Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

314 Missing Pieces
269 NAA B6121/3, Item 105E — Hepburn report, USS Blue — DD387/A16 serial 045 of 7 September
1942 — states that its SG radar was operating satisfactorily and that it had clear paints of
USS Ralph Talbot patrolling to the northeast. ‘No contacts which might have been enemy
surface craft were obtained prior to commencement of action by such vessels’.
270 MP 1185/8, Item 1932/2/226 — Hepburn report.
271 In an intensely researched book designed to restore the reputations of the RAAF Hudson
crews, whose ‘failure’ to report their detections of Mikawa’s force was viewed by US
analysts as a prime cause of the debacle, two Australian authors proposed in 1992 that
their enemy contact reports had been received by many ships of TF 62 close to their time
of transmission and that a surface attack around 0100 on 9 August was widely anticipated,
not least by the US cruisers of the eastern force and by Fletcher’s carriers. [Denis Warner, &
Peggy Warner, Disaster in the Pacific: New Light on the Battle of Savo Island, Allen & Unwin,
Sydney, 1992.] The inactivity of the senior commanders, Fletcher, Turner and Crutchley,
when in possession of that information, must therefore be viewed as culpable or at least
demonstrating dangerous incompetence. While impressed by the effort that the Warners put
into their research, and agreeing with their contention that the Hudson crews did all that
they could to make their reports, this author believes that they missed the point. The Battle
of Savo Island was not lost because of the late receipt or inappropriate attention given to two
enemy contact reports. Instead, a crescendo of Allied intelligence failures enabled Mikawa
to pull off his magnificent feat of arms. It is inconceivable that Turner and Crutchley would
not have taken every step to defeat Mikawa had they known that he was planning to attack
TF 62. King and Nimitz, both shrewd men and neither averse to sacking commanders they
regarded as incompetent, thought so too.
272 King accepted the Nimitz explanation of the primary causes of the defeat, which included
the failure of air surveillance, erroneous estimates of the enemy’s most likely course of
action and over-dependence on radar. [NAA MP1185/8, Item 1932/2/226 — Loss of HMAS
Canberra, CINCPAC letter Pac-11-Sn A17, serial 00888, undated.]
273 Crutchley was well regarded by the Americans, officially commended by CANF/Commander
7th Fleet and served on in a variety of subordinate command positions until his reversion to
the RN in 1944. [NAA MP1214/1, Item 592/201/1383—Rear Admiral VAC Crutchley VC—report
by C7F.]
274 Dyer, The Amphibians Came to Conquer, pp. 371—372.
275 NAA MP 729/6, Item 12/402/25 — Singapore Conference February 1941. Australia signified
willingness to accept these responsibilities in a cable to London on 27 March 1941.
276 Neale, Documents, Documents 62, 187, 195, 225, (the latter a scathing cable from Prime
Minister Curtin).
277 Australia reported to the United Kingdom on 18 June that there were 400 Australian and
200 Dutch military personnel on Timor facing around 6000 Japanese, and that there was
no question of surrender by the Allied force. [Neale, Documents, Document 527.]
278 Movements of the Australians towards an imminent landing point were delayed until the
last possible minute lest it be observed and reported to the Japanese. IJA reaction time was
reckoned to be around three hours. [Bernard Callinan, Independent Company: the Australian
Army in Portuguese Timor 1941—43, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1953, p. 183.]
279 Callinan, Independent Company, pp. 185, & 218—219.
280 NAA A5954/69, Item 518/18 — Report by ACNB on loss of HMAS Armidale.