Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

306 Missing Pieces
179 AWM 69, Item 23/22 — Allied Naval Command in the Far East.
180 NAA A3300, Item 219 — Directive to ABDACOM.
181 NAA MP1049/5, Item 1804/2/44 — SWPA — ABDA organisation, report VK/INT/119 of 26
January 1942, contains the whole staff organisation of ABDAFLOAT and intelligence staff
details.
182 Collins, As Luck Would Have It, p. 107
183 NAA MP1185/8, Item 1877/17/19 — Reports of Information Gathered by RANLO Batavia.
184 AWM 124, Item 4/158 — Messages from ABDACOM East Indies, cable 01113 of 12 February
1942, from by CGS Dill to Casey in London, shows that the British were certainly supplying
ABDACOM with ULTRA. The COIC sitrep of 23 January 1942 has a supplement titled
‘Japanese naval dispositions’, providing a comprehensive (and largely accurate view) of
the IJN order of battle and their estimated positions. The size of Japanese submarines was,
however, underestimated. The supplement is obviously an amalgam of British, Australian
and US intelligence and carries the security warning: ‘As this report is based on information
derived from sources which, if compromised, cannot be replaced, it is requested that the
distribution be restricted to an absolute minimum’.
185 AWM 124, Item 4/292/VK/INT/108—NLO Batavia. Kennedy reported that the NEI
Coastwatcher scheme had come ‘too late’.
186 Gill, Royal Australian Navy, 1939—1942, pp. 490—491.
187 NAA MP1185/8, Item 1932/2/2 — Battle of Java—Navy Office account.
188 In his war diary Collins observed that: ‘It was considered unwise to keep them in the West
Java Sea any longer in view of the ever increasing air activity and the weak Allied fighter
protection which could be provided’. The elderly British D class cruisers were no match for
any of the IJN cruisers they were likely to encounter. [NAA MP 1185/8, Item 2026/7/457
— China Force.]
189 Whiting commented that the NEI Army in Jakarta had an air reconnaissance report at 1700
of a large enemy force 100 miles north of Sunda Strait, but this was not passed to the naval
headquarters in the same building. Whiting also quoted a sighting allegedly made by an
RAAF bomber of a large convoy in the Thousand Islands area to the north of Jakarta earlier
on 28 February. [Brendan Whiting, Ship of Courage: The Epic Story of HMAS Perth and Her
Crew, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994, pp. 85-86.] The author has found no evidence to support
either claim, but Whiting may still be correct. Jakarta was on the point of evacuation by
naval forces and a message from a MLD aircraft might have been missed in the port and
intercepted by RecGroup Bandung. A RAAF Hudson would also have signalled its sighting
to RecGroup. Army HQ in Jakarta might have received a retransmitted report from COIC
Bandung. However, if that was the case, it is odd that neither Helfrich nor his RN chief of
staff knew of the report. Winslow made the same claim, and pondered how this report did
not reach naval authorities. [WG Winslow, The Ghost that Died at Sunda Strait, Naval Institute
Press, Annapolis, Md, 1994, pp. 131—132.] Intelligence reports about Japanese sightings
were still being sent to Allied units some days after Waller and his force were lost.
190 The Japanese stated that there were two light cruisers and nine destroyers in the convoy
escort, reinforced around 0100 on 1 March by two heavy cruisers and a destroyer. Perth
was not sunk until 0140. [AWM69, Item 67 — Japanese Strategy (A translation of document
no. 15686, received by ATIS on 28 March 1946 and issued by Supreme Commander Allied
Powers as ‘The Battle of the Java Sea’).]