Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

90 Missing Pieces
Crutchley, who devised the night disposition of the screening force, and Turner, who
endorsed it, had no intelligence of an impending surface strike. The information they
had received was fragmentary, old and ambiguous, and they reached decisions on
night dispositions that accorded with their understanding of the situation. Despite
adverse comment in the aftermath of the battle, the Hepburn Report reached much
the same conclusion. 270 The disposition of the Allied ships and the track of Mikawa’s
force, as reconstructed by Loxton in The Shame of Savo, are illustrated at Map 7, and
Crutchley’s arrangements still seem sound. The Japanese force should have been
detected, intercepted and destroyed. 271
The outcome of this succession of intelligence failures saw four major Allied units sunk, or
damaged and sinking, and the transports hurriedly departing the anchorage, leaving the
Marines to fight on unsupported. Someone had to bear the blame, and USN investigators
certainly pointed fingers, particularly at the Hudson crews. 272 However, no retributive
measures were taken against either Turner or Crutchley. Commander SOPAC, Admiral
Ghormley, lost his job and Fletcher was given a shore command, but McCain served on. 273
The final word can be left to Turner who, although not the most amiable of men, nor the
best tactical commander in the USN, surely had right on his side when he said:
I have been accused of being and doing many things but nobody before
ever accused me of sitting on my arse and doing nothing. If I had known
of any ‘approaching’ Jap force I would have done something — maybe the
wrong thing, but I would have done something. 274
Operation haMBuRgeR and the loss of hMas armidale,
december 1942
As a result of the Anglo-Dutch-Australian discussions of April 1941, the Australian
Government agreed to undertake a number of military commitments in support of the
Netherlands East Indies. These included deploying RAAF squadrons forward into the
Netherlands East Indies, and providing garrisons to supplement NEI military forces
on the islands of Ambon and Timor. 275 Independent all-arms forces were raised and
trained for the latter duties, and dispatched to their war stations in December 1941.
Sparrow Force, as the Timor unit was designated, was augmented by one of four
specially selected and trained independent companies. These were to act as harassing
forces, not so much to defeat an enemy force but, by engaging in guerrilla warfare, to
tie down and hamper a much larger force than would otherwise be appropriate to the
circumstances. Both Sparrow Force and the 2/2 Independent Company were initially
landed in Kupang, the capital of Dutch Timor. Later, 2/2 Independent Company under
Dutch command participated in the peaceful ‘invasion’ of the Portuguese areas of