36 Appendix C, ‘Intelligence’, to ‘Inchon Landing, Operation Order’, 13.7.1950, in MP981/1 Item 589/202/626, NAA. 37 Donald Chapman, ‘Admiral Gorshkov and the Soviet Navy’, Air University Review, Jul–Aug. 1982, in , accessed 17.9.2005. 38 Cooper, ‘HMAS Bataan’s 1951 “condenseritis”’. 39 For example, the Fletcher-Class USS Cassin Young had six throwers, while the Gearing-Class USS Ozbourn had four—see J Scott Harmon, USS Cassin, Young Pictorial Publishing, Missoula, Montana, 1984, and Cole, Korea Remembered, p. 55. 40 For example, HMAS Arunta received Squid in her 1952 refit, as did both RAN Battles as standard fit—see Fazio, Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, pp. 88, 117. 41 ROP, 1.4.1952. 42 ROP, 12.8.1952. 43 Weaver, Q Class Destroyers, p. 55. 44 Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 30. 45 ROP, 6.3.1951. 46 ROP, 1.4.1951.

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Notes to pages 147–57

47 Cole, Korea Remembered, p. 106. 48 Malcolm W Cagle & Frank A Manson, The Sea War in Korea, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1957, following p. 364. 49 The RN’s war-built destroyers, such as the Korean-era C Class, had the superior longitudinal framing, but still retained riveted plating, as did the Battles. 50 The term refers to the separation of the boiler rooms and engine rooms from one another, so that a hit in one machinery compartment did not cause total power loss. 51 Cole, Korea Remembered, p. 54. 52 Cagle & Manson, Sea War, pp. 107–164. 53 Cagle & Manson, Sea War, p. 196.

Chapter 9 | Navigating in hazardous waters 1 Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 32. 2 The maximum draught is given as 13 feet 7 inches, in Fazio, Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, p. 58. 3 ROP, 10.5.1952. 4 Collins, As Luck Would Have It, p. 172. 5 This provided a plan view of the area around the ship, by means of a continuously rotating radar head. 6 Norman Friedman, Naval Radar, Conway Maritime Press, Greenwich, 1981, pp. 147–48, 45. 7 A 10-metre craft with a 36-man capacity, the standard Allied assault craft in World War II: , accessed 13.2.09. 8 The reliance here upon a visual bearing rather than a radar bearing was because of the limitations of the 285 gunnery radar, which was accurate in bearing only within 3 or 4 degrees (this technical limitation indicates why Bataan was incapable of blind, radar-directed gunnery): , accessed 2003. 9 ROP, 10.5.1952. A cable was the traditional length of an anchor chain: 200 yards or 185 metres. 10 ROP, 1.4.1952. 11 The home port of today’s (controversial) Japanese whaling fleet. 12 ROP, 1.4.1951. 13 ROP, 10.5.1952. 14 Deck log, 22.3.1952. 15 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, p. 225. 16 ROP, 13.8.1952. 17 ROP, 5.5.1951. 18 Such craft displaced 1000 tonnes fully loaded, and had the capacity of five Sherman tanks: , accessed 13.2.09. 19 ROP, 13.8.1952. 20 , accessed September 2005. 21 Deck Log, 25.1.1952. 22 Cagle & Manson, Sea War, p. 344. 23 Friedman, Naval Radar, p. 45.

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Notes to pages 157–65

24 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, p. 132. Nootka had been recently modernised, receiving US fire control radars and directors and Squid antisubmarine mortars, and having all 4.7-inch mountings replaced by dualpurpose, radar-guided 4-inch and fast-firing, fully automated US twin 3-inch guns (Meyers, p. 116). She had full blind-fire capability, and was thus a full generation more advanced than any Australian Tribal. Arunta and Warramunga were to get the Squid, but they never received the RCN Tribals’ blind-fire capability. 25 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, p. 159. Theoretically, the 293 set should have been able to detect sampan-sized targets at about 8 kilometres—see Derek Howse, edited by Jerry Proc, ‘The 276 radar set’, . 26 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, p. 161. 27 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, p. 162. 28 ROP, 5.1.1951. 29 ROP, 1.4.1952. 30 ROP, 10.5.1952. 31 ROP, 5.6.1952. 32 ROP, 5.6.1952. 33 ROP, 10.7.1952. 34 Connell, Fighting Destroyer, p. 135. 35 ROP, 10.5.1952. 36 , accessed 13.6.2008. 37 All brands of cigarettes, hence the ‘Cigarette Route’. 38 Letter, Bataan to USS Carpenter, 31.5.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 39 Letter, Bataan to USS Carpenter, 29.5.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 40 Letter, 29.5.1952. 41 Letter, 31.5.1952. 42 Letter, 31.5.1952. 43 Letter, 31.5.1952. 44 Letter, 29.5.1952. 45 HMAS Bataan, Captain’s Night Order Book, 27.12.1951, in AWM 346 Item 9. 46 Night Order Book, 9–10.1.1952. 47 Spells at the wheel, typically of one or two hours. 48 Night Order Book, 14.1.1952. 49 Night Order Book, 17–18.1.1952. 50 Night Order Book, 23–24.1.1952. 51 Night Order Book, 24–25.1.1952. 52 Night Order Book, 31.1–1.2.1952. 53 Night Order Book, 1–2.2.1952. 54 Night Order Book, 1–2.2.1952. 55 The cruising-watch gun crew normally manned B gun at that stage of the tour, but X gun was mounted aft and therefore offered better protection from seas coming aboard. 56 Night Order Book, 2–3.2.1952. 57 Night Order Book, 4–5.9.1952. 58 Night Order Book, 3–4.2.1952. 59 Night Order Book, 20–21.6.1952. 60 Night Order Book, 10–11.2.1952. 61 Night Order Book, 23–24.2.1952.

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Notes to pages 165–79

62 Night Order Book, 16–17.5.1952. 63 Night Order Book, 31.3–1.4.1952. 64 Night Order Book, 17–18.5.1952. 65 Night Order Book, 16–17.5.1952. 66 Night Order Book, 18–19.5.1952. 67 Deck Log, 19.1.1952. 68 Meaning 27–33-knot (50–61-kph) winds, a ‘moderate gale’. 69 Deck Log, 2.2.1952. Force 8 was defined as 34–40-knot (63–74-kph) winds, a ‘fresh gale’. 70 Deck Log, 23.1.1952. 71 Deck Log, 9.2.1952. 72 Deck Log, 29.3.1952. 73 Deck Log, 4.9.1952. LORAN stands for ‘long-range aid to navigation’, a USdeveloped radio navigation system, which relied upon fixing position by a triangulation of bearings from multiple ground stations. 74 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 434. 75 ROP, 20.6.1952, Appendix A. 76 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, p. 225. 77 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, pp. 197–98.

Chapter 10 | Refuelling and ship-handling 1 The four-day patrol was highly atypical, and probably ought not to be counted, amounting to a VIP tour of the war zone with Admiral Collins aboard. 2 ROP, 5.5.1951. 3 The former RFA Tide Austral, launched in 1954. 4 Holloway, Aircraft Carriers, p. 76. 5 ROP, 13.8.1952. 6 Fazio, Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, p. 58. 7 Jerry Proc, ‘Refuelling at sea’, , accessed 9.9.2009. 8 Deck Log, 5.4.1950–8.7.1950. 9 ROP 5.6.1952, and Appendix A. 10 Bataan to FOCAF via D10, 1.7.1950, in MP138/1 Item 603/286/286, NAA. 11 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, pp. 119–20. 12 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, pp. 120–22. 13 From Geoff Cooper’s collection. 14 ROP, 13.8.1952. 15 ROP, 13.8.1952. 16 The torpedomen were given depth-setting instructions from the bridge before firing the charges over the side. The charge’s firing pistol had a depth-setting key on the side, allowing selection of either 50, 100, 150, 250, 350, 500 feet, or ‘safe’. When the ship was at sea, the primers were always fitted, but the depthsetting was set to ‘safe’—see Wesley Olson, Bitter Victory: The Death of HMAS Sydney, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 2000, p. 9. 17 ROP, 12.8.1952. 18 ROP, 13.8.1952. 19 Poem, ‘Mein Field (Not Kampf)’, in Geoff Cooper’s collection.

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Notes to pages 180–201

Chapter 11 | At liberty in Japan 1 Peter Bates, Japan and the British Commonwealth Occupation Force 1946–52, Brassey’s, London, 1993, p. 53. 2 Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, Penguin, London, 2001, p. 894. 3 Gill, Royal Australian Navy 1942–1945, p. 665. 4 MJ Whitley, Cruisers of World War Two, Cassell, London, 1999, pp. 173–84, 188–89. 5 Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers, pp. 159–62, 165–67. 6 MJ Whitley, Battleships of World War Two, Cassell, London, 2001, pp. 206–16. 7 Australian War Memorial permanent exhibition, Anzac Hall, viewed January 2008. 8 Steven L Carruthers, Japanese Submarine Raiders 1942: A Maritime Mystery, Casper Publications, Sydney, 2006, p. 49. 9 John W Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, WW Norton, New York, 1999, p. 542. 10 Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 552–53. 11 Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 73. 12 Robin Gerster, Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan, Scribe, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 5, 73. 13 Madgwick, Tribal Captain, p. 135. 14 Bates, Japan and the BCOF, pp. 61, 93. 15 Bates, Japan and the BCOF, p. 93. 16 Tom Hungerford, interview with Phillip Adams, Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, 6.10.2003. 17 Weaver, Q Class Destroyers, p. 115. 18 Bates, Japan and the BCOF, p. 61. 19 Carolyne Carter, ‘Rebirth of a city damned’, Wartime, No. 27 (2004), pp. 22–25. 20 Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 147. 21 Madgwick, Tribal Captain, p. 135. 22 Gough, HMCS Haida, p. 169. 23 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 3. 24 Gough, HMCS Haida, p. 169. 25 ‘Post Exchange’, but, in typical American style, more or less a military supermarket. 26 Cole, Korea Remembered, pp. 53, 55–56. 27 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, p. 204. 28 Thompson, Cry Korea, p. 282. 29 Lansdown, With the Carriers, p. 418. 30 Thomas, Furies and Fireflies, p. 83. 31 ROP, 7.3.1951. 32 ROP, 4.10.1952. 33 See Jason Spears, ‘“Something peculiar to themselves”: the social background of the Navy’s officers in World War II’, in Stevens, Royal Australian Navy, pp. 111–23. 34 ROP, 1.3.1952. 35 ROP, 1.4.1952. 36 Madgwick, Tribal Captain, p. 135. 37 Gerster, Atomic Sunshine, p. 105. 38 ROP, 13.8.1952 and 6.9.1952.

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Notes to pages 201–15

39 O’Keefe, Medicine at War, p. 267. 40 George Davies, The Occupation of Japan: The Rhetoric and the Reality of AngloAustralian Relations 1939–1952, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2001, pp. 242–43. 41 O’Keefe, Medicine at War, p. 266. 42 Davies, Occupation of Japan, p. 239. 43 Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 130–31. 44 Davies, Occupation of Japan, p. 238. 45 Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 131, 124–28. 46 Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 64. 47 Davies, Occupation of Japan, p. 240. 48 Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 129, 130, 132. 49 Dennis, Peter & Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior, with John Connor (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1995, p. 610. 50 Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 138. 51 Bates, Japan and the BCOF, pp. 177–79, quoted in Davies, p. 240. 52 Davies, Occupation of Japan, pp. 236, 238. 53 Davies, Occupation of Japan, p. 238. 54 Dennis et al., Australian Military History, p. 610. 55 O’Keefe, Medicine at War, p. 266. 56 Davies, Occupation of Japan, p. 237. 57 The term originated during World War I, when Major General Neville Howse, Director of Medical Services in the AIF, established treatment centres for VD, known as ‘Blue Light Depots’ after the colour of the lamps kept alight out of hours—see Dennis et al., Australian Military History, p. 608. 58 Davies, Occupation of Japan, p. 237. 59 Davies, Occupation of Japan, p. 240. 60 ROP, 6.9.1952, Appendix B. 61 Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. 62 Poem, ‘Ode to an Aussie Airman’, AWM 346 Item 5. 63 ROP, 7.6.1952.

Chapter 12 | Shipboard living 1 ROP, 20.6.1952. 2 James Edwin Alexander, Inchon to Wonsan: From the Deck of a Destroyer in the Korean War, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1996, p. 109. 3 Alan Payne, ‘HMAS Quiberon’, Naval Historical Review, March 2009, p. 6. 4 Malcom, White Tigers, p. 30. 5 ROP, 1.3.1952; O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 498. 6 ROP, 3.9.1951. 7 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 145. 8 ROP, 1.3.1952. 9 Fazio in Pears & Kirkland, Korea Remembered, p. 316. 10 ROP, 1.4.1952. 11 Sheedy, War at Sea, p. 8. 12 Bates, Japan and the BCOF, p. 94. 13 Deck Log, 13.12.1952. 14 Conversation with author, August 2004.

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Notes to pages 215–45

15 Deck Log, 13.12.1952. 16 Sheedy, War at Sea, p. 10. See also Roy Norris, A Cook’s Tour: HMAS Perth’s Mediterranean War 1941, Naval Historical Society of Australia, Sydney, 2005, p. 132. 17 Connell, Fighting Destroyer, pp. 19–20. 18 Files in MP138/1 Item 603/286/286, NAA. 19 Ship’s plans in MP138/1 Item 603/286/286, NAA. 20 Stevens, Centenary History, p. 134. 21 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, pp. 72–73. 22 Thompson, Cry Korea, p. 283. 23 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, p. 49.

Chapter 13 | Leadership and morale 1 McKie in Bartlett, With the Australians, pp. 270–71. 2 Cooper, ‘A gunnery officer’s journey’. 3 Meyers, Thunder in the Morning Calm, p. 34. 4 McKie in Bartlett, With the Australians, p. 273. 5 Sheedy, War at Sea, p. 266. 6 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 81. 7 Connell, Fighting Destroyer, pp. 234–35. 8 Cole, Korea Remembered, pp. 69, 88. 9 Sheedy, War at Sea, p. 273. 10 Sheedy, War at Sea, p. 24. 11 Sheedy, War at Sea, p. 245. 12 Sheedy, War at Sea, p. 15. 13 Gerry Shepherd, in Fazio, Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, p. 53. 14 Iain Nethercott, ‘Early days’, in Ian Hawkins (ed.), Destroyer, Conway Maritime Press, London, 2003, footnote 8, p. 29. 15 McKie in Bartlett, With the Australians, p. 271. 16 ROP, 20.6.1952, Appendix A. 17 ROP, 20.6.1952 and 10.7.1952. 18 G Hermon Gill, Royal Australian Navy 1939–1942, Collins, Sydney, 1985, pp. 185–96. 19 AWM 346 Item 5. 20 Letter, USS John R Craig to Bataan, 10.7.1952, in AWM 346 Item 5. 21 Letter, Admiral Collins to Bracegirdle, 5.8.1952, AWM 346 Item 5. 22 ROP, 20.6.1952. 23 ROP, 5.6.1952. 24 ROP, 7.6.1952. 25 ROP, 10.7.1952. 26 Poem, ‘Said Thring of Ceylon’, in AWM346. 27 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, pp. 468–69. 28 From Geoff Cooper’s collection. 29 McKie in Bartlett, With the Australians, p. 273. 30 Alliston, Destroyer Man, p. 41. 31 Deck Log, 15.2.1952. 32 Sears in Stevens, Royal Australian Navy, p. 110–23. 33 ROP, 7.3.1951. 34 ROP, 1.4.1951.

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Notes to pages 245–55

35 ROP, 1.9.1952. 36 ROP, 1.3.1952. 37 ROP, 10.5.1952. 38 ROP, 10.7.1952. 39 ROP, 13.8.1952. 40 O’Neill, Korean War Vol. II, p. 508. 41 ROP, 4.10.1952. 42 AWM 346 Item 6.

Chapter 14 | The end of the line 1 Nicholas Bracegirdle, ‘Epilogue—22 May 1982—Falkland Islands’, in , accessed 8.9.2009. 2 See correspondence in MP926/1 Item 4788/102/4, NAA. 3 Naval Board to FOCAS, 28.5.54, and Minute by First Naval Member, 25.5.54, in 4788/102/4, NAA. 4 Fazio, Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, pp. 54, 27. 5 See for an extensive virtual tour. 6 , accessed 13.5.2009. 7 Sandler, No Victors, p. 264. 8 Sandler, No Victors, p. 268. 9 Hickey, West Confronts Communism, p. 362. 10 Sandler, No Victors, pp. 269–70.

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Glossary AA Short for ‘anti-aircraft’ and referring to guns on a ship used against aircraft. Abuse Bataan’s call sign when operating as the Haeju Gulf inshore patrol. ack-ack Another term for ‘anti-aircraft’, based on an archaic British phonetic alphabet. action stations The highest state of combat readiness, during which every man onboard was ‘closed up’ at his station, with all guns manned, and all systems operating. Admiralty Fire Control Clock The computer in the transmitting station (TS) that calculated the main armament’s firing solution. Sometimes referred to as the Admiralty Fire Control Table. AFCC Admiralty Fire Control Clock. AIF Australian Imperial Force, the overseas component of the Australian Army in World Wars I and II, recruited voluntarily. air guard The destroyer assigned the task of maintaining station astern of an aircraft carrier during flying operations, in order to rescue any ditched aircrew, using the ship’s boats. air-spotting The control of a ship’s gunfire by aircraft overhead, providing range and azimuth corrections to bring the fire onto target. ANZUS The security treaty between the USA, Australia and New Zealand, signed in 1951, by which the parties were obligated to ‘act to meet the common danger’ in the event of foreign aggression. A/S, AS Antisubmarine. Asdic A sonar submarine detection system, developed by the British Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee. Battle Class A British destroyer design from the late World War II period, which the RAN used to supplement its Tribal-Class ships; although they mounted a modest main armament of only two twin 4.5-inch turrets, their radar-directed fire control system was far more advanced than the visual systems of the Tribals. BCOF The British Commonwealth Occupation Force that occupied part of Japan from 1946; initially a joint force from Commonwealth nations, but later solely Australian in composition and command. blind fire Engaging targets out of visual contact, such as targets not visible at night or masked by terrain. Bofors A 40-mm quick-firing anti-aircraft gun, designed by the Swedish company of the same name. broadside A salvo from the entire main armament of a ship. bulkhead One of the vertical surfaces or walls aboard a ship, forming part of a watertight compartment. captain Confusingly, either a junior army officer’s rank, a senior naval officer’s rank (typically, a flotilla commander or a cruiser CO) or a loose naval term denoting a ship’s commanding officer. Thus, an officer with the actual rank of lieutenant commander or commander was often referred to as ‘captain’. A well-known example is ‘Captain’ James Cook, who held only the rank of lieutenant. Captain (D) An RN designation for the officer commanding a flotilla of destroyers. Carley float A rectangular raft constructed of a wooden floor frame suspended from a canvas-covered flotation ring. It enabled survivors to stand waist deep in water,

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HMAS Bataan, 1952

awaiting rescue. Cigarette Route On the west coast of Korea, the series of channels running north– south inside Cho Do, leading to the approaches to the Communist-controlled port of Chinnampo; the name derives from those of the individual channels, many of which were named after cigarette brands, such as Players and Capstan. closed up A state of readiness in which a combat team, such as a gun crew, is not only physically present at its gun mount, but has every man at his station, ready for immediate action. CO Commanding officer. Cockatoo Island The naval dockyard facility in Sydney Harbour, opposite Drummoyne, and west of the Harbour Bridge, which constructed, repaired, refitted and modified RAN ships right up until the 1990s. con The giving of steering and engine commands in order to direct a ship’s movement, usually from the bridge by the OOW or CO. CPO Chief petty officer, one of the highest noncommissioned ranks. cruising stations A medium state of combat readiness, with only one of the three watches on deck, and with only one main armament gun mounting and one secondary armament mounting manned. The men remained by the guns, but not ‘closed up’ on them. day cabin The comfortable cabin that the CO used, when in port, as an office, to entertain guests and to hold meetings. His sleeping cabin was adjacent, and was also used only when in port. DC Depth charge. deck log Filled out by the officers of the watch, this recorded mostly the bare details of the ship’s movements, with the emphasis upon navigational matters. depth charge A drum of high explosives, dropped or flung overboard, and timed to explode underwater at a preset depth, in order to crack the pressure hull of an enemy submarine. director control Centralised control of the aiming and firing of the ship’s main armament by the director crew, using radar ranges and elevation and azimuth settings computed automatically by the Admiralty Fire Control Clock (AFCC). director tower, director The rotating tower atop the bridge, fitted with the radar rangefinder and powerful optical instruments, which provided range, closure, angle and rate data for the Admiralty Fire Control Clock in the transmitting station (TS). The gunnery control officer (GCO) controlled the ship’s main armament from here when the firing was under director control. DP Dual-purpose; used, for example, in reference to an armament designed to be used both for high-angle anti-aircraft fire and low-angle surface-to-surface fire. DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea. DSC Distinguished Service Cross, a naval officer’s award within the imperial honours system, awarded for valour, proficiency and leadership qualities in action. firing solution The elevation and azimuth settings at the gun mounts, computed by the Admiralty Fire Control Clock (AFCC) and required in order to hit the target. first lieutenant The ship’s executive officer and second-in-command, responsible for discipline, delegated to write the draft of the captain’s Reports of Proceedings, and stationed on the quarterdeck at action stations in order to be near the emergency-steering position and to be able to direct the ship in the event of the bridge being hit and the captain disabled. ERA Engine-room artificer, a technical rating in a ship’s engineering department. fo’c’sle The forecastle, in salty seaman’s argot.

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Glossary

forecastle The forward half of the ship, in which the ratings’ mess decks were located; the archaic term was still appropriate because this part of the ship stood one deck higher than the ‘iron deck’, which covered the machinery places aft. frigate A category of escort vessel, a warship of smaller size than a destroyer, lacking torpedo armament but with strong antisubmarine and anti-aircraft armaments, powered by old-fashioned reciprocating steam engines rather than turbines, and making up in endurance what it lacked in speed (it was usually capable of no more than 20 knots (37 kph). GCO Gunnery control officer, the head of the ship’s gunnery department, a specialist gunnery officer, who controlled the main armament from the director tower during action stations. HE High explosive ammunition, as distinct from starshell. indirect fire Gunnery against a target that is not in line of sight. jackstay A cable suspended taut between two ships, for the transfer of men, stores, mail and so on. knot A nautical mile per hour, 1.852 kph, a speed measurement still current in nautical and aeronautical affairs. KPA Korean People’s Army, the North Korean army. layer The gunner who sets the elevation of a gun mount, one of the pair of gunners responsible for aiming, the other being the trainer. ‘Laying’ therefore refers to adjusting the elevation setting of the gun mount. local control The aiming and firing of a gun mount by the gun crew, using telescopic sights and visually estimated range and azimuth settings, rather than by the director. LST Landing ship tank, a large sea-going landing vessel with bow doors (car-ferry style) and a flat bottom, for landing armoured vehicles and other military transport on a beach. main armament The ‘big guns’ of a ship, in Bataan’s case the 4.7- and 4-inch mounts, as distinct from the 40-mm secondary armament. MIG-15 A Soviet swept-wing jet fighter, a state-of-the-art machine in 1950–53, equivalent to the USAF’s F-86 Saber; there was no British equivalent. MO Medical officer. nautical mile At 1852 metres, longer than a statute mile (1609 metres). Naval Board In effect, the RAN’s Admiralty, a board of both uniformed and civilian directors who controlled the navy. net A network of radios operating on the same frequency. night cabin The captain’s sleeping accommodation when at sea, a relatively basic affair under the bridge. officer of the watch (OOW) One of the two officers who directed the ship from the bridge for the length of one watch; known as OOD, or officer of the deck, in the USN. ops room The operations room, under the bridge, equipped with the plotting table, radar scopes and communications; the nerve centre of the ship in action, known today as the CIC or combat information centre. PO Petty officer, a rank of noncommissioned officer. plot A representation of a ship’s tactical situation on a chart, on which the ship’s position, course and speed, and those of friendly and enemy forces, are updated constantly, in turn providing ranges and bearings for tactical decision making. Plots can be maintained either for navigational purposes (nav plots) or gunnery purposes (gun plots).

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plot board, plotting table The ARL (Admiralty Research Laboratory) plotting table in the ops room, upon which the tactical position was represented upon a chart, on a constantly updated basis. PPI Plan position indicator, in other words the radarscope, on which a rotating radar trace provided 360-degree coverage. PX Post exchange, the name for the US Army stores, where all sorts of goods were available to servicemen for purchase at bargain prices. Q Class A World War II class of British destroyer, of which the RAN acquired six examples during and after the war; Qs were smaller than Tribals, with four single 4.7-inch mountings. quarterdeck An archaic Nelsonian term for the aft-most deck of the ship, right above the propellers; on the Tribals it mounted the twin 4.7-inch Y gun, two depthcharge racks, and ready-use smoke floats; known as the fantail in the USN. RAAF Royal Australian Air Force. RAN Royal Australian Navy. RCN Royal Canadian Navy. Realpolitik A German term meaning ‘real politics’ or ‘practical politics’, coined in reference to the hard-nosed politics of Imperial Germany, and thus applicable to any particularly pragmatic policy position as opposed to a sentimental or moral one. RFA Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the organisation providing replenishment ships for RN vessels, using mixed naval and civilian crews. RN Royal Navy, the British navy. RNZN Royal New Zealand Navy. ROK Republic of Korea, commonly known as South Korea. ROP Reports of Proceedings, usually drafted by the first lieutenant for the captain’s signature, providing a coherent chronological narrative of the ship’s operations for the Naval Board. RPC Remote power control, the ability of gun mounts to automatically follow the director to achieve a firing solution, rather than being manually traversed and elevated to follow the director. RSL Returned Servicemen’s League, the Australian veterans’ organisation, serving both socialisation and lobbying purposes. SAR Search and rescue; in the Korean context, principally the retrieval of downed airmen. scuttle The naval term for porthole. SG The American surface-search radar fitted to Bataan, and to US destroyers. stanchions The upright posts along the edge of a ship’s upper decks, to which were fixed the guardrails. starshell A shell that provided nocturnal illumination for the purposes of observation and gunnery, achieved by bursting in the air and releasing a pyrotechnic flare that then descended to earth beneath a parachute. straddle A gun salvo being on target both in bearing and range, such that the shots fall both short of the target as well as beyond the target. TBS Talk Between Ships, a USN voice-radio network, used to supplement flag and signal-lamp communications. trainer The gunner who sets the azimuth bearing of a gun mount, one of the pair of gunners responsible for aiming, the other being the layer. ‘Training’ therefore refers to moving the gun mount’s aiming point in azimuth. Tripod Bataan’s radio call sign.

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Glossary

TS Transmitting station, the fire control room under the bridge containing the fire control computer, the Admiralty Fire Control Clock (AFCC), which produced the firing solution for the main armament. USN United States Navy. VD Venereal Disease, the period equivalent of STI, Sexually Transmitted Infections. waist The upper deck in the middle section of the ship’s length, between the fo’c’sle and the after deckhouse—another term from Nelsonian days. war cruise Tour of duty. wardroom The commissioned officers’ dining and relaxation area, equipped with ‘comfy chairs’, a bar, wireless, gramophone and other comforts. Wolfpack The codename for the ROK guerilla organisations in the Haeju Gulf area, garrisoning the offshore islands off the North Korean coast. Worthington Patrol The nocturnal west-coast inshore patrol, conducted by one of the three destroyers of the carrier screen, on a rotational basis. X gun On Bataan, the twin 4-inch mounting atop the after deckhouse. Yalu The river forming the border between North Korea and Manchuria (China), which flows into the Yellow Sea on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula. Y gun On Bataan, the aftermost twin 4.7-inch mounting, on the quarterdeck.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Australian War Memorial AWM 78, HMAS Bataan Reports of Proceedings AWM 346, Bracegirdle’s Papers AWM 346 Item 9, HMAS Bataan Night Order Book

National Archives of Australia MP 138/1, item 603/286 series, Naval Board correspondence on Bataan’s construction and technical problems Item 4788/102/4, Naval Board correspondence relating to Bataan’s 1954 accident Series SP 551/1, Bundle 86, HMAS Bataan Deck Log

Geoff Cooper’s letters Dated 15.8.1951, 28.8.1951, 23.9.1951, 11.10.1951, 21.10.1951, 28.10.1951, 29.11.1951, 20.12.1951, 28.12.1951, 4.1.1952, 10.1.1952, 22.1.1952, 7.2.1952, 14.2.1952, 4.3.1952, 16.3.1952, 29.3.1952, 21.4.1952, 29.4.1952, 13.5.1952, 27.5.1952, 6.6.1952, 18.6.1952, 30.6.1952, 10.7.1952, 24.7.1952, 3.8.1952, 13.8.1952, 28.8.1952, 14.9.1952, 28.9.1952, 8.10.1952, 13.11.1952, 18.1.1953.

Secondary Sources Alexander, James Edwin (1996) Inchon to Wonsan: From the Deck of a Destroyer in the Korean War, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. Alliston, John (1985) Destroyer Man, Greenhouse Publications, Melbourne. Bartlett, Norman (ed.) (1954) With the Australians in Korea, Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Bates, Peter (1993) Japan and the British Commonwealth Occupation Force 1946–52, Brassey’s, London. Brice, Martin H (1971) The Tribals: Biography of a Destroyer Class, Ian Allen, London. Cagle, Malcolm W & Frank A Manson (1957) The Sea War in Korea, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. Cain, Frank (ed.) (1997) Menzies in War and Peace, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Cassells, Vic (2000) The Destroyers, Kangaroo Press, Sydney. Catchpole, Brian (2001) The Korean War, Robinson, London. Chesneau, Roger (1988) Aircraft Carriers, Brockhampton Press, London. Chum-Kon, Kim (1973) The Korean War: The First Comprehensive Account of the Historical Background and Development of the Korean War (1950–53), Kwangmyong Publishing Company, Seoul.

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Bibliography

Cole, Charles F (1995) Korea Remembered: Enough of a War! The USS Ozbourn’s First Tour 1950–1951, Yucca Tree Press, Las Cruces, New Mexico. Collins, John (1965) As Luck Would Have It, Angus & Robertson, Sydney. Cooper, Anthony (2005) ‘HMAS Bataan’s 1951 “condenseritis”’, Journal of Australian Naval History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (March), pp. 1–30. —— (2008) ‘A gunnery officer’s journey: Commander Warwick Bracegirdle RAN: a case study of a professional naval officer’, Journal of Australian Naval History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (September), pp. 47–78. Davies, George (2001) The Occupation of Japan: The Rhetoric and the Reality of Anglo-Australian Relations 1939–1952, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane. Dennis, Peter & Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior, with John Connor (eds) (1995) The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Dower, John W (1999) Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, WW Norton, New York. Dugan, Michael (2000) Korean War, Macmillan, Melbourne. Fazio, Vince (1999) Tribal and Battle Class Destroyers, Naval Historical Society of Australia, Sydney. Frame, Tom (1992) Pacific Partners: A History of Australian-American Naval Relations, Hodder & Stoughton, Sydney. —— (2004) No Pleasure Cruise: The Story of the Royal Australian Navy, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Frame, Tom & Kevin Baker (2000) Mutiny! Naval Insurrections in Australia and New Zealand, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Friedman, Norman (1981) Naval Radar, Conway Maritime Press, Greenwich. Gerster, Robin (2008) Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan, Scribe, Melbourne. Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis & Litai Xue (1995) Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War, Stanford University Press, Stanford. Gough, Barry M (2001) HMCS Haida: Battle Ensign Flying, Vanwell Publishing, St Catharines, Ontario. Grey, Jeffrey (1999) A Military History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne. Haas, Michael E (2000) In the Devil’s Shadow: UN Special Operations during the Korean War, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. Harper, Norman (1987) A Great and Powerful Friend: A Study of Australian and American Relations between 1900 and 1975, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane. Hickey, Michael (1999) The Korean War: The West Confronts Communism 1950–53, John Murray, London. Hodges, Peter (1971) Tribal Class Destroyers: Royal Navy and Commonwealth, Almark Publishing, London. Hodges, Peter & Norman Friedman (1979) Destroyer Weapons of World War 2, Conway Maritime Press, Greenwich. Hoyt, Edwin P (1993) The Day the Chinese Attacked: Korea 1950. The Story of the Failure of America’s China Policy, Paragon House, New York. Hurst, Doug (2008) The Forgotten Few: 77 RAAF Squadron in Korea, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

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Hyslop, Robert (1990) Aye Aye, Minister: Australian Naval Administration 1939–59, AGPS, Canberra. Jeremy, John (1998) Cockatoo Island: Sydney’s Historic Dockyard, UNSW Press, Sydney. Jian, Chen (1996) China’s Road to the Korean War, Columbia University Press, New York. Lansdown, John RP (1997) With the Carriers in Korea: The Sea and Air War in South East Asia, 1950–1953, Crecy, Manchester. Lowe, David (1999) Menzies and the ‘Great World Struggle’: Australia’s Cold War 1948–1954, UNSW Press, Sydney. McCormack, Gavan (1983) Cold War Hot War: An Australian Perspective on the Korean War, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney. Madgwick, Edward (2003) Tribal Captain, Blue Island Books, Helston, Cornwall. Malcom, Ben S (1996) White Tigers: My Secret War in North Korea, Brassey’s, Washington. Manning, TD (1961) The British Destroyer, Putnam, London. March, Edgar J (1966) British Destroyers: A History of Development 1892–1953, Seeley Service & Co., London. Meyers, Edward C (1997) Thunder in the Morning Calm: The Royal Canadian Navy in Korea 1950–1955, Vanwell Publishing, St Catharines, Ontario. Nesdale, Iris (1989) Action Stations! Tribal Destroyers of the Royal Australian Navy, South Australian Branch of the HMAS Warramunga Veterans’ Association. O’Neill, Robert (1981) Australia in the Korean War, 1950–53: Volume I, Strategy and Diplomacy, Australian War Memorial, Canberra. —— (1985) Australia in the Korean War, 1950–53: Volume II, Combat Operations, Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Pears, Maurice & Fred Kirkland (eds) (1998) Korea Remembered, South Wood Press, Sydney. Pugsley, AF (1957) Destroyer Man, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London. Reeve, John & David Stevens (eds) (2003) The Face of Naval Battle: The Human Experience of Modern War at Sea, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Ross, WH (1994) ‘Lucky Ross’: An RAN Officer 1934–1951, Hesperion Press, Carlisle, Western Australia. Sandler, Stanley (1999) The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanguished, UCL Press, London. Sheedy, Brian (1998) The War at Sea, Brian Sheedy, Dromana, Victoria. Shepherd, Gerry (ed.) (1995) HMAS Bataan 1945–1954, HMAS Bataan Veterans’ Association, Melbourne. Spector, Ronald H (2001) At War at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century, Penguin, London. Stevens, David (ed.) (1996) The Royal Australian Navy in World War II, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. —— (ed.) (2001) The Royal Australian Navy: The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Vol. III, Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Stueck, William (2004) Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Thomas, Graham (2004) Furies and Fireflies over Korea: The Story of the Men of the Fleet Air Arm, RAF and Commonwealth Who Defended South Korea, 1950–53, Grub Street, London.

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Bibliography

Thompson, Reginald (1952) Cry Korea, Macdonald, London. Thornton, Richard C (2000) Odd Man Out: Truman, Stalin, Mao, and the Origins of the Korean War, Brassey’s, Washington DC. Whitley, MJ (2002) Destroyers of World War Two, Cassell, London.

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Index References to images and maps are shown in italics 3rd Battallion, Royal Australian Regiment 22–4, 30–1, 189 4 inch guns see X Gun 4.7 inch guns see Y Gun 21st Minesweeping Flotilla 148 22nd Minesweeping Flotilla 148 40-mm guns see Bofors guns 76-mm guns 93 77 Squadron RAAF 22–4, 137, 189 122-mm guns 93–4 8086th US Army unit 78 A Gun 10 ablutions facilities 217–19, 218 Acheson, Dean 21 Admiralty doctrine see Royal Navy Admiralty Research Laboratory plotting tables 84–5, 110–1, 151–2 aerial bombardments 86, 119–20, 129–30 after deckhouse, damaged in shelling 3–4 air-conditioning 45 air-guard destroyers 119–21 air power support 116–33 air spotting 85–6, 104 aircraft see names of aircraft aircraft carriers, screening duty 116–33 Akagi 181 Albatross, HMAS 32 alcohol use 59–60, 221–3, 238 Alliston, Lieutenant John RN 28, 39, 181, 229 ammunition, expenditure of 95–6, 114–5 ammunition stores 57–8 anti-aircraft armament 30, 32, 136, 139–41 anti-Communists 74–5 anti-submarine armament 144–5 anti-VD education 204–5

Anzac, HMAS fire control system 141–2 Korean tour 57 radar system 145 relieves Bataan 239–40 visits with 247 ANZUS Treaty 23 Arafura Sea 60 Ari Do 108 armament see guns artillery see gunnery; guns Arunta, HMAS as RAN ship 28 completion date 32 living conditions on 40–1 placed in reserve 26 service record x subsequent career 252–4 Asdic equipment 143–5 Atago 181 Athabaskan, HMCS 25, 31, 112, 172 atrocities 16–7, 87–9 Augusta, USS 157 Australia attitudes to Japan 187–8 currency controls 197 Geoff Cooper’s views of 221 Korean intervention 22–4 shipbuilding capabilities 31–4 VD among servicemen 203–4 Australia, HMAS 233 Australian Naval Board 38–9, 112 see also Royal Australian Navy auxiliary steering platform 37–8 B Gun 6, 10, 101–2 Bairoko, USS 116, 121, 122, 213 Baldridge, Commander EF USN 161–3 ballast 36 Barclay, Glen 23 Bataan, HMAS 2 as RAN ship 28–46 attends Japanese surrender 45 collision with Vengeance 253–4

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Index

construction of 31–4 enters service vii, 45–6 first tour of duty 24–7 fo’c’sle deck 209 living conditions on board 207–24 mechanical problems 47–65 modifications to 36–8, 211–2 naming of 34–5 patrol record xii personnel changes 55 placed with UN forces 22 plan of 8 radar masts 153 refuelling 169, 173 retirement 252–3 shelling attacks on 3–4, 4, 7–12 side scraping parties 49 toilets 219 top speed 36–7 upper works 42 VD on 199–206 whaleboat of 120 Bataan Peninsula 34–5 Bataan, USS 24, 35, 94, 117 Bates, Peter 186 Battle Class 141–2 battle management systems 110–1 beer 190, 222, 238 beer-halls 190 Belfast, HMS 14, 24 blind bombardments 96, 103–4, 111–2 blue berets 244 blue-light outfits 204 Blue-Watch gun crew 243 Boeing B-29 Super Fortresses 129 Bofors guns 37, 73, 114, 136–7, 136, 164–5 boiler rooms see power plant Bolt, Captain AS RN 142 books on board 223 Borneo 60 Bracegirdle, Lieutenant Commander Nicholas RN 252 Bracegirdle, Rear Admiral Sir Leighton RN 252 Bracegirdle, Commander Warwick 1, 81, 123, 151, 226 after Operation Round-up 92 appointed to HMAS Bataan 54

briefs Baldridge 161–3 deck log 13–4 dress at sea 241 in Operation Round-up 87 later career and retirement 252 leadership by 55, 225–33 on aerial attacks 139 on naval ‘bull’ 229–30 on Operation Round-up 83 on sexual attitudes 200–1 on Shimonoseki Strait 154–5 on Taeyonpyong Do 69 poetry 207–8, 235–6, 238, 247–8 presents to rescued pilots 125 prize for airmanship 127–9 Reports of Proceedings by ix response to criticism 95–7 response to shelling 7–12 sense of humour 232–3 ship-handling skills 174–7 standing orders from 163–4 bridge 151 Britain see also Royal Navy, recognises Communist China 99 British 29th Brigade 16–17 British Commonwealth Occupation Force 189–90 ‘broadside’ messing system 43–4 Broken Bay, sea trials in 58 brothels see prostitution Brush, USS 147 Buchanan, Commander AE 41 cable parties 155 Cairns 250 calibration of guns 108–9 Canadian Navy destroyers 31, 112 on Japanese facilities 189, 193, 195 VD among servicemen 203–4 Canberra, USS 34 Cardigan Bay, HMS 103 Carpenter, USS 161–3 carriers 116–33 casualties 86, 87, 98, 114 catering on board 38–9, 43–4, 216, 235–6 Cavalier, HMS 254 Cayuga, HMCS 287

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Chinnampo shelled by 25 dress code on 227 gunnery system 112 patrol with 62–3 radar 158–9 screening duties 117, 213 CCRAK 75–6 Ceylon, HMS 24, 106 Changson-Got Peninsula 94 Charles F. Adams class 45 Chester, USS 33 Chicago, USS 33 Chifley Labor government 26–7 China, Korean intervention by 15–6 Chinnampo 25, 146, 166 chlamydia 201 Cho Do as UN base 2, 131, 162 refuelling accident 175–7 shelling of 93 Chongyong Myon peninsula 114 Cigarette Route 2–3, 105 cinema nights 205, 237 coastal patrols 160–1 Cockade, HMS 158 Cockatoo Island 33, 47, 53–4 cockroaches 214–5 codes 165–6 cold room 43 cold water units 44 cold-weather rig 210 Cole, Ensign Charles F USN 147 Collins, Vice Admiral Sir John 98, 152, 226, 233–5, 234 comforts parcels 238 comic books 223–4 Commonwealth occupation zone in Japan 185 ‘communist calf ’ 88, 89 competitive sport 236–7 Comus, HMS 134 Condamine, HMAS 100–1, 212, 247 ‘condenseritis’ 61–2 condoms issued to sailors 200, 205 congratulatory signals 257–8 Constance, HMS 1, 166–7, 207–8 Cook, Commander WF 81, 226 Cook, Sub Lieutenant Nick RNVR 127 cooks 44 see also catering on board

Cooper, Able Seaman Geoff at Stork Club 192 at work 107 attitudes to Australia 221 attitudes to Japan 187–8 crews on Anzac 239–40 diving skills 55, 64 dress at sea 210, 228, 243 in action 10–1 joins Bataan 48 letters sent and received 219–20 loses camera 116 marriage and career 250–2 on Admiral Collins 234–5 on aerial bombardments 130–1, 135–6 on cockroaches 215 on leave 198 on Naval Board 53 on power plant refit 54 on refuelling accidents 174–8 on Sasebo 197 on steam venting 51 on Syngman Rhee 17 on weather conditions 5 war service viii–ix with Marie Knight 251 Corsair aircraft 94, 116, 121–2 Costin guns 171–3 Covert, Clandestine and Related Activities – Korea 75–6 Cregan, Tubby 9 cruising-stations gun 101–2 Crutchley, Rear Admiral Sir Victor RN 43 Curtin, John 23 Daring Class 235 DDT use 214–5 De Havilland Sea Venom aircraft 253 de-icing gear 165 de Ruyter 182 Deck Log 13–4, 166 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea aerial bombardments by 134–42 artillery forces vii–viii, 3, 14, 93–4 casualties among 87, 114 counterattacks by 86–7 invades Republic of Korea 15, 21 288

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Index

postwar history 255–6 depth charges 144–5, 144, 146, 176–8, 242 destroyers development of 29–30 fuel consumption 170 in RAN 26 Japanese 30 last combats using x living conditions aboard 38, 215–7 naval ‘bull’ on 229 navigation by 150–67 on mail service 220 preservation of 254 screening duties 117 steaming range 170 unitised layout 148 vulnerability of 10 displacement 29 diving 55, 64, 64 Donkey-16: 78–9 Douglas B-26 Invaders 129 Dower, John 203 DP/Mk 37 weapon system 30–1 dress rules see uniforms Dulles, John Foster 22–3 dungarees 242–4 Dunn, Lieutenant J Frank 80, 81 Dye, Major Tom 78–9 Dyer, Vice Admiral GC USN 89 Elizabeth II of England, coronation of 244–5 engine rooms see power plant Evans, Captain Charles 127 Exeter, HMS 182 F-80 jet fighters 129–30 F-94 night fighters 130 Fairey Gannet aircraft 253 Farncomb, Rear Admiral Harold 46, 62 Fazio, Vince 100–1, 212 films 205, 237 fire control systems 112, 138, 141–2 Firefly fighter-bombers 125–7 fires on board 50, 63 fisheries patrols 72–3 Flaherty, Joe 7, 9, 215 flare ships 73

fleet carriers 26–7 fo’c’sle decks 216–7 Forrest B Royal, USS 25 Fowle, Commander GL 253–4 Frank E Evans, USS 119 Freemasonry 199 fresh water supplies 217 Frewen, Captain John RN 66, 105 Fubuki class 30 fuel consumption 170–1 fuel tanks 169 Fukae Shima 145 Fursey, Lieutenant CJ RN 125 Fuso 182 Garden Island 48–9, 59, 250 gas turbines xi Genessee, USS 140 Geoff Cooper (sharkcat) 252 George VI of England 103 German destroyers 30 Gingrich, Rear Admiral JE 258 Gingrich, Rear Admiral JE USN 95 Glory, HMS 24, 104 Gloster Meteor fighters 137 Golder, Lieutenant JW ‘Johnny’ 10, 81, 123 gonorrhoea 201 Grey, Jeffrey 141 Griffiths, Rear Admiral Guy 141–2, 232 guerrilla units see also Wolfpack guerrillas Donkey-16: 78–9 Leopard 76 Lobo 6: 95 Lobo 7: 257 Gunfire Support Group 134–5 gunnery accuracy of 108–9 against troops 114 blind bombardments 96, 103–4, 111–2 dress codes 244 effect of 12 fire control systems 112, 138, 141–2 flashes from 106 manning orders 164–5 on destroyers 29–31 on fisheries patrol 73 289

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Operation Round-up 89–91 practice firings 58, 139–41 ‘registering’ 103 shore bombardment 100–15 standing orders for 166 under icy conditions 211 gunnery control officers 11–2 guns 8, 37 see also A Gun; B Gun; X Gun; Y Gun Gurke, USS 105–6, 220 gyro compass 155–6 gyroscopic stable platforms 30 habitability of ships see living conditions on board Haeju Gulf 69, 70–1 Bataan attacked in 24 picket duty in 79–80 postwar 255 starshell firing in 105 Haida, HMCS 254 Hale, Lieutenant 113 hammocks 217 Harima dockyard 47–8 Harper, Norman 22 Harrington, Captain WH 62 Haruna 181 Hawkesbury, HMAS 251 Hawkesworth, Lieutenant RDR ‘Harry’ RN 85 helicopters intership transfers by 173 on mail service 220–1, 221 rescue duties 121, 124 Heren, Louis 224 Hermes, HMS 182 Hiroshima 188 HMAS Bataan Side Party 249 Hobart, HMAS 33, 45 Hong Kong 61, 249 Hungerford, Tom 187–8 Huron, HMCS 167, 186 hydraulic gun mountings 29 Hyuga 181 ‘Ice-Burgers’ swimming club 191 ice-cream machines 38 ice floes 6, 63–4, 212–3 icy conditions 209–11

IL-10 Shturmovik aircraft 134 In Which We Serve 54 Inchon invasion 15, 17, 134–5 insulation 212 interdiction-fire task 100 Iroquois, HMCS 245 Isbell, USS 213 Ise 181 island patrols 66–99 Itsukushima 186–7 jackstays 122, 172–3, 220 Jaguar patrols 108 Jamaica, HMS 135 Japan leave spent in 180–206 military vessels 30, 181–3 sex workers in 202–3 subordinate independence 185 surrender by 45–6 US relations with 184–6 Java 182 Jenne, Lieutenant CM RN 128–9 Jervis Bay, sea trials in 58–9 Jobson, Sub Lieutenant JL 85 John J Borland, USS 208 John R Craig, USS 235–6 Johnston, Archie 98 Jones, Taffy 9 Kaesong, atrocities committed in 16–7 kangaroo cut-out 242 Keitki To 109 Kelly, Commander Monroe USN 150 Kenya, HMS 222 Kim Il-sung 18–9, 255–6 Kim Jong-il 255–6 Kirin beer 190 Knight, Marie 251–2, 251 Korea see also Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; Republic of Korea; weather conditions in Korea geography of 68–9 illegal immigrants from 46 landscape of 6 map xiii seasonal conditions in 214 Korean War 15–27 aerial bombardments 129–32 290

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Index

island patrols 66–99 outcome of 254–5 Kortenaer 182 Kunsan blockade 25 Kure 181, 183–4 dry dock in 65 first visit to 61 leave facilities in 189–90 US bombing of 180–1 VD in 199–206 Kurnai, HMAS 32–5 see also Bataan, HMAS La Perouse Straits 143 Lae, HMAS 48–50 Lamm, Captain George O 80, 81, 97–8 landing strips 125 Lansdown, John 127, 189 laundry facilities 39–40, 212 Lee, Mr 110 Leopard guerrilla group 76 Lewis, Captain AFP 240–1 Lewis, Captain AFP RN 178–9 library use on board 223 living conditions on board 38–45, 48–50, 207–24 Lobo 6 guerrilla unit 95 Lobo 7 guerrilla unit 257 long-service ratings 12 LORAN bearings 166 MacArthur, General Douglas 15–7, 23, 34–5 MacArthur, Jean 35 mail services 219–20 Mansfield, USS 147 Mao Zedong 18–9 see also China map firing see blind bombardments maps Haeju Gulf 70–1 Korea xiii Operation Round-up 82 Marks, Commander BM Anglophilia of 245 commands Bataan on first tour of duty 24 on coastal patrols 67 on fuel consumption 171 on radar navigation 156

on SG radar 157 on Shimonoseki Strait 155 Martin, Vice Admiral Harold M USN 25 Masonic Club 199 McKie, Ronald 225, 227, 232, 243 Melbourne, HMAS 119, 253 Menzies, Robert 22 Meyers, Edward C 157, 172, 227 MIG-15 fighters 125, 139 Mikuma 181–2 mine warfare 25, 146–9 Mogami 181–2 Moji Light 155–6 moored replenishment vessels 173–4 morale issues 54, 56, 227, 238–48 Morrison, Commander TK 52 Morrow, Captain JC 46 motor cutters 73 Mounts Bay, HMS 14, 66, 105–6, 169 movies 205, 237 Mu Do 93, 113, 131 Munro, USS 117 Murchison, HMAS Geoff Cooper on 183 replaces Bataan 25–6 takeover from 66 visits with 61, 245 Musashi 182 Nachi 181–2 Nagato 182 Nan-Do Swimming Club 236 Napier, HMAS 33, 46 Naval Board 38–9, 112 see also Royal Australian Navy naval ‘bull’ 229 Naval Forces Far East 22 navigation 150–67 navigation officers 161 Nepal, HMAS 33 Nestor, HMAS 33 New Orleans, USS 33 New Zealand, VD among servicemen 203–4 Newcastle, HMS 108, 140 Night Order Book 163 night-soil carts 187 Nizam, HMAS 33, 46 291

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No Gun Ri massacre 17 Nootka, HMCS congratulatory signals 257–8 farewell message from 205–6 refuelling speed 172 tour of duty 112 Norman, HMAS 33 North Korea see Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Nunn, Lieutenant RB ‘Dicky’ 150, 156, 167 nutrition for sailors 40, 44–5 see also catering on board Ocean, HMS 128, 169 aerial bombardments by 133 congratulatory signals 257 gunnery competition with 140 Operation Round-up 81–2, 84, 84 screening duties 117, 125–8 sortie rates 119 Oerlikon guns 32, 37 officers 219, 230–1 officers of the watch 111, 163, 213–4 Oiling-at-Sea championship 172 O’Neill, Robert 27 Operation Beat-up 114 Operation Round-up 79–92, 82 Operation Torch 156–7 operational policy 97 operations room 150–1 Oyodo 181 Ozbourn, USS 135, 229 Paengyong Do 125, 175 painting duties 57, 249 Peach, Major FSB 19 Peek, Commander Richard 51–2 Penguin, HMAS 48 Perth, HMAS 182 Petard, HMS 229 Players anchorage 162 plotting tables 84–5, 110–1, 151–2 poetry 240–1 as source of information ix by Bracegirdle 207–8, 235–6, 238, 247–8 Depth-Charge Regatta 176–7 pompom guns 137

Ponggu-Myon Peninsula 80–2, 94 Porterfield, USS 2 Portland, USS 33 power plant breakdowns in 47–8, 51–2, 61–3 fuel consumption 170 refit to 54 working conditions in 41–2 prisoners of war 46, 87 Proc, Jerry 171 propaganda 17–8 propeller shafts 65 prophylactic outfits see condoms issued to sailors prostitution 200, 202–3 proximity fuses 138 Pungchon 104 Pyongyang, atrocities committed in 16 Quiberon, HMAS 33, 208 Quickmatch, HMAS 33, 46 radar control room for 40 gun calibration with 109 in fire control systems 31, 105, 138 in navigation 152–60 masts for 153 SC-4: 152 SG 152 Sperry HDWS 157–9 Type 285: 109, 138, 154 Type 293: 157–8 Radio Australia 237 Ramsay, Commander JM 246 rations 44–5 refrigeration facilities 40, 44 refuelling 168–79, 173 remote power control for guns 30 Reports of Proceedings ix, 206 Republic of Korea atrocities committed by 15–7 guerrillas join army of 76–8 island garrisons 74–6 outcome of war 254–5 unready for attack 19 Rhoades, Lieutenant Commander Rodney 227–9 Ridgway, General Matthew 17–18 292

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riveted plating 147–8 Roberts, Lieutenant Commander CK ‘Chico’ RN 85 Robertson, Commander James M USN 235–6 Rochester, USS aerial attack on 135 escort duties 63, 106–7 radar used by 159 Royal Australian Navy chain of command 92–9 compared to RN 230–1 experience of personnel 56–7 kangaroo symbol 242 Korean service 24 living conditions for sailors 38 manpower shortages 26–7, 39, 54–5, 62 minesweeping capabilities 148–9 noncombatworthy ships 141 shipbuilding capabilities 31–4 Royal Canadian Navy 157–9 Royal Fleet Auxiliary tankers 168, 169 Royal Navy Admiralty doctrine 29 compared to RAN 230–1 destroyers borrowed from 33 destroyers lost in WWII 31 dress rules at sea 229, 240–1 ex-members in Bataan crew 56 pilots in 126–7 Sabre jets 135 saltwater showers 217–8 Sandler, Stanley 254–5 Sasebo 188–9, 194, 196 final visit to 249 US facilities at 193 VD in 199–206 Savage, Lieutenant Commander RC 98 SC-4 radar 152 Scott-Moncrieff, Admiral Sir Alan RN approves use of initiative 96–7 commands west coast force 68 congratulatory signals 258 on Operation Round-up 83 on shelling damage 4–5 poetry about 207–8 praise for Bataan 25

scuttles 217 Sea Fury aircraft 126–7, 131–2 Sea of Japan 164 sea trials 58 seasickness 58, 60 service clubs in Japan 196–7 SG radar 152, 155–60 Shackle Code 165–6 Sheedy, Brian 12, 213–4, 231 Shepherd, Gerry 10, 230 Shimonoseki Strait 154–5, 165 Shoalhaven, HMAS 22, 46 shopping in Japan 197–9 shore bombardment 100–15 shore patrols 232 Shropshire, HMAS 43, 45, 232 sick bay 40, 201–2 signals of congratulations 257–8 Sioux, HMCS radar systems 158 refuelling speed 172 runs aground 25, 166 Small Raids Section 55 Smith, Rear Admiral Allen E USN 25 snow 211 social activities 206, 235–6 sonar equipment 143–5 Sonjin 130–1 sortie rates of aircraft carriers 119–20, 126 Soryu 181 Sosuap Do 94–5 soundings 154 South Korea see Republic of Korea Soviet Russia, Korean involvement 18–21, 141–3 Spender, Percy 22–3 Sperry HDWS radar 157–9 sport 236–7 Squid anti submarine system 145 Stalin, Josef 18–21 see also Soviet Russia standing orders 163–4 starshells 104–5, 140 station-keeping 160 steam machinery see power plant steering failures 63 Storey, Commander AS 61–2 Stork Club 190–3, 192

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uniforms cold-weather rig 210 dress at sea 242–4 rules regarding 227–9, 240–1 summer rig 193–5 United Nations, Korean intervention 16 United States see also US Air Force; US Army; US Navy attitudes to Australia 22–3 Korean intervention by 15 on Korean leadership 20–1 US Air Force, bombing raids 129–30 US Army atrocities by 17 military advisors 78 transports guerrillas to islands 75–6 VD among servicemen 203–4 US Navy aircraft losses 132 bombs Kure harbour 180–1 comic-books popular in 223–4 destroyers 30–1 dress at sea 242–4 drone aircraft 140 east coast patrolled by 118 experience of personnel 56–7 fire control systems 112 length of duty tours 208 living conditions for sailors 38 micromanagement in 67–8 radar used by 159–60 refuelling capabilities 168–9 Sasebo base 193, 195

Strong, USS 93 submarines 142–9, 182–3, 183 Sumner Class 147 supply dumps bombarded 104 Supply, HMAS 168 supply officers 39 Swanson, Sub Lieutenant DLG RN 129 Sydney, HMAS 27, 50, 233 Syngman Rhee 16–7 T34/85 tanks 19 Tactician, HMS 236–7 Taechong Do 118, 159 Taesuap To 109–10 Taewha Do 157–8 Taeyonpyong Do 69 Tarakan Island 60, 164 TARCAP (Target Combat Air Patrol) 131 Task Element 95.11: 116 Task Group 95.1: 67 Task Unit 95.12.2: 161 Taupo, HMNZS 102 taxi dancers 196–7 Telemachus, HMS 52, 143 Theseus, HMS 24 Thomason, USS 232 Thompson, Reginald 17, 195, 222 Tobruk, HMAS 26 Bataan crewmen moved to 52 completion date 26 Geoff Cooper serves on 251 Korean tour 57 Squid system 145 visits with 245 Tokyo Bay 45–6 torpedo attacks 142–9 Torres Strait 163–4 Townsville 174 Trafalgar Day 114 Treaty of San Francisco 185 Tribal Class 31, 36–8, 40 Tsushima Straits 143 twin-gun mountings 29 Type 293 search radar 157 Typhoon Karen 96

vaccinations for sailors 50 Vampire, HMAS 182 venereal disease 199–206 Vengeance, HMAS 251, 253–4 ventilation on board ship 40, 42, 45, 217 Vladivostok 143 Voyager, HMAS 119 VT fuses 138

underway replenishment capability 168 Unicorn, HMS 195

Walker, Major 122–4, 123–4 Wallace Wombat 127–9 Waller, Commander Hector 229 War Diary 111

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Index

Warramunga, HMAS vii, 246 as RAN ship 28 attends Japanese surrender 45 Bataan relieves 47 completion date 32 living conditions on 40–1 postwar career 252–3 relief postponed 238–9 replaces Tobruk 61 runs aground 25, 166 service record x visits with 245–7 watch officers 111, 163, 213–4 Watkinson, Lieutenant P RN 125 Wave Chief 178 weather conditions in Korea 5–6 cold winters 208–11 during attack on Bataan 5–6 hot summers 214–15 temperature extremes 63–4 west coast patrols 66–99 whaleboats 237 Whitley, MJ 32 Wilbur, Colonel 98 Wolfpack guerrillas viii, 74–9, 77, 88, 90 as forward observers 110 casualties among 86 congratulatory signals 257 feedback from 112–3 outcome of war 255 prisoners killed by 87–9

search and rescue duties 122–4 shelling of 93 Wolsa-Ri 103–4 working conditions for sailors 41 World War II, personnel trained in 12 Worthington patrols 102–3, 160–1 X Gun anti-aircraft capabilities 137–8 cold-weather rig 210 manning orders 164–5 returns fire 9–10 Y Gun 91, 243 as cruising-stations gun 102 creeping barrage 110 crew of 101 fuse setting 138 in action 10 location of 9 ‘rig of the day’ 228 Yak-3 fighters 134–5 Yamashiro 182 Yamato 182 Yang Do 166–7 Yarra, HMAS 182 Yongmae Do aerial bombardments near 129 attacks on 93, 107–8 soundings near 154 Yonpyong Do 94 Yule, Lieutenant JG ‘Jock’ 11, 59

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Also published by UNSW Press

Bardia Myth, Reality and the Heirs of Anzac Craig Stockings Bardia is a load-bearing pillar in the temple of Australian military history. It has, however, been lost to view historically – overshadowed by the subsequent struggle with Rommel’s Africa Corps in North Africa and the epic battles of the Pacific War. Bardia deserves better memory. Craig Stockings’ excellent book restores it. – Kim Beazley On 3 January 1941, Australian soldiers led an assault against the Italian colonial fortress town of Bardia. Two days later, after 55 hours of heavy fighting, the position fell to the Australians in a resounding victory. At a cost of 130 killed and 326 wounded, the Australians captured around 40,000 Italian prisoners and large quantities of arms and equipment. The success at Bardia was considered to be one of the greatest military feats in Australian history, however, this battle has been largely neglected by historians and the Battle of Bardia is not well known to Australians. Craig Stockings, a leading military historian, writes the first in-depth study of this important battle. Providing a rare balanced account of the war in North Africa from British, Italian and Australian perspectives, he deals not only with what happened at Bardia but why the Australians were so successful, and reveals the real factors behind the Australian victory and Italian defeat. Challenging in its perspective and controversial in its conclusions, Bardia is a riveting account of the first large-scale battle planned and fought by an Australian formation in World War II. ‘Unlike many other historians and authors who . . . were quick to embrace Anzac mythology to explain the victory [at Bardia], Stockings does not rely on vague notions of national character or stereotypes to explain the difference between victory and defeat. Given the longevity of such beliefs, it is an ambitious undertaking.’ – Karl James, Australian Book Review ‘It is these national character arguments that lift Stockings’ book from run-of-the-mill military history to a book of importance and substance.’ – Michael McKernan, The Canberra Times ISBN 978 1 92141 025 3

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‘Sorry, lads, but the order is to go’ The August Offensive, Gallipoli, 1915 David W. Cameron ‘A man was blown thirty feet into the air by a naval shell, his limbs outspread, his whole body silhouetted against the sky. Yet another shell and the charred trunk of another man’s body fell near us …One moment they were working their rifles like men possessed, and shouting defiance, and the next they lay crumpled up in the trench.’ – Trooper Harry Browne, Wellington Mounted Rifles The plan for the August Offensive was one of the most complex and ambitious of the Gallipoli campaign. It was a do-or-die effort on the part of the Allied forces to break the stalemate with the Turkish and finally seize control of the Gallipoli peninsula. But it would turn out to be a long and costly battle. ‘Sorry, lads, but the order is to go’ is the first book since Charles Bean’s Official History to provide a narrative account of the August Offensive in detail. Through the use of letters, diaries and interviews from both Commonwealth and Turkish soldiers, David Cameron recreates the five days that defined the August Offensive, including the battles of Lone Pine, The Nek, Chunuk Bair, Hill Q and Hill 971. Not only do we gain access to the thoughts and experiences – sometimes the very last – of men who were on the frontlines, but also the devastating effects that poor leadership, treacherous terrain, scanty provisions and fatigued and depleted troops would have on the success of the offensive. While soldiers on both sides fought courageously, even in the face of certain death, the August Offensive continues to be a grim chapter in the Gallipoli story, one in which bodies and minds were shattered and lives senselessly lost. Praise for Cameron’s previous book 25th April 1915: ‘I loved this book … if you want to relive the battle I can recommend nothing more than you read this and the Official Australian History by the ‘Blessed Bean’ side by side. Then visit Anzac…’ – Peter Hart (Imperial War Museum), Wartime: Official Magazine of the Australian War Memorial ISBN 9781 74223 077 1

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