Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

secuRing sOuTheasT asia: Malayan eMeRgency and indOnesian cOnFROnTaTiOn
No. In fact, as an Australian I wasn’t meant to see UK EYES ONLY
information and my colleagues said: ‘Well, you can’t do your job if you
don’t have the information’, and they gave it to me…. Nothing was
held back from me. 655
Reporting and responsible to the CinC — and by extension to the National Operations
Committee — were the individual service commanders and their headquarters.
Operationally, by the time the RAN became involved in 1964, forces assigned to
Borneo came under the operational control of DOBOPS, specifically through the Naval
Component Commander, an RN captain in the joint headquarters in Labuan. 656 In other
parts of the command, ships were assigned their duties through the Captain Inshore
Flotilla on the staff of the Commander Far East Fleet (COMFEF), in Singapore.
Command intelligence was the responsibility of the JIC (Far East). The JIC chairman
also acted as a member of the Combined Intelligence Staff Committee, which exchanged
collated intelligence between Malaysian and other Commonwealth agencies. Single
service representatives of the joint intelligence staff also held responsibilities to their
own service headquarters. The JIC directed the work of the Joint Air Reconnaissance
Intelligence Centre (Far East), operated on the committee’s behalf by the RAF and
staffed by Army and Air Force. 657 The major part of this Centre’s work was both
photographic interpretation of the Borneo border areas to spot Indonesian units and
activities, and the mapping of the areas over which operations had to take place.
Intelligence provided to ships of the Far East Fleet, to which the RAN units were
attached, was the responsibility of COMFEF. At one stage during Confrontation, the
Commonwealth naval forces comprised more than 80 ships of the British, Australian,
Malaysian, and New Zealand navies, including three aircraft carriers. The RN 7th
Submarine Squadron carried out intelligence collection patrols as well as operational
tasks. Figure 7, compiled by the author, sketches the intelligence organisation for the
Commonwealth forces.
The Australian Government was kept well informed of the Confrontation situation
and command responses to developments, as the Australian Commissioner (from
1965 the High Commissioner) in Singapore attended bi-weekly CinCFE meetings.
This continued the tradition that had been established during the Emergency. CinCFE
meetings covered a broad range of political and operational topics. For example, the
16th meeting of 1964 on 17 December discussed clearances for the employment
of Commonwealth forces, while the 4th of 1965 (9 April) was concerned with antiinfiltration
operations around Singapore. Two weeks later, the meeting discussed the
possibility of Indonesian amphibious operations against Malaysia. CinCFE meeting
minutes were cabled back to Canberra. 658
While having the military and intelligence upper hand during Confrontation, the
Commonwealth forces laboured under an important political constraint. They were
rarely permitted to take the initiative and were thus required to wait for and to respond
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