Back at the height of the Red Storm Rising days of the Cold War, the Soviet Project 1164 Atlant (Slava-class) guided missile cruisers were scary. At 611-feet overall and 11,500-tons full load, they were bigger than anything the West had with the exception of the one-offs USS Long Beach (CGN-9) and HMS Blake (C99).
After all, with a COGOG suite that allowed for at least 32 knots, powerful (for the Soviets) over-the-horizon sensors, and 16 bus-sized SS-N-12 Sandbox anti-ship missiles– each capable of carrying 2200-pounds of high explosives or a tactical nuke at Mach 3+ to ranges thought to exceed 300nm– they looked a lot like carrier-killers, especially if used in congested waters and/or in conjunction with waves of cruise-missile carrying Backfire/Bear bombers.
It should be no surprise that the ONI made a special effort to capture and disseminate good images of Slava and her sisters, back in the days when HUMINT behind the Iron Curtain often ended up in a basement with a Makarov.
A bow view of the Soviet cruiser SLAVA, 8.11.1986 Note those 16 big SS-N-12 Sandboxes. DN-ST-86-11108
A vertical view of the Soviet guided missile cruiser SLAVA underway, 6.20.86 DN-SN-87-06825
A port quarter view of the Soviet guided missile cruiser SLAVA underway 1.29.86 DN-SN-87-06829
A port beam view of the Soviet guided missile cruiser SLAVA underway 1.28.86. She has carried several hull numbers over the years, with the most recent being 121. DN-SC-86-03642.
While ADM Sergey Gorshkov– Brezhnev’s decoration-girded Mahan, Tirpitz, or Jacky Fisher– planned for at least 10 of these big cruisers, only three were completed by the end of the Cold War. Bigtime prestige ships that signaled the old powerful days of Yakov Smirnoff jokes, the modern Russian Navy kept those three in flagship roles– with Slava (now Moskova) in the Black Sea Fleet, Ustinov in the Northern Fleet, and Varyag in the Pacific Fleet– even if they rarely left port.
ex-Slava, 2022 Russian Black Sea flagship Moskova (121), in a pre-Ukrainian War photo. Certainly still a handsome ship even at 40 years old.
With the Montreux Convention limiting foreign naval assets deploying into the Black Sea and Turkey, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria having nothing comparable, Slava/Moskova has been the most powerful warship afloat in those ancient waters for some time.
She gained prominence in the Snake Island (“F You, Russian Warship”) incident last month (yes, I know those guys didn’t die) and the Ukrainians even issued– this week, a stamp to commemorate it, showing a sole Border Guard with an AK standing off with Slava/Moskova.
All of which leads us up to the news that Moskova has reportedly been hit by two Ukrainian RK-360MC Neptune shore-launched anti-ship missiles yesterday as the ship’s very formidable air defenses were being diverted by a low-flying TB-2 drone or two.
These big guys:
Able to operate well inland from the coastline with OTH targeting cues, the domestically produced AShM is a rough equivalent of Harpoon based on the Soviet Kh-35 (SS-N-25 Switchblade) anti-ship missile with a smaller warhead and longer range.
There seems to be some fire to the proverbial smoke on this, and the Russian Defense Ministry had issued a statement, repeated on state media, that a fire had caused munitions to explode and the crew had been fully evacuated.
This jives with reports that the big Russian cruiser was broadcasting SOS messages in morse and over voice channels in the clear.
Timeline:
01.00 Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation announced the fire and the following explosion of ammunition on the Moskova. The department is talking about the fire on the cruiser. The causes of the fire are being established.
01.05 from Moskova, an SOS signal was sent
01.14 as a result of fire and explosion, Moskova began evacuation and listed to port.
01.47 On Moskova, the power has completely disappeared. Everything is bad.
02.07 In Turkey, they claim that 99.99 percent within an hour Moskova may sink (54 sailors from the cruiser were saved by a Turkish ship. )
02.48 In Turkey and Romania, new outlets say that the cruiser Moskova has sank.
Likewise, the Montreux Convention means Russia cannot replace any losses of ships in the Black Sea Fleet with other Russian Navy vessels.
If Moskova has in fact been sunk, it would be the largest warship since ARA General Belgrano (C-4)/ex-USS Phoenix (CL-46), was sent to the bottom almost exactly 40 years ago in the Falklands, dispatched by a trio of three WWII-era unguided Mk 8 mod 4 torpedoes from HMS Conqueror (S48).
It would also be the first Russian cruiser sunk since the Admiral Nakhimov-class light cruiser Chervona Ukraina was sunk in November 1941 by German aircraft (Ju 87, Stuka’s from II./StG.77) at Sevastopol.
Chervona Ukraina (Soviet Cruiser, 1915-41) photographed in 1935 or later, probably at Istanbul. Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 89395
As an interesting sidenote, Chervona Ukraina was laid down at Nikolayev on the Black Sea as Nakhimov under the Tsar and was renamed Bogdan Khmelnitsky while on the ways by the Skoropadskyi Ukrainian breakaway government in 1919, making her kinda-sorta a Ukrainian cruiser for a minute.
Nonetheless, increasingly, it appears the Russians have feet of clay.
Warship Wednesday, April 13, 2022: The Example and Inspiration Remain
Here we see the sail of the British U-class submarine HMS/m Upholder (N99)with her only skipper, LCDR Malcolm David Wanklyn, VC, DSO, RN, pointing in the distance for the camera as the White Duster flaps in the breeze behind the boat’s attack periscope. Upholder is a legend, which we will get into, although her short yet brilliant career came to a tragic end 80 years ago this week.
The U-class was “Small Patrol Submarines” and simple, under 200-feet overall, and able to float in just 16 feet of water. Even in their largest format and ballasted down they only weighed about 700 tons. Carrying two diesels and two electric motors with no direct diesel drive they weren’t the fastest boats in the sea, capable of just 11 knots in a surface attack, but they made up for it in wartime use in the congested seas of the Mediterranean.
Armed with four 21-inch bow tubes and a few .303 Vickers guns, they were fitted with a single 3-inch deck gun forward of the sail.
They carried a single QF 3-inch 20 cwt gun forward, with shells handed up by hand from below decks
Standard U-type plan, with four forward tubes and none to the rear as there just wasn’t the space.
While most had “U” names, nine only received alpha-numeric designations (P32, P33, P36, P38, P39, P41, P47, P48, and P52) and four had “V” monikers (Varangian, Vandal, Varne, and Vox).
The first completed, HMS/m Undine (N48), joined the fleet on 21 August 1938 and the 49th, HMS/m Vox (P73) commissioned on 20 December 1943 while five units (Ulex, Unbridled, Upas, Upward, and Utopia) were canceled.
Our boat was a little different and was one of the seven (Undine, Unity, Ursala, Unique, Upright, and Utmost) completed with an extra pair of bow tubes, which gave them six forward tubes and a total load of 10 torpedoes, while the other members of the class just carried four and eight.
A great shot of Ursula tied to a buoy where you can note her extra two bow tubes and distinctive “nose.” Upholder and five others had this same arrangement. Of interest, Ursula fired the first British submarine torpedoes of the war when she attacked the German U-35 just eight days after Hitler crossed into Poland and would also count coup on the light cruiser Leipzig shortly after. IWM FL 20784
English built at Vickers Armstrong, Barrow-in-Furness, Upholder was one of a dozen sisters on 4 September 1939 just hours into WWII, was laid down 30 October 1939, and was commissioned one year and one day later on Halloween 1940.
Her skipper from shakedown through loss was “Wanks” Wanklyn, who, of note, was colorblind, a fact that never seemed to affect his nighttime attacks at sea.
Lt Commander Malcolm David Wanklyn VC, DSO, left, with his First Lieutenant, Lt J R D Drummond, both of HMS Upholder, 13 January 1942. IWM A 7293, Russell J E (Lt), Royal Navy official photographer.
Born in British India in 1911, he stoked an early interest in the sea and applied to the Royal Navy in his early teens, leaving for Dartmouth Naval College at age 14 and finishing at the top of his class as a mid in 1929. After service on Great War battlewagons HMS Marlborough and Renown, he was a lieutenant in the Submarine Service by 1933, serving on HMS/m Oberon, L56, and Shark in the lead up to the war, including tense service in the Spanish Civil War. Starting WWII as the first lieutenant on HMS/m Otway in the then-sleepy waters of the Med, he was given his first command, the cramped little HMS/m H31, in early 1940, and commanded that boat on its 5th and 6th War Patrols in the North Sea, sinking the German auxiliary patrol vessel UJ 126/Steiermark (422 GRT, built 1938) on 18 July off the Dutch coast then bringing his boat back safely after the ensuing depth charge attacks by her fellow surface escorts.
In short, Upholder’s first skipper was a regular officer with a decade of service– most of it in subs– under his belt and was ready for a fight.
Malta!
After trials and working-up in Home waters at the end of 1940, covering her first two War Patrols, Upholder was dispatched to join the 10th Submarine Flotilla in Malta on 10 December. The 10th, composed of over a dozen U-class boats (including two sailing under Free Polish control), was in January 1941 put under the control of Commander George Walter Gillow “Shrimp” Simpson, RN as Commander (Submarines), Malta. Based at Lazaretto, near Grand Harbour, Shrimp had one marching order: to stop all supplies from Italy making for the Axis troops in North Africa.
HMS/m Urge inboard of HMS/m Upholder at Malta in WWII as part of the 10th Submarine Flotilla. Observe the difference between the two classmates as Upholder has her twin external bow tubes plus four internals, giving her a prominent nose, whereas Urge only has the quartet of bow tubes. Of note, Urge was also remarkably successful, sinking the Italian cruiser Giovanni dalle Bande Nere among some 74,669 tons of shipping and damaging the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto. She was lost after meeting a minefield in late April 1942, on passage from Malta to Alexandria with all hands including Bernard Gray, a reporter for Sunday Pictorial, who was unlucky enough to gain passage through the offices of his friend, Lord Gort.
Besides daily harassment from Axis air raids at Malta, the life of the 10th Flotilla was anything but business as usual.
As detailed in British Submarines of WWII:
The Mediterranean is a very difficult hunting ground for submarines, in some places deep and clear, the outline of a submerged craft is visible for miles. In many places where the 10th Flotilla operated, the sea was very shallow and was poorly charted at that time, causing many a submarine to bump along the bottom during an attack. Ultra-shallow seas forced submarines to caution in those areas where the depth was such to allow the laying of mines, and closer to the coast they would be avoiding hordes of small craft housed in many bases to hunt down and attack submarines. The whole operating area for the Malta submarines was within the range of land-based reconnaissance aircraft. Mirages also created confusion as land and other objects appeared to be distant aircraft carriers or enemy ships. Another problem, mainly encountered near the Northern coasts, was that of the many rivers emptying fresh water into the Mediterranean; this would cause serious ‘layering’, where a submarine might ‘drop’ 100 feet in seconds in the less buoyant water. Off the Tunisian coast, another problem was encountered, what to do about enemy ships in French territorial waters. With the advance of the enemy along the North African coastline, more ports became available for the handling of the essential supplies, resulting in a greater dispersal of shipping.
Nonetheless, Upholder was off on her first of 26 Mediterranean War Patrols on 24 January 1941 and was off to a busy campaign. On 25 April, she sank the 5,428-ton Italian freighter Antonietta Lauro, then a week later bagged the German cargo ships Arcturus (2,576 GRT) and Leverkusen (7,382 GRT).
While on her 10th Med War Patrol on the night of 24 May, despite his Sub’s vital listening gear being out of action, Upholder came across a heavily escorted troop convoy just east of Siracusa, Sicily, and picked as her target a ripe troopship.
From her report:
2030 hours – Sighted three very large two-funnel liners in position 36°48’N, 15°42’E. Course was 215°. Closed to attack. It was later seen that there were at least four destroyers but most likely six.
2043 hours – Fired the last two torpedoes at the centre ship which was the biggest. The nearest destroyer (a Grecale-class) was then only 400 yards ahead. Upholder went to 150 feet upon firing and retired to the East. Two explosions were heard about a minute after firing.
2047 hours – Depth charging started. In all 37 depth charges were dropped. The last four at 2107 hours were very close. No damage was sustained.
2120 to 2125 hours – The target was heard to sink.
2250 hours – Surfaced and passed a report to Malta. There was a strong smell of fuel oil in the breeze upon surfacing.
Her victim that night was the 18,000-ton former trans-oceanic passenger liner SS Conte Rosso, built in 1922, sunk with the last of Upholder’s torpedos. The Scottish-built liner was pressed into service as a troopship then torpedoed and sunk on 24 May 1941 in a convoy to North Africa by Upholder. Of the 2,729 soldiers and crew aboard headed to Tripoli, she instead took 1,297 to the bottom with her.
Italian Line’s SS Conte Rosso is shown with her neutrality markings on her side in a photo taken in the late 1930s. NH 91277
The incident, specifically the heavy depth charging after, was dramatized in the 2018 cable series, Hell Below: Defying Rommel.
Stacking up the tonnage
Upholder would soon sink a further three freighters– including the Italian cargo ship Laura Cosulich (6,181 GRT) which carried a vital load of explosives– then move firmly into the history books during her 17th War Patrol. On 18 September 1941, accompanied by HMS/m Unbeaten, Upright, and Ursula, Upholder torpedoed three large escorted Italian transports off Tripoli, sinking two and damaging a third.
Closing at night at full speed on the surface the little submarine managed to get into a good firing position despite six escorting Italian destroyers and her torpedoes mortally wounded the converted liners Neptunia and Oceania, each of 19,500 tons and full of reinforcements for North Africa.
From her report:
0350 hours – Sighted convoy of three lines escorted by four destroyers bearing 045°. Range was about 6 nautical miles. Closed to attack.
0406 hours – In position 33°01’N, 14°49’E fired four torpedoes from 5000 yards.
0408 hours – Dived and retired to the South.
0410 – 0411 hours – Two explosions were heard. Two of the liners had been hit by one torpedo each. No depth charges were dropped following the attack.
0445 hours – Surfaced and sighted one large vessel stopped in the area of the attack. One destroyer was nearby. A second large vessel was making to the Westward at 5 knots with another destroyer as escort. Set course to the East to reach a favourable attack position to attack again after dawn when the torpedo tubes would have been reloaded.
0530 hours – Dived and approached while reloading in the meantime.
0630 hours – Sighted one Oceania-class ship still stropped with one destroyer nearby. Closed to attack.
0756 hours – When about to open fire a Navigatori-class destroyer was spotted close by. Went deep. The destroyer went overhead when Upholder was at 45 feet but did not drop any depth charges.
0759 hours – Dived under the target while at 70 feet to obtain a new attack position.
0851 hours – In position 32°58’N, 14°50’E fired two torpedoes from 2000 yards. Both hit. The liner [Oceania] sank after 8 minutes. Again no counter attack by the destroyers followed.
A huge rescue operation mounted by the destroyers managed to save 5,400 German and Italian troops, who were sent back to Europe soggy and sans equipment, but the sea claimed at least 384.
Italian troopship Oceania as she sinks after being torpedoed by HMS Upholder on September 18, 1941
Detail of the above
Besides sidelining whole brigades of Italian soldiers, Upholder also took a toll on the Regia Marina, sinking the Italian Maestrale-class destroyer Libeccio, the minesweeper Maria (B 14), as well as the submarines Tricheco and Ammiraglio Saint-Bon.
Libeccio survived the disastrous Naples-Tripoli BETA (Duisburg) Convoy– annihilated midway across the Med by Bill Agnew’s cruiser and destroyers of Force K on 8 November– only to be torpedoed the next day by HMS Upholder.
At the height of Upholder’s success, Wanklyn was presented a VC in a quiet ceremony in Malta in January 1942, surrounded by his boat’s happy crew.
The problem is every story has an ending and some have a noticeably short third act.
On her 28th War Patrol– her last sortie before she was to head to Britain for refit– Upholder was sent on 6 April 1942 to land two SIS agents in Tunisia then patrol the western approaches to Tripoli along with sistership Urge. While the agents were safely put ashore on 10 April, Upholder was not heard from again.
On 16 April, Urge heard the distant explosions of continuous depth-charging. Two days later, Italian radio reported an Allied submarine had been sunk.
With Upholder and the 33 souls aboard missing, Shrimp Simpson wrote:
I hope it is not out of place to take this opportunity of paying some slight tribute to Lt Cdr David Wanklyn, VC, DSO, and his company in HMS Upholder, whose brilliant record will always shine in the records of British submarines and in the history of the Mediterranean Fleet in this war. The Upholder would have returned to the United Kingdom on completion of this patrol. She had carried out 23 successful attacks against the enemy, and the targets attacked had almost always been heavily escorted, or else enemy war vessels.
Epilogue
On 18 April 1942, the Admiralty reported HMS/m Upholder missing, perhaps mined off Tripoli.
On 22 August, with no contact from Wanklyn and crew for over four months, the Admiralty announced (emphasis mine):
It is seldom proper for the Their Lordships to draw distinction between different services rendered in the course of naval duty, but they take this opportunity of singling out those of HMS Upholder, under the command of Lt.Cdr. David Wanklyn, for special mention. She was long employed against enemy communications in the Central Mediterranean, and she became noted for the uniformly high quality of her services in that arduous and dangerous duty. Such was the standard of skill and daring set by Lt.Cdr. Wanklyn and the officers and men under him that they and shier ship became an inspiration not only to their own flotilla, but to the Fleet of which it was a part and to Malta, where for so long HMS Upholder was based. The ship and her company are gone, but the example and inspiration remain.
While debate ensues on what happened to Upholder— theories include a sinking by the Italian Orsa-class torpedo boat Pegaso, German bombers, or a minefield– Upholder remains on eternal patrol and her wreck has not been found. She is keeping her secrets.
In terms of tonnage, the Upholder is considered to be the most successful of all British submarines.
According to U-boat.net, the “official” Admiralty figures are a bit overstated, but even the trimmed down data is impressive:
Postwar it was reported that HMS Upholder had sunk two destroyers, three submarines, three transports, ten supply ships, two tankers and one trawler, totaling 128353 GRT during her career. This figure was a bit optimistic, Given our detailed history listed below, HMS Upholder sank one destroyer, two submarines, nine supply ships (including three large troop transports and no tankers. Total tonnage sunk was 93031 GRT.
One of her victims, the 6,100-ton freighter Laura Cosulich, has gone on to a sort of infamy of her own. Sunk in shallow water off Saline Ioniche, Calabria, her 1,500-ton cargo of munitions has been extensively farmed by illegal salvagers for the benefit of the Mafia, who have used it as a “bomb supermarket” over the decades. The Italian navy sealed it off in 2015 and it is inspected routinely.
Upholder has been remembered extensively in maritime art and special stamp runs.
May 1981 40th anniversary of Upholder’s loss special issue
Zambia 948 MNH Royal Navy Submarines, Commander Wanklyn
HMS Upholder sinking Italian destroyer Libeccio by Raymond Dominic Agius
As is Wanks, who has an official portrait that he never had a chance to sit for, handing in a place of honor at the RN’s Submarine Museum.
Wankins’ portrait at RN Submarine Museum
The Submarine Museum has a mockup of her jolly roger on display as well.
In September 1944, with so few Axis targets left, the hardworking 10th Submarine Flotilla disbanded just three months after the last British boat sunk in the Mediterranean, HMS/m Sickle, became the Royal Navy’s 45th submarine loss in the ancient sea. Between June 1940 and the end of 1944, RN submarines in the Med had accounted for over 1 million tons of enemy shipping including three cruisers, at least 30 destroyers, torpedo boats, and several German and Italian submarines.
To be sure, had Rommel benefited from all the gear and stores that Shrimp Simpson’s dozen U-class boats, Upholder included, deep-sixed, Montgomery’s 8th Army would have had a tougher go of it as the Afrika Korps and its Italian allies would have been a much bigger gorilla to spank. This could have drawn the North African campaigns out longer, pushing the Atlantic Allies’ invasion of Sicily, Italy, and France even further down the calendar, and given Stalin a bigger role in the end game.
As for Shrimp Simpson, he would retire to New Zealand in 1954 as a Rear Admiral, after having served as Flag Officer Submarines/NATO COMSUBFORLANT.
Of Upholder’s sisters, the U-class itself took lots of lumps, losing besides class leader HMS/m Undine early in the war along with Unity (N66), Umpire (N82), Unbeaten (N93), Undaunted (N55), Union (N56), Unique (N95), Urge (N17), Usk (N65), Utmost (N19), Usurper (P56), P32, P33, P36, P38, P39, P41 (sailing as HNoMS Uredd under Free Norwegian command), P48, Vandal (P64) (who had the shortest life of any British submarine, lost just four days after commissioning), for a total of 19 submarines sunk– 13 in the Mediterranean and six in the Atlantic and the North Sea. This jumps to 20 if you count HMS/m Untamed (P58) which was lost while during training in 1943 due to a bad sluice valve then salvaged and recommissioned as HMS/m Vitality only to be scrapped less than two years later.
Postwar, with the class considered too small and slow by late 1940s standards, the survivors were quickly passed on to allies needing low-mileage and easy-to-use submarines (P47 to Holland, P52 to Poland then later Denmark, Untiring and Upstart to Greece, Upright to Poland, Varne to Norway, Vox to France, Unbroken, Unison and Ursula to Russia) or scrapped (Ultimatum, Umbra, Unbending, Una, United, Unrivalled, Unruffled, Unruly, Unseen, Ultor, Unshaken, Unsparing, Universal, Unswerving, Uproar, Uther, and Varangian).
Janes only listed 7 U-class submarines as being active in the Royal Navy in the 1946 edition.
The final units in British hands were withdrawn by 1950.
The last repatriated from overseas loans (Untiring and Upstart after service with the Greeks as Xifias and Amfitriti respectively) were sunk as sonar targets by the Royal Navy in 1957 and 1959. The holdout of the nearly 50 mighty British U-class boats, HNoMS Ula (P66), ex HMS/m Varne, continued in Norwegian service until 1965, when she was broken up, ironically, in Hamburg, having served just 23 years, most of them for King Haakon VII.
HNoMS Ula (P66), ex HMSm Varne in Norwegian service
Upholder was the first RN warship to carry the name while the second was given to the lead ship of the Type 2400 Patrol Submarines– Britain’s last diesel-electric boats.
HMS Upholder (S40), like her namesake built at VSEL, Barrow-in-Furness, led a class of four boats that repeated at least two of the names of the old U-class: Unseen, Ursula, and Unicorn. While MoD retired the class early, they were sold to the Royal Canadian Navy where they continue to serve today as the Victoria class, sadly, under new names.
Canadian submarine HMCS Victoria, ex HMS Upholder
Specs:
HMS-upholder-submarine by Dr Dan Saranga Blueprints.com
Displacement Surfaced – 540 tons standard, 630 tons full load Submerged – 730 tons Length 191 ft Beam 16 ft 1 in Draught 15 ft 2 in Propulsion 2 shaft diesel-electric 2 Paxman Ricardo diesel generators + electric motors 615 / 825 hp Speed 11+1⁄4 knots max. surfaced 10 knots max. submerged Complement: 27–31 Armament 4 × bow internal 21-inch torpedo tubes, 2 externals 10 torpedoes 1 × QF 3-inch 20 cwt gun
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.
The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force a couple of weeks ago commissioned that country’s second new Mogami-class multi-mission stealth frigate, just four years after she was ordered. The JS Kumano (FFM-2) is modern and roughly the same size (5,500-tons, 426 ft oal) as the now-retired Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7) class frigates but better armed with a 5″/54, eight anti-ship missiles, a 16 cell VLS with the option for quad packed ESSMs– giving her 48 medium-range missiles in addition to her 10-cell SeaRAM system– as well as ASW and anti-small boat weapons.
She also has a hangar for a single MH-60 type and can launch UUV, USV, and sea mines from the rear ramp under her helideck.
Interestingly, she quickly received a splinter camouflage scheme, something that is increasingly the rage in the West Pac.
All in all, the U.S. Navy would have been much better buying a couple dozen of these rather than the LCS debacle, but who wants to rub salt in that multi-billion dollar wound.
Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano anchored at Rabaul, with a Mitsubishi F1M Pete reconnaissance seaplane in the foreground, December 4-5, 1942
She had participated in the invasion of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, the bird-dogging of Royal Navy Task Force Z (HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse), Operation C in the Indian Ocean, Midway– where she caused the infamous collision between the cruisers Mikuma and Mogami– and the assorted battles for the Solomons.
Born 27 July 1929, Henry Patterson grew up poor in Northern Ireland. A good lad, he did his two years of national service in the late 1940s, first with the East Yorks, then as an NCO with the Blues & Royals along the East German border during the tense period that included the Berlin Airlift.
After the Army, he went back to school and became a teacher, then, at age 30, started writing and never stopped.
Writing under his own name and the pseudonyms James Graham, Martin Fallon, and Hugh Marlowe, you probably know him best as Jack Higgins.
When I was a kid in elementary school, I read The Eagle Has Landed and Storm Warning (in my opinion his best book) and they were my first “war novels,” starting me on a road from which I have never felt the need to look back.
Henry Patterson last week passed away at his home in the Channel Islands, on 9 April 2022, aged 92, with at least 85 books and several screenplays under his belt.
Thank you for your work, sir. I owe you more than you could have ever known.
As a salute, the film version of The Eagle Has Landed, with the magnificent Sir Michael Cain (a Fusiliers veteran of Korea) and that anti-war hippy Donald Sutherland.
Lt. Col. Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller, the most decorated Marine in American history, fulfills his solemn duties as Davy Jones during a Neptunus Rex Shellback ceremony in April 1942 aboard the Heywood-class attack transport USS Fuller (AP-14/APA-7). Aboard Fuller on the way to Wellington, New Zealand, (and then to Guadalcanal a few months later) Chesty and his men of the 7th Marines had departed Norfolk on 10 April and, transiting “The Ditch” at the Panama Canal, “Crossed the Line” into the South Pacific shortly after.
Note his lifebelt and M1917 Navy cutlass, an item that some Marines would continue to carry ashore for use in clearing brush during jungle fighting in 1942. (Collections OFFICIAL USMC PHOTOGRAPH)
Formerly the steamer SS City of Newport News of the Baltimore Steamship Company, Fuller was laid down for the British as War Wave as a “444 class” vessel during the Great War but never made it to wear a red duster. Completed too late to carry goods to fight the Kaiser, she spent her interbellum service working for a series of American shippers.
Once things started looking bad in late 1940, the Navy acquired all five of the class then sailing under a U.S. flag and converted them into troop transports, a process that took three to five months. Ready to fight with four 3″/50s and 20 assorted 40mm/20mm AAA guns, they could carry as many as 1,200 troops and deploy them ashore via their own embarked landing craft.
USS Fuller (AP-14) Fine-screen halftone reproduction of a photograph taken in 1941. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1978. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 86975
Named after former Marine Corps Commandants (Heywood, George F. Elliott, Fuller, William F. Biddle, Neville) they earned almost 30 battle stars between them in fighting across the Pacific (Biddle also took part in the Torch landings while both Biddle and Neville were in the Husky landings as well). One of the class, Elliot, was lost off Guadalcanal to Japanese aircraft during the August 1942 landings. The remaining vessels were quietly scrapped in the 1950s.
“Jamboree Day” on USS Yorktown (CV-5), 10 April 1942. Parading the last T-bone steak on board. Two sailors displaying a sign that reads “Special Slide Show. Big T-Bone Steak. The only one in captivity. 10 cents a peek. Do Not Touch.”
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 95570
Note the Marines with newly-issued M-1 (Garand) rifles and fixed bayonets surrounding the steak and the clarinet player with beard and sunglasses.
At the extreme right is the tail of an F4F-3 Wildcat fighter (Bureau # 3999) that had been transferred to Fighting Squadron 42 (VF-42) from Fighting Squadron Two (VF-2) in March 1942. Note Bombing Squadron Five (VB-5) SBD-3 aircraft parked in the background and volleyball net in the upper center.
Yorktown, still nursing grave damage from the Battle of Coral Sea, would be sunk at Midway less than two months after this somber celebration.
Fighting Two and Bombing Five would go on to fight another day, as would another carrier with the name Yorktown, and by 1945 steaks would be back on the menu.
As we have touched on in past articles, the Dutch East Indies had its own army, totally separate from the one based in Europe, that dated back to 1814– the Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger, or KNIL. Coming up on the losing side (among good company) against the Empire of Japan in 1942, the KNIL was rebuilt in exile with the “Free Dutch” forces that ran a clandestine infiltration and intelligence gathering campaign behind Japanese lines (see Korps Insulinde) and helped liberate Borneo in 1945.
Post-war, it was tossed into the maelstrom (along with British Army– mostly Indian troops– and, curiously, recycled Japanese occupation forces) that was the four-year, often very bloody, conflict that is listed in the history books as the Indonesian War of Independence.
As the history books and any map of the globe will tell you, the Dutch politionele acties (“police actions”) in what is now Indonesia would ultimately fail, and a Sukarno-led independent country would emerge and enter the greater Soviet influence, but that is going past the point of this post.
No, what I want to highlight here is the special COIN unit set up by the KNIL to fight Sukarno and company, one whose model would be recycled throughout the Cold War to tackle insurgent guerillas in bush wars ranging from Malaysia to Mozambique and Bolivia. The company-sized (Depot Speciale Troepen) and later battalion-sized Korps Speciale Troepen, literally the Special Troops Corps, was formed from a mix of Dutch volunteers– including veterans of the disbanded British No. 2 (Dutch) Troop and the Korps Insulinde— along with Eurasians and native soldiers– often drawn heavily from minorities in the islands such as the Moluccans. The latter was a tactic used in Vietnam by the U.S. a decade later with the persecuted ethnic Degar, Bahnar, Hmong, Nung, Jarai, Khmer Krom, and Montagnards who made up the core of the Mike Force and CIDG units fighting the Viet Cong and NVA.
Led by such men as the infamous Capt. Raymond Westerling, aka “The Turk,” who had become so good in commando training with the Free Dutch in 1942 that Fairbairn had selected him to become an instructor, the KSK was sent to islands and regions where guerilla fighters held more sway than the Dutch government. To get to these remote regions, the Dutch established a local parachute school on Java, forming 1e Paracompagnie (1st Para Company), to augment amphibious operations.
Due to their lineage, they were equipped with a strange mix of American, Australian, British, and– sometimes– even Dutch kit. They often wore a green beret, a holdover from the old No. 2 (Dutch) Commando days of WWII.
Photo dump ensues.
KST paratrooper in school at Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea 1946-47. Note the Australian-made Owen submachine gun. NIMH AKL023561
A stick of 1e Parachutisten Compagnie troopers loaded in a Dakota on Operatie Ekster (Magpie) 12.29.49. Note the American chutes, British HSAT helmets and the SMLE .303 rifle. NIMH AKL023617
KST training paratrooper school, Hollandia (New Guinea) 1946-1947. Providing fire support. Note the Bren gun, centered, flanked by two Own SMGs, and American M1 helmets. AKL023560
Paratroopers from the KST gather in the field after a jump during an action or exercise. Dutch East Indies. 1948. One could easily imagine this photo captioned to be French paras in Dien Bien Phu. NIMH 2155_502065
KST Paratroopers are being prepared for an action 1948-50. Note the American frogskin “duck hunter” camo pants to the left, USMC HBT shirts, M1 Carbines, US-marked canteens and aid kits, and field knives, coupled with British HSAT para helmets. NIMH AKL023638
KST troops training in an old factory complex near the barracks, 1949. Dutch East Indies. This photo could almost pass for commando training in Scotland in 1945. NIMH AKL023619
Troop II of the 1st Para Company in action northeast of Krawang in West Java. 2.1948. Note the Owen gun in the foreground, sans magazine, and American M1 helmets
The advance of Dutch airborne troops from Magoewo airport to Djokjakarta at the start of the Second Police Action in Central Java. A Bren gunner positions his weapon at a signpost 4 km away from the city to be captured. 12.19.1948. NIMH AKL024567
Paratroopers of the Special Troops Corps walk at Magoewo airport near Djokjakarta to a number of (not visible) Dakotas. Note the PBY Catalina on the tarmac and slung SMLEs. NIMH AKL024539
Korps Speciale troepen Padalarang, West Java 11.29.1949. Note the skrim’d helmets and SMLEs
KST two man rubber rafts Padalarang, West Java 11.29.1949 AKL023586
KST assault boat with Bren gun Padalarang, West Java 11.29.1949 AKL023606
American paramarines, err, never mind, KST exercise, Batoedjadjar, Java, Dutch East Indies, 1949. NIMH
KST troops late in the conflict with locally-made Dutch camouflagekleding uniforms.
While we aren’t getting into the more controversial aspects of the KST such as its record of extrajudicial killings– the somewhat factually incorrect film The East (De Ost), which is currently available on Hulu, does plenty of that– the KST did go on to be the stepping stone that today’s professional Korps Commandotroepen of the Dutch Army counts in its linage.
Following the fall of the Netherlands East Indies, the remnants of the Dutch colonial army– the KNIL– and Royal Dutch Navy fell back to Australia to regroup and carry on the fight for independence from exile. They were the lucky ones. Of the 42,000 European POWs taken by the Japanese in the East Indies in early 1942, almost one in five (8,200) would die before liberation.
This rag-tag group of survivors would carry on the war– with the Dutch submarine force being especially active— while the land forces would reform. Ultimately, in the liberation of Borneo in 1945, a 3,000-strong force dubbed 1ste Bataljon Infanterie and the Technisch Bataljon of the KNIL, landed on the beaches alongside Allied troops. Before that, the unit had its baptism of fire supporting the Americans at Biak.
Australian and Dutch units land in Borneo on the island of Tarakan. On April 30, 1945, units of the Australian Imperial Forces 9th Division and the KNIL land on the island of Tarakan of Borneo, starting the first combined Australian and KNIL attack on the Japanese army in Dutch- India. The photo shows Captain FE Meynders, commander of the 2nd Company of the 1ste Bataljon Infanterie of the KNIL, discussing the progress of the Tarakan campaign with Mr. L. Broch, war reporter for the Dutch news agency Aneta, on the beach of Lingkas on Tarakan Island.
However, before the 1ste Bataljon Infanterie and the Technisch Bataljon went back to the East Indies, the islands were often visited by Free Dutch forces running a clandestine war that gets no attention.
Meet the NEIFIS & the Korps Insulinde
The Netherlands East Indies Forces Intelligence Service, or NEIFIS, was formed in Australia from KNIL remnants starting in April 1942, some 80 years ago this month.
Regrouping of exiled Dutch/Dutch East Indies soldiers in Perth, Australia. Inspection by, among others, lieutenant commander of the first-class JAFH Douw van der Krap. Van der Krap was later assigned to the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service (NEIFIS) as head of Division II; Internal Security & Security.
Besides counterintelligence duties such as censoring mail of Dutch refugees in the region and vetting volunteers, they soon formed commando units in conjunction with MacArthur’s Inter-Allied Services Department (ISD) that, dropped covertly via coasters and submarines on beaches in the East Indies, and later by parachute into the interior, they tried to gather intel on the Japanese and ignite a guerilla resistance in the archipelago.
NEIFIS was eventually given its own clandestine operations unit, dubbed the Korps Insulinde. Drawn initially from 150 men of the 1st Battalion, Koninklijke Brigade “Prinses Irene,” which had trained in England in 1940-41 then had been shipped to the Pacific, arriving at Ceylon just after the fall of Java, these Free Dutch went commando quite literally, and served alongside the SOE’s Force 136 Intelligence in the region. Ultimately, No. 2 (Dutch) Troop of the No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando would contribute volunteers to the enterprise as well.
In all, the Korps Insulinde would muster no less than 36 teams made up of 250 agents. They made 17 landings in Sumatra alone in 1943-44, in addition to operations in Borneo, the Celebes, New Guinea, and Java.
Members of the Korps Insulinde, made available to the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service (NEIFIS), patrolling a fordable area in the vicinity of Merauke, New Guinea. Second from left is possibly First Lieutenant Infantry of the Royal Dutch East Indies Army J. de Roo. 2.9.1944. Note the American weapons and uniforms. NIMH AKL027827
Some of the operations performed by the Dutch:
Operations Tiger I-VI (Java) November 1942- July 1943, 10 men landed in six different teams. It is thought all members were captured and shot as none were seen again.
An IDS report on Tiger II
Operation Lion (1942) Celebes, all men missing in action. The follow-on Operation Apricot which landed in January 1945 to find the Lion commandos was also unlucky but was able to extract via Cataline after losing just one man.
Operation Flounder (1942) Ceram Island, eight men, at least two executed
Operations Walnut I-III (1942-43) Aroe Islands, all teams presumed killed
Operation Oaktree/Crayfish (1942–44)– saw Dr. Jean Victor de Bruyn, a Dutch colonial district officer who had escaped in early 1942, return via Australian flying boat insertion in November 1942 with rifles and ammunition to organize and train native Papuan guerillas that spent the next 22 months raiding and ambushing Japanese positions, pillaging supplies and destroying ammunition dumps. Dr. De Bruyn was withdrawn by PBY in July 1944 from Hagers lake, escaping advancing Japanese once again
Dr Jean Victor de Bruyn and his native Papuan soldiers in Dutch New Guinea, 1943. Note the five soldiers in KNIL uniforms. Never stronger than a platoon, De Bruyn’s partisans tied down a battalion-strong Japanese force
Operation Whiting (1943) A joint six-man Dutch/Australian force was sent in to establish a coast watching station above Hollandia in February. By October, they had been captured and publicly beheaded.
A photograph found on the body of a dead Japanese soldier showed Indonesian Private (Pte) M. Reharin, a member of the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) Forces wearing a blindfold about to be beheaded with a sword by Yunome Kunio. The execution was ordered by Vice Admiral Kamada, the commander of the Japanese Naval Forces at Aitape
Operation Prawn (1944) landing seven men of a NEFIS shore party from the Dutch submarine K XV on the coast of Sorong, New Guinea.
Operation Firetree (1945) involved a 10-man NEIFIS team landing on the Soela Islands to access the situation. The detailed report on the shore party by its English-speaking Christian Ambonese commander, LT (and future Indonesian minister) Julius Tahija, shines a light on the types of operations these groups conducted.
A page from the Firetree after action report
Operation Inco (1945) Dutch submarine K XV landed and extracted a small NEIFIS shore party at six different places along the Damar islands off Java for recon.
Operation Opossum— April 1945, a 10-man Z Special Unit op with 3 Dutch officers attached to the island of Ternate near Borneo to rescue the Sultan of Ternate, Muhammad Jabir Syah. The sultan and his family were taken to Morotai by PT boat.
Operation Parsnip (1945) a five-man NEIFIS shore party landed from Dutch submarine K XV on the north coast of Java. They were picked up almost immediately by the Japanese and two commandos were killed.
Operations Platypus I-XI (1945) involved small 2-man teams of mixed Australian and Dutch commandos inserted by folboats, prahu canoes, and rubber dinghies from submarines along the Balikpapan area of Dutch Borneo between March and July then resupplied by air as needed. This is one of the more successful operations and most operators survived. The companion all-Australian Operations Python I-V, Agas, and Semut, involving about 90 Z Special Unit Commandos operating deep into the interior of British Borneo and Sarawak, were likewise successful.
These operations were at best dangerous, and at worst suicidal. The series of landing parties on Java known as “Tiger I–VI” were captured and executed almost to a man. Similar fates befell the “Walnut” ( Aroe Islands ) and “Whiting” (Dutch New Guinea) groups, and in all, nearly 40 lives were lost.
However, some successful operations were undertaken. In general, however, they tended to be those involving groups already cut off behind enemy lines, reasonably well-armed, and acting as guerrillas. The “Oaktree” party, in particular, based in the remote country of central Dutch New Guinea, and under the command of the redoubtable Captain J.V. de Bruijn, remained a thorn in the side of the Japanese for more than two years between 1942 and 1944. This group was able to supply valuable intelligence, tie-down a superior enemy force, and maintain the prestige of the Dutch among the inhabitants of the area. Sadly, it was the exception rather than the rule.
A Dutch commando is a character, Lieutenant J.A. (Jan) Veitch, in the 1982 Australian war sleeper, Attack Force Z, featuring an Australian Z Special Unit team in a covert operation based on Operation Opossum, where a team of commandos rescued the local sultan on the Japanese-occupied island of Ternate near Borneo.
In the end, the NEIFIS and Korps Insulinde would accept the surrender of some 15,000 Japanese troops on Sumatra.
Speaking of the end, post VJ-Day, the NEFIS and Korps Insulinde would soon morph into the Korps Speciale Troepen to fight the budding Indonesian insurgency into 1950, then grow into today’s modern Korps Commandotroepen.
With this being April, we are reminded of the anniversary of the launch of Operation Iceberg– the invasion of Okinawa, the grueling 82-day “typhoon of steel” that was the prelude to the– gratefully canceled– amphibious landings on the core Japanese home islands.
For an easy (and easy to share) graphic on the campaign, check out this from the NHHC.
Click to big up 1582×2048
But what we are really here for is this outstanding 20-minute Restricted 1946 film analyzing the effect of naval gunfire support during Iceberg. It includes lots of details and footage of USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37) and LSM(R)s in action as well as destroyers, battle wagons and the like.
One other chart to keep in mind when speaking of April 1945:
1LT Harry T. Stewart Jr., foreground, of Queens, New York, is pictured on April 1, 1945, when returning from an escort mission in his P-51D Mustang. Stewart is holding up three fingers to indicate that he shot down three Messerschmitt Bf 109s (an accomplishment that earned him a Distinguished Flying Cross) while escorting B-24 Liberators tasked to bomb the St. Polten marshaling yard. Pictured behind Stewart is his crew chief, Jim Shipley, of Tipton, Missouri.
Stewart’s jubilance was tempered by the reality that two of his fellow “Red Tails” pilots lost their lives during the same engagement with German fighters. The engagement, in which eight P-51s fought off a dozen Me 109s and four Focke-Wulf Fw 190s, took place near Wels, Austria just a week before the end of the war in Europe.
Born on Independence Day 1924, while still a teenager, he cycled through flight training at Tuskegee Air Field Stewart and joined the all-black 332d Fighter Group. Flying P-40s and later P-51s, he flew 43 combat missions in the ETO. He remained on active duty until 1950 and in the reserves into the 1960s, retiring as a light colonel.
