after the
battle
MATILDAS ON CRETE THE BATTLE OF SALAMAUA
75>
9
770306 154103
No. 175
£5.00
NUMBER 175 © Copyright After the Battle 2017 Editor: Karel Margry Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey Published by Battle of Britain International Ltd., The Mews, Hobbs Cross House, Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow, Essex CM17 0NN, England Telephone: 01279 41 8833 Fax: 01279 41 9386 E-mail:
[email protected] Website: www.afterthebattle.com Printed in Great Britain by Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH. After the Battle is published on the 15th of February, May, August and November. LONDON STOCKIST for the After the Battle range: Foyles Limited, 107 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0DT. Telephone: 020 7437 5660. Fax: 020 7434 1574. E-mail:
[email protected]. Website: www.foyles.co.uk United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution: Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH Australian Subscriptions and Back Issues: Renniks Publications Pty Limited Unit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019 Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355 E-mail:
[email protected]. Website: www.renniks.com Canadian Distribution and Subscriptions: Vanwell Publishing Ltd., 622 Welland Avenue, St. Catharines, Ontario Telephone: (905) 937 3100. Fax: (905) 937 1760 Toll Free: 1-800-661-6136 E-mail:
[email protected] New Zealand Distribution: Battle Books NZ Limited, P.O. Box 5549 Lambton, Wellington 6145, New Zealand Telephone: 021 434 303. Fax: 04 298 9958 E-mail:
[email protected] - Web: battlebooks.co.nz United States Distribution and Subscriptions: RZM Imports Inc, 184 North Ave., Stamford, CT 06901 Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106 E-mail:
[email protected] Website: www.rzm.com Italian Distribution: Milistoria s.r.l. Via Sofia, 12-Interporto, 1-43010 Fontevivo (PR), Italy Telephone: ++390521 651910. Fax: ++390521 619204 E-mail:
[email protected] — Web: http://milistoria.it/ Dutch Language Edition: SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188, 6860 AD Oosterbeek Telephone: 026-4462834. E-mail:
[email protected]
CONTENTS MATILDA TANKS ON CRETE PACIFIC The Battle for Salamaua NEW ZEALAND Wellington’s WWII Harbour Defences IT HAPPENED HERE Massacre at Hannover
2 20 36 53
Front Cover: In May 1941 the 7th Royal Tank Regiment sent nine Matilda tanks to Crete to reinforce the Allied garrison there. All nine were knocked out or left behind during the subsequent German airborne invasion of the island. This is T7402, abandoned at Heraklion and ending up at nearby Karteros Beach, a popular photo venue for German soldiers during their occupation of Crete. (Robert Gregory/Mark Wilson) Back Cover: The cemetery of honour on Arthur-Menge-Ufer in the city of Hannover, Germany, where 386 victims of Nazi forced-labour and concentration camps are buried, among them 154 Russian slave workers and prisoners of war murdered by the Gestapo in the Seelhorst municipal cemetery on April 6, 1945 — four days before the American capture of the city. The memorial, dedicated in October 1945, erroneously dates the massacre to April 8. (Karel Margry) Photo Credit Abbreviations: ATL — Alexander Turnbull Library; AWM — Australian War Memorial; USHMM — US Holocaust Memorial Museum; USNA — US National Archives.
2
Its key position in the eastern Mediterranean made Crete of strategic value to both the Allies and the Axis, leading Britain to station a land, naval and air garrison there and Germany to plan and carry out an airborne invasion. British interest in Crete can be traced back to the origins of the Second World War and the policy developed jointly by Britain and France of isolating Italy, without openly antagonising her. Realising that Italy was firmly in the Axis camp, Britain and France were also aware that Italy was quite unprepared for war. Instead their main strategy became one of non-provocation, while containing Italy within the Mediterranean, through the joint actions of their fleets as well as blocking the Straits of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. Greece and Turkey were also important, the latter because of its control of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus — their principal supply route for raw materials from the Black Sea — and Greece because the Corinth Canal provided Italian merchant ships with a more direct route to Italy and one far from the British Mediterranean Fleet. Crete was important to the British because it would give their naval forces a forward base, while airfields on it could be used to counter the Luftwaffe. This all changed with the fall of France when Italy, driven by greed, finally entered the war, militarily, on the side of Germany. Nevertheless, Britain continued to court both Greece and Turkey and their persistence was finally rewarded on October 28, 1940 when Italy declared war on Greece and invaded Greek-controlled Epirus from Albania. The British responded to this by sending some fighter and bomber squadrons to Greece, setting up a naval base in Suda Bay on Crete and garrisoning the island with a brigade of infantry, which in turn allowed the Greeks to withdraw the Cretan Division from the island. They also began to improve the airfield at Heraklion to take Bristol Blenheim light bombers and build another airfield at Maleme. Following the death of the Greek Prime Minister General Ionnas
Metaxas, the Greeks finally accepted the British offer of support and this, in the form of W Force, was shipped over in March. In the end, Germany invaded both Yugoslavia and Greece in April, overrunning the former in two weeks and the latter in three. This still left the British with a presence in Crete, albeit a small one, but it was evident as early as a week before the withdrawal of W Force from Greece that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill still had a firm resolve to hold the island. Thus, its plans to use fast capital ships and Crete as an intermediary stop-off point for their troops from Greece, actually provided Britain with a way to reinforce its Crete garrison, albeit surreptitiously. The strategic importance of Crete was not lost on the Germans either, the idea of using airborne forces to take it gaining some traction at the Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Command, OKH) as early as October 1940. The idea came up again around the time of the start of the invasion of Greece among the staff of Luftflotte IV and then later when Generalleutnant Kurt Student, the commander of the XI. Fliegerkorps, put the idea to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. After further discussions Adolf Hitler agreed to this proposal and thus on April 28 Operation ‘Merkur’, the airborne invasion of Crete, was born. The British soon learned of German intentions through Ultra decrypts and set about preparing their defences. General Bernard Freyberg, VC, was selected as the commander of the new force, to be known as Creforce, the defence to be based around the three airfields at Maleme, Rethymno and Heraklion, but with provision to deal with a seaborne invasion, the bulk of their forces to be concentrated at the western end of the island (see After the Battle No. 47).
MICHAEL GRIEVE
During the battle for Crete, which lasted from May 20 to June 1, 1941, the British and Dominion and Greek forces defending the island had very little armoured support, the only available tank units being C Squadron of the 3rd Royal Hussars fielding 16 Light Mark VI tanks, and two troops from B Squadron of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment with a strength of six (later nine) Matilda Mk II tanks. These tanks were distributed over the various defensive sectors set up on the island’s northern shore, the 3rd Hussars sending six to Heraklion and seven to Canea (three were unserviceable), and the 7th Royal Tanks dispatching pairs of Matildas to bolster up the defences of the three airfields at Maleme, Rethymno and Heraklion. After the German airborne invasion had
started, the tanks were committed in various attempts to counter-attack, with mixed success. Several were knocked out, others bogged down, some were recovered and carried on fighting with improvised Australian crews, but in the end all those still operable after 12 days of battle had to be left behind in the final evacuation from the island. This is Gnome III, one of the pair of Matildas that was sent to Rethymno, pictured in the location where it was knocked out during the failed Australian attack on Perivolia on the 27th. (Each battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment adopted tank names beginning with the equivalent letter of the alphabet to their number. Thus, the 7th Royal Tanks named all their tanks starting with the seventh letter ‘G’.)
MATILDA TANKS ON CRETE TANKS FOR CRETE One of the problems facing Freyberg was that his troops, having abandoned all of their heavy weapons in Greece, were considerably under-resourced when it came to facing up to the forthcoming airborne invasion. In the end these deficiencies were never properly made up. A number of troops were simply withdrawn from the island because there were insufficient weapons for them, while what artillery that could be made available was obsolete by modern standards and even lacked basic items such as gunsights. The British did have some armour in the form of 35 Bren and Universal carriers that had come over with the three battalions sent over in 1940 and plans were afoot to augment them with tanks. In fact earlier on in April, C Squadron of the 3rd King’s Own Hussars, commanded by Major Gilbert Peck, had been pulled out of Tobruk and sent back to Alexandria just for this purpose. A search around the workshops in the Delta area dug up 16 Light Vickers Mk VI tanks, most in various stages of disrepair. All lacked functional wireless sets but sufficient were obtained before they departed for Crete on May 11, though there was no time to fit them. On the 14th their ship, the SS Dalesman, anchored in Suda Bay but even before they had started to unload their tanks and lorries the harbour came under attack from
By Jeffrey Plowman, Michael Grieve and Mark Wilson the Luftwaffe. Worse still, their ship took a hit from a bomb that passed through the aft cargo hatch and blew a hole in the hull. With the ship taking on water, the crew beached it. The squadron was keen to recover its vehicles and fortunately all of them were in the forward hold. However, there was some equipment in the rear hold, including a few of the wireless sets, and these ultimately could not be recovered. Though there was no power to the ship’s winches, due to the engine room being flooded, they still managed to start unloading their tanks the following morning and by 6.15 p.m. had got all 16 of them off, transferring them by lighters to the shore. The vehicles had not suffered much from their ordeal, only one failing to start up so it was towed to the Ordnance workshops in Suda. After some persuasion they also managed to convince the port authorities to bring another ship alongside to assist in the unloading and on the 16th, with its help, they also got their lorries off. On the 18th, six of the tanks departed for Heraklion under the command of 2nd Lieutenant Jack Clarke but several hours later one of them returned, suffering from a broken selector fork that had considerably reduced its speed. It too was sent to the Ord-
nance workshops and a replacement provided for its crew. The next day, the remaining seven tanks set out for Canea, a further tank having to be sent to the workshops because they could not get it mobile. In contrast, the decision to send over Matilda tanks (heavier and designed for infantry support, they were usually referred to as ‘I’ (Infantry) tanks) to Crete appears to have been an afterthought. It was only on May 8 that the 7th Royal Tank Regiment, then at Sidi Bashar, Egypt, was ordered to select two troops of tanks, i.e. six Matildas, and have them ready to leave Egypt within a week. The regiment duly complied the next day, drawing three officers and 35 other ranks from their B Squadron, only to find themselves down at the docks in Alexandria on the 10th and the next day on their way to Crete. The plan for deployment of the detachment was for pairs of Matildas to be sent to each of the three airfields — Maleme (defended by the 5th Brigade of the 2nd New Zealand Division), Rethymno (protected by two Australian and two Greek battalions) and Heraklion (held by the British 14th Infantry Brigade, one Australian and two Greek battalions) — to bolster up their defensive strength. 3
MALEME-CANEA
NEW ZEALAND OFFICIAL HISTORY
RETHYMNO
HERAKLION
TIMBÁKION
The battle of Crete began with fighting in three widely separated areas: Maleme-Canea, Rethymno and Heraklion. At least their arrival in Suda Bay on the 13th was somewhat less fraught than that of the 3rd Hussars. After disembarking, the detachment commander, Captain Samuel ‘Sandy’ Badrock, sent Lieutenant George Simpson to conduct a recce around Rethymno and Lieutenant John Johnson to do the same at Heraklion, while Badrock met up with Brigadier James Hargest, commander of the 5th New Zealand Brigade. Badrock then spent some time scouting suitable laying-up sites for the two Matildas that were to go to Maleme airfield, with some difficultly as it turned out, considering this to be hardest of the three airfields. Eventually he settled on two depressions some 300 to 400 yards apart at the base of Hill 107. Leaving instructions for two revetments to be dug for them and for an irrigation ditch between them and the airfield to be filled in, Badrock returned to Suda Bay. By the time he got back the six tanks had been unloaded, the two for Maleme first, and after dividing up the spares Sergeants A. J. Gosnold and Francis Marshall drove them two miles up the road to a position that gave them good cover from the air. After dark, a lighter arrived to take the two tanks to Heraklion but the lighter for the Rethymnobound tanks did not show up, it had broken down apparently. Captain Badrock then joined Gosnold’s and Marshall’s tanks –
T7368 Gnu III and T7398 Greenloaning – and set off for Maleme, a journey that involved a number of detours, as far as the beach in one case, as some bridges proved incapable of taking them. The gearbox in Marshall’s Matilda also gave trouble and at times his driver could not engage the gears at all. In the end they had to find another location to lie up for the day. When Badrock got back to Suda on the 14th he discovered that the lighter had still not arrived for the two tanks for Rethymno and there was no indication from the Navy as to when it would be ready. As nothing could be done till nightfall he set about sorting out the stores for the tanks and getting these to their respective airfields. Finding sufficient diesel for the vehicles proved to be another problem but someone from the RASC succeeded in the end. Their ship, still carrying some of their stores, was also bombed later that day but they managed to get the rest of these off. When Badrock returned to Maleme that evening he found that the revetments for the tanks were not ready so he located a second lying-up point closer to the airfield and ordered Gosnold and Marshall to make for there the next night. When there was still no sign of the lighter for the Rethymno tanks on the 15th, Badrock ordered them to drive over that
night. The pair set off, but just to the west of Georgiopolis one of them broke down. An ordnance officer, who had been travelling with them, went back to Suda to make a replacement bearing as they had no spares of any sort with them. With this they managed to get the tank going again the following night but it broke down again after travelling another ten miles. By this stage the other tank had made it to Rethymno, so what followed was a complicated set of gymnastics. On the 19th the ordnance officer took a good bearing off the tank at Rethymno, fitted it to the broken-down tank, which then set off for the airfield. In the meantime he returned to Canea to make another, which he said could be done within 24 hours. Badrock then went back to Maleme where he and Sergeant Gosnold met with Lieutenant-Colonel Leslie Andrew, the commander of the 22nd NZ Battalion. During that meeting they brought him up to date with the situation regarding the tanks and impressed on him that the tanks were under orders not to be used except if enemy troop carriers landed on the aerodrome. That done, and before leaving, Badrock arranged for spare batteries to be sent Gosnold as his were flat. This was of sufficient concern to him that when he returned to Canea he arranged for batteries to be sent to all the other tanks as well.
3
4
1
The two Matildas sent to Maleme airfield — T7368 Gnu III and T7398 Greenloaning — were put under command of the 22nd New Zealand Battalion of the 5th New Zealand Brigade. Primarily responsible for the defence of the airfield itself was 4
2
C Company, which had No. 13 Platoon north of the airstrip itself; No. 15 Platoon to the west of it, overlooking the Tavronitis river, and No. 14 Platoon between the road and an irrigation ditch, with Company HQ to the east of them.
WILHELM WEIER
The two Matildas were sited in revetments in depressions some 300 to 400 yards apart at the base of Hill 107 — marked [1] and [2] on the map. During the counter-attack at Maleme on May 20, the lead one, Gnu III commanded by Sergeant A. J. Gosnold, drove down into the Tavronitis riverbed and swung to the right under the bridge, before heading further down-
commander Oberleutnant Wulff Freiherr von Plessen being among those killed. Oberleutnant Kurt Sarrazin’s 4. Kompanie fared no better coming down south of the airfield, many of their gliders flipping over as they struck the rugged riverbed. Those that survived were driven off by fire from 22nd NZ Battalion. Another cluster of nine gliders under Major Franz Braun, however, managed to land close to the Tavronitis bridge, which they assaulted and, though suffering heavy casualties, including Braun who was killed, managed to secure, forcing the right wing of D Company to pull back to the irrigation ditch at the base of Hill 107. Of the parachutists of the assault regiment, those of Major Otto Scherber’s III. Bataillon who landed within the 23rd NZ Battalion area were, for all practical purposes, destroyed as a fighting unit within minutes. However, Hauptmann Walter Gericke’s IV. Bataillon landed unopposed to the west of the Tavronitis and, although many of their heavy weapons and motorcycles were damaged, Gericke’s troops managed to close up
on the river. There they linked up with Koch’s force, taking control of the RAF camp, in the process driving a wedge between C and D Companies. Other German moves were not so successful, attempts to get between A and B Companies by Major Edgar Stentzler’s II. Bataillon being blocked by the 21st NZ Battalion. The paratroopers in the RAF camp also failed to extend their hold to the lower slopes of Hill 107. They launched an attack pushing some air force prisoners ahead of them but when they got close enough to the New Zealand lines someone yelled at the prisoners to drop, at which point the New Zealand platoon opened up, killing many of the paratroopers and forcing the rest to retire. Around midday, Student, thinking that Maleme was now under German control, sent over two Junkers Ju 52 troop carrier aircraft but as the first started to touch down it was hit by intense rifle and machine-gun fire, shattering windscreens and ripping holes in the fuselage, very nearly failing to take off again. A second attempt in the afternoon met the same response.
MARK WILSON
MALEME – MAY 20 T7368 Gnu III (Sergeant A. J. Gosnold) T7398 Greenloaning (Sergeant Francis Marshall) The main defence around Maleme was based around Andrew’s 22nd NZ Battalion, whose C Company was on the landing ground, D Company bordering the Tavronitis river south of the bridge, A Company on Hill 107, B Company to the south-west of A Company and HQ Company in Pirgos. Further support came from Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Leckie’s 23rd NZ Battalion to the east of Pirgos and Lieutenant-Colonel John Allen’s 21st NZ Battalion to the south of 23rd Battalion. Like any other day the morning of May 20 started out with the usual morning ‘hate’ from the Luftwaffe, albeit a little more intense than others. Then around 7.30 a.m. the first gliders of the 3. Kompanie of the I. Bataillon (Major Walter Koch) of Generalmajor Eugen Meindl’s Luftlande-SturmRegiment swept in. After overrunning the anti-aircraft position at the mouth of the Tavronitis, they tried to advance inland but ran into heavy fire from C Company, their
stream towards the sea. It eventually came to a halt in an area [3] that was noted to be seething with enemy troops. After remaining motionless for a time, the crew was observed to climb out and surrender. The parachute supply containers, discarded by the paratroopers of the Luftlande-Sturm-Regiment, are evidence of the German presence.
When Mark Wilson visited Crete in May 2016 for the 75th commemorations of the battle, he found a lot had changed in the Tavronitis valley since the war (and even since Jean Paul Pallud had visited there in 1984 in preparation of the Crete feature in After the Battle No. 47). The river has now
become canalised, with tall trees and ten-foot-high cane on either side of it, making a comparison more difficult. Mark took this photo on the right of the river but feels that the tank was probably some 50 yards away on the other side of the river. 5
According to Captain Stanton Johnson of C Company, the lead tank, Gosnold’s Gnu III, continued up to the Tavronitis, firing as it went. It then drove down into the riverbed, enfilading the German line as it did so, before swinging to the right and passing under the bridge. It eventually came to a halt further downstream. Lieutenant Rob Sinclair of No. 15 Platoon noted that: ‘The place was seething with enemy plainly visible in the long grass.’ The tank then sat motionless for a time, its crew appearing to the New Zealanders to not to know what to do next. Shortly afterwards its crew were seen to climb out with their hands up. Back at the airfield, Lieutenant Donald attempted to make contact with the other tank, Marshall’s Greenloaning, but was forced to take cover in the ditch alongside the road. At that point, however, the tank turned round and started to make its way back along the road, only to stop beside Donald. According to Johnson it had not fired a shot. At that point Donald got up and tried to attract the attention of the crew by activating their alarm gong from the switch at the rear of the tank. When that failed he ran round to the front and waved at the driver through his visor. Then, as he climbed onto the front of the tank, the commander warily raised his hatch slightly and told Donald that he was pulling out as his turret could not traverse. Donald then spotted that a shell had ripped the cowling at the base of the
turret, jamming it. With the commander’s permission they laid some of their wounded on the lee side of the tank and, using it for cover, made their way back. The tank was last seen by Lieutenant Sinclair proceeding in a direction that took it past C Company HQ. Despondent after the failure of his trump card, and having lost contact with C and D Companies, Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew reached the decision around 6 p.m. to abandon Hill 107. Hargest’s response on hearing of this from him was: ‘If you must, you must’ but then he offered to send two companies, one from the 28th (Maori) Battalion and the other from 23rd NZ Battalion. Just after dusk Andrew and A Company withdrew to B Company’s position. When A Company of the 23rd Battalion arrived they were sent forward and re-occupied Hill 107, without incident, though later one platoon ran into a German patrol, losing several killed and wounded. The company from the 28th (Maori) Battalion managed to get within 200 yards of C Company but on hearing German troops moving around thought that the airfield had been taken and returned to the 21st NZ Battalion. Their failure to show up led Andrew to order a withdrawal to the line held by the 21st and 23rd NZ Battalions. This left his C and D Companies alone on the airstrip but when their runners failed to find any sign of the rest of the battalion, they too withdrew.
MARK WILSON
MICHAEL GRIEVE
While things had not gone well for the paratroopers at Maleme, the situation of the 22nd Battalion was also starting to look serious. With his telephone lines cut and his runners unable to get through, LieutenantColonel Andrew had lost contact with his forward companies. The artillery observers with him had also lost contact with their guns. Around mid-afternoon Andrew sent up some emergency flares but these went undetected by the 23rd NZ Battalion. When Andrew radioed Hargest at 5th NZ Brigade headquarters at 5 p.m. to request that 23rd Battalion put in a counter-attack, he was told that: ‘23 Battalion were itself engaged by paratroopers in their own area’, when in fact the latter had told Hargest that they had cleared up most of the enemy troops before midday. Worse still, Hargest had told Leckie, the 23rd Battalion commander, at 2.25 p.m. that things were under control and he would not be needed to put in a counter-attack unless things turned serious. Around 5.15 p.m. Andrew decided to launch his own counter-attack, utilising the two Matildas — Sergeant Gosnold’s Gnu III and Sergeant Marshall’s Greenloaning — and No. 14 Platoon, the latter under the command of Lieutenant Haddon Donald. The trouble was it was hardly a well-coordinated affair, there being no communication between Donald and the tanks before the counter-attack was launched. When Donald and his men broke cover and spread out, two sections to the left of the road and one on the right, the nearest tank was already 100 yards ahead of them, while another 100 yards beyond that the lead tank was halfway to the Tavronitis bridge. To make matters worse when the infantry tried to close up on the rear tank they ran into an increasing hail of fire that saw one man killed and others in the right-hand section wounded while the lead section on the left was reduced to half strength. By now the rear tank had come to a halt 75 yards ahead of them and the other had reached the bridge.
WILHELM WEIER
Right: Another view of Gnu III, this time looking east and giving a good view of the many Junkers Ju 52s parked on Maleme airfield. In the afternoon of May 21, the second day of the battle, the first Ju 52s bringing in Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 100 of the 5. Gebirgs-Division began landing with great boldness on Maleme while it was still being shelled, some 80 aircraft being wrecked in the process. Then, after the LuftlandeSturm-Regiment had finally secured the town and airfield that evening, the rest of the mountain division was flown in over consecutive days.
Left: Various reasons have been offered as to why the crew of Gnu III surrendered. According to Corporal Bob Smith from No. 14 Platoon, who was captured 24 hours later and had a chance to examine the tank, the turret had become jammed, possibly by a Panzer-Buchse (anti-tank rifle). However, the existing photo material shows the turret pointing in different directions, which refutes that suggestion. Lieutenant Rob Sinclair of 6
No. 15 Platoon, who was also picked up by the Germans, claimed that after the tank was disabled by an anti-tank rifle round (though this weapon was highly unlikely to penetrate a Matilda), damaging the engine, the crew were forced to repair it at gun-point but instead ‘ruined it permanently’. Right: These days there is considerably more vegetation, both on Hill 107 and in the old riverbed.
MICHAEL GRIEVE MARK WILSON
Mark took this comparison photo from the eastern end of the airfield but to get to the spot he had to sneak around the end of the wire at the beach. The distant mountains are those of the Rodopou peninsula.
MARK WILSON
MICHAEL GRIEVE
Above: The other Matilda at Maleme, T7398 Greenloaning commanded by Sergeant Francis Marshall, was some 200 yards behind Gnu III when Lieutenant Haddon Donald of No. 14 Platoon first saw it and only advanced another 100 yards towards the RAF encampment before it turned around (at [4]). According to Donald, its turret had become jammed as a result of the impact of a shell on the cowling round its turret. It then carried some wounded from Donald’s platoon away from the fighting. The tow-cable on the tank suggests that it has been put to good use after its capture by the Germans, possibly hauling wrecked aircraft off the airstrip. In fact Greenloaning was one of two Matildas repaired and used by the Germans on Crete during the subsequent occupation. Note the DFS 230 glider in the right-hand background, one of the 40 gliders used to land elements of the Luftlande-SturmRegiment at Maleme.
Left: According to the 22nd Battalion history, the crew of Greenloaning found that the breechblock would not accept its 2-pounder ammunition, though its commander did not say as much when Lieutenant Donald made contact with him, his only concern being his jammed turret. Thus it seems more likely that Marshall broke off the attack because of this,
though the disappearance of Gosnold’s tank into the Tavronitis and the apparent lack of infantry support may have also been factors. Right: Mark took this shot facing the other way, looking due east. On the left is the island of Agioi Theodoroi, off the coast from Platanias, and on the right the Akrotiri peninsula. 7
Right: Ten miles east of Maleme, a half-squadron of the 3rd Hussars, fielding seven Light Vickers Mk VI tanks, was stationed in the Canea-Galatas area.
BRITISH OFFICIAL HISTORY
PRISON VALLEY AND GALATAS – MAY 20-26 C Squadron, 3rd Hussars On the morning of the 20th the crews of the 3rd Hussars were sitting down to breakfast on the outskirts of Canea when the first parachutes were sighted. Second Lieutenant Roy Farran set off immediately with his troop of three tanks and, after passing first through Galatas and then 10th NZ Brigade lines, moved out into the valley where parachutes from Oberst Richard Heidrich’s Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 3 and Major Ernst Liebach’s Fallschirm-Pionier-Bataillon 7, reinforced with machine gun, anti-tank and medical detachments, were seen descending. Shortly after engaging some of the paratroopers in the area one of the tanks threw a track, the crew hastily repairing it by the side of the road covered by the other two tanks. That done, they decided discretion was the better part of valour, especially when there was no sign of their own infantry, and pulled back to the New Zealand lines. While Farran was away, the rest of the squadron assisted the 19th NZ Battalion in rescuing personnel and patients from the British 7th General Hospital and 6th NZ Field Ambulance,
PETER BROWN
Right: During the night of May 25/26, Lieutenant Roy Farran, commanding one of the tanks, took part in a counterattack in the town of Galatas. On reaching a corner halfway through the town, his Vickers Mk VI was struck by a round from an anti-tank rifle fired by Obergefreiter Rauch Moritz from the 8. Kompanie of Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 100 from a balcony of a house across the road, splinters from the rounds wounding his gunner. When he ordered his driver to turn round, the latter was hit; in the process he over-compensated and the tank slipped into a ditch on the side of the road. The crew remained in it for several minutes under a hail of rifle fire and grenades, during which Farran was hit twice and his gunner a second time. They then escaped from the tank and took shelter until the infantry of the 23rd NZ Battalion arrived. This photo, probably posed, shows German mountain troops advancing through the town in the opposite direction as taken by the New Zealand troops. Note the dead Greek soldier on the right. which had been captured by the Fallschirmjäger, by picking off the German guards at the head and tail of the column. Later that evening they were back. Around midday it had become evident to the commander of the 10th Brigade, Colonel Howard Kippenberger, that a strong counter-attack was needed on the German forces amassing around the area of the prison, located in the wide open valley about a mile south of Galatas. Brigadier Bill Inglis, commander of the 4th NZ Brigade, also came to see possibilities in such a counterattack, especially if all the Hussars’ tanks
MARK WILSON
Left: Eleftheriou Venizelou Street in Gala tas, where Farran’s tank was abandoned, has changed a lot since the war. All of the buildings in the background have been replaced and only the white building on the left is original. A wall now runs where the ditch was and houses now line that side of the road. The view is looking towards the centre of town, which suggests that the tank slipped into the ditch after completing its turn. 8
MARK WILSON
ATL
Left: Looking the other way, Farran’s tank can be seen behind the pole in middle distance. This is another picture taken by a
and gradually push the defenders back towards Canea and Suda Bay. On the evening of May 25, German troops from Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 100 finally entered the town of Galatas, in the process threatening to cut off the whole left flank of the New Zealand Division and ultimately take Canea. A little before 8 p.m. Farran and another tank arrived to block the town’s eastern entrance, while another two 3rd Hussars tanks under Captain Alfred Crewdson were sent over to block the entrance to Karatsos. Close behind Farran two companies of the 23rd NZ Battalion arrived, followed by two more shortly before he drove off into the town. After a quick reconnaissance Farran returned with the news that the town was ‘stiff with Jerries’. Unfortunately, as a result of this sweep, the commander and gunner of his other tank had been wounded so he called for volunteers. Two New Zealanders came forward, Private Charlie Lewis, of the 27th NZ Machine Gun Battalion, took over as commander and Private Ben Ferry, of 4th NZ Brigade HQ, became the gunner. They then withdrew a short distance to allow Farran to provide them with some basic training. On their return, Farran’s two tanks set off again into Galatas, his tank on the left of the road and Lewis’ on the right, followed by C
LYNN MCMILLAN
could be employed, to the extent that he felt that if the prison area could be cleared they might be able to push onto Maleme via a route over the hills. Unfortunately, MajorGeneral Edward Puttick, commander of the 2nd NZ Division, did not agree and nor did Freyberg when he was consulted. Eventually a counter-attack was organised later that evening but only employing the 19th NZ Battalion (of the 4th Brigade) and Farran’s three tanks, though in the end only two companies of the battalion were actually used. The infantry moved out at 7.30 p.m., the tanks joining up with them in Galatas. From there they pushed south on to within 1,400 yards of the prison. However the following morning they were withdrawn. Then around midday Farran’s troop went up to the 10th Brigade and assisted their counter-attack that saw the recapture of Cemetery Hill, a knoll located just south of Galatas along the road to the prison. On May 22, the half-squadron was called upon to assist another counter-attack, this time to retake the airfield at Maleme. On the night of May 21/22, having given the Germans a day to land reinforcements on Maleme, Freyberg had decided to take it back with the 20th NZ and 28th (Maori) Battalions. Before this could be launched, however, the Australian 2/7th Battalion had to be brought across from Georgiopolis to take over 20th NZ Battalion’s positions and as a result the attack did not get going until 3.30 a.m. the following morning. For this operation the 3rd Hussars were joined by one of their tanks from Ordnance workshops, though this was left behind to cover a roadblock in 4th NZ Brigade’s area. Unfortunately, while moving up, one of the other tanks left the road and fell down a five-foot drop, landing on its side at the bottom. With no means to recover it, its crew had to abandon it. Farran and his troop joined up with the Maori Battalion but after passing through Pirgos ran into trouble. At a crossroad he was told that the Germans had a fix on the road ahead but when he hesitated an angry officer from 23rd NZ Battalion demanded that they move forward. At that point Sergeant Henry Skedgwell, in the front tank, set off but got too far ahead and ran into two German anti-tank guns in a churchyard. His tank was hit but before it caught fire he managed to destroy one of the guns. Though Skedgwell was badly wounded, Farran managed to drag him free but he died shortly afterwards. Farran returned to his tank but one of its bogey wheels collapsed and he was forced to leave it behind. Later in the day Farran and some fitters from his unit returned and were able to repair his tank with a bogey wheel from Skedgwell’s tank. The failure to secure Maleme enabled the Germans to build up their troops on Crete
German combat photographer. Right: Brenton Beach, who accompanied Mark into Galatas, stands in for the soldier.
Part of Farran’s tank has been preserved in Galatas as a gate to someone’s property in an alleyway off the Agias-Galatas road, directly opposite the New Zealand Battle of Crete memorial in the main square.
Company, 23rd Battalion. Farran’s tank made good progress until it reached a corner halfway through the town when it was struck by a round from an anti-tank rifle fired by Obergefreiter Rauch Moritz from the 8. Kompanie of Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 100 from the balcony of a house above the road. With his gunner wounded in the arm, Farran ordered his driver to turn around and get out but as he did so the tank was hit again, the driver being wounded this time. As a result the latter swung the tank too hard and it slipped into a ditch. Under continual fire from the Germans, who were lobbing grenades as well, Farran was hit twice and his gunner stopped one in the stomach. They dropped to the bottom of the turret and then Farran proceeded to push both crewmen out through the driver’s hatch, before crawling out himself. He then pulled himself behind the cover of a small stone wall on his elbows and waited for the infantry to arrive before making his escape. Lewis’ tank was a little more fortunate despite its turret being partially jammed and limited to an arc of 75 degrees. They managed to get past a small well on the outskirts of the town, where a German machine-gun team had taken up station. Unable to turn the turret in its direction, they swung around and drove back down the street, again missing the machine-gun team. In a matter of minutes they found themselves among the advancing soldiers of the 23rd NZ Battalion, being ordered at gun-point by an officer to turn around. This time they got as far as the main square but by then the driver had had enough. He turned the tank around and headed back out of Galatas. On the outskirts of town they were ordered to wait further back but the driver carried on till he reached some British troops. With the tanks now gone, the New Zealand troops continued on until they reached the main square, forcing the Germans to withdraw in disarray to the southwest corner of the village. However, lacking the resources to hold the place, they had to withdraw to a new line west of Canea. Meanwhile, the Hussars squadron took up station in an olive grove about half a mile from 5th NZ Brigade’s position. However, the retreat had taken its toll on their tanks: one of them had a broken tiller and steering problems, while Major Peck’s tank had a broken petrol pipe and the engine had timing problems. There being no way to fix the former, their fitters cannibalised it for its petrol pipe and sorted out the timing problems in Peck’s tank. On the 26th, Captain Crewdson, on receiving orders from 5th NZ Brigade to assist in a counter-attack, led his three tanks in and was instrumental in holding up the Germans in spite of intense aerial activity directed against his tank. 9
2
4
5 1
AUSTRALIAN OFFICIAL HISTORY
3
The two Matildas sent to Rethymno airfield — T7411 Gnat IV and T6924 Gnome III — were to support the Australian 2/1st and 2/11th Battalions and the Greek 4th and 5th Battalions. This map
MICHAEL GRIEVE
RETHYMNO – MAY 20-27 T7411 Gnat IV (Lieutenant George Simpson) T6924 Gnome III The airfield at Rethymno, which lay six miles east of the town, was held by two Australian and two Greek battalions under the overall command of Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Campbell. The Australians were placed on two features, Campbell’s own 2/1st Battalion on Hill A to the east of the airfield and Major Ray Sandover’s 2/11th Battalion on Hill B to the west of the airfield, with the 4th Greek Battalion on the ridge between them and the 5th Greek Battalion behind them in reserve. Lieutenant Simpson’s two Matildas — T7411 Gnat IV and T6924 Gnome III — were concealed among some olive trees behind the ridgeline in Wadi Pigi, with one company from the 2/11th Battalion. German plans for Rethymno called for the I. Bataillon of Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 2 under Major Hans Kroh and a machine-gun company to be dropped to the east of the airfield and thence capture it. A second force consisting of the III. Bataillon under Haupt-
10
shows the Australian and Greek dispositions. The two Matildas were initially located alongside Wadi Pigi to the left of 2/1st Battalion’s reserve B Company on Hill D — marked [1] on the map.
mann Oscar Wiedemann, the 2. Batterie of Fallschirmjäger-Artillerie-Regiment 7 and another machine-gun company were to land further west, between the Platanes river and Perivolia, and secure Rethymno itself. These landings represented the second airborne lift,
following up after the morning’s first-wave landings at Maleme and Suda. Originally this operation had been set to start at 2 p.m. but ended up being delayed considerably, largely as a result of the first-wave assault on Maleme and Suda. Many of the aircraft
Gnat IV had a chequered history. On the first day of the airborne assault its commander, Lieutenant George Simpson, managed to get it ditched in Wadi Bardia [2], only to be killed himself when he got out. His crew surrendered. Recovered by men of the carrier platoon of the Australian 2/1st Battalion and 5th Brigade Workshop two days later, the tank, with a scratch crew under RAOC Lieutenant Frank Mason, took part in several unsuccessful attempts to winkle the paratroopers out of the olive oil factory at Stavromenos. Then, on the 25th and 26th, now under the command of Australian Lieutenant George Greenway of the 2/11th Battalion, it participated in two abortive attacks on Perivolia, finally pulling out after a direct hit jammed its turret. On May 27, the 2/11th launched a third attack on Perivolia, this time with both Matilda tanks in support. Gnat IV, now commanded by Lieutenant Patrick Lawry of the 2/1st Battalion, was advancing on the south side of the main coastal road when it was struck by a round from a 10.5cm Leichtgeschütz 40 of the 2. Batterie of FallschirmjägerArtillerie-Regiment 7 that killed the gunner and brought the tank to a halt. The rest of the crew escaped but Lawry was badly burnt. Note the fabric clogging the tank’s suspension: in lieu of mines the paratroopers had strewn their parachutes over the field in the hope that it would foul the tank tracks and bring it to a halt or at least slow it down.
MARK WILSON
ROBERT GREGORY
Left: Gnat IV was struck just below the gunsight where the base of the mantlet meets the turret. The resulting explosion blew off the driver’s hatch and part of the hull roof armour and warped the turret ring. The blackening of this area of the turret and hull is consistent with the Australian observation that the tank appeared to catch fire. Note the Junkers Ju 52 wreck behind the tank, one of the over 280 transport aircraft lost by
The remainder, however, came down on the right drop zone although they ran into fierce resistance from a force of Cretan police and armed civilians at Rethymno and
HE 59
GNOME III
MICHAEL GRIEVE
POSITION OF LG40 GUN
were forced to take up a defensive position around Perivolia. Of their supporting artillery, four recoilless 10.5cm Leichtgeschütze 40s were dropped with them but
Another shot of Gnat IV, now with a clear view of the sea. The village of Perivolia is over to the left, while the other Matilda, Gnome III, can be seen in the distance, just to the right of the bush on the right. Visible above the cupola of the Matilda, along the line of the beach, is a Heinkel He 59 floatplane, presumably one of those destroyed by Australian artillery on the 22nd.
MARK WILSON
returning from those missions to the airfields on mainland Greece were peppered with bullet holes and in need of repair. They also had to be refuelled by hand as there were no petrol tankers available and this was no trivial task, the paratroopers themselves being enlisted to help. The dust kicked up by the aircraft taking off caused more delays, two even colliding on one airstrip. In the end the aircraft carrying the paratroopers did not reach the target area until 4.30 p.m. Of the 160 aircraft involved, nine were shot down while more were seen flying back to Greece, some of them on fire or damaged. A number of men landed in the sea and drowned. Two of Kroh’s companies dropped on the airfield right in front of Campbell’s men, though most managed to crawl away and link up with the rest of their battalion which had come down around an olive oil factory at Stavromenos. The commander of Fallschirm jägerregiment 2, Oberst Alfred Sturm, and his headquarters company also landed in front of the Australians. Twelve of the paratroopers were killed and a further 80 captured including Sturm himself the following day. They were lucky as two companies of Wiedemann’s battalion landed almost on top of the Australians and were all but wiped out.
the Germans in the Crete battle. Right: Gnat IV was most probably knocked out near where today stands the Holy Church of St Peter and Paul on Plateia Machis Kritis — [3] on the map — in the beach resort town of Missiria, east of Perivolia, as this road was the original main coastal road in 1941. This view is north toward the sea but the growth of vegetation across the road all but obscures the field where the Ju 52 lay.
Construction of the church began in 1994 and the rise seen behind the tank in the wartime photo was levelled for a soccer field. 11
HEINZ RICHTER
Gnome III, the second Matilda at Rethymno, also bogged down during the first day’s counter-attack, slipping into ten-foot-deep Wadi K — [4] on the map — and its crew was captured too. It was five days before the 2/1st Battalion could begin attempts to recover it, the tank finally being dug out on the 26th. The next day, now with an Australian crew and commanded by Lieutenant John Bedells of the 2/11th, it joined Gnat IV in supporting the Australian attack on Perivolia. On its approach to the village, it was struck by a round from Richard Witzke’s 10.5cm LG40 light gun (the latter’s approximate position is arrowed on the photo on the previous page). This broke the right-hand track and may have also been responsible for blowing open the commander’s hatch, causing Bedells to lose three fingers when it fell shut on his hand. The prominent fig trees beyond and to the right of the tank mark the location of one of the German trench positions. Gnat IV can be seen just to the left of them.
12
the German regimental aid post they pressed onto the factory, the two carriers being destroyed in quick succession by an anti-tank gun. The Australians then put down artillery fire on the factory with the guns on Hill A but when the infantry stood up to advance on the building they came under intense fire from the paratroopers inside. Their casualties being heavy, the attack ground to a halt. A second attack that evening that was supposed to include the Greeks also failed when they failed to show up, casualties again being
MARK WILSON
the wheels for the guns fell into the sea. Worse still, they only had a total of five rounds for all four guns. Kroh managed to rally his troops at Stavromenos, before leading them back to the airfield. They launched an assault on Hill A driving the 2/1st Battalion and their artillery crews off the eastern side and the summit, the artilleryman removing the firing mechanisms of their guns before departing. Campbell responded by moving up some infantry to block any further movement along the ridge. At the same time he launched the two Matildas in a counterattack against Hill A, though with less than satisfactory results. They were supposed to advance along the east bank of Wadi Pigi, then cross the airfield parallel to the road and attack Hill A. Simpson’s tank, T7411 Gnat IV, instead of using the bridge over the drain in Wadi Bardia, entered the wadi at an open cut on the northern edge of the airfield and got stuck sideways. When Simpson climbed out he was killed whereupon his crew surrendered. The other tank, T6924 Gnome III, carried on around Hill A but slipped into ten-foot-deep Wadi K on the immediate east of the hill, its crew also being captured. Both crews were taken back to the factory at Stavromenos. Determined to regain Hill A, Campbell sent the 2/1st Battalion in again before first light the next morning and, after throwing in additional troops around 8 a.m., finally pushed the Germans off the hill, recapturing not only his own guns but also German mortars, machine guns and an anti-tank gun. The surviving paratroopers then retreated to the beach where they started sniping at Hill A until they were attacked again and rounded up by the battalion. In the afternoon the Australians mopped up any stragglers in the area. On the 22nd Australian attention turned to dealing with Kroh’s men in Stavromenos. Two carriers were sent there in support of C and D Companies of the 2/1st Battalion and the 5th Greek Battalion. After taking over
heavy among the 40 Australians who took part. That night the Greeks took over the containment of the factory from the Australians. That same day, the 2/11th Battalion drove the remaining Germans back westwards along the coast to Perivolia before establishing themselves on a low ridge 100 yards east of Wadi Perivolia. However, no attempt was made to attack the garrison other than by counter-battery fire on both sides, the Australians losing one of their 100mm guns in the process. They did manage to destroy two Heinkel He 59 floatplanes that landed off the coast, one of which was trying to ferry what looked like a radio ashore. With the area around Lieutenant Simpson’s abandoned Matilda, Gnat IV, now clear, Lieutenant Patrick Lawry and some men from the battalion’s carrier platoon turned their attention to recovering it. With the advice of Lieutenant Frank Mason of the 5th Brigade Workshop, RAOC, the tank was eventually driven back to base and arrangements made to train up its new crew in driving and gunnery. At 6 a.m. on the 24th the newly repaired Matilda was driven down to the Stavromenos factory, approaching to within 100 yards without being fired upon. It was then sent in again at 10 a.m. under the command of Mason and driven by an ordnance sergeant. They managed to get as far as the ‘Mortar House’, which was another house on the high ground to the right of the factory, where Germans had been seen earlier in the day. A few Germans were spotted but they took shelter in the house and on the way back the tank came under fire from the factory. Later on, Gnat IV was sent in a third attempt to reach the Mortar House. However, before it reached the factory, it was stopped by some of Campbell’s men and when the driver opened his hatch to talk to them he was shot and wounded by a sniper. This left the Australians with a dilemma. The driver was now unable to operate the controls but, being at the same time under the watchful gaze of the Germans in the factory, they could not get him out. Instead they had to wait till nightfall to recover the Matilda. Naturally enough, Major Sandover had to call off the attack on Perivolia until the next day.
Mark pinpointed the approximate position where Gnome III was knocked out — [5] on the map — by means of the mountain range in the background, taking this shot on Ionias Street in Missiria, just to the east of the Missiria apartments, at a point where a track crossed the road on the way to the beach. His rental car marks the position of the tank. Knowing the position of the two knocked-out Matildas in relation to each other, he then used this to determine the location of Gnat IV, the latter being somewhere in line with St Peter and Paul Church visible in the distance.
HANS BENDLER
MICHAEL GRIEVE
Left: Taken at a slightly different angle, this shot shows the same crash-landed Ju 52 aircraft that we earlier saw behind Gnat IV. It is evident from this view that the damage to the
were dropped turned out to be for the 7.5cm version of the gun.) After crossing the start line, Bedells’ tank continued to advance north of the road. When it was close enough, the LG40 commanded by Richard Witzke fired, the shell striking Gnome III on the right-hand track frame, bringing it to a halt and blowing open the commander’s hatch. Bedells quickly grabbed the rim of the cupola to hoist himself out but the hatch slammed down on his hand, cutting off three of his fingers. The problem the Germans now faced was Lawry’s tank which had strayed to the south side of the road. The nearest gun was that of Hans Danzer but it had no ammunition. With no other option, the battery’s last round was unloaded from the gun it was in and transferred under fire to Danzer’s weapon. This round killed the gunner, Ian McNeilage, and set Gnat IV on fire. The rest of the crew bailed out but Lawry was very badly burnt on his face and hands. Bedells and his crew, trapped in their tank by the intense enemy fire, remained inside the vehicle for the rest of the day, continuing to fire back until their ammunition was exhausted. They then made their way back after dusk. Due to the loss of both tanks, the
2/11th Battalion assault came to a halt and the companies went to ground, also returning to their original positions at dusk. Undaunted, the battalion went in again that night but unfortunately, as the assaulting companies were moving up, the Greeks on Hill C disobeyed orders and opened fire on St George’s Church, an act that woke up the Germans on the southern flank. This brought down an intense hail of fire just as the Australians were pushing through to Perivolia. Despite this, one company did eventually reach as far as the crossroads. The intense firefight ultimately forced them to withdraw before dawn, leaving one company to hold on for another day in the town before making their escape. Thus ended the final attempt to clear the paratroopers out of Perivolia. By May 30 it was all over. Unbeknown to the Australians the evacuation from Crete was now in full swing. When a force of Germans arrived from the west they were faced with two choices — surrender or evade. While Campbell chose the former, Sandover opted for the latter, he and half his battalion reaching the south coast. Most were eventually forced to surrender but 13 officers, including Sandover, and 30 other ranks did reach Egypt.
MARK WILSON
MICHAEL GRIEVE
At first light on the 25th the Matilda set off for the start line with a scratch crew under the command of Lieutenant George Greenway from the 2/11th Battalion. It was at this point that a Blenheim light bomber chose to make a pass over the area. This startled its inexperienced driver causing him to swerve, the tank plunging into a ditch beside the road. Quickly covering it with foliage, some engineers began to dig it out and around 9 a.m. drove it back to Hill B. Once again Sandover had to postpone the attack. Instead that night they drove the tank round to Wadi K and tried to tow out the other Matilda, Gnome III, but were only able to move it slightly. There was, however, one success that day: the 2/1st Battalion, using a captured German mortar, managed to drop a round on the Mortar House, killing the five men inside. The Greeks then drove off another 40 Fallschirmjäger from the high ground around it and took over the position. On the 26th, an attack was launched on St George Church in Perivolia but it came to a halt almost as soon as it started. Gnat IV had lumbered off from the start line and managed to get within 100 yards of the German lines before receiving a direct hit. This both stunned the commander, Lieutenant Greenway, and jammed the turret. It also put its Besa co-axial machine gun out of action so its crew, unable to clear the stoppage with the interior lights not functioning, drove back to Wadi Pigi to try to sort it out. Thus, lacking tank support, the 2/11th Battalion came under heavy fire when they launched their attack and were unable to make any headway so the attack had to be called off again. Not that the Matilda was idle. Instead it accompanied a platoon from B Company of the 2/1st Battalion in an investigation of the Stavromenos factory, as the Greeks had reported very little firing coming from it. What followed was a short but sharp battle in which some 40 wounded and 40 unwounded Germans were captured, their three surviving officers and 30 others having escaped before dawn to make for Refuge Point to the east. Also rescued were the original British tank crews, though now very famished and shell-shocked. That night the second tank, Gnome III, was dug out of Wadi K, a scratch crew found for it and some rudimentary training provided. At 5.35 a.m. on the 27th the attack on Perivolia was renewed, now with both tanks operating, the right-hand tank, Gnome III, commanded by Lieutenant John Bedells of the 2/11th Battalion, while Lieutenant Lawry had taken over from Greenway in Gnat IV on the left. By now Wiedemann’s four 10.5cm LG40s in Perivolia were down to their last two rounds. (Although a re-supply operation had taken place, the shells that
tank was caused by a high-explosive round striking the tank above the second mud chute, the resulting blast warping the skirting plate. Right: A close-up of the Junkers.
Various other claims have been made by the Australians regarding the demise of Gnome III. According to the 2/11th Battalion History, it ran onto a mine that wrecked the tracks (although the paratroopers did not possess any) and then came under a hail of mortar fire that blew open the commander’s hatch, Bedells losing three fingers to another bomb burst before he could close it. According to the 2/1st Battalion History, Bedells lost his fingers because, as was trying to get out and had gripped the rim of the hatch, a burst of machine-gun fire slammed it shut. The Australians also maintained that both the tank’s two-pounder and Besa machine gun were damaged by mortar fire but neither weapons show any sign of damage in any of the photos. 13
MICHAEL GRIEVE
Of the two Matildas sent to Heraklion (they appear not to have carried a name), T7402 was commanded by Sergeant Oakley. On May 20, the first day of the battle, it was ordered to flush out a party of German paratroopers that had taken hold in the Greek Army barracks — [1] on the map below — located just south-east of the airfield, but, according to the Black Watch, its gun suffered permanent damage when the driver failed to negotiate the gate leading to the barracks and knocked the gun sideways. According to the 7th Royal Tanks war diary, HERAKLION – MAY 20-22 T7006 (Lieutenant John Johnson) T7402 (Sergeant Oakley) The defence of Heraklion had been entrusted to three battalions of British infantry (comprising the 14th Brigade), three battalions of Greeks and the Australian 2/4th Battalion, under the overall command of Brigadier Brian Chappel. The Australians were dug in on two conical hills in the centre, known as ‘The Charlies’, while the 2nd Black Watch were on East Hill, a rocky outcrop dominating the airfield; the 2nd York and Lancasters were linked up with the Greek Brigade in Heraklion itself, and the 2nd Leicesters were in reserve. In addition Chappel had 13 obsolete field guns and 14 Bofors 40mm anti-aircraft guns around the airfield, plus six Light Mk VIs from the 3rd Hussars and the two Matildas — T7006 and T7402 — the latter two commanded by Lieutenant Johnson and Sergeant Oakley respectively. German plans called for FallschirmjägerRegiment 1 under Oberst Bruno Bräuer to secure the airfield and surrounding areas at Heraklion, the I. Bataillon under Major Erich Walther dropping five miles east of the airfield; the II. Bataillon under Hauptmann Burkhardt directly onto the airfield, and the III. Bataillon under Major Karl-Lothar Schulz to the west of the town. In addition two companies from Hauptmann Gerhart Schirmer’s II. Bataillon of FallschirmjägerRegiment 2 were to block the coastal road to the west. As at Rethymno, the actual launch of the airborne assault had been delayed because of the difficulties experienced with repairing and refuelling the aircraft returning from the first lift in the western sector. The landings were preceded by the usual aerial bombard14
it was left behind at Heraklion after suffering a hit from an antitank gun that damaged the radiator and caused the engine to overheat and seize. (Once again, this seems unlikely as the Fallschirmjäger’s 37mm anti-tank gun could not penetrate the armour of the Matilda, so maybe this was written to cover up the stupid error of the driver.) This picture of T7402 standing beside the Greek Army barracks was taken by the Germans after the battle. Mark was unable to get into the present-day Greek Air Force base to take a comparison.
ment but, with further to go, the attacking aircraft started to run out of fuel and had to depart the scene well before the slower Ju 52s appeared over Heraklion at 5.30 p.m. Under Chappel’s orders, the well-camouflaged antiaircraft guns had been ordered to hold their fire until the troop transports showed up. The effect of them, and of the infantry small-arms fire when they too joined in, was devastating, a total of 15 Ju 52s being shot down. Of the nine transports heading towards the Australians on ‘The Charlies’ (carrying one
company of Burkhardt’s II. Bataillon), one was hit on the nose and crashed on the shore; a second aircraft crashed on the airfield; two caught fire and, though the men jumped, either their parachutes failed to open or simply caught fire. A fifth Ju 52 had its tail shot off and the occupants, jumping at 50 feet, were all killed. When one aircraft crashlanded close by, an Australian promptly ran over to it and tossed grenades inside, while others opened up on any survivors with automatic fire.
1
2
MARK WILSON
MICHAEL GRIEVE
The Germans parked the tank up on the beach — [2] on the map — and left it there, the vehicle soon becoming a popular venue for group photos (see front cover).
MARK WILSON
The remaining paratroopers landed on an open space known as Buttercup field, where many were dealt with before they could get to their weapon containers. When the parachutes started to appear, the two Matildas also emerged and opened up on the men who had landed. One of the tanks was right underneath a stick of paratroopers and swung around and around running over them as they landed. When another 20 paratroopers came down in a field of crops at the end of the airfield, the Australians immediately set fire to it. The tanks then moved up and mowed the Germans down as they emerged from the flames. The Light Mk VIs of the 3rd Hussars were also active, their troop leader, Lieutenant George Petherick, claiming that his tank commanders had killed 30 paratroopers, firing from their open hatches with their revolvers. The other two companies of Burkhardt’s battalion landed east of the airfield in front of the 2nd Black Watch. Those that tried to charge up the hill against the Scottish soldiers were caught in a cross-fire. Losses were heavy, over 300 Germans being killed and 100 wounded, the two companies that landed to the west of the airfield being almost wiped out to a man. In the end only a few managed to rally around Burkhardt at the end of the ridge. Some Fallschirmjäger managed to get into the area of the Prison and the Slaughter House from which they could bring fire to bear onto the airfield itself, while some others had entered the nearby Greek Barracks. Sergeant Oakley’s Matilda T7402 was sent in to fire on the barracks but, according to the Black Watch, in his excitement the driver failed to negotiate the gate and knocked the gun sideways. Apparently it never fired again. Further to the west, Schulz’s III. Bataillon also suffered heavily from anti-aircraft fire, Schulz being the only survivor from his plane. Many of his men were attacked by Cretans when they hit the ground or were caught dangling from trees. Schulz eventually managed to gather together some troops and attacked Heraklion but soon ran into fierce resistance from the police and armed civilians.
by the cloud of smoke above the vehicle, it was on the move when this picture was taken. Right: Mark found the location in a gully that leads down to Karteros beach between Heraklion airfield and where the Krateros stream runs into the sea.
ROBERT GREGORY
Left: In fact, the Germans did get the tank operational again and it served for a time in Panzer-Abteilung 212, a unit that had its origins in the 5. Kompanie of Panzer-Regiment 31 of the 5. Panzer-Division, and was part of the Crete garrison until the German evacuation of the island in 1944. Judging
A timeless comparison and one that was easy to find, Karteros beach being a popular holiday spot. The table mountain across the bay is the Kako Oros. 15
Right: Matilda T7006 was originally the mount of Lieutenant John Johnson and fought at Heraklion for the first four days of the battle. Then on the 23rd, Johnson handed it over to Lieutenant Jack Terry — who had arrived with two additional Matildas from Timbákion on the south shore — and proceeded to put T7006 and the other two tanks on lighters and move them over to the Suda sector, 70 miles to the west, thinking they would be more useful there. First committed near Galatas on the 25th, under Terry’s command, the tank was disabled by mortar fire. The crew exited the vehicle but, coming under attack from a divebomber, Terry ordered his men back inside, while he drove the aircraft off with a machine gun. For that exploit he was awarded the Military Cross. 16
MARK WILSON
The face of the bluff has changed little, though the beach has receded somewhat since the war.
MICHAEL GRIEVE
Walther’s I. Bataillon was luckier, landing near Gournes, five miles east of the airfield at around 8 p.m., meeting no resistance and capturing its objective, a radio station, with ease. Regimental commander Bräuer landed with Walther’s battalion and, after reporting back to Athens that things had gone well, took one of Walther’s platoons to the airfield only to discover that Burkhardt’s battalion had been all but annihilated and the area strongly held by the enemy. Over to the west of Heraklion, Schirmer’s men landed successfully and set up a blocking position there. The following morning, May 21, Schulz renewed his assault on Heraklion after a bombing run by the Luftwaffe. The attack made good progress, the Fallschirmjäger reaching the harbour in the afternoon but Chappel’s reinforcements arrived around the time Schulz was negotiating terms of surrender with the Mayor and they were forced to retreat to the eastern outskirts of the town. At the airfield, having reinforced the company there, Walther’s men tried to break through the perimeter defences but failed. Then the Black Watch counter-attacked, the two Matildas (the damaged one apparently went along despite its inoperative gun) with two Light Mk VIs in the lead, overrunning the survivors. The Light Mk VIs were soon forced to withdraw because their guns failed and there were no spares to repair them. At 8.45 a.m., D Company under Captain Archie Wilder went out with the Matildas along the road to the east to search for a couple of enemy field guns reported in that area, but they proved to be anti-tank guns and the sortie was called off. Meanwhile, the other Matilda, Johnson’s T7006, and the remaining light tanks of the 3rd Hussars, were occupied in carrying out fighting patrols. Although the airfield was now invested and under German small-arms fire at short range, RAF aircraft still landed there on three separate occasions expecting to be refuelled and rearmed. On one occasion, the refuelling of a Hurricane was actually achieved under the protection of one of the Matildas, but the tail assembly was so damaged that it could not take off. On the 23rd Johnson reported that his traversing gear was out of order, while Oakley’s tank was out of action, apparently — in addition to its damaged gun — having suffered a hit from an anti-tank gun that pierced the radiator and caused the engine to seize. Not that they, or the 3rd Hussars, now had much to do apart from dealing with snipers. After destroying the last of their tanks, all the crews were eventually evacuated from Heraklion harbour, along with the Black Watch and other troops, during the night of May 28/29.
MICHAEL GRIEVE
Right: Before the Germans finally left Crete in mid-October 1944 (leaving the island to the Greek partisans), they set off demolition charges in T7402, the resulting explosion blowing off the turret.
MICHAEL GRIEVE
THE TIMBÁKION MATILDAS T10084 T18896 T????? [number unknown] On May 23, Johnson learned that Lieutenant Jack Terry was bringing over two Matildas from the south coast. A total of three had been landed at Timbákion on the night of May 19/20 but one had broken down and had to be left at the port. With the situation at Heraklion at a stalemate, Terry arranged for the remaining two — T10084 and T18896 — to be shipped over to Suda Bay on lighters that day, taking Johnson’s only runner, T7006, with him. However, no one had consulted Captain Badrock, the detachment commander, and when he found out about the move, he was unimpressed because he considered the terrain around Suda, with its closed-in vegetation and numerous small streams, totally unsuitable for tank deployment. He and Terry spent the next two days reconnoitring the area but by the time they had finished on the 25th, the general situation had changed for the worse. The Germans were gaining the upper hand and the retreat of Creforce had already started. Nevertheless Badrock reported to Freyberg and, after informing him of the arrival of the three tanks, was simply told that they were not needed for any offensive operations. In the meantime Terry had returned to his tanks at Suda and soon found himself in action during the drive by Oberst Willibald Utz’s Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 100 towards Galatos on the 25th. Though under heavy attack, he kept his Matilda T7006 in action until it was disabled by mortar fire. The crew abandoned the tank but Terry ordered them back to shelter inside when they were attacked by a bomber, while he himself drove it off with machine-gun fire. The remaining two Matildas were now to assist the rearguard covering the withdrawal and evacuation of Creforce. On the night of May 26/27, a commando force, under Colonel Robert Laycock, consisting of A and D Battalions of Layforce, plus a detachment of B Battalion, had landed at Suda. Too late to be employed in an offensive role, they were ordered to leave their heavy equipment and transport behind and take up a position on the road that led inland to Sphakia, the selected point of embarkation on the south coast. That same day Badrock contacted Major-General Eric Weston, the commander of the Royal Marine Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation (MNDBO) in Canea, and was told that the tanks were to join Layforce, proceeding to a position 12 miles east of Suda that night.
MICHAEL GRIEVE
Right: The consignment that had arrived at Timbákion to reinforce the 7th Royal Tanks detachment had originally consisted of three Matildas. After disembarkation on the night of May 19/20, one of them proved a non-runner and had to be left at the port, the other two proceeded to Heraklion under command of Lieutenant Terry. This is believed to be the one that was left behind.
The pair that made it to Heraklion and was shipped over to the Suda sector with T7006 were T10084 and T18896. With T7006 lost on the 25th, they were the last two Matildas left operational when the final retreat to Sphakia started on the 28th. That day, they helped Layforce break through the German lines north of Stylos and join up with the 5th NZ Brigade at the latter town. Shortly after, T10084 was abandoned, apparently because it ran out of fuel.
MARK WILSON
Right: Mark’s comparison proves that T10084 was abandoned just south of Stylos, this view looking back towards the town from the direction of Neo Chorio. The II. Bataillon of GebirgsjägerRegiment 85 claimed in a report that they knocked out two tanks near Stylos, which Dan Davin, the author of the New Zealand Official History of the Crete battle, thought were probably a Light Mk VI tank and a Bren carrier. However, since all of the four light tanks then remaining with the 3rd Hussars are accounted for further south and known to have been in action as late as May 28, it is more likely that the tank reported ‘knocked out’ by the Gebirgsjäger was in fact Matilda T10084. 17
T7006 KNOCKED OUT HERE
T10084 ABANDONED HERE
BRITISH OFFICIAL HISTORY
T18896 ABANDONED HERE
MARK WILSON
MICAHEL GRIEVE
The following morning the two Matildas made their way forward to join up with Layforce, meeting up with Laycock himself and his A Battalion just south of the turn-off to Stylos. It proved to be timely as the II. Bataillon of Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 85, in a move to cut them off, had attacked the 5th NZ Brigade at Stylos and become involved in vicious hand-to-hand fighting. With the aid of the Matildas, Laycock and A Battalion were able to break through to the 5th Brigade. Shortly after, T10084 was abandoned south of Stylos, either due to lack of fuel or knocked out by the Gebirgsjäger. Later in the day, Laycock established another rearguard position with D Battalion just north of the Babali Hani crossroads, with A Battalion and the last remaining Matilda (T18896) in reserve. Around 1.30 p.m., after the last of the retreating troops had passed through, the Gebirgsjäger launched their first attack on Layforce, this falling on C Company to the west of the road. Though the battle raged for half an hour, the Germans were repulsed until they tried again two hours later on the left flank. At this point the Australian 2/8th Battalion was called upon to assist. Then B Company of D Battalion launched a counter-attack, while T18896 made a number of sorties along the road, thus stabilising the line. Although the Germans had planned to launch another attack that evening they were too late, Laycock having received orders to pull out that night, the withdrawal starting at 9.15 p.m. T18896 was abandoned on the road to the Askifou Plain, south of the Babali Hani crossroads, swung sideways to act as a road block, but what happened to the crew after that is not known. One assumes that they, together with that of T10084 and Terry’s crew, got away in the final evacuation. Early on the evening of the 27th the remaining four Light Mk VI tanks of 3rd Hussars were ordered to proceed to the plain of Askifou to deal with any paratroopers that might land there. They set off at 9 p.m. but on reaching the 2nd New Zealand Division headquarters received orders to send one tank back to the 5th Brigade on the Suda Line, the task being given to Corporal Summers. The other three tanks reached the Plain of Askifou at first light on the 28th and took up positions on the southern side of the basin where they were joined by Summers around midday. Early the following morning, Squadron Sergeant Major Child’s tank was sent up to the head of the pass to provide support to a rearguard from the 18th NZ Battalion but midafternoon they learned that the 4th and 5th
Left: T18896 — the last Matilda left in action from the force of nine — was abandoned on the road to the Askifou Plain, somewhere south of the crossroads at Babali Hani, on the 27th. Before leaving it, the crew appeared to have swung the tank around to block the road but whether they also attempted to sabotage it is not clear. Right: Mark and his wife Robyn spent a considerable amount of time driving from Vyresess to Askifou to try to match the skyline of 18
T18896, making a nuisance of themselves to the cars following by stopping every 50 yards to scan the various ridges. However, it was only on the return journey, as they motored round a bend, that Robyn, now actively engaged in the hunt, spotted this view. She continued to insist that it was the right location for another 300 metres down the road until Mark turned the car around and drove back to obtain this perfect comparison.
ARMOURED SUPPORT IN RETROSPECT Looking back at the operations in which the Matildas participated, it is apparent that they were of mixed success. Major Thomas Hawthorn of the 22nd NZ Battalion maintained that these particular tanks had been used for training purposes at the Kasr-el-Nil Barracks in Cairo and ‘were much the worse for being handled by beginners’. This is exemplified in what happened on Crete, Marshall’s Matilda suffering from gearbox trouble after leaving Suda for Maleme, while one of the Rethymno-bound Matildas broke down twice on its way there. In the case of Oakley’s tank at Heraklion, the regimental diary noted that it suffered damage to its radiator as a result of a strike by an anti-tank gun although this seems unlikely, given that the 37mm guns dropped with the paratroopers could not penetrate the Matilda’s armour. The fact that the Germans eventually took it over after the battle and used it would further support this. At Heraklion the Matildas played a significant role helping to eliminate German para-
MICHAEL GRIEVE
Brigades were pulling out, leaving them without infantry support. They were now nominally under the command of the 19th Australian Brigade, whose last troops were also moving down to Sphakia to set up another rearguard above the beach. However, after discussion with their commander, Brigadier George Vasey, some Bren carriers were promised as support. The three tanks then moved a mile back down the road towards the town of Invros, where they were to cover a party of engineers who were preparing to blow the road in four places, but on the way there the timing gear in Major Peck’s tank failed again and the vehicle had to be abandoned. That evening Child’s tank pulled back into Invros. Before dawn on the 30th, the light tanks of Captain Crewdson and Corporal Summers were joined by Child’s and at first light three Australian Bren carriers joined them. This proved to be timely as the leading German troops made their appearance shortly afterwards. Crewdson opened up on them and managed to kill 12 before both guns jammed. Shortly afterwards, his tank was hit by an anti-tank round that penetrated its petrol tank, fortunately without exploding although it drained it of its fuel. Both Crewdson and his driver, Trooper Mumford, were wounded, Mumford by the round itself and Crewdson by shrapnel inside the turret. With the tank thus immobilised they had no choice but to abandon it. The remaining two Light Mk VI tanks then withdrew to the southern outskirts of Invros, allowing the engineers to blow the first of their demolitions. Joined by a party of Royal Marines, infiltration by Germans down a ravine forced them to pull back behind the next two demolitions that were blown just after midday. Then, when mortar fire eventually made life uncomfortable, they retreated again behind the final demolition but asked the engineers not to blow it. After waiting about ten minutes, Summers drove slowly back up the road accompanied by two Bren gunners on foot and caught a party of 40 or 50 Germans, most of whom were killed. After pulling back down the road, Summers tried the same tactic again but this time was not so lucky. Met by fire from two anti-tank rifles from the slope above the road, he withdrew allowing the sappers to detonate the last demolition. That evening they pulled further back to the main infantry position but the two tanks were now almost finished mechanically, both suffering from steering, brake, engine and clutch problems. So, after consultation with Brigadier Vasey, both were immobilised and left blocking the road. The crews then made their way down to Sphakia where Brigadier Inglis of the 4th NZ Brigade got them on board with his headquarters party.
The Germans were eventually able to move T18896 from its road-block but the question was whereto. We thought it might have been at a hairpin bend where the 23rd NZ Battalion rearguard had been but this proved to be not the case. An exhaustive search downhill from the tank road-block was also fruitless, so the exact location of this shot remains unknown. (An important clue that enabled Jeff Plowman to distinguish the Matildas of the first consignment from those in the second was their paint scheme. The first six Matildas to arrive in Crete all came from the 7th Royal Tanks and, as that regiment had fought in Operation ‘Compass’, all its tanks were painted in the standard desert camouflage of the time. Known as Caunter, after the officer who came up with it, it consisted of three colours, Silver Grey, Slate and Portland Stone, that started at a sharp point at the rear of the tank, each band expanding as it went forward. It is easy to spot because the colours are separated by long straight lines on the tank. However, of the three Matildas that were sent later, two were finished in different schemes, the one that was left at Timbákion appearing to be completed in overall Light Stone, and T18896 in Dark Green and Khaki Green, the latter being essentially the European scheme as used by the BEF and in England. The third — T10084 — had been completed in the Caunter scheme, but this vehicle had originally been issued to the 44th Royal Tanks, which arrived in Egypt in April 1941.) troopers during the actual drop and in the counter-attack to clear up the remaining enemy the following day. At Rethymno the results were more mixed. That the Australians had gone to great lengths to recover and then employ the two Matildas that had been so carelessly ditched by their British crews is clearly evident. In the end they were both lost in the final attack on Perivolia though had they been deployed in a manner in which they could have provided mutual support, the result may have been different. Ironically, the Australians achieved more in their night-time attack on the town than they did with tank support and might have done even better had the Greeks not disobeyed orders. It was a different story at Maleme. There the counter-attack involving the tanks and Lieutenant Donald’s platoon was clearly mishandled and the question is why? One thing apparent is that Donald was expecting a combined operation with his infantry working together with the tanks. The trouble was that it was not the normal modus operandi of 7th Royal Tanks. During Operation ‘Compass’ — the first, and greatly successful, British offensive in the Western Desert against the Italian forces which had run from December 1940 to February 1941 — the standard practice had been for the tanks to precede their ‘supporting infantry’ by a considerable margin, often in two waves, and that the infantry, when they reached the objective, were simply there to mop up. This is what Gosnold and Marshall, the commanders of the two Matildas at Maleme, may have been expecting and it is possible that they would not have appreciated that what had worked with the Italians would not necessarily work with the Germans.
What else was odd was the number of sergeants sent to Crete. The normal structure of command in a troop of three tanks was an officer, sergeant and corporal. From Badrock’s point of view, it made perfect sense to send one lieutenant to Rethymno and the other to Heraklion, each with a subaltern (a sergeant in the case of the Heraklion detachment) but for some reason the two tanks at Maleme were both commanded by sergeants. This raises the question as to who was nominally in charge of the detachment there because Badrock’s role as detachment commander was clearly more administrative. It is possible that in introducing Sergeant Gosnold to Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew on May 19, Badrock intended him to take charge but in the end both tanks appear to have acted quite independently. Admittedly the manner in which they were dispersed may have been a factor but that was largely because of the problems of finding suitable places where they could be hidden from the air. Had an officer been present, or if one of the commanders had been a corporal, the senior of the two tank commanders would have surely insisted on the two tanks conforming before going into action but this did not happen. If the tanks had worked closer together, then their combined fire might have been able to suppress that from the Fallschirmjäger at the RAF encampment and their armour could have at least shielded Donald’s platoon as they moved up. While this may still not have been enough to dislodge the Germans, it would have been better than what did happen. Which raises another question: if the counter-attack had been successful would Andrew have been more inclined to hold onto Maleme a little longer? 19
LIZ THURSTON
From January to September 1943, Australian and American forces in Papua New Guinea fought a difficult and bitter battle with the Japanese Imperial Army for possession of Salamaua, a port town and commercial centre on the Huon Gulf on the island’s northern coast. The main aim of these operations was to tie down Japanese troops that could otherwise be deployed in the defence of Lae, further north, where a major Allied landing was planned to take place in early
September. This was all part of Operation ‘Elkton’, later replaced by ‘Cartwheel’, the Allied grand design to isolate and neutralise the main Japanese supply base of Rabaul on New Britain. Most of the fighting at Salamaua took place in the incredibly difficult jungle country inland from the town, on hills and ridges flanking the valleys of the Bulolo river near Wau, the Buisaval river in the south-west, and the Francisco river leading to Salamaua itself.
THE BATTLE FOR SALAMAUA
20
Salamaua isthmus. During the raid as many as 113 Japanese troops were killed for no Australian loss.
By Phil Bradley
PHIL BRADLEY
Having captured the important supply base of Rabaul (see After the Battle No. 133) on January 23, 1942, the Japanese landed on the New Guinea mainland at the towns of Lae and Salamaua six weeks later on March 8. The Australian defenders, the local elements of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles (NGVR), pulled back from both centres to defend the Bulolo Valley and Wau, which were expected to be the next Japanese objectives. In response to the Japanese landings, two US Navy aircraft carriers, Lexington and Yorktown, conducted an air raid across the Owen Stanley Range against Lae and Salamaua on March 10. Two transport vessels were sunk, delaying the planned Japanese amphibious operation against Port Moresby. Even before the fall of Salamaua, a company of about 100 men from the NGVR had assembled at Mubo to oppose any Japanese move towards Wau and to observe the enemy base at Salamaua. The 250 commandos of the Australian 2/5th Independent Company were flown into Bulolo and Wau on May 23-24 and a month later on the night of June 28/29 the commandos raided Salamaua. Seven separate raiding parties reached their attack positions undetected due to detailed reconnaissance and the skills of the local NGVR guides. Japanese-occupied buildings were targeted using improvised blast bombs while a 3-inch mortar shelled Japanese positions along the
Completely wrecked by Allied bombing during the campaign, although rebuilt after the war, Salamaua town never regained the same size or importance of pre-war days.
RABAUL
One of the first actions in the campaign was a raid by 63 Australian commandos of the 2/5th Independent Company on Salamaua on the night of June 28/29, 1942. No photos were taken during the raid so when Australian official war photographer and cine cameraman Damien Parer reached Mubo, an Australian outpost position 15 miles inland from Salamaua, in early August he asked the commandos to re-enact it. This frame from his footage shows them blowing up one of the native huts.
PHIL BRADLEY
On July 21, 1942 about 130 Japanese naval troops with local guides advanced on the Australian outpost of Mubo. The Japanese force took heavy casualties on this occasion but when they returned on August 30, the Australians could offer little resistance. Though the Japanese did not move beyond Mubo, the Australian commander, Colonel Norman Fleay, panicked and withdrew from Wau, destroying much of the town as he went. However, anticipating that the operation across the Kokoda Trail (see After the Battle No. 137) to capture Port Moresby would succeed, the Japanese command saw no need to occupy Wau at this stage and three weeks later the Australians returned to the damaged town. The Australian command now recognised the strategic value of Wau and the Bulolo Valley, from which any future offensive to retake Salamaua and Lae would originate, and in October 1942 Major Fergus MacAdie’s 2/7th Independent Company was flown to Wau. Following the failure of the Kokoda campaign the Japanese command had also reassessed the importance of Wau. A five-ship convoy carrying Colonel Kohei Maruoka’s 102nd Infantry Regiment, part of LieutenantGeneral Hidemitsu Nakano’s 51st Division, left Rabaul on the afternoon of January 5, 1943 heading for Lae. Before it was light on the morning of January 7, Flight Lieutenant David Vernon in a Catalina from No. 11 Squadron, RAAF, was able to drop two 250lbs bombs on the Nichiryu Maru, killing 456 men and wounding another 85. Air attacks also damaged the Myoko Maru, which was deliberately run aground just east of Lae. However the majority of the 102nd Regiment had reached Lae and the Japanese Eighth Area Army’s Chief-of-Staff reported that ‘this will send chills through our conceited enemy’. Meanwhile, 300 Australian commandos, supported by 400 native carriers, attacked the 200-strong Japanese garrison at Mubo. The Australian force was split into five separate parties spread out over three locations, each divided from the next by jungle and mountainous terrain. Though partially successful, lack of communication between the groups and poor command led to a withdrawal back to the Saddle to protect the main track to Wau. When the first Japanese reports of the Mubo attack had reached Salamaua late on January 11, a fresh infantry company from the 102nd Regiment was immediately sent to
AWM 127958
SALAMAUA
Right: Village dwellings still occupy the area between Mubo’s former airfield and the lower slopes of Observation Hill. 21
Right: Wau airfield is one of the most challenging in Papua New Guinea as it slopes upwards to the mountain range behind. Landings could only take place uphill with no chance of going around while downhill take-offs struggled for lift. Though hardly used today, the airfield remains operational. 22
AWM 014368
The aircraft still remains where it came down below Black Cat Pass, bleached of its colour over the years. The aircraft was originally designated to go to RAF Coastal Command and the latter’s grey colour scheme and the RAF roundel and serial number FL461 had already been applied when it was diverted to the Pacific theatre where it was repainted.
The early phase of the fighting evolved not so much around recapturing Salamaua as preventing the Japanese from capturing the inland town of Wau and its airfield, vital to the Australians as a forward base for bringing in supplies and troops. This picture of the airstrip was taken on March 3, 1943 by Australian official Department of Information cameraman Frank Bagnall.
PHIL BRADLEY
Mubo. Most of the company had reached the place by midday on January 13 and soon began attacking the Saddle area. Concerned at the prospect of being cut off, on January 17 Major MacAdie ordered his men to pull back from the Saddle along the Buisaval Track towards Skindiwai. The Australians were also reinforcing the Wau area. Brigadier Murray Moten’s 17th Brigade of the 6th Infantry Division, comprising the 2/5th, 2/6th and 2/7th Battalions, was ordered to Wau. However, troops could only be flown from Port Moresby to Wau while the passes through the Owen Stanley mountain range were clear of cloud. By January 18, on the same day that the Japanese had captured the heights above Mubo, the 2/6th Battalion reached Wau and was split up to cover the major routes of advance thereto. The strongest force, comprising two infantry companies and one independent company, covered the Buisaval Track, which was thought to be the most likely avenue of approach, as it was considered doubtful that the Japanese would advance from Mubo up the rugged Black Cat Track, given the difficultly of negotiating the Bitoi river gorge. However, that was exactly the route the Japanese were now following until they branched off onto an old miner’s track, later termed the Jap Track, which led through exceptionally rugged country to Wau. Two battalions of Japanese troops with attached engineers, some 1,500 men in all, moved unhindered towards a near-defenceless Wau and its precious airfield. Captain Wilfrid ‘Bill’ Sherlock’s A Company from the 2/6th Battalion had reached Wandumi Ridge, on the outskirts of Wau, on January 27. The company was less than half strength but had been bolstered by some 20 commandos from the 2/5th Independent Company. The first clashes between Australian and Japanese patrols came that same afternoon before the Japanese force began its attack on Wandumi Ridge on the morning of January 28. Though somewhat disoriented by the terrain and suffering from hunger, the Japanese had assembled over 1,000 men against less than 100 Australians defending the crucial ridge. However, the Japanese battalion attacking the feature was severely dislocated by the loss of its commander, Lieu-
PHIL BRADLEY
Right: On January 8, 1943, Allied bombers attacked a ship convoy bringing the Japanese 102nd Infantry Regiment from Rabaul to Lae, the main port north of Salamaua. One of the aircraft involved in the attacks was a B-17 Fortress of the USAAF 65th Bomb Squadron (serial 41-9234), piloted by 1st Lieutenant Ray Dau. As it lined up for a bomb run on an escorting destroyer, the aircraft was struck by both anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighters. Dau’s crippled plane headed for Wau, steadily losing altitude before crash-landing into the upward-sloping side of a ridge near Kaisenik, breaking its back and losing the tail turret as it hit the ground, then slewing to the right before coming to rest. As Dau later noted, the aircraft ‘glided in on the side of a mountain at about 110 miles an hour and, as luck would have it, there were no trees, nothing but nice soft grass, so we slid along into a crash landing’. The surviving crew and the valuable bombsight were brought back to Wau by an Australian patrol.
AWM 059001
WANDUMI RIDGE
That Wau and its airfield remained in Australian hands was primarily due to the dogged defence put up by A Company of the 2/6th Battalion under its indomitable commander Captain Wilfrid ‘Bill’ Sherlock. A farmer from Coleraine in Western Victoria, Sherlock had served as a platoon commander and company second-in-command in the North African and Greek campaigns before being put in command of A Company in late 1941.
PHIL BRADLEY
inspiring them to follow him. The bayonet charge was too much for the Japanese on the knoll, one of Sherlock’s men later observed that ‘the Nips simply could not stand it . . . they all turned tail and shot back down the other side’. A scratch company of about 180 men from the 2/5th Battalion was sent to reinforce Wandumi Ridge and as night fell Captain Sherlock pulled his remaining men back along the ridge towards the Bulolo, now in flood from increasing rainfall. With a rearguard in place, Sherlock reached the river early on January 29 but as his men crossed over via a fallen log, he was cut down by Japanese machine-gun fire. However, by holding the ridge for a crucial 24 hours, Sherlock’s men had kept the Wau airfield in Australian hands. The first of 59 transports to fly in that day of January 29 began landing at Wau at 0915. The aircraft landed in pairs before taxiing up to the top end of the strip to disembark the troops. The balance of the 2/5th Battalion
PHIL BRADLEY
Reinforced by some 20 commandos of the 2/5th Independent Company, Sherlock took up position on Wandumi Ridge on January 27 and for a full 24 hours held up the Japanese columns. This aerial photo shows how close the ridge was to Wau airfield.
As his force finally pulled back behind the Bulolo river early on the 29th, Sherlock was cut down by Japanese machine-gun fire. Though apparently recommended for a VC, he was only mentioned in dispatches for his outstanding leadership. Today, he lies buried at the Commonwealth war cemetery in Lae alongside all the other casualties from the Wau-Salamaua and later New Guinea campaigns.
AWM 128154
PHIL BRADLEY
tenant-Colonel Shosaku Seki. The other battalion got lost as it tried to find the Kaisenik bridge to cross the Bulolo river. The Japanese troops then tried to bypass the ridge on either flank but the terrain and the Australian fire slowed their advance. Back in Wau Brigadier Moten waited with increasing anxiety for the 30 transport flights that were scheduled to arrive that day (January 28), but after the first four aircraft had landed at 0900 hours, the weather closed in across the mountains, preventing any more flights that day. Now Moten had to face an increasingly serious threat on his doorstep with what he had left in Wau, and that was very little. Captain Sherlock’s men continued to fight for the precious time that would keep the airfield in Australian hands for at least another day. Observers in Wau spotted ‘long lines of Japs like a plague of ants’ moving towards Wau. Another Australian platoon arrived on the ridge at 1400 as the Japanese pressure increased. At 1510 Sherlock signalled ‘things very hot, any help sent may be too late, one platoon overrun, countering now’. He led a desperate counter-attack, grabbing a rifle and dashing past his men with fixed bayonet,
WAU AIRFIELD
Left: On February 6, 1943, nine Japanese Kawasaki Ki-48 ‘Lily’ light bombers escorted by 29 Nakajima Ki-43 ‘Oscar’ fighters unexpectedly attacked Wau airstrip. Captain John May of the 2/2nd Field Ambulance watched as ‘suddenly we heard planes approaching from the top end of the aerodrome, we thought that’s funny they are coming in the wrong way’. The bombing caused chaos amongst the Allied aircraft that were coming in to land at the time. Flight Sergeant Arthur Rodbourn of No. 4
(Army Cooperation) Squadron, RAAF, had just touched down in his Wirraway observation aircraft when bombs began falling along the airstrip. Both he and his observer, Sergeant Andrew Cole, ran for cover, throwing themselves flat, Cole being wounded by shrapnel in the process. Blasted and set on fire by a near miss, the Wirraway was left to burn out at the end of the airstrip. Right: The shape of the hills in the background confirms the match. 23
SALAMAUA
WAU
The area of operations between Wau and Salamaua had no roads, only tortuous trails running along jungle-clad hills and ridges. In early March another Japanese convoy left Rabaul for Lae but all eight transports plus four escorting destroyers were sunk by Allied air strikes in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. At this time the only area in New Guinea where Allied troops were in direct contact with the Japanese was in the ridges around Salamaua. On March 2, 1943, General Thomas Blamey, the Australian Commander in Chief, signalled Brigadier Moten: ‘I would be glad if you would give consideration to the question of inflicting a severe blow on the enemy in the Salamaua area with a view to seizing the opportunity should
On March 18, 1943 six A-20 Boston bombers from No. 22 Squadron, RAAF, flying out of Ward’s Drome at Port Moresby, attacked Salamaua. Flight Lieutenant Bill Newton was the pilot of Boston A28-3 with Flight Sergeant John Lyon as his navigator and Sergeant Basil Eastwood his rear gunner. After dropping its bombs on the airfield, Newton’s aircraft turned to strafe some buildings nearby. Attacking one adjacent to an anti-aircraft battery, it was hit and he was forced to ditch into the ocean off the Salamaua isthmus. Other aircraft circled for about 30 minutes and watched as Newton and Lyon swam to the shore, Eastwood having been killed in the action. Both men were captured and taken to Lae where the Japanese noted of Newton ‘that he is a person of importance, possessing considerable rank and ability’. The airmen told their interrogators that they were only attacking the store buildings, not Japanese personnel, and stressed that ‘we are fighting to preserve the Australian mainland’. Their fate was not uncommon for Allied airmen captured by the Japanese: Newton was returned to Salamaua and beheaded on March 29 (his body was recovered from a bomb crater after the Allied recapture of the town); Lyon was bayoneted adjacent to the Lae airfield. Newton had flown 52 operational missions, some 90 per cent of them under enemy anti-aircraft fire. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, the only such award made during the entire Wau-Salamaua campaign. 24
it present itself, since it may have far-reaching results if successful.’ As a consequence of this directive, Major George Warfe’s 2/3rd Independent Company was moved from Wau down the Bulolo Valley and across the daunting Double Mountain Track into the Missim area west of Salamaua. On April 21 a commando patrol ambushed the Japanese on the Komiatum Track, the main supply route to Mubo, killing about 20 enemy naval troops before withdrawing. The imposing Bobdubi Ridge protected the western flank of the Japanese position at
AWM 100644
and all of the 2/7th Battalion, 814 men in all, were flown in that day. ‘Lifeblood of green’ was how one described it. Two 25-pounder guns were flown in the next day and by the time the Japanese organised a concerted attack on Wau later that afternoon of January 30, it was easily halted. On February 9 the Japanese force began the withdrawal of what troops remained from Wau to Mubo. Australian front-line casualties during the battle for Wau were 120 killed and about 180 wounded. The total number of Japanese killed during the same period was assessed at 1,045, with only 12 prisoners taken alive.
PHIL BRADLEY AWM 015148
Left: A native supply train moving across the swing bridge over the Bulolo river at Kaisenik. This was the start of the Buisaval Track, one of the two main jungle trails leading to Mubo and from there to Salamaua. The picture was taken by Australian war photographer Gordon Short on June 28, 1943. Above: A suspension bridge capable of carrying Jeeps was later built from Marsden pressed-steel planking at the same site and although one of the support cables has since given way, it still provides a handy footbridge. ment and supplies, the Japanese defenders at Centre Coconuts continued to hold out until Warfe organised a night attack for May 9/10 accompanied by flares and screaming from a speaker. His bold ploy worked and the next morning the Centre Coconuts position was found vacant. Now having control of the ridge, Warfe set up four Vickers guns and flayed the Japanese columns moving along Komiatum Track. However, on the morning of May 14 the Japanese counter-attacked and, after getting up onto Bobdubi Ridge unobserved, they drove the Australian commandos off it. Despite the loss of the Bismarck Sea convoy, many of the Japanese it had carried were rescued and ultimately reached the
Salamaua area either by destroyer, motorised landing craft or even submarine as the latter were being used for bringing supplies from Rabaul to Lae and Salamaua. However, the Japanese front-line soldier was always hungry and relied on scarce native garden food. The Australians were much better supplied but were completely reliant on the American transports flying in or airdropping ammunition and supplies to them. A basic road was under construction from the south coast to Wau but by the time it was complete the campaign would be almost over. One key advantage the Australians had was the native carrier force they could use to bring the supplies forward from Wau to the front lines at Mubo and Missim.
AWM 015240
PHIL BRADLEY
Salamaua. The northern end of the ridge was surrounded on three sides by the bend of the Francisco river and had been occupied by the Japanese since April 10. If the Australian commandos could capture this position they would be able to bring machine-gun fire to bear on Komiatum Ridge, thus severely disrupting the supply route to Mubo. However, Major Warfe was only allowed to deploy a single platoon for the operation. There were three main Japanese positions set up along the northern end of Bobdubi Ridge, each centred on a clump of coconut trees, named South, Centre and North Coconuts. On May 3, the South Coconuts position was captured and the Japanese withdrew to Centre Coconuts. Denied reinforce-
Left: The Australian troops fighting in the Salamaua jungle depended heavily on supplies dropped from the air. One of the drop zones used was Skindiwai, a small clearing hacked out on the southern slope of the Buisaval valley. It was a difficult drop zone as the aircraft had to fly into the narrow vale and then come in low over the kunai grass before flying a figure eight to allow a second run. As a further handicap, there was a big tree on the DZ that could not be felled as it would have fallen across the camp. On March 11, 1943, a
C-47 transport, 41-38662 piloted by Staff Sergeant Elmer L. Crowley from the US 22nd Troop Carrier Squadron, hit the top of the tree with a wing. Down below the anxious Australians could hear the roar of the engines as the damaged aircraft tried to gain height before it crashed to the ground. The eight men on board, six crewmen and two Australian air dispatchers, were all killed. Gordon Short pictured the wreck in July 1943. Right: The wreckage remains to this day along the old Buisaval Track. 25
AWM 055628
On August 9, 1943, Australian official war photographer Robert Buchanan reached a position from where he could see the ultimate objective, Japanese-occupied Salamaua. Taken from the ridge at the head of the Buirali Creek, his pictures shows the valley of the Francisco river and two of the jungle-covered ridges that played a key role in the battle, Bobdubi Ridge on the left (surrounded on three sides at the northern end by a bend of the Francisco river) and Komiatum Ridge on the right. Fighting here began in early May and lasted until early September.
26
Japanese 51st Division, was killed. The Bobdubi Ridge defence now comprised five Japanese infantry companies, two of them fresh, some 500 men in all with artillery support. It would be a hard nut to crack. The landing of a battalion from Colonel Archibald R. MacKechnie’s US 162nd Infantry Regiment at Nassau Bay was scheduled for the night of June 29/30. The landing force used 29 Higgins Boats escorted by four PT boats for the 50-mile trip up the coast from the base at Morobe. Unfortunately it was a foul night for such an operation with heavy rain and high seas and to Corporal Alfred Smith ‘a landing seemed impossible in that high surf’. As his landing craft grounded, a following wave smashed it into some rocks which tore a gash in the hull.
PHIL BRADLEY
By May 1943 the Japanese had gathered enough troops to attack the Australians at Mubo. The first attempt on May 9 targeted Lababia Ridge above Mubo, with four more heavy attacks taking place the following day. The position was staunchly defended by a company of the 2/7th Battalion and a wounded Private Ray Pope watched as ‘the Japs came on very bravely and resolutely, but our automatic weapons cut them to pieces’. Having held off eight enemy attacks, the Australians pulled back along the ridge to a better defensive position and the Japanese attack petered out. On June 21 there was a second attack on the ridge, this time against a company from the 2/6th Battalion but after two days the Japanese withdrew having lost at least 42 men killed and 131 wounded. Following the loss of Bobdubi Ridge the Australian 58/59th Battalion was sent into the area west of Salamaua. The battalion had come across to Missim to be part of an intricate three-pronged offensive against the Japanese at Salamaua in Operation ‘Doublet’. Following an amphibious landing by units of the US 41st Infantry Division on the eastern flank at Nassau Bay on the night of June 29/30, the 58/59th Battalion was to attack on the west flank the following day. As the Japanese command tried to deal with these threats to both its flanks, Brigadier Moten’s 17th Brigade would then attack at Mubo. To face the coming Allied assault the Japanese had 673 front-line troops at Mubo, 127 in the Bobdubi area, 122 at Nassau Bay, 543 at Salamaua, 540 at Malolo (between Lae and Salamaua) and 43 at Komiatum, in all a total of 2,048 troops. Two companies from the 58/59th Battalion made the initial attack on Bobdubi Ridge, one at the south end near Orodubi and the other at Old Vickers. However, the Japanese defenders were well prepared and both attacks were unsuccessful. Three days later than originally planned, a third company crossed Bobdubi Ridge, reached the Komiatum Track junction, and set up an ambush on the morning of July 3. Later that afternoon 20 enemy troops were ambushed as they moved up to Bobdubi Ridge and Colonel Tadao Hongo, the Chief-of-Staff of the
All but two of the landing craft in the first wave foundered in the towering waves. ‘Those 12-foot breakers’, Corporal John Stephens wrote, ‘hurtled the big squaresnouted barges into the beach like so many match-boxes, sideways, and backwards and almost upside down.’ Nonetheless, 770 men got ashore, 440 of them infantrymen from Lieutenant Colonel Harold R. Taylor’s 1st Battalion of the 162nd Infantry. However with the loss of all but one of the landing craft, reinforcements and supplies would be significantly delayed. Fortunately there were few Japanese troops on the beach that night. On July 8 two of Taylor’s companies were ordered to occupy Bitoi Ridge to block the escape of Japanese troops from Mubo. Though Taylor’s men were on the upper southern slopes of the ridge by that afternoon, with patrols forward on the crest, it did not have the desired effect of forcing the Japanese to withdraw from the Mubo area. The Australians would now have to take Mubo by force, a daunting task. The operation was meant to start on July 5 but due to the delays with the Americans moving inland from Nassau Bay, it was postponed for two days. According to Lieutenant Masao Shinoda, ‘the artillery intensified again in the morning of July 8, followed by the advance of superior ground forces.’ The Australians advanced steadily and slowly cleared the heights around Mubo. On July 11, a US patrol finally contacted them near Mubo and the previous day a commando patrol had also made contact on the other flank. Although there was still no iron ring around the Japanese at Mubo nevertheless, bowing to the pressure, Lieutenant-General Nakano, the 51st Division commander, ordered the garrison to retreat to Komiatum. The withdrawing troops soon realised that the main track was blocked behind them and they had to find an alternative route out. Lieutenant Shinoda later explained that ‘we were taking our sick and injured troops with us on the advance through the dark jungle terrain. Climbing and descending through the steep mountainous terrain made our withdrawal operation extremely difficult.’ An American patrol spotted a large enemy force withdrawing north-east on July 11 and was able to call down mortar and artillery fire. The American gunners noted that ‘we had four rounds per gun — 16 rounds in the air in 36 seconds — fired a total of nine
Phil Bradley took his comparison from a lower viewpoint near Ambush Knoll. The mouth of the Francisco can be seen to the right of Salamaua.
BERNIE BORDER
AWM 127971
Left: One of the men wounded during the 58/59th Battalion attacks on Bobdubi Ridge on July 13 was Private Wal Johnson. He had been on a two-man patrol that morning looking at Japanese positions at the hillock feature known as the Coconuts when they were spotted, the Japanese throwing grenades and opening up with a machine gun. Both men were driven off the ridge and Johnson was badly hit in the arm while a grenade explosion had wounded his face. Sergeant Gordon Ayre took Johnson back to the regimental aid post at the edge of Uliap Creek where he collapsed. Damien Parer, who had been in the area since early July, watched and filmed as ‘a blinded
vent the escape northwards of enemy forces in the Mubo area’. On July 6 Warfe’s supply line was ambushed by a Japanese patrol astride the track near Orodubi. The native carriers dropped their loads, which included two Vickers guns and one 3-inch mortar, and fled, the site thus becoming known as Ambush Knoll. The Japanese occupied Ambush Knoll in strength on July 12 and heavy Australian attacks along the narrow ridge were repulsed until the Japanese withdrew during the night of July 15/16. The position, encircled by some 100 yards of trenches with two log bunkers, had been defended by a reinforced platoon of engineers. When the Australians
took over the knoll, Lieutenant Ron Garland said ‘the place was a shambles’. The loss of Ambush Knoll rankled the Japanese command. With the fall of Mubo, it now became a key point in securing the Japanese western flank. Following artillery support from Komiatum Ridge, on July 19 fresh Japanese troops used the light of a full moon to scale the ridge and attack Ambush Knoll from the north along the crest. Lieutenant Garland’s commandos were ready and the opening burst of fire caught the enemy on their feet. At dawn on July 20 a weakened commando platoon reached Ambush Knoll to augment the defence and, although there
AWM 127970
PHIL BRADLEY
rounds per howitzer.’ The next day another patrol followed an artillery barrage forward and found 40 to 50 dead Japanese and a profusion of hurriedly abandoned equipment. More artillery fire on July 13 targeted enemy positions at the head of the Buigap Creek resulting in ‘literally hundreds of dead Japanese’. However, by that afternoon the majority of the retreating Japanese had reached a line of well-prepared positions along the saddle from Goodview Junction to Mount Tambu. Meanwhile, the role of Major Warfe’s commandos in the ‘Doublet’ plan was to establish a strong blocking position west of Mount Tambu at Goodview Junction ‘to pre-
digger led by an RAP sergeant stumbles over a stony creek, then squelches ankle deep through the clinging mud of the jungle track’. Considered one of Parer’s finest film sequences, it has often been compared to George Silk’s iconic photo of the blinded digger at Buna (see After the Battle No. 162). Right: Johnson was back in action ten days later but wounded again when his mate stepped on a mine, which killed his companion and caused Johnson to lose an eye. This time he was evacuated, ultimately back to Australia. Johnson, who shunned any limelight, was from Moe in Victoria where Bernie Border pictured him at the local RSL Club on Anzac Day, April 25, 1993.
Left: One of the key points in the battle was Ambush Knoll, a hillock astride the Mubo to Salamaua track near Orodubi. On July 19, two Vickers machine guns were sent up to reinforce the position. Damien Parer filmed the one that was emplaced at the north end of the knoll covering the track up from Orodubi. The commando at left (with the beret) is Lieutenant Hugh Egan of the 2/3rd Independent Company and on the right of the gun is Trooper Hilton May. Egan would be killed
a few days later, on July 21. The other Vickers, manned by Privates Arthur ‘Matey’ Crossley and Ferdinand ‘Bunny’ Sides, was emplaced to the right, covering the main approach up Sugarcane Ridge from Buirali Creek. The weight of fire from the Vickers, set up on loose mountings, was vital in stopping the Japanese attacks on the knoll. Right: The forward weapon pit is still there, littered with machine-gun cartridges from the action. 27
PHIL BRADLEY
AWM 127986
Right: Phil Bradley’s comparison, taken on the same narrow approach to Mount Tambu just forward of the start line. 28
The most dominant feature protecting Salamaua was Mount Tambu. The 2/5th Battalion captured a first foothold on the height on July 16, defending it against dozens of Japanese counter-attacks and gradually extending its grip further northwards. Then on the morning of July 24, after a heavy artillery and mortar preparation, Captain Lin Cameron’s D Company attacked the Japanese bunker line on Tambu Knoll at the ridge’s northern end. Robert Buchanan photographed the men as they moved into action.
PHIL BRADLEY
were 14 attacks that day, the feature was held. More Japanese attacks began before dawn the following morning against the knoll’s north end. Ammunition supply was becoming critical and the order came through to switch automatic weapons to single-round fire. Resupply came through that night, the photographer Damien Parer being one of the carriers. In the 18th attack the Japanese infantry advanced to within six yards of the Australian positions before being driven off. Further attacks continued throughout the night, with two more before dawn on July 22. Having lost at least 61 men in the battle for Ambush Knoll, the Japanese gave up the next day and the 2/6th Battalion moved up from Mubo to relieve the exhausted commandos. There was no rest for Warfe’s commandos. On July 29 Lieutenant John Lewin’s platoon attacked Timbered Knoll further north along Bobdubi Ridge. The first attack up an open steep side of the ridge faltered and the lead section was pinned down by machine-gun fire, three commandos being killed: Private Percy Hooks, Corporal Don Buckingham and Corporal Andrew ‘Bonnie’ Muir. Damien Parer, who filmed the attack, wrote ‘on the right, three men have been killed. The lanes of Jap fire are too accurate from this side. They pin us down.’ With the initial thrust parried, Lewin took Lieutenant Sid Read’s section around the flank. The commandos were faced with a steep razor-backed ridge with heavy covering fire from pillboxes and trenches but Private Wal Dawson went forward with his Tommy-gun and grenades and opened the way. Read’s section fought on the ridge-line along the knoll, clearing 20 yards of foxholes. Damien Parer later wrote, ‘we moved around to the Japs’ position feeling out the pits with grenades. Just rolling them in and ducking before the grenade went off.’ The commandos found 18 enemy troops dead when they captured the knoll. On the late afternoon of July 16, Captain Mick Walters led the 60 men of his understrength company from the 2/5th Battalion up a steep track leading to the southern crest of Mount Tambu, the most dominant feature protecting Salamaua. Walters’ scouts reported that the Japanese occupied two knolls just over the crest and were busy digging weapon pits. He boldly attacked and captured the two heights, leaving 20 Japanese dead while many others fled north across
homage to their three fellow comrades’. Father James English (second from left) reads the prayers. His batman, Private Francis Ryan, is protecting the prayer book with his groundsheet. Right: In 2008 a plaque with the names of the three dead men was placed on the knoll by Darren Robins, the grandson of Bill Robins who was wounded during the Timbered Knoll action.
AWM 056770
Left: On July 29, a platoon of commandos from the 2/3rd Independent Company attacked Timbered Knoll, further north along Bobdubi Ridge. The three men killed in the attack, Private Percy Hooks, Corporal Don Buckingham and Corporal Andrew Muir, were buried on the misty knoll the following morning. Damien Parer watched and filmed as ‘they prayed with sincerity their
the narrow mountain plateau. It was an extraordinary coup as the Japanese had built positions for over 100 men but only a single platoon was present when the surprise attack came. That night the Japanese made eight separate assaults on the Australian position. Walters noted that the ‘fighting was thick and furious during these counter-attacks and the small-arms fire was the heaviest I’ve known’. Over the 36 hours that Walters’ company held the key position there were 24 separate Japanese attacks but these waves broke on an immoveable shore with Japanese losses in the hundreds. Every spare man at the 2/5th Battalion headquarters was used to carry supplies up to the besieged company. It was a three-hour climb up the near-vertical track onto Mount Tambu, each man carrying around 30lbs of supplies. The next day Captain Lin Cameron arrived with two fresh platoons and a 3-inch mortar crew. Having held off the Japanese, Walters now did the unexpected: he attacked again. On the morning of July 18, after heavy concentrations of mortar and artillery shells, his company captured the next knoll along the ridge top. However, early the following morning a Japanese force attacked the rear of the Australian positions. Two Australian Bren gunners, Privates Jim Regan and Fred Allan, held the attack at bay by firing straight down the approach track from the crest, the Japanese losing half of the 40 men involved in their bold but unsuccessful attack. The remaining Japanese position at the northern end of Mount Tambu was a fortress protected by near-vertical walls on all sides. Ten log-reinforced bunkers and a chain of weapon pits connected by tunnels had been constructed to augment this natural defence. The overhead cover on the weapon pits was up to four logs thick and all were interconnected by crawl trenches. At 1130 on July 24, after Allied artillery and mortars had lashed the ridge, Captain Cameron led his company forward to attack the Japanese fortress. One of the men in the lead section was soon killed and Cameron was hit in his right elbow. As he saw his men hesitate, the wounded captain shouted out: ‘Forward, get stuck into them!’ Corporal John Smith then led his 11-man platoon forward, heading for the crest through three lines of enemy bunkers. ‘Follow me!’ the courageous, blonde-haired Smith called back as he pushed on. Cameron’s last view of him was ‘Smith heading up Tambu with
AWM 015515
Right: On July 30, the 1st Battalion of the US 162nd Infantry Regiment, newly arrived to reinforce the Salamaua front, attacked the same Japanese bunker line. The initial assault by Company C ended in bloodshed, one third of the force being killed or wounded. Gordon Short pictured Corporal Leslie ‘Bull’ Allen, a stretcher bearer from the 2/5th Battalion, bringing back the last of at least 12 wounded Americans he rescued that day. The man across his shoulders is Sergeant Jay Bixler. Others that Allen carried out that day were Captain Delmar Newman (the company commander), Lieutenant Barney Ryan, Tom Boothby, Joe Bradshaw, Lyle Walter, Tom Moyer, Hank Roser, Darrell Donaldson, Ted Richter, Dan Juarez and Richard Monger, a wounded medic who was the first man Allen rescued and who later died. The Australian Saturday Sun later stated that Allen carried out a total 17 men over four and a half hours, quoting him as saying ‘A stretcher-bearer has to be strong and willing’. Allen, who had been awarded the Military Medal for similar bravery at Wau six months earlier, was awarded the American Silver Star for his work on this occasion but no Australian award was made — an extraordinary omission.
the bayonet’. Three men managed to keep up with Smith but Japanese grenades soon caught them as they broke through a third line of bunkers. Though also hit, Smith kept going and soon stood on the top of Mount Tambu with his back to the enemy yelling: ‘Come on boys, come on boys!’ The gallant Smith was dragged out and died of his severe wounds two days later, Cameron noting ‘some 40-odd the doctor told me later’. On July 28 the American infantry from the 1st Battalion, 162nd Infantry, arrived on Mount Tambu, Captain Delmar Newman’s Company C taking over the Australian front line, about 100 yards south of Tambu Knoll. Two days later on July 30, as the artillery fire stopped and the Browning machine guns opened up, Newman’s three platoons attacked the knoll. Bombardier Clyde Paton watched as the attack progressed: ‘After the barrage we stood up and watched as the Yanks moved in, or rather up. Down they went on our side of the neck, were lost to sight, and then slowly climbed a further side, steep and impossible really, as handgrenades were rolled down upon them.’ Now forward with his men, the gallant Captain Newman had machine-gun rounds pass through his shirt sleeve and take the pockets off his webbing belt. The Japanese had waited out the barrage in their tunnels and
then emerged as the Americans reached the ravine. Though Newman’s men took the first line of bunkers, the assault ended in carnage, with one third of the attackers killed or wounded trying to break through the wellecheloned enemy bunker lines. When an attack by Captain John George’s Company A was also unsuccessful, Colonel Taylor ordered a withdrawal. At least three American medics, Corporal Byron Hurley, Staff Sergeant Samuel Sather and Private Richard Monger, were killed trying to recover the 36 wounded Americans. An Australian stretcher-bearer, the 2/5th Battalion’s Corporal Les ‘Bull’ Allen also responded to the plaintive cries of ‘Bull, Bull, Bull’ from the wounded Americans. Clyde Paton watched as ‘Allen came ploughing hurriedly upwards through the slippery mud. He brushed past me and then was lost to view. Shortly, back came Bull Allen with a soldier draped over his shoulders. Under the weight he staggered a little and then lowered the body to the ground, right before me.’ Paton watched Allen go out again facing the prospect of being shot like the men he rescued, however ‘Providence watched over him’. Allen went forward at least 12 times carrying back wounded Americans, working himself to exhaustion over some four and a half hours. 29
AWM 015385
STEVE DARMODY
sevelt (right), the commander of the 3rd Battalion, the unit sent to seize it. He was the fourth child of the late US President ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt. Serving as a 1st lieutenant with the US 1st Division during the First World War, he had been thrice wounded and awarded the French Croix de Guerre. Due to his age (he turned 50 in 1943) and a previous disability discharge, Roosevelt was exempt from active service in the Second World War but he had successfully lobbied his cousin, the incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, for a chance to serve in a front-line unit.
The first two attempts to take the ridge failed, the Americans being driven off with heavy casualties, and it was not until August 14, after intense shelling and with bomber support,
that they finally succeeded in capturing the feature. Here a supply train of native carriers moves along Roosevelt Ridge on August 25, 1943.
USNA
Left: A further battalion of the 162nd Infantry was sent up from Nassau Bay in early July with the mission to capture the ridge that jutted into the sea south of Salamaua and formed the northern arm of Tambu Bay. This ridge — described by ABC war correspondent Peter Hemery as ‘a piece of old-style razor blade jutting into the sea’ — needed to be taken in order to secure the bay area for Allied field artillery. Seen here in mid-distance, running down from the slopes of Mount Tambu, it soon came to be known as Roosevelt Ridge. The name came from Major Archibald B. Roo-
30
KOMIATUM RIDGE
USNA
Once Tambu Bay was secure heavy artillery was brought ashore to support the Allied advance on Salamaua. This photo was taken on August 23, 1943.
STEVE DARMODY
On July 3 the New Guinea Force commander, Lieutenant-General Edmund Herring, had met with General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, and obtained permission to deploy a second battalion from MacKechnie’s 162nd Regiment to the Salamaua front. After landing at Nassau Bay that battalion, the 3rd under Major Archibald R. Roosevelt (a son of the 26th US President Theodore Roosevelt), moved north to Tambu Bay to secure that area for the deployment of artillery. What came to be known as Roosevelt Ridge extended westwards from the sea towards Mount Tambu, forming an imposing bulwark shielding the northern end of Tambu Bay, and until it was taken the bay was under threat. General Stan Savige, the Australian 3rd Division commander, suggested to Brigadier General Ralph W. Coane who commanded Coan Force, the US 41st Division’s detachment fighting under Savige’s command in the Tambu Bay sector, that Roosevelt Ridge be attacked from the western end and rolled up to the east from the higher ground. However, Coane made his major move at the eastern end with an attack by two companies. The men climbed up the steep side of the ridge, hand over hand, but were hampered by grenades and mortar bombs rolled down from above. Then, as they neared the crest, enemy machine-gun and rifle fire broke out from well-concealed positions and the attack failed as did another attempt later that day. Both companies were forced off the ridge two days later. On July 27 the Americans had another go at Roosevelt Ridge. One hundred infantrymen moved in single file up through the jungle, following a creek south of the ridge before moving along a spur leading to a small knoll on the crest. However, enemy fire stopped further advance on a shoulder slightly below the ridge top. Another company joined up on the left but was also unable to gain the ridge top and further attacks only lost more men without gaining any ground. The failure to secure Roosevelt Ridge was frustrating to the Australian command as it dominated Tambu Bay which was urgently required to bring in supplies. When General Savige requested that both Coane and the battalion commander, Roosevelt, be relieved, General MacArthur became involved and Savige later wrote that ‘I had my bags packed but MacArthur supported me’. Coane was replaced by Colonel MacKechnie, whose regiment was now detached
The same beach seven decades on, pictured by Steve Darmody.
FRANCISCO RIVER
OLD VICKERS COCONUTS
PHIL BRADLEY
HUON GULF
from the 41st Division and would be directly controlled by New Guinea Force. Major Roosevelt was also relieved though he would resume command of his battalion after the Salamaua campaign. Early on August 14 the Americans established a lodgement along the crest at the western end of the ridge, forcing the Japanese back to the eastern end where they came under heavy shell-fire. The intense shelling included Bofors guns that had been dragged up the rough track onto a knoll adjacent to the ridge from where they fired on a horizontal trajectory directly into the Japanese positions. ‘Section by section the target was laid bare. When one section was devastated the guns were trained on the next section . . . the whole deadly show might have been controlled by a switch.’ Bombers followed and ‘those who watched from the beach saw the top fourth of the ridge lift perceptibly into the air and then fall into the waiting sea.’ Roosevelt Ridge was finally in American hands. Left: Komiatum Ridge and Bobdubi Ridge, with its two embattled features, Old Vickers and the Coconuts, as seen from Mount Tambu. 31
PHIL BRADLEY
AWM ART 27543
Right: The shape of Davidson Ridge in the background allowed Phil Bradley to match up the shot. 32
Komiatum Ridge, the Japanese stronghold north of Mount Tambu, was finally captured by the 2/6th Battalion after the Japanese defenders withdrew from the latter position during the night of August 18/19. Official photographer Harold Dick pictured Australian troops and native carriers resting near the ridge’s eastern edge on September 14, after the end of the battle.
PHIL BRADLEY
Meanwhile, the lack of operational success by the 58/59th Battalion on Bobdubi Ridge meant that the Japanese had been able to maintain the supply line up the Komiatum Track to the critical defensive positions at Goodview Junction and Mount Tambu. The inability to capture the Old Vickers position at the northern end of Bobdubi Ridge was at the heart of the 58/59th Battalion’s problems. The Japanese had held the position since retaking it from Major Warfe’s commandos on May 15. One of those defenders, Sergeant Kobayashi, wrote in his diary that ‘the situation grows worse from day to day. This is the 71st day at Bobdubi and there is no relief yet. We must trust our lives to God. Everyday there are bombings and we feel so lonely. We do not know when the day will come for us to join our dead comrades.’ With artillery support now available from the 2/6th Field Regiment’s 25-pounder guns down at Tambu Bay, a new attack was ordered. On July 27 Lieutenant Roy Dawson began directing very accurate shell-fire onto Old Vickers. The following day the attack went in hard on the heels of the shelling so catching many of the defenders still under shelter. When the bombardment finished, the Australians were cresting the slope in front of the enemy positions. Lieutenant Laurie Proby’s platoon had been allocated the direct approach, across the gully at its steepest point and then up a steep and narrow spur with only room for one man at a time. ‘During the bombardment we approached as far as possible. What a high climb we have to gain our objective. On the way up the ridge, it is obvious that our request for lots of smoke has borne results, the smoke was so thick we had the chance to organise near the top of our spur and extend for our final charge. We surprised Nips coming up from underground positions tossing grenades to which we retaliated with the same medicine — ours was the best obviously.’ After its capture, four pillboxes and 57 weapon pits were found on the Old Vickers position along with 17 dead defenders. The Australians lost one officer and four men killed with another two officers and nine men wounded. The Coconuts position at the north end of Bobdubi Ridge was the next objective. Lieutenant Ted Griff’s company from the 58/59th Battalion soon captured South Coconuts but Griff realised there was no chance of a successful attack along such a narrow ridge-line which was well covered by machine guns.
that ‘after artillery show today the boys went in and from this position we could see a wonderful battle panorama of smoke and men advancing. We were both as excited as hell.’ Right: The slopes of Old Vickers today.
AWM 015681
Left: On July 28, the 58/59th Battalion attacked and finally captured the Old Vickers knoll. Damien Parer and Australian war artist Ivor Hele had moved up behind the troops during the attack to record the action on cine and in paint. Parer wrote
USNA
The Allied aim in the final phase was to drive the Japanese north of the Francisco river. The first Australian troops crossed the stream on August 21 but the Japanese would continue to fight for their positions on the north bank until their final withdrawal to Lae on the night of September 10/11. Signal Corps photographer Pfc Ovid Di Fiore pictured American and Australian troops crossing the Francisco west of Salamaua on September 12. tain Harold Laver’s D Company. General Savige later noted: ‘By the 8th [of August] it was apparent that the key to Mount Tambu was in Wood’s hands, but the trouble was to find the keyhole.’ At daybreak on August 16, Captain Cam Bennett’s company of the 2/5th Battalion put in a diversionary attack at Goodview Junction to hold the Japanese front line in place. When it proved a success Bennett was told to hold up which he reluctantly did, telling his battalion commander ‘I had ‘em! I had ‘em in the palm of my hand and you called me off!’ Meanwhile, under cover of artillery fire, Captain Laver’s men made their move up onto Komiatum Ridge and soon captured a key knoll and then another, forming a blocking position across the ridge. As Sergeant James Gibson noted, the Japanese hit back
PHIL BRADLEY
Early on the morning of July 31 there were three Japanese counter-attacks on South Coconuts, accompanied by much noise and clamour. All were repulsed but seven men were evacuated with stab wounds, reflecting the closeness and ferocity of the fighting. Japanese attacks resumed the next day and Griff’s men, now down to two officers and 36 men, had to withdraw back along the ridge. At dawn on the same morning, Japanese troops that had infiltrated overnight opened fire on the Old Vickers position before attacking from many directions. The battle continued for four days and nights but the men of the 2/7th Battalion held onto the key position. Another Australian attack on the Coconuts followed, this time with heavy air support. On August 14, 27 B-24s, 14 B-17s and 12 B-25s dropped 133 tons of bombs on the Salamaua area including the Coconuts. ‘Trees, logs and other rubbish flew through the fall of dust which now cloaked the target’, observers noted. ‘It seemed that nothing could have lived in the midst of devastation loosed by the planes.’ An artillery and mortar barrage followed, but despite the support it proved a tough day for the 2/7th Battalion with nine men, including two officers, killed and another 17 men wounded. The Japanese remained on the position for another two days before pulling out. In the 17th Brigade sector, the dominating peak of Mount Tambu remained in Japanese hands and attacks at Goodview Junction made little progress. Meanwhile, the Japanese had emplaced a mountain gun on Komiatum Ridge that fired across the Buirali Creek valley onto the 2/6th Battalion positions around Ambush Knoll. The gun was so close that the first shot arrived before the men on the ridge heard the gun-fire. Each day during the first week of August the gun, dug into the ridge for protection from counter-fire, would fire no more than 12 rounds before being returned to its shelter. Regular patrols from Lieutenant-Colonel Fred Wood’s 2/6th Battalion were sent out to find the best way to get the unit up onto Komiatum Ridge behind the Japanese positions at Goodview Junction and Mount Tambu. This critical task was given to Cap-
hard the next night. ‘They attacked for three hours before moonrise, throwing everything they had at us. We hurled grenade after grenade and pasted them with everything.’ Following orders from the Japanese commander General Nakano, the remaining Japanese defenders withdrew from Mount Tambu during the night of August 18/19 via the steep valley between Komiatum Ridge and Davidson Ridge. The role of General Savige’s 3rd Division was to drive the enemy north of the Francisco river while ‘the capture of Salamaua is of course devoutly to be wished but no attempt upon it is to be allowed to interfere with the major operation being planned’. That operation was the invasion of Lae and the role of the 3rd Division was to hold the maximum number of the enemy at Salamaua. On August 25, Major-General Edward Milford’s Australian 5th Division took over that role. At dawn on September 4 the troops on the ridges around Salamaua observed warships in the Huon Gulf, part of the Allied invasion force on the way to land on the coast east of Lae. The need to continue the fighting around Salamaua, to hold the enemy in place, suddenly assumed even greater importance. General Nakano had already been ordered to return to Lae and some of his front-line troops accompanied him on barges from Salamaua on the night of September 4/5. On August 12 Major Warfe had assumed command of the 58/59th Battalion. Captain Bob Hancock took over Warfe’s former unit, the 2/3rd Independent Company, which was now ordered to cut the Komiatum Track at its junction with the Bobdubi to Salamaua track. As Lance Sergeant Cliff Crossley later noted, the river flats were ‘a bewildering tangle of marshy stinking jungle, visibility five yards until terrific small-arms fire literally cut a clearing’. Lieutenant Stan Jeffery’s commando section came under heavy fire from a machine gun bunker covering the track junction up to Bobdubi Ridge. Though the ground was open between the now prone men and the bunker, the headstrong Jeffery gave the order to charge and the resultant losses were heavy. Meanwhile Captain Vic Baird’s infantry company from the 2/7th Battalion attacked enemy positions astride the Buirali Creek junction but the attack foundered at the bunker system. Following the withdrawal from Mount Tambu on August 19, the Japanese troops also withdrew from these positions.
A perfect comparison by Phil Bradley. 33
Right: That same day, American troops from the 641st Tank Destroyer Battalion disembarked from a Higgins Boat onto the Salamaua isthmus.
PHIL BRADLEY
USNA
Two days later the 2/7th Battalion crossed the Francisco river at the south end of Bobdubi Ridge and captured Rough Hill and Arnold’s Crest. This unhinged the Japanese defence of Salamaua but, for strategic reasons, the opportunity to advance into Salamaua was refused. General Nakano ordered a counterattack on Arnold’s Crest and a later attack on the night of August 27/28 cut off the Australian position. Lieutenant John Bethune’s men of the 58/59th Battalion managed to drive the attackers off, leaving some 40 Japanese dead but, with ammunition rapidly running out and four men killed and another six wounded, Bethune withdrew from Arnold’s Crest. Despite the Lae landing, the Japanese continued to fight for the positions north of the river and they would hold them until the final withdrawal to Lae on September 10-11. Following the loss of Mount Tambu, the keystone position in the new Japanese line south of the Francisco river was a prominent peak towards the northern end of Davidson Ridge known as Charlie Hill to the Australians. On August 24 General Nakano told his men that ‘if this line cannot be maintained, the division is to be honourably annihilated’. Nakano would have had in mind the comments on Salamaua by the area commander, Lieutenant-General Hatazo Adachi: ‘In light of the great importance of this place, it is my hope that it can be held till the very last, just like the Soviet Army did at
USNA
PHIL BRADLEY
Right: The shore line has retreated with the narrowing of the isthmus.
Left: With Salamaua finally in Allied hands, Pfc George Bridges and Pfc Ray Waybright, both from Company L of the US 162nd Infantry, inspect a Japanese Model 10, 3-inch dual-purpose anti-aircraft and coastal defence gun left behind on the beach. 34
The picture was taken by Pfc John Moore of the 161st Signal Photo Company on September 12, 1943. Right: The very same gun (note the shell damage on the barrel) is still in place on the beach with an old gas cylinder now hanging off it as an improvised gong.
USNA
Salamaua was a ruin when finally captured, just wrecked buildings and bomb craters. Most of the damage had been done by
Salamaua was a shell, the Allied bombing that had hit the settlement repeatedly during the campaign having been particularly destructive, Lieutenant Griff of the 58/59th Battalion observing that ‘the isthmus was lined with bomb craters’. Australian war correspondent Peter Hemery reported that ‘not a building is left standing, just an occasional heap of scattered wreckage’.
The evacuation of Salamaua had come as a relief for the Japanese troops stationed there. At a parade on September 16, an Australian army chaplain, Lieutenant Vernon Sherwin, raised the Australian flag over Salamaua. The tattered emblem had been taken from Salamaua in March 1942 and Sherwin had carried it with him ever since, waiting for the day to fly it there again.
PHIL BRADLEY
Stalingrad.’ Although the Australian brigade commanders agreed that Charlie Hill could not be taken from the front, General Milford, with a penchant for artillery, insisted that it could if enough support fire was laid on. In the event, it was not taken until the Japanese pulled out on the night of September 8/9. Milford’s 5th Division was now advancing on Salamaua on three fronts, the third of which was the coastal route along Scout Ridge. On August 30 he moved LieutenantColonel Jack Amies’s 15th Battalion onto the coastal flank of the American 162nd Regiment with orders that ‘the crest of Scout Ridge must be secured at all cost and with least possible delay’. Heavy mortar and artillery fire was brought down onto the Japanese positions along the crest of the ridge and on September 3 a patrol reported that it was clear. Two platoons moved up to occupy the position but the Japanese counter-attacked before they could do so. The 15th Battalion made another attack on Scout Ridge on September 9, more to continue to pin down the Japanese rather than to actually gain the position. Astonishingly, despite the landings at Lae, the Japanese command continued to stress that Salamaua must be held and the Japanese south of the Francisco did not begin to withdraw until the night of September 9/10. Heavy rain helped to mask the withdrawal and by the following morning all organised enemy resistance south of the river had ceased. Unfortunately the heavy rain also prevented the Australians from crossing the river that day; somewhat ironic that, even with the Japanese defenders gone, the natural defences still protected Salamaua from capture. The next morning Captain Alfred Ganter’s company from the Australian 42nd Battalion finally got across, he and six of his men becoming the first Allied troops to enter the ruins of Salamaua.
an air raid carried out by the US Fifth Air Force on July 18, 1943.
The sea is doing the damage today although the fight goes on to save the isthmus. 35
TERRY BROWN
To defend its capital Wellington against enemy aggression, New Zealand before and during the Second World War built a series of coastal gun batteries, anti-aircraft batteries and radar stations, most of them on the Miramar peninsula at the
entrance to the harbour. This is one of the two 6-inch guns of the battery emplaced at Point Dorset on the south-eastern shore of the peninsula. Note that the photographer has neatly captured the fall of shot landing beyond the distant reef.
WELLINGTON’S WWII HARBOUR DEFENCES
36
main fixed coastal weapons, six or seven for Wellington alone, but this recommendation was not taken up by the government, postwar retrenchment being one of the main factors. Nor did Japan’s moves in 1931 inspire much action in New Zealand either, a complacency inspired by the CID. However, two years later the CID, in an about-face, said that they felt that the entire Far East and the coastlines of the Dominions
By Jeffrey Plowman were open to attack. The only effect this had in New Zealand in 1933 was for the government to commission a report from the GOC, Major-General William Sinclair-Burgess, who, in turn set up a five-man committee to look into the matter. When their report eventually came out their conclusion was
JEFFREY PLOWMAN
As was the case for all members of the British Empire, New Zealand had agreed at the 1923 Imperial Conference to assume responsibility for its own defence. What this meant in 1926, in the opinion of the United Kingdom’s Committee for Imperial Defence (CID), was to develop adequate measures to deal with raids on New Zealand by cruisers, armed merchant cruisers or submarines. However, critical to this was the British proposal to establish a fortified naval base at Singapore. It was their view that this would rule out larger attacks or invasions, though this was based on the assumption that the Imperial Fleet, or part of it, could get to Singapore. However it was the realisation of this that was to prove problematic. Though approval for the Singapore base had been given in 1921, work on it was suspended three years later, only to be resumed in 1926, albeit on a reduced scale due to costcutting measures. However, by 1931 work on it was said to be well underway, though even more whittled down in size because of further financial constraints. Nevertheless, the continued work on the base was no doubt justifiable as the Japanese attack on Manchuria in September of that year drew attention to Japan as a likely future threat to the region. Moreover, the CID was still confident that the base would be completed and that the main fleet would be able to reach it in time, should it be needed. However, New Zealand had not exactly made a great effort towards developing its own defence works over this period. In 1926 the CID had recommended that what the country needed was 11 guns of 6-inch as the
The same view today, looking out towards Barrett’s Reef. (This reef was the scene of one of New Zealand’s major maritime disasters, when the ferry Wahine foundered on it in a storm in 1968 with the loss 51 lives.)
WELLINGTON
WELLINGTON
Located in a bay on the southern tip of North Island, Wellington’s defences had to watch both the Cook Strait and the Tasman Sea. effort was also put into establishing a district pool of motor vehicles, though the assembly of 18 gun tractors and conversion of a number of civilian vehicles into military-purpose lorries and radio vans hardly amounted to a serious investment. On the negative side the Territorial Force was drastically cut in its establishment, with former regiments being reduced to companies or squadrons in composite units. One thing that did happen in 1938 was the creation of a Special Reserve of the Territorial Force to provide troops to garrison the defended ports in the Dominion. That year the Chiefs-of-Staff were also provided with disturbing evidence of German preparations for raiding commercial shipping in the Pacific. In April 1939 New Zealand hosted the Pacific Defence Conference, representatives from the UK and Australia attending. It was at this conference that more disturbing news was received. The British High Commissioner to New Zealand informed them that if Britain found itself at war with Germany, Italy and Japan simultaneously — a quite likely scenario — and if the fleet sailed for Singapore, then the Mediterranean would be left undefended. Though he was quick to assure them that the fleet would sail for Singapore, regardless of the situation elsewhere, the government decided other steps were necessary. The following month they announced the formation of a National Military Reserve to be drawn from Class II personnel. Units of the Territorial Force were also restored to their pre-1937 establishments. That year also saw the arrival of the first armoured vehicles, six Bren No. 2 Mk I carriers arriving in February. Nevertheless the government still seemed quite relaxed about the whole issue of the defence and, even though coastal batteries were ‘stood to’ over their guns, when war was eventually declared in September, the Army set about raising a ‘special force’ that was intended to be sent to support Britain’s effort overseas. Remarkably this attitude continued for a time into 1940, to the extent that the Chiefs-of-Staff even considered reducing the scale of local defence. Mid-year, however, Britain finally put the nail in the coffin over their Singapore policy, announcing that it was highly unlikely that they could send adequate reinforcements to the Far East. Later that year, thanks to losses in France, they also began reviewing downwards the stores requested by each Dominion, that is apart from what could be made available for training establishments. Though
unhappy with this, there was little New Zealand could do about it. Instead they set about bringing the Territorial Force up to a war-like footing, both in strength and preparedness. Even so, it would appear that even the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, while accelerating defensive preparations in New Zealand, did not do so in a way that could be described as rapid. There still appeared to be the belief that the country’s security rested on the fact that it was sufficiently remote from any bases that Japan might secure in the future, and that Singapore would still be able to act as a bulwark against anything the Japanese could throw against it — a perception that was shattered when Japan took it in February 1942 (see After the Battle No. 31). On the other hand it was not all bad — the Japanese attack had, after all, brought into the war a powerful ally in the form of the United States, one of the tangible benefits being the arrival of the first American divisions later that year.
ATL
that the country could not be defended and as such was highly dependent on the base at Singapore and the Imperial Fleet! They did, however, see the need for some local defence until the British fleet got to Singapore and put forward a suggestion that what was needed was some additional 6-inch guns in Auckland and, of lesser importance, some for Lyttleton (the port of Christchurch) and at Dunedin in the South Island. Two anti-aircraft guns for Auckland and Wellington were also thought necessary, along with some more modern aircraft. It was as a result of this that the New Zealand Chiefs-of-Staff entered into discussions with the CID in London in 1934 over the defence needs of these two cities. The initial agreement was for eight coastal defence guns in both centres in addition to those already in place, including two 6-inch guns for Palmer Head in Wellington, but within six months the CID reported back that these would be insufficient and what was required were 9.2-inch guns. Thus began a debate that was to rage on for several years. Nothing that happened over the next few years saw the diminishment of Japan as a threat and by 1935 it was being openly named in official papers as a potential enemy. Even at this stage, however, there was still considerable faith that British naval vessels operating out of Singapore would be able to contain them. In part this was based on the belief that New Zealand was too small a nation to be able defend itself and thus considered that it stood or fell with the Empire as a whole. Nevertheless there was a re-affirmation that some form of coastal defence was necessary against Japanese naval ships in New Zealand coastal waters or raids by landing parties should the Singapore policy fail. The view was that this should not be confined to the various ports but should also include mobile forces from all three services. This presented a further and critical complication because New Zealand would not be able to call on its own two cruisers as these were only on loan and would revert to British command in the event of war. By 1937 the government had come to realise that the ‘Singapore policy’ might not meet New Zealand’s needs. As a result there was a promise of an increase in defence expenditure and, after years of neglect, there were moves afoot to re-equip the coastal defence installations and expand the Army, though this did not exactly translate into events on the ground as the haggling over coastal artillery needs continued. Some
Major-General William Sinclair-Burgess, the Commander of New Zealand Forces and chairman of the NZ Chiefs-of Staff from 1931 to 1937, who took most of the decisions concerning the defence of the capital. 37
POINT HALSWELL
WRIGHTS HILL
FORT BALLANCE
FORT DORSET
MOA POINT
Sited on Miramar peninsula, from north to south, were an antiaircraft battery on Point Hallswell, coastal batteries at Fort Ballance, Fort Dorset and Palmer Head, and a radar station at NEW ZEALAND’S COASTAL DEFENCE POLICY With some 2,400 miles of coastline and a population of only 1.4 million at the start of the Second World War, New Zealand had serious issues over how to defend itself. To some extent it had relied on its remoteness from the rest of the world (the nearest friendly country, Australia, was 1,300 miles away) and the limitations of sea capability of any potential aggressor but its links with the UK were also considered crucial. What policy it did develop seemed to be based around its ports, in particular its four major ones. During the re-organisation of 1937 these ports — Auckland, Wellington, Lyttleton and Dunedin — were given the status of a Defended Port and, along with its coastal artillery and all its local troops, were organised into a higher formation known as a Fortress Area. All the coastal artillery possessed by New Zealand was based in one of these fortress areas, much of it dating back to before the First World War and some even to the Russo-Turkish War scare of 1877-78. This was the situation up until the outbreak of war, at which point Dunedin much to its chagrin was removed from the list of major ports, only to be reinstated in 1941. In 1942 the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland, became the fifth Fortress Area, largely in response to a recommendation from a military advisor from Britain, General Sir Guy Williams. This was because he felt that it would have provided an invader with a sheltered anchorage with many beaches suitable for landing troops. That same year the smaller harbours around the country were defined as Minor Defended Ports, either because they had breakwaters that could only hold one or two ships at a time or, like Greymouth, had restricted access thanks to a bar at the mouth of their river. At the start of the war each fortress area had for its garrison troops a fortress battalion (defined in 1936 as the senior Territorial Battalion of the district). In 1941 two National Reserve Battalions were added to each 38
PALMER HEAD
Moa Point. Further afield were Wrights Hill Fortress and (not on this map) Fort Opau, the latter overlooking the Tasman Sea at Makara on the west coast.
fortress area. Further support for each fortress area came in the form of mobile forces outside it. The previous year three home defence brigades — the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Brigades — had been created from Territorial Force units in Northern, Central and Southern Military Districts, respectively. (The North Island was divided up into NMD and CMD, while SMD encompassed the whole of the South Island.) At the same time the 7th Brigade was formed from other battalions in NMD and CMD to act as a reserve unit. To these were added the embryonic 1st NZ Army Tank Brigade in September 1941, a unit that had to make do with 30 Valentine tanks until more could be made available. Troops from the National Military Reserve were also formed into infantry companies or mounted rifle squadrons. The latter were seen as being particularly useful for patrolling segments of the coast that the more mechanised units could not reach. They proved so useful in this role that they were retained in 1942 when the National Military Reserve was broken up and its personnel dispersed among the Territorial Force and the Home Guard, the fitter men going to the former. COASTAL DEFENCES IN WELLINGTON In 1934 the New Zealand Chiefs-of-Staff had entered into a debate with the CID over the deployment of coastal artillery in the capital, Wellington. Palmer Head had been chosen in 1933 as the site for two 6-inch guns to act as a counter-bombardment battery to cover the southern front, while, as early as 1926, Ohariu at Makara had been proposed as suitable site to defend Wellington from an attack from the westerly direction. However, by 1934 the CID came back with the view that what was now needed were 9.2-inch guns to deal with attacks by 8-inch cruisers. In Wellington’s case these were to be sited at Wrights Hill in the suburb of Karori, something that would be in addition to the existing ordnance at Forts Ballance and Dorset and Palmer Head. One of the factors in the
favour of Wrights Hill was its elevation of 1,000 feet, allowing it to command much of Cook Strait separating the North from the South Island. In the end, in what appeared to be an act of defiance, the 9.2-inch option was rejected by the NZ Chiefs-of-Staff on the basis of cost, being two and half times that of the 6-inch guns. Instead they pushed on with the latter, starting work on Palmer Head in 1936. Nevertheless the subject of 9.2-inch guns reared its ugly head again in 1937 when the War Office recommended the need for them. This time the New Zealand Cabinet approved this option, only to see the Chiefsof-Staff defer it again. They did, however, approve three 16-inch searchlights covered by two 12-pounders for close-in defence of the port. They were no warmer to the idea of the 9.2-inch option the following year, on the basis that they could not justify the additional expenditure for them. In the end, however, persistence had its rewards and in 1942 approval was given to develop Wrights Hill for the 9.2-inch guns. At the outset of the war there were numerous installations around Wellington, with quite a few concentrated at the entrance to the harbour on the Miramar peninsula. From north to south these consisted of the Point Hallswell anti-aircraft battery, Fort Ballance, Fort Dorset and the Palmer Head Battery and Moa Head radar station. Further afield were Wrights Hill Fortress and Fort Opau, the latter located on a bluff overlooking the Tasman Sea at Makara on the west coast. In addition there were anti-aircraft batteries at five other sites, including Tinakori Hill, Mount Victoria, Matiu/Somes Island, Pol Hill in Brooklyn and on a hill between the suburbs of Newlands and Johnsonville. Backing up these were their associated fortress battalions and Wellington could also call upon two mobile units (both initially dependent on impressed civilian motorcycles, cars and lorries), the 2nd Brigade based in the Manawatu and the 7th Brigade in the Wairarapa.
JEFFREY PLOWMAN
FORT BALLANCE Situated on the Point Gordon promontory at the northern end of the Miramar peninsula, where it commanded the inner reaches of the harbour, Fort Ballance had its origins in the defence-building boom of the 19th century. Work here dated back to 1885 with the initiation of the construction of emplacements for two 7-inch RML muzzle-loading guns, the southern one of these being replaced by a 6-inch disappearing gun in 1895. Its secondary armament consisted of two 6-pounders mounted on movable trolleys running on rails on either flank. With this arrangement if one got damaged during an engagement the other could be quickly switched to the other location. The structure also included two magazines, which were initially lined with wood and later brick, and bomb-proof casemates at the rear with accommodation for 40 men. The following year an 8-inch disappearing gun was added between them, with a second one being added 80 yards to the south in 1891. That same year work began on another battery of two 64-pounders on the foreshore of Point Gordon. Known as Low Battery, it was built to cover a minefield that was to stretch from there to Ward Island, the construction of this being completed in 1904. The guns in the fort could not cover it because the thick parapet they had to fire over and their height above sea level meant that there was a dead zone of some 650-700 yards out from the shoreline. Finally in 1901 work began on Gordon Point Battery consisting of two 12-pounder QF Mk IA guns on a low shelf down the hill in front of the main guns of Fort Ballance. Because of the construction of this installation, Low Battery became progressively more redundant and in 1907 the removal of the submarine mining essentially ended its usefulness. Fort Ballance remained in service in the First World War but the disappearing guns were declared obsolete in 1922 and removed two years later, the 6-inch gun pits being converted into magazines and quartermaster stores. The 12-pounders were shifted to Fort Dorset. At the start of the Second World War the only defences, as such, at Fort Ballance were a few 18-pounders sited in revetments adjacent to the old Gordon Point Battery site. In
TIM RYAN
Built in 1885, Fort Ballance (named after John Ballance, the country’s Prime Minister from 1881-83) was decommissioned at the end of the First World War. During the Second World War the building to the right provided accommodation for battery personnel until more suitable 40-man huts could be built. Off limits for many years, the area is now accessible to the public.
December 1939 a proposal was put forward to move two of the 4-inch guns from Fort Dorset, only to be repeated early in 1941. This time, however, it was acted upon, the guns being moved in May and erected in the old Gordon Point 12-pounder emplacements. They were proofed the following month and fitted with Department of Scientific and Industrial Research designed autosights a year later. In this position, manned by C Battery, 10th Heavy Regiment, they served as the support examination battery to Fort Dorset’s 6-inch guns for the rest of the war. The only shots they fired were on July 24, 1945, a day after being fitted with one-inch aiming rifles, 40 proofing rounds of that calibre being fired on this occasion. One other concern was the lack of suitable defence against motor torpedo boats. What was required was a quick-firing weapon. The British had developed a 6-pounder Twin for anti-motor torpedo boat (AMTB) defence in the 1920s that was finally ready for service in 1934. New Zealand ordered two on March 4, 1938, only to be told they would have to wait another four or five years to get theirs, the first ones going to higher priority areas like Singapore. By the time they did arrive the
On the bluff below Fort Ballance lay Gordon Point Battery. Its two 4-inch guns were shifted here from Fort Dorset in 1941, being installed in the old 12-pounder emplacements that had been built before the First World War. In 1959 Tim Ryan, learning of the plans to scrap the guns and demolish the old defence installations, took this photo of the battery and of many others before they disappeared.
TERRY BROWN
Right: The fate of the gun emplacements is not clear though there is a suggestion that they were simply covered over with spoil sometime in 1970. Terry Brown worked his way up from the road to obtain this comparison. 39
ATL
The director tower was blown up in 1959 and the searchlight emplacement demolished in 1970. Terry Brown took this comparison beside Massey Road round the point from Scorching Bay and just past the site of Searchlight No. 6. The island in the distance is Matiu/Somes Island, itself the site of an anti-aircraft battery (see page 52). A number of searchlights were also installed at Fort Ballance to augment the two that had been there since the First World War. One of these was on a ledge 25 feet above the road at the point where the road turned the corner
from Scorching Bay, the second was on the seaward side of the road near the site eventually occupied by the 6-pounder twin. During the course of the war four more searchlights were brought into action, two of them mobile.
TERRY BROWN
TERRY BROWN
threat to New Zealand had moved away. As a stopgap measure the Americans made available two 75mm M1917 guns that had been fitted to coast artillery mounts but it was some time before they could be made effective. The guns actually arrived in October 1941 but lacked sights, range tables and even ammunition, the first shipment of the latter being lost to enemy action. Some ammunition was eventually obtained on loan from USMC stores but only after the guns had been installed on small concrete pads in the revetments used by the 18-pounders, that being complete on March 19, 1943. They continued in this role until February 1944 when a QF 6-pounder 10cwt twin gun was installed in a mounting beside the road at the base of the peninsula. The old 1885 fortress itself was also put to use during the war, initially to provide accommodation. The first men, 30 in total, arrived in 1941, though their living space being underground was somewhat damp. Fortunately, they did not have to spend long there, three 40-man huts being erected six months later. There was a steady build-up of numbers over the next few years, the camp eventually accommodating 177 men, some in tents on the site of the old submarine mine facilities. The old fort continued on during the war as an ammunition store.
August 1948 when this photo was taken. Across the road from it is the emplacement for Searchlight No. 4 and its associated engine room, the roof of which is just visible above the rocks on the left.
TERRY BROWN
In addition to the 4-inch guns, a quick-firing 6-pounder twin was installed on Point Gordon’s foreshore in February 1944 as defence against enemy motor torpedo boats. The gun emplacement and its director tower were still in evidence in
Though all foreshore installations were supposedly removed in 1970, Terry found the Engine Room for Searchlight No. 4 still intact just beyond the 6-pounder Twin site. (This is the building seen on the far right in the picture at the top of the page.) In all there were four searchlights at Gordon Point, two fixed and two fighting ones. 40
Also apparently missed was the mount for Searchlight No. 4a. Terry, seen here scrambling down the hill, found it on the hillside across the road from the Engine Room for No. 4. (Of the other searchlights on the foreshore, only the concrete floors of No. 6 and the foundations for the Engine Rooms for Nos. 5 and 6 remain today.)
ATL
Located further south on the Miramar peninsula was Fort Dorset, named after the Surgeon-in-Chief, Dr John Dorset, who had been involved in the defence of Wellington from 1843-45. This picture of the fort was taken by Sydney Charles Smith in August 1925 during the visit to Wellington of the US fleet detachment under Admiral Robert E. Coontz — part of a tour of the US surface fleet to Australia and New Zealand undertaken to demonstrate Amer-
ica’s strategic reach in the Pacific. Visible making their way up the harbour are the battleships Pennsylvania (the fleet flagship), Oklahoma and Nevada. Just visible is a crowd of Wellington residents lining the ridge of the promontory above the camp to watch the spectacle. Steeple Battery, first equipped with two 12pounders and later with two one-inch guns, was located on the other side of the high point on the right.
JEFFREY PLOWMAN
FORT DORSET Fort Dorset had been surveyed as far back as 1880 as a site for a three-gun battery but nothing came of this at this stage. Then in 1906, at the insistence of the Imperial authorities, it was selected as the site for two 6-inch Mk VII guns. Around this time the New Zealand government had become somewhat jaded with regard to expenditure on its coastal defences but, nonetheless, took over some 54 acres of land at the Seatoun end of the Miramar peninsula. The emplacements were constructed to a standard Imperial design of open concrete pans for the guns
ATL
JEFFREY PLOWMAN
Right: The Army camp at Fort Dorset officially closed in 1991 and the former parade grounds and buildings have been replaced by the playing fields of Seatoun School, which opened in 2002.
Left: Sydney Charles Smith also took this photograph of the other part of Fort Dorset, with the suburb of Seatoun behind. By 1939, Fort Dorset had become the headquarters and home to all Wellington artillery, with additional accommodation for artillery personnel being progressively built during the war in nearby
Seatoun Park (the cluster of trees in the distance). For a time it also served as the headquarters of the Wellington Fortress Area. Right: With seven hectares on the southern end re-zoned for residential development in the late 1990s, many new houses now occupy the hill that overlooks the old campsite. 41
TERRY BROWN
The main defence installation at Fort Dorset was the 6-inch battery, which originated from before the First World War.
During WWII the battery was responsible for giving warning shots to unidentified or suspected ships entering the port.
over the magazine, with shell and cartridge hoists and a battery observation post behind. The guns were mounted and ready to man by September 1910 and the battery, which came to be referred to as the 6-inch Battery, was ready for action by January the following year. Nevertheless there were issues with the placement of this design at the head of the harbour as there was no way that they could cover the examination anchorage. One recommendation was that the parapet of A2 gun be chipped away so it could swing around to achieve this but by the end of the First World War this had still not been done.
TIM RYAN
Right: Manned by men from 71st Heavy Battery of the 10th Heavy Regiment, the 6-inch guns were eventually provided with overhead cover in 1942 but by the following year were no longer operational. By the time Tim Ryan visited the site in 1959 the guns were gone. Instead, at the start of that conflict two 12pounders facing north were temporarily sited behind the 6-inch guns until the chipping could be done. They were refitted to ships later in the war. Nothing really happened at Fort Dorset until 1925 when two 12-pounders were brought back for drill purposes. That year Dorset was also surveyed for two more sites for guns, one at the harbour entrance and the other in a saddle in the ridgeline, facing south over Breaker Bay, this latter site eventually
JEFFREY PLOWMAN
Left: The emplacements were removed in late 1970 and all that is left of them today is a jumble of concrete blocks. The view is looking across the harbour entrance towards the Orongorongo hills. The concrete platform and posts on the left mark the site of the Oruaiti Pa, a Maori palisaded village that guarded the entrance to the harbour in pre-European times. 42
TERRY BROWN
JEFFREY PLOWMAN
The Night Battery Observation Post did not succumb to the demolition hammer. It was built on the hill above the guns in 1937 after problems were experienced with the main BOP.
Another survivor is this radar post on the hillside above the Night BOP. It was added in November 1943 to house a British CD No. 1 Mk V set.
becoming the Gap Battery. However, it took another ten years before work actually commenced on that battery, construction of the four concrete gun pads being started in 1935. The guns themselves were 4-inch guns on Mk II* mountings with Mk III directional rangefinders and came from a signalling battery at Point Jerningham at the northern end of the Roseneath peninsula between Wellington’s harbour and airport. That year too, more-formal emplacements were established for the 12-pounders at a
TERRY BROWN
Right: The need to guard against enemy motor torpedo boats led to the establishment of a battery on the shore below the 6-inch battery. Initially comprising two 18-pounder field guns on improvised emplacements, two 2-pounder guns were later added to it, the latter being replaced by two 12-pounders in February 1942. They remained in service until late 1944 when the 6-pounder Twin at Fort Ballance was put into operation, taking over the anti-MTB role. This is all that remains of Beach Battery today.
STEEPLE BATTERY
BEACH BATTERY
6-INCH BATTERY
6-INCH BATTERY CP AND DAY BOP
GAP BATTERY BOP
GAP BATTERY
6-INCH BATTERY NIGHT BOP
In all there were four coastal batteries with their associated observation posts distributed around Dorset Point. 43
ATL TERRY BROWN
Above: Located in the saddle of the ridge around which Fort Dorset sprawled, overlooking Breaker Bay, was Gap Battery. Initially it was armed with four 4-inch guns but two of them were shifted to Fort Ballance in 1941, leaving Gap Battery with just two. On August 12, 1958, a party of government ministers visited Fort Dorset to assess its potential for housing development. By then one of the guns had already been removed, its shield dumped beside it. One nice touch was that all the scrap metal was then sold to the Japanese! Below: Terry Brown took this comparison from near the battery’s magazine, looking west.
44
new site along the promontory that flanked the eastern side of the camp, this new position becoming known as Steeple Battery. Two years later another observation post was built for the 6-inch Battery on the hill above it because of problems with the main Battery Observation Post (BOP), this new construction becoming the Night BOP.
TIM RYAN
At the start of the war the examination service was quickly revived and this role was taken over by the 6-inch Battery, apparently because Steeple Battery had been converted to fire one-inch aiming rifle rounds in practice instead of full 12-pounder rounds. It was not long before the 6-inch Battery had the chance to fulfil its examination role when at 9.45 a.m. on September 3, 1939 the British steamer SS City of Delhi was ordered to stop by the Examination Vessel Janie Seddon. One of the battery guns loosed off a shot at 800-900 yards range. Though that shell missed, hitting the cliffs on the other side of the harbour entrance, the second was right on target, striking the water just in front of the steamer. Naturally with that much attention the ship complied. Aiming was apparently not a strongpoint of the gun crews of Steeple Battery either as many of their 12-pounder rounds ended up across the harbour in Gollans Valley, one even hitting a farmhouse. As the war developed there were further improvements to the gun positions. The two remaining 4-inch guns of the Gap Battery had autosights fitted in July 1942 and later had shields added. Overhead cover for the 6-inch guns was also added that year, however the following year the guns were no longer operational. In November 1943 the Naval anti-submarine radar station consisting of a British CD No. 1 Mk V set, was moved to Fort Dorset and set up in a splinter-proof building behind the 6-inch Night BOP. Improvements were also made to the facilities at Steeple Battery because the command post proved to be useless, being in the area affected by the blast with its view partly blocked by the gun mountings. As a result a new command post and battery observation post were added to the rear of the guns, while shields and overhead covers provided for the guns themselves. Some 18-pounder guns from the 2nd Field Regiment were also installed below the 6-inch Battery on improvised ‘beach platforms’ in an AMTB role. Later, they were augmented by 2-pounder anti-tank guns
The other gun was still in place when Tim Ryan visited the site in 1959. The discarded shield of the other one lies in the lower left corner.
TERRY BROWN
Two more observation posts were built on the hill on the other (western) side of Gap Battery. The one in the foreground is that for Gap Battery itself, while the one behind it is the Day Observation and Command Post for the 6-inch battery.
JEFFREY PLOWMAN
Right: Though the guns were removed, their concrete emplacements remain and can be reached by a walking track that roughly follows the line of the road that served both the 4-inch and 6-inch batteries. The battery’s magazine can be seen beside the left-hand track leading to the 6-inch gun position. The steps lead up to the radar post and the Night Battery Observation Post. from the 22nd Anti-tank Battery. Then on February 22, 1942, two 12-pounders, obtained on loan from the Royal Australian Navy and mated on spare mounts from stores, were installed on an emplacement down below the 6-inch gun position. A twostoried, combined magazine/command post was added three months later. Known as Beach Battery, this position had a short life, being abandoned in late 1944 when the 6pounder Twin became operational at Fort Ballance. Following the establishment of fortress areas on November 1, 1940, Fort Dorset became the headquarters for Wellington Fortress Area, a role it fulfilled until December the following year when this HQ moved to Wellington College, having outgrown the space available. Fort Dorset was also the home for all of Wellington’s artillery with tented accommodation being added in Seatoun Park shortly after the start of the war and quarters for the WAACs added in September 1942. During the war the guns were manned by 71st Heavy Battery of the 10th Heavy Field Regiment, RNZA, the unit going from strength to strength. The total number manning the guns, including radar operators, was 280 in November 1941, 268 in September 1942, 172 in 1943 and 108 in 1944. 45
because they were using the wrong type of rammer. It worked fine when the gun was level but on raising it to 45 degrees the shell slipped back on the cartridge. On this occasion the minesweeper HMS Tui had been engaged to tow a target 1,200 yards behind it. The first two shots were under, one only travelling some 500 yards. However, the third time, when the Tui, target and battery were in line, the shells went over. Fortunately they did not hit the minesweeper as it was carrying 20 400lb depth charges at the time! At the start of the war 71 men from the 15th Heavy Battery took over the guns, though their first battle was with a bush fire around the magazines. To add to their woes they were forced to live in tents until the first barracks building was finished in February 1941. Over the course of the rest of the year cookhouses, messes, a quartermaster building and other facilities were added. In January 1942 work began on excavating a hill behind the guns for plotting and wireless
rooms, this not being finished until July the following year. However, the facility suffered from leaks and it took another four years of repairs to fix them. There were other problems with the site as well, mainly concerning the battery observation post. Built on the knoll behind the guns, it suffered from two blind spots, one by the battery command post just behind the guns and the other by a small hilltop towards the south. Starting in April 1942 the Army set about relocating the command post and levelling the hill, both jobs being complete by the end of the year. They also decided to add a third gun and set about digging the pit for it in December 1942. They ordered another Mark XXI from Woolwich and by September the following year had installed it but could not get it into operation until the end of the war. This was largely because of the lack of a bracket connecting the gun to the cradle. Consideration was also given to providing overhead cover for the guns but abandoned shortly after work had begun on them.
TIM RYAN
JEFFREY PLOWMAN
PALMER HEAD Palmer Head had been selected as a site for coastal artillery as early as 1887 but it was not until 1925 that interest was shown in it as a possible site for two of HMS New Zealand’s 4-inch guns, not that anything came of this. Thus it was not until 1933 that approval was given for the siting of two 6-inch guns there. Work did not begin on surveying the site for another two years, starting in January 1935, along with the bulldozing of a road up from Tarakena Bay, but the guns themselves were not received until 1936. These were the rare Mark XXI 6-inch guns, being standard Mk VII barrels with larger chambers, on 45-degree mounts, which gave them capability of firing out to 20,000 yards. They were trucked up to the site in June 1936, though not without incident for one gun when a section of the road sank under the combined weight of it and its trailer. Even so they could not be installed because the emplacements for them were still under construction. Work on these had started in March 1936 but was not complete until January the following year, while work on the rest of the site carried on until June. The guns were then mounted in six weeks over September and October 1937 but were still not fully functional when war began, a result of much of the ancillary equipment having not arrived or having been mishandled. Critically they lacked telescopes, sighting equipment or autosights. They were eventually calibrated in March 1940, though not terribly successfully
ARCHIVES NEW ZEALAND
Right: At the southern end of Miramar peninsula was the 6-inch battery at Palmer Head (named after George Palmer, a director of the New Zealand Company in 1825 and Member of Parliament). This oblique aerial was taken sometime between the start of work on the pit for the third gun in December 1942 and the installation of its gun in September 1943. Once in place, it was designated No.1, and the two existing guns re-designated Nos. 2 and 3 (from left to right respectively). Two barracks buildings can be seen behind the empty pit, while there is another on the other side of the parade ground. The T-shaped building behind No. 1 and No. 2 guns is the Mess, with a series of small ablution blocks next to it. The Battery Observation Post was on the small hill to the right and the underground plotting rooms were dug into this same knoll. The water expanse visible at upper left is Lyall Bay.
Though the two Mark XXI guns for Palmer Head were received early in 1936 they were not installed until September/October 1937. Once in place, they had a commanding view of the whole harbour. The guns were still there in 1959 when Tim Ryan took this photo, most probably of No. 3 gun, the access road built for this battery from Tarakena Bay being visible in the distance on the right. 46
With the guns long gone, there is nothing to challenge the Cook Strait ferries as they head out of Wellington harbour. These days access to the site is from a road that runs past the wartime radar station at Moa Point up to the modern radio navigational beacons of Airways New Zealand. Jeff took this comparison from below the beacons and beside the old parade ground.
TERRY BROWN
TIM RYAN
already being wound down. Right: The area around the gun pits is now hidden under a heavy covering of scrub and gorse, so in the circumstances this is the best comparison Terry Brown could achieve.
The battery’s underground plotting rooms still exist but access to them is restricted due to the hill’s current use by Airways New Zealand. These pictures were taken by Darcy Waters in 1998, who had to sign a safety disclaimer before he could borrow the key for the tunnel’s access gate.
The underground installation was never fully operational due to leaks and Darcy found the L-shaped tunnel partially blocked and still flooded. This is the Battery Plotting Room, still featuring the pedestal for the coordinate converter. The hatch in the wall connects to the Fortress Plotting Room.
DARCY WATERS
DARCY WATERS
Left: Gun No. 1, pictured by Tim Ryan in 1959. Despite being installed in September 1943, the gun did not come into service until the end of the war, largely because of the lack of a bracket connecting the gun to the cradle. By then the battery was
of the installation of an Australian Shore Defence (ShD) Mk I set down at Moa Point, work on which had started in March that same year. This latter set was finally finished in December, apart from the aerial drive, which was not made functional until January the following year. In October 1943 a CD No. 1, Mk V (UK) was installed. Both these sets were eventually replaced by a microwave CA No. 1 Mk II/1 in 1944 to the east of the battery.
The Palmer Head battery was wound down on March 27, 1944, most of its personnel being withdrawn, leaving only a small cadre to maintain the guns. Following on from the capitulation of Japan the Coastal Regiment was pulled off Palmer Head on September 6, 1945 and disbanded. The next month two of the searchlights and No. 2 engine room were dismantled and placed in storage, the other two being put into care and maintenance.
ATL
JEFFREY PLOWMAN
A number of radar sets were also installed at Palmer Head, the first in 1939 in the Fortress observation post being a DPF Type O Mk I. This was later moved over to Fort Opau in June and replaced by a Z No. 2. In June 1940 a CD (NZ) Mk 1 radar set was installed between the guns for battery ranging and early warning. Two years later in April, a CD (NZ) Mk 2 was installed and made operational within the month. This was actually achieved before the completion
Left: The radar station at Moa Point below Palmer Head was set up in April 1942. The two lower buildings were for an imported Australian ShD (Shore Defence) Mk I set. The upper
structure was built later for a CA No. 1 microwave radar installed in 1944. Right: Both buildings survive intact, albeit adorned in colourful graffiti. 47
Right: Located on a bluff overlooking the Tasman Sea at Makara, the 6-inch battery at Fort Opau covered Wellington’s western approach. Judging by the camouflage over the two gun casemates, the Battery Observation Post and the smaller OP behind the guns, this oblique aerial was probably taken sometime after its completion in 1942 and possibly before September 1943. The camouflage was quite effective too, though the paths leading to the various installations would have been a give-away.
TERRY BROWN
ARCHIVES NEW ZEALAND
FORT OPAU Located overlooking Cook Strait and the Tasman Sea on a promontory separating Opau Bay from Wharehou and Ohariu Bays, this site was first recommended by the War Office in London in 1926. However it was not until March 1941 that the Royal New Zealand Artillery finally gave approval for the construction of a battery at this site, the Admiralty sourcing two 6-inch guns in the East Indies. Originally intended for Papeete they eventually arrived in April on the RMS Rangitiki along with 180 shells from the Royal Indian Naval Ordnance Depot in Bombay. Unfortunately the emplacements were incomplete so once overhauled the guns were stored at Fort Dorset. In fact work
TERRY BROWN
While the Army decided not to fit overhead cover to the guns at Palmer Head, they had no hesitation at Fort Opau and these are the only examples to survive in the Wellington area. Just what a commanding view the two guns had over the Tasman Sea and Cook Strait can be seen from this photo (above) taken by Terry Brown from the Battery OP (below). Gun A1 is nearest the camera.
48
on the emplacements dragged on for quite some time and was not complete until the end of the year. The first gun was mounted on December 22 and the second on January 1, 1942. Unfortunately little forethought seems to have been given to the rest of the battery facilities as construction of the BOP only started around the time the first gun was installed. As to the other installations, among them the underground command post, war shelters and engine rooms, the Army had planned for these to be similar to those at Palmer Head but eventually cancelled that idea in 1942 in favour of surfacebased, splinter-proof buildings. Work on the command post began after the fall of Singapore in February 1942, an event that also provided incentive for the construction of overhead covers for the guns. One thing that was not built was the engine room for the searchlights, the Army deciding on installing radar there instead. The battery was eventually wound down on September 6, 1943, and the guns removed in June the following year. For the period of its existence Fort Opau was manned by 73rd Heavy Battery, 10th Heavy Field Regiment.
Right: Wrights Hill took its name from John Fortescue Evelyn Wright, a local farmer who in 1876 had been granted some additional land encompassing the hill (see the map on page 38). It was chosen as the site for a 9.2-inch gun battery, construction beginning in November 1942. However, from early 1943 onwards it was afforded a lower priority, work not being completed until 1949.
GUNPIT No. 2
GUNPIT No. 3
ing tunnels with three magazines, shafts for ammunition hoists for the guns, an engine room, gun stores, a command post, and stair-
ways and landings to the three guns. At four of the five tunnel portals, shelters consisting of a concrete building were also constructed.
TIM RYAN
TERRY BROWN
WRIGHTS HILL As has been seen, the issue of 9.2-inch guns for the fortress areas was one of the more-contentious issues in New Zealand’s Second World War fixed coastal defences. As it happened, the debate over the need for them, and other delays in their construction, meant that by the time they were ready they were no longer required. After approval to go ahead with the 9.2inch gun option in 1942 the whole project was accorded a Top Secret status, being referred to as Site ‘W’. Prior to construction of the installations themselves, an access road was pushed up from Campbell Street and at its end a camp to accommodate 150 men constructed. Work was initially assigned to the Public Works Department and later jointly carried out by them and the Army. With the road complete, work on the underground facilities started in November 1942, top priority being given to its construction until the end of 1943 when the situation in the Pacific had become more settled. This involved building 2,030 feet of interconnect-
GUNPIT No. 1
Left: Once again Tim Ryan was there to record the site before the guns were finally scrapped. This is No. 1 gun. Right: All the gun pits were filled in in 1964 to prevent children and, some say, sheep falling into them but in recent years the Wrights Hill
Preservation Society have begun to excavate them, No. 1 now having been completely cleaned out. As Wright Hill is listed as a recreational reserve by Wellington City Council, a fence has been built around the pit as a safety measure.
TERRY BROWN
Above-ground facilities included an observation post at the eastern end of the fortress, a battery workshop and store, and a miniature range in a two-storied building, as well as a parade ground. Not that this facility was complete at war’s end, in fact work on the site continued on until 1949. The guns themselves arrived in 1944 and were towed up to the site by a D8 tractor, albeit not without incident, a large piece of the gun carriage becoming stuck on one corner. It took two hours to free it. One thing still remained contentious, the need for the third gun. On October 1, 1943 New Zealand was informed that the third gun for each battery had been deferred due to a delay in their manufacture; in the case of the one for Wrights Hill this meant shifting its installation from July 1944 to April 1945. Left: It is easy to see why the concrete pit is fenced off from this photo by Terry Brown. The protractor markings on the upper rim were repainted by a diligent member of the preservation society over a period of several months. The bolts for fastening the gun are clearly evident. 49
TERRY BROWN
TIM RYAN
Left: Gun No. 2 pictured by Tim Ryan in 1959. Right: The preservation society has only partly excavated the gun pit, slowly
approached the Minister of Defence, Frederick Jones, on January 24, 1944 with the view to cancelling the order as it would save £50,000 each for the three batteries the guns had been sought for. Two days later the War Cabinet approved this cancellation. The two guns on Wrights Hill were never fired in anger during the war but the Army did receive permission to fire No. 1 in 1946, the great event taking place on June 28. On
this occasion three rounds were fired into Cook Straight with a super charge of 125 lbs of cordite. The test was announced as a great success, though the neighbours were probably not impressed, several houses suffering broken windows. Not surprisingly the battery did not fare too well either, losing many of its windows. Though the guns were never fired again, Wrights Hill continued on as a training facility well into the 1950s.
ATL
TERRY BROWN
In the mind’s eye of some people this called into question whether the third gun was needed at all. The main argument in favour of three guns came from the Senior Staff Officer (Artillery), namely that this was considered the minimum number needed for suppressing fire from an 8-inch cruiser, usually with straddle fire. The Chief of the New Zealand Forces, Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Puttick, was not happy with this and
developing it as a sheltered picnic spot. (There are long-term plans to also excavate the third gun pit.)
his comparisons on Waitangi Day, 2014. The three stairways all look alike but this is the one leading up to gun pit No. 2. Of course access to the pit itself is not possible because of the spoil still in it.
Left: These photos are part of a series taken by E. J. Wright on May 1, 1943, when the underground facilities were still under construction. This is the Battery Plotting Room, looking out to
its anteroom. It was later divided into two rooms. Right: The Wrights Hill Preservation Society is in the throes of its reconstruction.
ATL
TERRY BROWN
Left: The Wrights Hill Battery included extensive underground facilities. This picture of one of the three access stairways was taken in 1957. Right: Access to the subterranean installation is today only possible on public holidays and Terry Brown took
50
TERRY BROWN
ATL
Left: Scaffolding was still in evidence at one end of the No. 2 magazine, a narrow-gauge track leading to what would be the
Nevertheless it was only a matter of time before proper anti-aircraft equipment arrived to replace them, 16 Bofors 40mm light AA guns arriving in early 1942, along with the same number of QF 3.7-inch AA guns. The Bofors were essentially deployed as mobile anti-aircraft units, one gun of the first battery being lifted onto the roof of the freezing works and another onto the roof of the railway station, while the rest were deployed on Aotea Quay. For the heavy anti-aircraft guns the Army set about establishing six permanent sites around Wellington, the first 3.7-inch battery being set up on Mount Victoria in April 1942. At this stage
work on their emplacements was still ongoing, so it was not until the following month that they were complete and guns prooffired. A second heavy battery was installed that month on Tinakori hill, while work had started on a third position on Pol Hill in the suburb of Brooklyn. Both batteries were proof-fired in June, along with another battery at Hallswell Point at the northern end of the Miramar peninsula. Later on emplacements for a fifth battery were built on Matiu/Somes Island, being completed early in 1943, while the sixth and final battery was established at Johnsonville, though in the end only partially completed.
The harbour defences included several 3.7-inch anti-aircraft batteries. One of them was at Hallswell Point (named after Edmond Hallswell, who became Commissioner of Native Reserves after his arrival in 1841) at the north end of the Miramar peninsula. Here emplacements were built for four guns, initially manned by B Troop, 74th Heavy AA Battery (later 160th Heavy AA Battery). It is still currently Defence land but soon to become part of a public reserve. This the northernmost emplacement, pictured for us by Peter Hodge.
PETER HODGE
ANTI-AIRCRAFT DEFENCES New Zealand did not reach the decision regarding anti-aircraft protection until 1934 when they put in a request for a two-gun section of QF 3-inch 20cwts guns for Auckland and another for Wellington. The UK was unable to release any from their stocks until 1936, the first arriving in February of that year. Those for Wellington were initially based at Fort Dorset in a shed built the previous year, along with predictors, range- and height-finders, sound and ranging equipment and three searchlights. There they remained until September 1939 when they were moved onto their newly-built concrete pads on Mount Victoria on the 4th of that month. In mid-1940, following the appearance of German raiders off the coast, they were towed to various places around the city for live shoots. Then in December 1941 they were dispatched to Fiji, leaving the capital’s anti-aircraft defence in the hands of machine gunners!
site of the ammunition hoist. Right: All the clutter had gone when Terry Brown visited Wrights Hill.
51
DEREK QUINN
The other 3.7-inch AA battery site remaining is the one on Matiu/Somes Island (Joseph Somes being the deputy governor of the New Zealand Company) and manned by 104th Heavy AA Battery. It is now a predator-free scientific reserve managed by the Department of Conservation. This is the battery command post.
52
zine. The whole area is now a public walkway and interpretative panels have been added identifying the various surviving features. The Army continued to use the Palmer Head site briefly after the war, installing a No. 10 radio set with a microwave link to Wrights Hill as part of its fire-control communications. Later the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) took over and ran the radar station at Moa Point. It was their use of it and other facilities at Palmer Head that resulted in the shelving in 1961 of plans for a sub-division running up from Tarakena Bay to the top of the hill. However, in 1970, it was finally decided to remove the gun emplacements and other constructions because they were considered to be notorious places for children and undesirables to congregate. In July 1970 three searchlight emplacements at the base of the hill were levelled and the rubble buried on site. Work then began on the main facilities at Palmer Head. Gun emplacement No. 1 was demolished to emplacement base level with explosives on August 17, 1970, while Nos. 2 and 3 were demolished to their existing ground level, the rubble from them being dumped in a gully between the two positions. What was left of
Jeffrey Plowman extends his appreciation to Terry Brown; Peter Cooke, author of Defending New Zealand; Peter Hodge; Derek Quinn; Malcolm Thomas and Darcy Waters, webmaster of the Capital Defence website, for their help in the preparation of this article.
DEREK QUINN
THE DECONSTRUCTION OF THE HARBOUR DEFENCES In 1957 the government finally decided that the country’s coastal defences were no longer needed and set in motion their decommissioning. In Wellington this resulted in all of the guns at Palmer Head, Fort Dorset and Wrights Hill being scrapped in 1960, ironically the scrap metal being sold to their former aggressors, the Japanese! The Wellington City Council then decided to remove all traces of the defence works and while they may have started this process they certainly never carried it out to completion. When it came to the removal of other facilities the first things to go at Fort Ballance were the barracks buildings. Then in November 1959 the control tower of the 6-pounder Twin was blown up by Army engineers as part of a training exercise. Nothing further happened for another ten years when plans were drawn up to remove what remained. These were brought into effect in June 1970 with the demolition of the installations along the foreshore and supporting facilities for the Gordon Point gun emplacements. The intention was to remove the emplacements next but what happened is not clear from records. The remaining buildings were certainly demolished but there is a suggestion that the emplacements were simply buried. Though the 6-inch Battery was demolished in late 1970, Fort Dorset survived a lot longer because it had become the site for coastal artillery training on the introduction of Compulsory Military Training in 1950. The camp provided accommodation for 200 Air Force, Army and Navy personnel, as well as messing facilities for Army General Staff and Defence HQ personnel, many of its buildings being refurbished over that period. Fort Dorset remained in Army use until 1991 when it was demilitarised, though the barracks continued to be used by Territorial units until 1999, demolition of these starting that year. In 1997 the Ministry of Education received permission to purchase 2.5 hectares for a school, another 7.5 hectares being rezoned for residential use. Part of the site was also taken over temporarily for the construction of a medieval village, possibly as a film set. Construction of the school started in 2001 and was complete the following year, the school shifting in during April. Though the installations for the 6-inch guns were removed, the BOP and radar installation were kept, as were the mounts for the 4-inch guns, their associated Night BOP and maga-
them was then covered over with spoil from the hill behind. The Moa Point radar station was also considered for demolition but because it was still being used by the CAA it survived. Likewise the underground plotting rooms also survived because the CAA (now Airways New Zealand) took over the hill above them as a base for a Doppler VOR short-range radio navigational system for aircraft, the ventilation shaft remaining exposed until finally being buried in 1990. One thing that does remain beside the Airways NZ compound is the old Miniature Range. In more recent times Palmer Head was incorporated into a walkway running up from Ahuriri Street in the suburb of Strathmore Park, part of it following the road that ran down from the parade ground to the radar station. At Wrights Hill Fortress some of the tunnel entrances were filled in in 1961, a year after the removal of the guns. However, the land and some of the buildings continued in use for some years as a site for a VHF radio station for mobile radio users such as taxis and a site for a trunk-line microwave radio station for toll calls to the South Island, while the Post Office used some of the tunnels for storage. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research also installed some seismic monitoring equipment adjacent to those storage facilities and inside the tunnels. The gun pits were not filled in until three years later to prevent children (and some say sheep) falling into them. In 1988 the site was rescued by the Karori Lions Club. They set about digging out the gun pits, one at least completely, cleaning up the tunnels, waterproofing and rewiring them and restoring the command post and radio room. It was first opened up to the public on ANZAC Day (April 25) the following year. This and subsequent open days help to fund the restoration work, and with a grant received from the Lottery Board they were able to replace all the wooden doors outside. In 1992 custodianship was taken over by the Wrights Hill Preservation Society. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the installation of the original guns a replica gun was constructed from wood and trucked up to the site. It is currently on display in one of the tunnels.
Part-way through the building programme the Army came up with the idea of using the AA guns against shipping. To save money and to allow them to be used in this role, the Public Works Department developed a simpler design, octagonal in shape, known as the Type C. This is the southern-most of the battery’s three gun emplacements. (The emplacements for the anti-aircraft battery at Johnsonville were similar to this.)
USHMM 37280
In early May 1945, the Allied Military Government in the city of Hannover discovered a mass grave in the Seelhorst municipal cemetery containing the bodies of 154 Russian prisoners of war and slave labourers. They had been murdered by the local
MASSACRE AT HANNOVER Arbeits-Erziehungs-Lager were a special kind of camp of which there existed many all over Germany. They had been set up by a Himmler decree of May 28, 1941 as places where labourers who had deserted their workplace or broken some other work regulation were locked up for ‘re-education’, usually being released after a certain period of time. However, as Nazi Germany conquered half of Europe and began the recruitment of foreign workers, followed by the mass introduction of foreign forced labourers, to man the German war industry, the AEL quickly began to fill up with thousands of foreigners of all nationalities, both male and female. The inmates were still required to work but under a much-harsher regime. As the war progressed, the conditions in many of the AEL began to equate those of proper concentration camps, being cruel and deadly. On April 1, 1945, as the Allied Armies surged eastwards from the Rhine, the AEL at Lahde was evacuated to Hannover, the 800 inmates being incarcerated in the Polizei-Ersatz-Gefängnis (Police Substitute Prison), which was housed in the former Jewish Horticultural School at No. 10 Heisterberg-Allee in the north-western district of Ahlem. This complex had previously — from autumn 1941 to January 1944 — served as the central collecting point for Jews from the Hannover area, some 20,000 having passed through it on their way to the extermination camps in the East. In October 1943, their headquarters on Schläger-Strasse having been destroyed by Allied bombing, the Hannover Gestapo had moved its two department for supervising forced-labourers (one for Western Europeans and Poles, the other for Russians) to the complex, setting up their office in the director’s house. Following that,
By Karel Margry in July 1944, with most of the Hannover Jews having now been processed, the main building was turned into a Gestapo prison. The first large group of inmates were German political prisoners, arrested after the July 20
USNA
On April 10, 1945, the city of Hannover in north-western Germany was captured by the US 84th Infantry Division. Hannover was located in the British Zone of Occupation as planned prior to invasion, and therefore on April 14 a British Military Government unit — MG Detachment No. 229 under Major G. H. Lamb — assumed administration of the city, albeit temporarily under American command. The city still fell within the theatre of operations of the US Ninth Army and American troops of the XIII Corps were tasked with policing the city, guarding important sites, processing displaced persons and generally maintaining law and order. On April 26-27, the US 35th Division arrived in Hannover from the Elbe sector and took over these duties from the corps units. A few days later, the MG Detachment was informed about the existence of a mass grave of victims of a massacre at the Stadtfriedhof Seelhorst, the municipal cemetery in the south-eastern quarter of the city. According to the informant, a survivor of the massacre named Pjotr Palnikov, the grave contained some 250 people, mostly Russian prisoners of war, who had been murdered by the Gestapo some three weeks earlier, on April 8. The information about the murder and the mass grave was accurate but the details of the event were a little different from those reported by Palnikov. Firstly, the massacre had taken place not on April 8 but on April 6; secondly, the group that had been murdered on that day had numbered not 250 but 154; and thirdly, although the victims were indeed all Russians, not all of them were prisoners of war, i.e. captured members of the Soviet Red Army; among them were many Russian civilians who had been rounded up and deported to Germany for slave labour. Most of the victims had originally been inmates of a so-called Arbeits-ErziehungsLager (Labour Correctional Camp, AEL) at the town of Lahde near Minden, 60 kilometres west of Hannover.
Gestapo on April 6 – four days before the Allied capture of the city. Under American Army supervision the townspeople of Hannover were forced to watch as Nazi Party members exhumed the bodies prior to their reburial in a new cemetery.
The Allied authorities had been informed of the massacre by the only survivor, a young Russian POW named Pjotr Palnikov. Here he stands and watches as the corpses are being dug up. 53
ATB
USNA
Covered in white sheets and put on trucks, the 154 bodies are transported in slow procession through the streets of Hannover to their new burial place in the centre of the city.
ATB
plot against Hitler, but by 1945 some 90 per cent of the inmates were foreign slave labourers, both male and female, and former prisoners of war, mostly Russians and Poles. A reign of terror characterised the prison, torture and hangings being a regular occurrence. On April 6, with Allied capture of the city only four days away, the chief of the Hannover Gestapo, SS-Obersturmbannführer Johannes Rentsch, selected 155 of the prison
A stele in the Seelhorst municipal cemetery today marks the site of the original mass grave. 54
The photograph was taken on the Hildesheimer Strasse, the main road into the city from the south-west, at its junction with Geibel-Strasse.
inmates for execution. The order had come from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) instructing all Gestapo offices that all inmates with a pending death sentence were to be executed. In effect, it was a final fanatical effort to kill as many of the Eastern ‘sub-humans’ as possible before the demise of the Third Reich. Ninety-nine of the 155 came from the group that had just arrived from the AEL Lahde, the other 56 had been held in the Gestapo prison longer. Rentsch charged SS-Obersturmführer Heinrich Joost, the chief of the OstarbeiterReferat (Department for supervising Eastern Workers, i.e. Russian slave labourers), with carrying out the executions but he managed to excuse himself. In his place, one of his subordinates, Reinhold Plünnecke, took over the task. The mass execution was carried out in the grounds of the Seelhorst Cemetery on Garkenburg-Strasse. Guarded by Gestapo personnel and Ukrainian auxiliaries the column of prisoners was marched through the city to the cemetery. Twenty-five of the victims, including a woman, were forced to dig the grave pit. Next, the prisoners were brought forward to the pit, first in groups of four, then of 25, and shot through the head. Only one of the unfortunates managed to escape death: Pjotr Palnikov killed a guard with a shovel and escaped into the woods, where he heard the shooting as the Germans massacred his comrades in cold blood. The bodies were then hastily covered with earth When informed by Palnikov of the massacre that had taken place, the British and American authorities decided to make the exhumation and reburial of the victims a public event. This was in accordance with regulations issued by Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force after the discovery of other atrocity sites such as Gardelegen (see After the Battle No. 111) and Buchenwald (see The Nazi Death Camps Then and Now). On April 30, a poster appeared on the
city notice boards with the following decree in both English and German: ‘On Wednesday 2 May 1945 at 0900 hours the exhumation of the 250 Russian prisoners of war, who were murdered by the SS on 8 April 1945, will take place at the Seelhorst Churchyard. Thereafter the victims will be given solemn burial in single graves. The population of Hannover with the exception of those employed on essential Military Government work is ordered to be present at Seelhorst Churchyard at 0900 hours precisely. By order of Military Government.’ A group of well-known Nazi Party members were ordered to participate in exhuming the bodies, the Americans standing by to supervise as they dug up the victims and, with bare hands, wrapped them in clean white sheets. Several of the dead were recognised by friends and relatives who were still in the area and had come to witness the ceremony. In all, six persons — one woman and five men, all Russians — could be identified. The whiteshrouded bodies were then put on 15 trucks, which proceeded in slow procession through the streets of Hannover to the banks of the Masch-See, a large lake near the city centre close to the Town Hall, where they were to be re-interred in a cemetery of honour. In addition to the 154 Russians murdered on April 6, the Americans discovered several other mass graves in the Seelhorst Cemetery, containing another 232 victims of Nazi brutality — inmates of one of the over 500 forced-labour camps or of the seven satellite camps of Neuengamme concentration camp that had existed in Hannover during the war. These victims came from countries all over Europe: France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, Latvia and the Soviet Union. They too were exhumed, transferred to the cemetery on the Masch-See and re-buried there on May 2 and 3. Thus the total number of graves in the new cemetery reached 386.
ATB
Built in 1901-13, it stands in the large Masch-Park, fronted by a small lake. Because of trees and hedges that have grown up in the cemetery, Karel had to take his comparison from a little closer in. Court in Braunschweig in 1946. All three received a death sentence but, whereas the other two were executed in 1947, his sen-
tence was later commuted to life imprisonment, then to 15 years, with him later being given amnesty in 1954.
ATB
STADTARCHIV HANNOVER
On October 16, 1945, a memorial was unveiled in the burial ground. Designed by the Russian sculptor Mykola MuchinKoloda, it featured a Soviet red star, a halfrelief of a mourning soldier, and an inscription: ‘In eternal memory of citizens of the USSR and other countries, victims of Nazi brutality foully murdered at Hannover on 8 April 1945.’ In post-war years the monument became the target of politically-inspired vandalism. For example, in February 1947 the front relief was damaged with blows from a hammer which occurred again in 1952. As a result, discussions were held as to whether the cemetery should not be changed or moved elsewhere. In the atmosphere of the Cold War, dissatisfaction seemed to be specifically aimed at the Red Star on the monument and, in an effort to appease public opinion, this was removed by the city authorities, never to be reinstated. Still the acts of vandalism continued, the monument being covered with red paint in 1980 and there were even two attempts to destroy it with explosives in 1979 and 1987. Over the years the cemetery fell into neglect and it was not until the 1970s that public interest was regenerated, the youth association of the local branch of the IG Metall union of steel workers assuming responsibility for maintaining the cemetery in 1979. Today the cemetery on ArthurMenge-Ufer is properly kept up by a coalition of schools and civic societies, with new information panels telling the full story of what happened in 1945. Of those responsible for the April 6 massacre, only a few were brought to account after the war. Gestapo Chief Johannes Rentsch went into hiding and was never caught, an East-German military court in Dresden ultimately pronouncing him dead in 1969. Heinrich Joost was tried before a British Military Tribunal in 1948 and a German civilian court in 1950 and received a total of three years, of which he served 22 months. Reinhold Plünnecke appeared with two other accused before a British Military
USNA
Right: The new cemetery was on the northern bank of the Masch-See, the large lake on the edge of the city centre. This location had been expressly chosen by the Allies so that Hannover would never forget the heinous crime committed within its city limits. Here, supervised by troops of the US 35th Division, the townspeople assemble around the freshly dug graves just before the start of the burial services. In the foreground are the few friends and relatives of the murdered Russian prisoners. The large monumental building in the background is the Neue Rathaus, Hannover’s city hall.
Left: Five months later, on October 16, 1945, a memorial to the victims was dedicated in the cemetery. Hannover lay in the British Occupation Zone but, since the victims were all
Russians, a Soviet delegation had been invited to attend the ceremony. Right: The memorial still stands, albeit without the Red Star that was removed by the city authorities in 1952. 55