Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

seTTing The scene - The Ran and iTs inTelligence diVisiOn TO 1939
The responsibility for defence of the sea routes on the Australia Station rested with
CNS, and this force could not provide enough warships to convoy every merchant ship.
In the Indian Ocean, where the intensity of enemy attacks on trade was expected to be
only sporadic, many ships would have to sail independently. The Australian command
organisation for its naval forces mirrored that of the British. CNS, who was also the
First Naval Member of the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board (ACNB), exercised
operational command of the RAN and of Imperial ships assigned to the Australia Station.
He was thus both an operational commander of forces and the executive head of the
RAN. Australian ships leaving the station would transfer to the operational command
of the appropriate station commander, such as Commander-in-Chief China Station.
At a joint level, Area Command Headquarters (ACH) were set up in Melbourne,
Fremantle and Darwin to facilitate close cooperation between the RAN and the RAAF
in maritime operations.
CNS delegated operational control of naval forces on the Australia Station to the
Rear Admiral Commanding Australian Squadron (RACAS), who usually exercised
this control in one of the cruisers as flagship. He directed forces assigned to him on
tasks and operations approved by CNS. This arrangement worked far from smoothly.
Throughout 1938, RACAS Wilfred Custance engaged the Naval Board in a series of
exchanges regarding his responsibilities in the event of war. 50 Separate arrangements
were in place for the command and control of naval ports where Naval Officers-in-
Charge (NOICs) had responsibility for naval affairs in their assigned ‘districts’. These
included operation of Port War Signal Stations, harbour defences and the examination
of ships entering the port. In wartime their responsibilities would be expanded to
include the command of local defensive operations using assigned vessels, cooperation
with the Army and RAAF in port security and defence, and the assembly and sailing
of convoys and escorts. 51
In August 1939, the Naval Board comprised two serving officers, Vice Admiral Sir
Ragnar Colvin RN as First Naval Member, and Commodore Boucher as Second Naval
Member. Mr A R Nankervis was the Civil and Financial Member (and permanent head
of the Department of the Navy after November 1939) and the Secretary was Mr G L
Macandie. The Operations and Intelligence Staff , under Captain Joseph Burnett as
Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff, consisted of twelive permenant officers, including
Lieutenant Commander Rupert Long as DNI, Henry Burrell and George Oldham both
staff officers. 52 The entire Naval Staff, including medical, naval stores, victualling,
accounts, works, staff & industrial, engineering & construction and the personnel
branches, stood at just 252. This was too small a staff to fight a war, but the Naval Staff
was handicapped by the shortage of RAN officers of sufficient seniority and operational
experience to undertake the additional staff workload. 53
Thus was the RAN organised as events in Europe and the Far East continued a spiral of
deterioration towards war. The manifest shortcomings in the organisation, manpower,
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