The
Far East: January - September 1943
References
Patrolgram
18 War Patrols in the Far East Jan - Sep 43
Map 42 Indian Ocean and Malacca
Straits Jan - Sep 43
CHAPTER XII
TOOK SUBMARINE OPERATIONS in the Far East to the end of 1942
and it would be as well to refresh our memories of the situation
in the area at the beginning of 1943. It will be recalled
that after the Japanese First Air Fleets raid into the Indian
Ocean in April 1942, the British Eastern Fleet retired to
Kilindini in East Africa, virtually abandoning any attempt
to command the sea in the Bay of Bengal and concentrating
on the defence of sea communications to the Middle East, India
and Ceylon and the seizing of Madagascar. This policy was
successful only because of the Japanese Fleets defeats at
Midway and the Coral Sea by the US Navy during the summer
of 1942 and their subsequent involvement in the Guadalcanal
campaign. This meant that they had no ships to spare for the
Indian Ocean and all they could do was to base some submarines
at Penang to work on the east coast of Africa. The British
Eastern Fleet had therefore little to do and its ships were
taken away one by one for urgent duties at Home and in the
Mediterranean. The aircraft carrier Indomitable left in July
1942 to take part in the Pedestal convoy to Malta and Formidable
left shortly afterwards for the North African landings. In
January 1943 Illustrious left to refit followed by the battleships
Warspite and Valiant and the fleet virtually ceased to exist
except for escort forces for the convoys to India and the
Middle East. The few submarines on the station were the only
naval forces available to take the offensive at all. There
were just three operational submarines, Trusty
and the Netherlands O23 and O24 based on the elderly submarine
depot ship Lucia
at Colombo with the overflow accommodation vessels Wuchang
and Plancius1.
Rover
was still refitting in Bombay after her escape from Singapore
as well as the Netherlands KXI, but she was only fit for anti-submarine
training duties. The brand new submarine depot ship Adamant
was also on the station but was kept back at Kilindini to
maintain the destroyers and escort vessels of the Eastern
Fleet. The Netherlands depot ship Colombia2
had been sent to South Africa to service the surviving
Netherlands submarines3
from the East Indies on their way round the Cape to
refit in the United Kingdom or the United States.
The only offensive
operation contemplated in South East Asia at this time was
in Burma. It had been hoped in the Casablanca Conference in
January 1943, to retake the country during the autumn in order
to open up the Burma Road to supply China. A combined assault
was to be made by Chinese forces from the north, the British
Fourth Corps from Assam in the centre and a landing from the
sea to take Rangoon. Planning was in a very early stage and
as yet the naval and amphibious forces to land at Rangoon
were not available on the station. The whole question was
considered again after the Casablanca Conference and it was
agreed in principle and senior British and American officers
went on to India and China to discuss the matter further.
Shipping, however, could not be found to mount the Rangoon
landing, and naval forces were not available anyway to regain
command of the Bay of Bengal, so the offensive to retake Burma
was replaced in the plans by a great increase in the airlift
over the Himalayas to China. At the same time there were suggestions
that any forces available would be better employed for landings
in Sumatra and north Malaya. During the planning to retake
Burma, it is of interest that the Chinese Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-Shek insisted that if he was to commit his armies to invade
the country from the north, the British naval forces must
be strong enough to prevent the Japanese reinforcing their
armies by sea through Rangoon. The difficulties of providing
an Eastern Fleet when the ships were required at home and
in the Mediterranean turned the thoughts of the planners to
the use of submarines for this purpose. The submarine campaigns
at home and in the Mediterranean, however, clearly took priority
and submarine reinforcements were no more available than surface
ships. The three operational submarines on the station could
not even keep one continuously on patrol. These deliberations
have been followed because they affected submarine operations
in the area, but the whole offensive campaign came to nothing
in the end.
To date, patrols
in the Malacca Strait had three purposes. The first was to
give warning of any Japanese raids by surface forces, the
second was to interdict the sea traffic to Burma, and the
third was to try and catch Japanese submarines entering and
leaving their base at Penang. With offensive operations against
Sumatra and Malaya under consideration, an additional use
for submarines was seen. Intelligence of the area now became
important and the landing of agents and reconnaissance of
landing beaches began to take precedence over the earlier
purposes of submarine patrols.
In January
only two of the three operational submarines were available,
as O23 had returned from patrol in December with serious engine
defects, which kept her in dockyard hands until May. Trusty
(Lieutenant Commander EF Balston DSO RN) sailed from Colombo
on 4th January to carry out a long-range special operation that
had been planned for some time. It was to land agents near Cambodia
Point in French lndo China. The patrol required the cooperation
and assent of the US Navy, as it was to take place in their
area. It also required arrangements for Trusty
to fuel on the way. It was decided that she should proceed from
Colombo to Exmouth Gulf in Australia and would there fuel and
embark provisions. She reached Exmouth Gulf on 14th January,
having suffered engine defects on the way, and sailed again
on 17th passing through the Lombok and Karimata Straits. She
landed the agents successfully after dark on 4th February and
returned through the Karimata Strait to the Java Sea. Early
in the morning of 11th February, an unescorted merchant ship
was sighted steering towards Surabaya. Trusty
made a surface attack and fired at 600 yards but after only
one torpedo had been launched the enemy turned towards and opened
fire. Trusty
withheld the rest of the salvo and dived. Half an hour later,
however, she was able to surface and pursue the enemy reaching
a new firing position after an hour and firing four torpedoes
at a range of 2000 yards. One hit was obtained and the ship
was seen to sink eight minutes later4.On
the same day a northbound tanker was sighted and an attack begun.
The target, however, altered course towards at 900 yards and
the attack had to be broken off. Trusty
then withdrew through the Lombok Strait arriving at Exmouth
Gulf on 16th and Colombo on 27th February. She had been absent
for 54 days and had carried out her task to time in spite of
a number of defects in her main engines, which her ships company
had managed to rectify. It is of interest that by this time
the US Submarines in the Pacific had begun to take advantage
of signal intelligence. They were able to decrypt some 57 messages
in January and take advantage of 15 of them to sink four ships.
O24 (Luitenant
ter zee 1e Kl WJ de Vries) left Colombo on 14th January to make
a beach reconnaissance on the coast of Sumatra. This she completed
on 18th/19th, returning to Colombo on 24th January. O24 left
again on 7th February to patrol off Salang Island on the route
from Penang to Rangoon. Until 21st she only saw patrol craft
but then she sighted a northbound ship of medium size. She was
unable to get within torpedo range and so engaged with her gun.
She obtained a number of hits and the ship turned towards the
land but was lost sight of with a heavy list. This ship has
not been identified in Japanese records. O24 got back to Colombo
on 26th February.
In February
Colombia was recalled to Ceylon from South Africa as all the
Dutch submarines had now passed the Cape on their way home.
She was due for docking, so was sent to Simonstown. On passage
there on 27th February, escorted by the corvette Genista and
a training aircraft, she was torpedoed and sunk by U516 between
East London and Port Elizabeth. The loss of this ship was a
serious blow to the Royal Netherlands Navy, and from now on
the support and supply of their submarines in the Far East had
to be done by the Royal and United States Navies. At the end
of March, Adamant
was released from her duties at Kilindini in exchange for Lucia
and arrived at Colombo on 2nd April. Commander RMG Gambier RN
with the acting rank of Captain, took over command as Captain(S)
Fourth Submarine Flotilla relieving Captain RS Warne RN, who
had returned to the United Kingdom from Kilindini to become
Captain(S) Third Submarine Flotilla in the Clyde.
On 21st February,
O21 arrived in Colombo having exchanged a defective Vulcan clutch
with O19 in South Africa. The flotilla's strength was raised
to four submarines but not for long as Trusty
was due for refit and sailed for the United Kingdom on 5th April
round the Cape, reaching the Clyde on 28th June. The Fourth
Flotilla now consisted of three Netherlands submarines with
a British depot ship. O21 (Luitenant ter zee 1e Kl JF van Dulm)
sailed on 6th March on her first patrol for Port Blair in the
Andaman Islands. On 11th March, O21 sighted a small ship leaving
Port Blair but she did not attack as her operation orders instructed
her not to give away her position by attacking coasters. Next
day early in the morning before it was light, O21 picked up
the hydrophone effect of a ship entering Port Blair but did
not sight her. She confirmed the ship's presence in the harbour
by periscope reconnaissance during the day. On 12th the ship
left Port Blair and O21 fired four torpedoes at 1400 yards hitting
with two of them and sinking Kasuga Maru No.2 of 3967 tons.
Anti-submarine vessels came out to hunt O21 but she was undetected
and moved her patrol across to Salang Island. However no further
targets presented themselves and she left patrol for Colombo
on 19th March. O24 (Luitenant ter zee 1e Kl WJ de Vries) left
Colombo on 16th to complete the beach reconnaissance in Sumatra,
which she accomplished between 20th and 25th March returning
to Colombo by 29th.
In April,
O24 landed and recovered a reconnaissance party on islands off
the coast of Sumatra between 16th and 21st. O21 sailed from
Colombo on 11th April for another offensive patrol. She first
carried out a special operation on 18th April at Belawan Deli
in Sumatra and then took up her patrol position on the other
side of the Malacca Strait between Penang and Selangor. On 22nd
she pursued a northbound ship sighted just after midnight, which
was escorted by a torpedo boat. By dawn she had achieved an
attacking position and fired four torpedoes from 2000 yards,
hitting with two of them. The target, the passenger-cargo ship
Yamazato Maru of 6925 tons broke in two and caught fire. Both
halves later sank. The escort made a wildly inaccurate counter
attack on the wrong side of her charge and O21 was able to withdraw
unmolested. Next day, in much the same area, O21 attacked an
unescorted merchant ship but missed with two torpedoes fired
at 700 yards from her stern tubes. The target turned on to the
torpedo tracks and dropped three depth charges fortunately some
300 yards away. An aircraft and a torpedo boat then appeared
and hunted for two hours or so dropping further charges but
contact was not regained and O21 withdrew at silent speed. After
sighting a number of aircraft, she returned to Colombo on 29th
April after a second successful patrol.
In April 1943
the Netherlands submarine KXII, which was one of those that
withdrew from the Dutch East Indies to Australia in March
1942, had been used for intelligence missions in the Bali
Straits and Java Sea and had made a number of trips under
American operational control. She was, however, suffering
increasingly from defects and the US Command were keen to
replace her with a more modern Dutch submarine. Negotiations,
however, revealed the weakness of the Anglo-Dutch submarine
force in the Indian Ocean where, understandably, the British
were reluctant to release any of the modern Netherlands submarines.
The US Commander Submarines of the Seventh Fleet then offered
to help and sent the American submarine Grenadier to patrol
in the Malacca Strait. She was an experienced submarine on
her sixth war patrol and she found the Strait disappointingly
short of targets and a somewhat confined and dangerous hunting
ground. She nevertheless took up a position off Penang where
on 21st April she sighted a two-ship convoy and set off in
pursuit. After daylight she was nearly in an intercepting
position ahead of the convoy and was still on the surface
when an aircraft was sighted and she dived. She had got to
120 feet when there was a very heavy explosion aft from one
of the aircraft's bombs. This caused serious structural damage
and leaks near her main motors. Both propeller shafts were
bent and Grenadier dived out of control and hit the bottom
at 270 feet. Fire then broke out in the motor room and the
compartment was shut off. During the day strenuous efforts
were made to repair the damage and after dark she was brought
to the surface. She was, however, found to be immobile but
her radio survived and she was able to report her plight.
Japanese aircraft and the escort of a convoy then discovered
her. Grenadier shot down one enemy plane before abandoning
ship and scuttling her. The Japanese took prisoner the whole
crew. The US Navy at this time was also short of submarines
in this area and had only eight boats at Fremantle. Operations
in the Malacca Strait were not repeated by them5.
During May,
on 11th to be precise, O24 (Luitenant ter zee 1e Kl WJ de
Vries) left Colombo to patrol off Sabang where on 19th she
missed a westbound ship. She then moved to the southern part
of the Malacca Strait between the Sembilan Islands and the
One Fathom Bank. Here she sighted a number of patrol vessels
but nothing else and returned to Colombo arriving on 31st
May. O23 (Luitenant ter zee 1e KI AM Valkenburg) had now completed
her engine repairs and on 22nd left Colombo to patrol north
of Penang. The weather was bad throughout this patrol and
she saw nothing returning to Colombo on 6th June with more
engine defects. O23 was relieved north of Penang by O21 (Luitenant
ter zee 1e Kl JF van Dulm) from 28th May to 18th June but
she too had a completely blank patrol.
On 6th June,
Adamant
was ordered back to Kilindini because Lucia
could not cope, and the fleet repair ship Wayland had been
withdrawn for service elsewhere. Wuchang, which had been sent
to Trincomalee, was recalled to Colombo and the submarines
had to rely on her and on Plancius, and whatever help could
be provided by the civilian shipyard at Colombo. In June 1943,
too, KXII, which as we have seen was operating with the US
Navy in the South West Pacific, was found to have defects
which rendered her unfit for operational duties and she had
to be relegated to anti-submarine training. The intelligence
work on which she had been employed, however, was by no means
complete and after further negotiations between the American
and Netherlands Navies, it was decided that a more modern
submarine must replace her. O21 was selected for this duty
and she sailed from Colombo for Fremantle early in July to
join the US Commander Submarines of the South West Pacific
Area. It was decided also that she must be replaced in the
Fourth Submarine Flotilla and Trident
was sailed from Beirut in the Mediterranean at the end of
July by the Suez Canal and Red Sea for Colombo.
O23 (Luitenant
ter zee 1e Kl AM Valkenburg) sailed again on 15th June to
patrol between Penang and the One Fathom Bank and carried
out a special operation on 25th. Next day she missed a small
tanker with two torpedoes, which were set too deep and ran
under the target. She sighted nothing else except fishing
vessels and arrived back in Colombo on 6th July. O23 sailed
again for patrol on 24th July at short notice to investigate
a report that there was a concentration of shipping in Port
Blair in the Andaman Islands. O23 was, however, delayed on
passage by damage sustained in a heavy following sea to one
of her external fuel tanks. On 28th, south east of Port Blair
she had a fleeting contact with what was believed to be a
Japanese minelayer but she was forced to dive as the enemy
began to use a searchlight and dropped a depth charge. O23
went deep and contact was subsequently lost. She remained
off Port Blair for three days and there was considerable activity
by air and surface patrols. She then moved across to the southern
approach to Penang and carried out a special operation on
4th August. Next day after dark she encountered a small escorted
merchant ship and attempted a submerged attack in moonlight
but was unable to bring her torpedo tubes to the ready in
time. She then surfaced and pursued the enemy but was sighted
and forced to dive by gunfire from the escort. O23 left patrol
on 8th and returned to Colombo arriving on 16th August. This
was her last patrol as she was due to return to the United
Kingdom to refit. O24 (Luitenant ter zee 1e Kl WJ de Vries)
left Colombo on 30th July to patrol in the southern part of
the Malacca Strait. She saw a number of patrol craft and on
15th August she sighted a convoy of three ships northbound
from the One Fathom Bank. O24 endeavoured to make a submerged
attack by moonlight but lost contact for the somewhat unusual
reason that there was an eclipse of the moon. On 19th she
was south of Penang when she encountered a northbound tanker
that had no escort. She turned in to fire too late and 'missed
the DA' but got away four torpedoes after the enemy had passed
but they all missed. Next day she came upon a southbound ship
in the same area firing another four torpedoes, one of which
hit and sank Chosa Maru of 2538 tons.
On 12th August
Trident
(Lieutenant PE Newstead RN) arrived at Colombo from the Mediterranean6
and she was despatched on patrol to join O24 after only
three days in harbour. Her area was to be the southern part
of the Malacca Strait but on passage to it she developed a cracked
cylinder head in her starboard engine so her patrol position
was altered to the north east coast of Sumatra. On 24th she
was ordered to a position off Pub Weh with O24, who was still
on patrol, to intercept a U-boat that had been reported. No
U-boat was, however, sighted and O24 was ordered to return to
Colombo where she arrived on 29th August. She had been at sea
for thirty-one days and living conditions had been difficult
because of a failure in her battery cooling system. Trident
remained on patrol and on 29th August sighted the Japanese training
cruiser Kashii. She fired a salvo of eight torpedoes at a range
of 7500 yards and an explosion was heard and a hit claimed.
Post war research, however, does not confirm this. Next day
Trident
was hunted by anti-submarine vessels and a pattern of depth
charges was dropped close enough to damage her high power periscope.
She encountered antisubmarine vessels again on 2nd September
but evaded them, subsequently leaving patrol and arriving back
in Colombo on 10th September.
O23 sailed
for the United Kingdom to refit on 11th September and her voyage
was shortened, as she was able to go by the Suez Canal and the
Mediterranean arriving in Dundee by 4th November. She was followed
on 29th September by Trident,
whose engine defects could not be put right on the station and
which rendered her unfit for operations. The Fourth Submarine
Flotilla was now reduced to a single operational submarine,
which was O24. Reinforcements were, however, on the way. At
the end of July the Admiralty ordered C-in-C Mediterranean to
send six long-range submarines to the Far East and some of them
were already on their way. Meanwhile O24, left on her own, did
her best and sailed from Colombo to patrol south of Penang on
12th September. She had orders to carry out a special operation
on 20th in the Sembilan Islands, the orders for which forbade
her to attack a northbound convoy sighted earlier in the day.
On 25th in darkness and poor visibility, a large Japanese U-boat
was sighted in a flash of lightning, passing 100 yards astern
at 16 knots. An attempt was made to use O24's stern torpedo
tubes but contact was lost almost at once and the enemy escaped.
O24 remained another two days off Pub Weh in the hope of intercepting
another U-boat and left for Colombo on 29th September.
IN THE NINE
MONTHS covered by this chapter, Allied submarines in the Far
East had carried out seven special operations either to land
agents or make beach reconnaissances. These operations took
up much time and effort and are often criticised by submarine
officers as taking submarines away from their offensive or what
are thought to be their 'proper' functions. If any offensives
on a large scale in the area were contemplated, however, reconnaissance
was an essential element in their planning and submarines at
the time were the only way to make it. Submarines were able
to carry out ten torpedo attacks and one with the gun and fired
36 torpedoes sinking four ships of 16,430 tons and damaging
another of 4000 tons. Considering how few submarines were involved
and the paucity of targets, this performance was reasonable.
For giving warning of the sortie of Japanese surface forces
from the Malacca Strait, the few submarines available, although
better than nothing, were not of very much use. To be sure of
sighting an enemy, three or four submarines would have had to
be kept on patrol continuously and in practice there were never
more than two, generally only one and often none at all. It
was as well that the Japanese did not, during this period, attempt
anything.
To be effective
against the Japanese U-boats stationed at Penang, again a continuous
patrol of at least one submarine would be required off the northern
entrance to give any chance of success. In fact this was seldom
possible and in the whole nine months only one Japanese submarine
was sighted and this did not lead to an attack. The use of the
Malacca Strait as a supply line for the Japanese forces in Burma
does not seem to have been very important to them, although
obviously there was merit in trying to attack whatever traffic
came that way. Apart from living off the country, the Japanese
Army drew its war supplies mainly by the way it had invaded
Burma, that is through Siam, and were known to be connecting
the Burma and Siamese railway systems to improve this route.
With the removal
of all the heavy units of the Eastern Fleet for employment elsewhere
and its reduction to an escort force, able only to compete with
U-boats and surface raiders, it seems odd that so little attempt
was made to increase submarine strength in the area. The submarine
has always been considered the weapon of the weaker power, and
the Royal Navy was certainly the weaker power in the Indian
Ocean. For the planners, submarine strength did not look too
bad on paper with two British and seven Netherlands7
submarines allocated to the station. However one of the
British boats was in pieces in Bombay in the middle of a long
repair, one of the Netherlands submarines was fit only for anti-submarine
training and three or four of the others were refitting in the
United Kingdom or the United States or on passage to and from
refit. The need to return to Europe or America for dockyard
refits wasted a great deal of time, especially when the Cape
route had to be used. Before the war all the British, Netherlands
and American submarines in the Far East were refitted on the
station in the dockyards at Hong Kong, Singapore, Cavite and
Sourabaya and also in civil yards in Hong Kong, but all these
places were now in Japanese hands. The reason why no more submarines
were sent to the Far East was obvious. They were wanted more
in the Mediterranean and on the Home station. So the area had
to be left almost entirely to the submarines of the Royal Netherlands
Navy and they 'held the fort' during this period with skill
and perseverance. That the overall strategy, which left the
Far East so weak, did not lead to disaster was mainly Pacific
kept the whole Japanese Fleet busy with nothing to due to the
United States Navy whose operations in the spare for the Indian
Ocean.
