Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

nOTes
intelligence in this area has been very reliable being obtained mainly through captured
documents, aerial reconnaissance and confirmed after interrogation of enemy P.O.W.s’.
[Dovers report, p. 1.] It is likely that Sigint also made a contribution although this could not
be revealed to an officer as junior as Dovers.
429 NACP RG 38 — Box 250, HMS Ariadne secret hand message to CTF 75 DTG 200107Z June
44 re minelay at Wewak.
430 Transcript of interview of Rear Admiral WJ Dovers by author 16 November 2001, hereafter
the ‘Dovers interview’.
431 Dovers interview.
432 On 17 May an ordnance inspector from Manus inspected force weapons. Five of the MLs’
Bofors and nine of their Oerlikons were condemned. Only by cannibalising the weapons
from the larger ships were the MLs able to be kept in action. It appears that a contributing
cause of the burst barrels was faulty ammunition. [AWM 78, Item 244/1 — ML808 Report of
Proceedings, May 1945 and Navy Office letter 2026/7/1351 undated.]
433 Dovers report, pp. 4—5. This was not an unaccustomed task for MLs and other smaller
warships, whose relatively high speed, shallow draft and respectable armament made
them ideal for inshore work of this nature. Living under tough tropical conditions in ships
designed for the English Channel, the crews of MLs would have welcomed any opportunity
of action of a retributive kind. Gill, Royal Australian Navy, 1942—1945, p. 439 provided an
account of an attack on Karkar Island off New Guinea where MLs were engaged. The senior
officer remarked of the operation: ‘I am inclined to think it unlikely that there were many
Japanese about the areas, but I have no doubt that the bombardment acted as a very fine
tonic for the ship’s companies concerned, as did the subsequent mentions in the press’.
434 Dovers report, pp. 2—4.
435 Dovers interview, and Peter Evans & Richard Thompson, Fairmile Ships of the Royal Australian
Navy, Vol. II, Australian Military History Publications, Loftus NSW, 2005, pp.69—78.
436 Dovers report, pp. 8 & 10.
437 UKNA ADM1/31005 — Development of RAN intelligence organisation in wartime, Navy
Office letter 151/22 of 8 January 1944.
438 ‘This implies that a Signal Intelligence organisation must be fully operative in peace-time in
order to be available for immediate use on the outbreak of war’. [NAA B5436/2, Item Part
K — Critique of CBB, p. 1.]
a united nations ‘Police action’: korea 1950—53
439 Frank Cain, ‘Missiles and mistrust: US intelligence responses to British and Australian
missile research’, Intelligence and National Security 3, 1988, pp. 6—7. In a separate article,
‘An Aspect of Post-War Australian Relations with the United Kingdom and the United States:
Missiles, Spies and Disharmony’, Australian Historical Studies 23, 1989, pp. 186—202’, Cain
argued that this rejection of former alliance partners was led by ‘intelligence operatives’,
and that in the case of Australia it was the USN that was the principal objector.
440 The problem of US release of classified information to the United Kingdom continued into
the 1950s. ‘The unpalatable truth, which there has been an understandable reluctance to
expose, is that there has not been a full and frank disclosure of technical information by the
United States to the United Kingdom as agreed in the Burns-Templer agreement’. [UKNA
329