PROUD: HMAS Tarakan at dusk in East Timor.

Photo: POPH Damian Pawlenko

By Priscilla Alchin

Many Royal Australian Navy ships have been named in honour of past battles, and so not surprisingly, since the Second World War, two RAN ships have been named HMAS Tarakan.

As the battle for Tarakan was an amphibious operation carried out predominantly by RAN units it sealed an important victory in the final year of the war.

Tarakan Island had fallen to the Japanese in January 1942, with the island’s rich oil fields being the main objective of the invasion force. Oil fields that prior to the war had produced annually 6,000,000 barrels of the world’s purest oil.

The convoy to Tarakan carried nearly 13,000 troops in a convoy of 150 ships. HMAS Westralia carried 1,047 officers and men including the 2/24th Battalion, AIF; HMAS Manoora had a crew plus men of the 2/48th Battalion, AIF, totalling 1,180.

Each ship had a LCT and HMA Ships Barcoo, Burdekin and Hawkesbury accompanied them.

The main assault force left Morotai, where they had been rehearsing the landing, on April 27. TG 74.3, RADM Berkey, USN, comprising of the US cruisers Phoenix and Boise, HMA Ships Hobart and Warramunga, and five US destroyers, met with the Hydrographic and Minesweeping Group.

The following day the first bombardments took place from USS Phoenix and HMAS Hobart’s 6-inch guns. These bombardments continued the next day.

On the 30th, a landing was made on nearby Sadau Island, to set up an artillery battery of 25-pounder guns to cover the landings the next day.

Covered by destroyers of TG 74.3 including HMAS Warramunga, the landings went smoothly until USS Jenkins hit a mine. Warramunga attempted to take her in tow but was unsuccessful; Jenkins however managed to return to the main task group under her own steam.

The naval bombardment commenced at 0640 on the morning of May 1, 1945.

The bombardment ended at 0830 and the first wave of landings commenced. There was no opposition and the landings were successful.

This due in a great part also by the RAN Commando “B” beach parties, the first time a RAN Commando unit had undertaken an operation. Eighteen officers and 113 ratings were divided into four groups, three on Tarakan and one on Sadau.

Two were killed and one wounded when under enemy fire on the May 2.

Enemy resistance ceased on June 23. The first HMAS Tarakan was originally LST (Landing Ship Tank) 3017, loaned to the RAN by the RN.

She was commissioned into the RAN on July 11 1946 and renamed HMAS Tarakan on December 16 1948. Tarakan was used as a general-purpose vessel; mostly to dump condemned ammunition out at sea.

Tragedy struck on January 25 1950 when an explosion on board whilst alongside Garden Island, Sydney, resulted in seven sailors and one dockyard worker being killed.

Twenty-two seamen were trapped in the mess and rescued by two dockyard workers, Frank Geddes, a 50-year-old welder, and John McComas, a 22-year-old boilermaker.

They cut a hole in the side of the vessel, sustaining burns and overcome from the smoke, allowing rescue parties to enter the burning vessel and rescue those inside.

The present day HMAS Tarakan is a LCH (Landing Craft Heavy) based at HMAS Cairns, and is herself a ship of heroes.

Whilst the LCH was on duties in the Solomon Islands in June 3, 2004, WO Ian Chill fell into a cave and was rescued by his crewmates in a rescue mission that lasted more than eight hours.

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