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Tragic end remembered
Volume 50, No. 14, August 09, 2007 |
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| DEATH THROES: HMAS Canberra, right, abandoned before it was sunk. |
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Seaman B. Barnes saw the horrible wakes of the first three torpedoes that led to the sinking of HMAS Canberra on August 9, 1942.
Barnes, of Brisbane, a member of the crew of one of the 4in AA guns, was quoted in The Argus newspaper in Melbourne on August 21, 1942, as saying the first of the torpedoes seemed to go right under the heavy cruiser.
August 9 marks the 65th anniversary of the early-morning attack on the ship from a powerful Japanese cruiser force in the opening shots of the Battle of Savo Island in the Solomon Islands group.
“I was blown right off the ship into the water,” Barnes told The Argus. “I swam round for half an hour, and then I found a raft and climbed on to it. It was pitch dark. I sang out to find out if there was anyone else about, but no one answered. I hadn’t been on the raft long when ships began firing all around me, so I slipped off the raft into the water, and floated holding on to the raft. I could see Canberra, and I saw a destroyer go alongside to take off the wounded. I was in the water for four hours before the light came and an American ship picked me up.”
HMAS Canberra was hit 24 times in less than two minutes and 84 of her crew were killed including Captain Frank Getting. HMAS Canberra was sunk the next day by a torpedo from a US destroyer.
HMAS Canberra had been part of a US Navy-RAN force screening American transports during the landing operations of US marines at Guadalcanal, which begun on August 7, 1942.
A failure of Allied intelligence and vigilance resulted in this screening force being surprised by a determined group of seven Japanese cruisers and a destroyer near Savo Island just before 2am on August 9, 1942.
HMAS Canberra, as the lead ship, was the first to be attacked and received the full force of the Japanese barrage. In the darkness and confusion the rampaging Japanese attackers wreaked havoc with other vessels before withdrawing. However, despite this significant setback landing operations at Guadalcanal continued.
HMAS Canberra was laid down in Scotland and commissioned on July 9, 1928.
After five months in British waters, Canberra arrived in Australia in 1929.
During the first nine months of World War II, Canberra performed escort duty in her home waters and the Tasman Sea.
In early 1941 Canberra was involved in the fruitless hunt for the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer. In March, Canberra and HMS Leander intercepted the German supply ship Coburg and the former Norwegian tanker Ketty Brovig, which had been taken the previous month by the raider Atlantis.
Visit the Sea Power Centre on http://www.navy.gov.au/spc/
More information:
Battle of Savo Island — loss of HMAS Canberra: www.navy.gov.au/spc/history/general/savo.html
HMAS Canberra (D33) on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Canberra_(1927)
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