Ahoy - Mac's Web Log

This interview is from this page. I will use this page to make corrections to the interview transcript.

Mr Mackenzie Gregory
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01:00:21:12

 

Q: Your life before the War, how you came to enlist and why you chose the Navy.

01:00:30:20

Then we'll move through your War experiences and then post-War and if we could just get a feel for the major events of your life initially and then we'll come back and talk in further detail about significant experiences you've had. First, if you could tell us where you were born?

A: I was born in Geelong on 9 February 1922. I happened

01:01:00:16

to be there because Dad was working with the J-Class Submarines which had come out from England in 1919 and they were based at Osborne House in Geelong, which happened to be the first Royal Australian Naval College. Mum and Dad were there and so that's how it happened. I believe on the kitchen table in Hope Street in Geelong.

01:01:30:18

 

Q: And after your early experiences, you went to school?

A: Yes, Dad was always a Steward in the Navy and he worked for Admirals and generally the first Naval member so we went out of Geelong when I was quite young and were actually living in Haynton Place in Toorak with one of the Admirals and my first school was Christchurch Grammar

01:02:00:18

on the corner of Toorak Road and Punt Road and probably my earliest memory was catching the tram and I started school the day before I was 5 there. Subsequently the next Admiral had a house in St Kilda Road at Landene and it's still there, a lovely old brick place. I used to have to walk across the park, Fawkner Park to get to school.

01:02:30:16

I remember it particularly when the magpies were nesting and I used to be quite terrified as they swooped down on me when I was wandering off to school as quite a young boy.

Q: And did you want to join the Navy from an early age? Was that your intention?

A: Probably not at that stage. They bought a block of land in Coburg of all places and built a house and I went to Coburg State School until I was about 11 or 10

01:03:00:09

I guess and then I went to Coburg High. At that stage I suppose I realised that we were very working class, went through the Depression. Dad was away a lot and Mother really had to struggle and I can remember her stuffing her shoes with paper to keep the rain out and making sure I had a pair of shoes and I had

01:03:30:13

learnt about the Naval College where boys during their 13th year could sit for the Naval College and they selected maybe a dozen out of 300 applicants and I guess I saw if I could get into the Navy and get a good education I'd get myself out of this very working class rut I guess. Even at that young age that's what I wanted to do

01:04:00:10

and I was most surprised when I sat for the examine, then I was called for a medical and then eventually I had to face a series of Captains and Admirals at Victoria Barracks and being petrified as the young man being interviewed and these gruff Naval Officers saying things like "Look out of the window young man. What car is that going down the road" and all sorts of questions. Then I was of 13 who were

01:04:30:12

selected to go into the Naval College in January 1936.

Q: And when you went to the Naval College did you have to sign up for a number of years?

A: My father did. For the 4 years of the College and a subsequent 12 years from the age of 18 and the only way you could get out was to pay quite a considerable sum of money which was never going to be forthcoming from my family so having made the bed I really had to lay in it.

01:05:30:11

 

Q: Tell me something about the College.

A: Well the first year was pretty tough. We had 3 senior years and we were really dogsbodies. There was a pretty nasty sort of initiation and you doubled everywhere around the College and we were the youngest and the eldest were 17 or 18 were quite young men. For instance we went swimming in an open swimming pool which was one end of Flinders Naval Depot from where the

01:05:30:12

College was. We doubled everywhere and we carried our own gear and we carried the seniors' gear as well. The first year was quite rough and one of our turn was told not to return after the first term. We never knew what happened. We started with 13 and then after Noosey, as his name was, just did not appear after our first term leave and we never knew why. He subsequently joined the Air Force

01:06:00:11

and unfortunately as a Fighter Pilot got killed in the Western Desert in about 1940, '41.

Q: And what about the rest of your class?

A: Well we bonded pretty well of course. We had to survive I guess. For instance at night you had to be totally undressed, all your gear laid out, your chest of drawers open for inspection and have had a shower in 3 minutes against the stop watch and

01:06:30:08

if that didn't happen you got a size 10 gym shoe on your bum quite regularly and that you learnt pretty quickly to be able to it. One would help each other and we had 2 double bunks in a cubicle so you lived with 3 others and we had our own gun room. I guess out of that 12, 2 died in the War and one got killed in a car accident but the other 9 of us are still going.

01:07:00:11

We all were 80 last year and we all met in Sydney in July last year for a wonderful lunch at the Sydney Yacht Club and went from midday to about 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

Q: And what year did you graduate from the College?

A: We were due to finish our 4th year in '39 and in August '39 the international situation was quite alarming and we were due to go on leave in August

01:07:30:16

of '39 to come back for our final exams, our big passing out parade, our graduation ball which was a big deal. The College was lined up and the Commander said "Years 1, 2 and 3 will proceed on leave. The 4th Year will stay. You are going to sea. Leave is a privilege not a right." We had a week's extra seamanship and signals

01:08:00:12

and we were sent off to sea and we all went off to join the Navy at sea before the War.

Q: Which ship did you join?

A: We all went to the Canberra which was an 8 inch cruiser and the Australia was not in commission at that stage, our sister ship. They'd both been built in the British Navy in about 1928 and came out to the Australian Navy. The Canberra and the Australia were sister ships of the County Class

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Cruisers because they were named after counties, Shropshire, Devonshire, Sussex, Essex, etc. Just after War was declared, 6 of us went to the Australia and I was one of those so 6 stayed on Canberra and 6 went to the Australia.

Q: Do you remember the day War was declared?

A: Very well. Very well. It was about quarter past nine in the evening when the Prime Minister who was Robert Gordon Menzies made the announcement that

01:09:00:16

because Britain was at War, we too were at War and I was sent to run the pinnace which is a motorboat, Mid-Shipmen ran the boats, in the charge of the boats. You had a bowman, a stern sheet man and a stoker to run the engine and interestingly enough a couple of Anzac Days ago a tall gentleman fronted me and said "Sir, do you remember me?" and I had to say "Not really" and he said "Let me take you back to the day

01:09:30:18

War was declared. You were running the pinnace and you came into Man O'War steps and the end of Man O'War steps is a blue stone wall, you said stop engines, go astern. The engines cut out and we crashed into the blue stone wall and the bowman went over the side and I was the bowman" and then I remembered the incident and it was really breaking up the sailors from wives and mothers and saying goodbye.

01:10:00:15

The ship had been recalled to go to sea. It was a Sunday and I remember it quite vividly still.

Q: Where did you sail?

A: Oh, we went straight out, just down the coast and to make sure all was well and we sailed around the coast for a day or two and then about - we didn't do much more than convoy work around the coast for the first 3 months then early 1940 we went over

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to New Zealand and picked up a New Zealand Army group and a couple of troop ships and that was probably a poignant memory of the War. I can recall the troop ships pulling away from the wharf in Wellington and thousands of people breaking out into the Maori farewell and singing as the troop ships left and we took them round to Melbourne where we picked up the Melbourne, Australian group

01:11:00:11

over to Perth and we went across to South Africa with them and then the ship went on to England and joined the home fleet in 1940 about a month after Dunkirk when it was quite dark days.

Q: And you were then stationed where? Where did you sail after that?

A: We were stationed in Scapa Flow (UNCLEAR) in the North of Scotland in a very bleak up in the Orkneys. Very bleak and cold and

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wet. At one stage we were sent up to Bear Island to look for German trawlers giving away they though convoy information. That's 75 degrees north which is only 900 miles from the North Pole and bitterly cold, ice. The ships were not built to go into that sort of weather and within the month we back based on

01:12:00:12

the Clyde in Scotland. Greenwich which is a Naval Base on the west of Scotland close to Glasgow. We were told we were going down to Dakar with De Gaulle's expedition which he was hoping to Dakar sits right on the hump of West Africa right on the convoy routes. The Americans at that stage of course were not in the War, were very interested in

01:12:30:13

getting hold of Dakar because of the convoy routes and Britain had to rely on America and Canada for food and oil to keep them going and we did convoy work for best part of a year. Dakar was an absolute fiasco. De Gaulle at one stage thought he was going to march in and take over and the brand new French battleship, The Richelieu had gotten into Dakar and she had

01:13:00:11

14 inch or 15 inch guns and she was virtually a land fort. They had cruisers, destroyers. They had forts with 9 inch guns and for 3 days we went in and for 3 days they bombed us. They shot at us. We got hit twice with 6 inch shells.

Q: Was this the Vichy French?

A: Yes, it was the Vichy French and they were not going to give up to De Gaulle and he virtually stood off and said "Well I'm not

01:13:30:
going to shed the blood of Frenchmen for Frenchmen." I'm afraid I haven't been too fond of the French which they showed pretty well in the present war I think but they don't want to fight that much.

Q: And after Dakar, where did you sail to?

A: We went to Gibraltar. We did a bit of time in the Mediterranean with a convoy off to Malta and then we went back to England doing convoy. We were based in Liverpool.

01:14:00:12

At that stage we went into dry dock to fix up the damage we had and it was December 1940 when Liverpool was very badly bombed and it was much worse being in harbour than it was being at sea running the gauntlet of the u-boats and ships being sunk and it was pretty nasty sort of time. At that stage we had 3 bad nights in December 1940

01:14:30:15

when in fact the side of the dock was hit with a 500 pound bomb and one of the jobs - they dropped incendiaries all over Liverpool and one of the jobs the midshipman had was to rush around the upper deck and kick off the incendiaries that landed there over the side as we'd left a few feet of water in the dock. There was a whoosh one evening and something came down and lobbed between the ship and the dockside which was probably

01:15:00:12

no more than 15 or 20 feet. Nobody paid much attention and we were duly taken out of dock and another ship was put in and they pumped out the water and there was a 4000 pound land mine sitting on the bottom ticking away still. We'd been lucky.

Q: Lucky!

A: Yes.

Q: When an incendiary hit the deck - how big is an incendiary?

A: Oh fairly small. They just set fire.

01:15:30:13

I think they were phosphorous and they'd burst into flame and the idea was to set the place alight then the bombers could follow where the fires were coming from and drop their bombs accordingly. Rather like we use pathfinders on our side to go into Germany and drop bombs and start the fires so the bombers could follow.

Q: So did you have to run around the deck literally and kick these things off the deck?

A: Oh if they happened, yes.

Q: You did that yourself?

A: Yes.

01:16:00:12

 

Q: And were you burnt at all?

A: No, no. You wore boots and gave it a quick boot and hope it would happen. I only had it on one occasion I think but it was a bit scary.

Q: I'm sure it was. What happened after you left Liverpool?

A: We did a number of convoys working out of the Clyde. We did convoy work and prior to that in November 1940 we were out looking for a German cruiser or a pocket battleship I

01:16:30:13

think. We were called out and a Sunderland aircraft which was quite a big flying boat which we used for anti-submarine work ran into a storm and it was a real Atlantic gale. Waves 30, 40 feet hight, 100 mile an hour winds. It had run out of petrol and had gone down and somehow the pilot had got it down. She'd been down for a number of hours and she was using her radio

01:17:00:11

and with our directional finding equipment we were trying to find her. I think if I remember correctly the Captain said he would offer £10 to anybody who sighted the wreck. £10 was a lot of money. As a midshipman we got 6 shillings a day, £2 a week and that didn't go very far and eventually we sighted it and just as we got her in sight a huge wave picked it up and turned her right over on her back

01:17:30:16

and broke the Sunderland in 2. There was one of the airmen clinging to the tail and we were coming up with the wind and sea behind us doing 26 knots and I can remember watching the speedo down below decks and it went up to about 31 and back again as we literally surfed and the airmen were then in the water and they were too weak to even grab a line

01:18:00:14

so eventually our Commander, an Officer and some sailors secured a line to themselves and leapt over the side and physically tied a line to the airmen and we got 9 out of the 13 and I remember being sent up to the focsle with a party of sailors and the heaving line to try and get the 4 who were drifting past but we were unable to cast a line to them. As soon as you threw it out it came flying back with the wind over your head and they went off to die.

01:18:30:08

That was a dreadful moment to see them so helpless. 60 years ago I can still feel the absolute helplessness of myself and everybody else. We then took them back into - we could only do 5 knots back into the storm and we took them back into Glasgow and we recovered 9 out of the 13.

Q: Then from the Atlantic?

A: The ship

01:19:00:17

was coming home. We left England with the biggest convoy that had ever left at that stage. The Mediterranean was virtually closed. It was a troop convoy and we took them round the Cape up to Aden to go into the Mediterranean that way. We then went to Cape Town and Durban and Ceylon and the ship was coming home and this was about

01:19:30:12

May 1941 and I'd been promoted to Acting Sub-Lieutenant where you get your commission. We did our Seamanship Exam in the British cruiser, the Emerald. We had 3 glorious weeks in Ceylon at the Government's expense at the Gallface Hotel for 10 days and then we got sent up country to a rest camp at Desalawa which was interesting. We never had any money.

01:20:00:12

We'd gone to 11 shillings a day which was a big increase and we were walking down the street one day and a very toffee-nosed English voice said "Oh, some Australians I see." It turned out it was a tea planter who had been at Gallipoli and was badly injured and some Australian had hauled him up off the beach and he gave as a wonderful time. He had a Rolls Royce and he wined and dined us for 10 days in Desalawa.

01:20:30:15

We then caught a troop ship back to England to go and do our Sub-Lieutenant's course. There was nothing worse for a sailor than to serve on a ship run by the Army, I'm afraid. They had so many troops it was a hot bunk system almost. 4 hours in and 4 hours out. Two meals a day because they couldn't cope with 3 and we ran the gauntlet of the u-boats and got into Glasgow.

01:21:00:17

We were late for our courses and nobody really knew that we were there. So we said "let's go off" to people we know. We told our own group where we were going, there were 6 of us and eventually we got a recall with a telegram. Somebody had run out of money and gone into Australia House who said "what are your doing here, you should be on your courses". They rounded us all up and sent us down and we did our

01:21:30:13

gunnery signals and navigation. Some in Brighton in England. That was quite amusing. We were again bombed because 1941 was when they were expecting the invasion and at times you'd get called out to go and man the beaches overnight when they thought the Germans might be coming. There were stories, whether it happened but there were stories that they'd set the sea alight at one stage by putting oil on it and lighting it. Our hotel got

01:22:00:12

the top floor knocked off with a bomb one night which wasn't very pleasant but we were all safe and the Signal School. The Navy had taken over Roedean Girls School, like our Fernbank here, fairly toffee-nosed school.

Q: That's where Princess Anne when to school, I think isn't it?

A: Yes and it still had notices in the rooms if you want a Mistress during the night please ring. We rang those bells like hell but it never happened.

01:22:30:06

We had quite an amusing time. We had 3 or 4 months we went to Whale Island for our gunnery. We did navigation at Dryden which happened to be just out of Portsmouth and was General Eisenhower's headquarters for D-Day where he made his famous decision, we will go. That's where we did our navigation courses and we were to come home and we got bundled into a blue star

01:23:00:15

ship called the Tuscan Star and we sailed in convoy to Halifax and then went individually down to Panama through the Canal and the ship had boxed Avro Anson aircraft on their decks coming for the Air Force and we stopped on the east coast of Cristobal on the eastern side of Panama for the night and I'm afraid we all stayed ashore until about 1 in the morning and we missed the tide and the Captain wasn't

01:23:30:12

very pleased with us. We were late coming back. We got through the Canal and all of a sudden in the Pacific, smoke started to come out of these boxes. Somebody had got at them in Panama and put some type of incendiary and they all finished up all dropped over the side as they burst into flames. So the RAAF didn't get their Avros.

Q: So that was sabotage?

A: Yes it was. I understand you could have a

01:24:00:10

little metal container with 2 chemicals which ate through and then caused a small conflagration and so they were dumped over the side and we arrived back in Melbourne on Pearl Harbour Day, 7th December 1941. We'd been away 2 years.

Q: Then were you immediately sent north?

A: I think we had 2 weeks leave. I was then not quite 20.

01:24:30:13

We got engaged. I got engaged to Gladys who I'd gone to school with. Her brother was my best friend. Gladys was a year older than I was and we said we wouldn't get married until the War was over in case I got bowled over. I got sent to the Canberra as a Sub-Lieutenant to get my Watch Keeping Certificate which means that you keep a watch on a Bridge as an

01:25:00:11

Assistant Officer until the Captain says you are competent to run a watch on your own. I guess it would have been February '42 when we took the last troops into Singapore just to put then straight into the bag virtually and we went up through Sunda Strait through Banka Strait not quite to Singapore, called in at Surabaya or Jakarta as it now is.

01:25:30:23

Then we did a bit of convoy work and went back into Sydney and we were in Sydney Harbour in May when the midgets attacked Sydney Harbour on May 31st, 1st June. It was a mad night in Sydney.

Q: After Sydney Harbour?

A: After Sydney Harbour we were then part of the - the

01:26:00:11

coast watchers around the Guadalcanal. There was Martin Clements, was an Englishman but he was in the coast watcher force for Australia. He was a Captain in the British Army and he'd been a District Officer and the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal and landed on Tulagi and they were building an airfield on Guadalcanal. He sent this information back and the Americans

01:26:30:14

had decided and the British had decided that Germany was going to be knocked over first before the Pacific but Admiral King who was the Commander in Chief of the American forces decided that we ought to do a landing on Tulagi and Guadalcanal and we sent as part of the force for that operation. Operation Watchtower ad we part of the bombardment force and there were 18000 marines under

01:27:00:10

Major General Vandegrift, the American carriers and Fletcher was the Admiral in charge of the total force and we did a stage out of Wellington and went off the marines and convoy and Australia, Canberra and Hobart were the 3 Australia ships. We were part of the bombardment force to do the softening up beforehand. August 7th we arrived and we did our bombardments, did our

01:27:30:13

night patrol. Fletcher said he'd stay for 3 days with his carriers but he nicked off after 2 and we were not very happy about that which meant we were absolutely without air cover and the Japs were coming down from Rabaul where they were bombing and we had a couple of nasty days of torpedo attacks and bombing attacks and about 4 or 5 of them

01:28:00:11

were knocked over and we been at action stations for virtually 2 days and at night there was the Australia, the Chicago and Canberra and 2 destroyers south of Savo Island. Savo Island is a little island that sits off Guadalcanal which is sort of down one side. Savo's there. There is an entrance north and south or east and west of Savo. There were 3 American cruisers blocking off the northern one with 2 destroyers, Quincy, Astoria, Vincennes.

01:28:30:17

We were the southern force. When Fletcher suddenly took his carriers off, Admiral Turner in charge of the landing called for Admiral Crutchley who was the second in command to take the Australia over to Guadalcanal for a conference and with Vandegrift they decided they would have to abandon the next morning and leave. So we were without our flagship and we were leading the Chicago who was the senior ship but he decided

01:29:00:10

to stay astern of us 300 yards and I had the midnight to 4 watch and I'd just gone on watch at midnight on the night of 8/9 August. I was on the bridge it was 1.43 in the morning and I had to call the Navigator at quarter to 2 so I could remember the time very well and all of sudden mayhem broke loose. There was an explosion to the north, there was someone flashing to us

01:29:30:09

and all of a sudden there were Japanese 6 cruisers and a destroyer about 3000 yards firing 8 inch guns and torpedos at us. The bridge got hit and I was relieved by the Navigator. We got hit in fact by about 28 8 inch shells and I virtually walked around 2 or 3. The Captain was mortally wounded and the gun roister was killed. Everyone of the bridge except the Navigator and I

01:30:00:10

were either dead or shot and we were not able to fire a shot. We suddenly took up a list to starboard. There were fires going on, ammunition exploding, it was just mayhem.

Q: I'd like to come back to that experience later in more detail. Just at the moment I'd like to get a sense of what happened after that. Where you went in the last couple of years

01:30:30:15

of the War?

A: I then came back to Australia. It took about 3 weeks to get home. I had to go the Court of Inquiry as to why we'd lost the ship being Officer of the Watch when it all started. I'd lost all my gear. I had a pair of boots and overalls. I did hang on to the binoculars which I've still got. I'll show them to you later. I re-kitted and got sent back to sea. I joined an old cruiser called the Adelaide convoying

01:31:00:14

out of Fremantle and we were just doing basic convoy duty but we came across a merchant ship one day that turned out to be a German blockade runner. In combination with a Dutch ship, the Heemskerk and ourselves we sank her plus she put charges on board and they all bailed out into their boats and paddled up and just as we were hauling the Germans in

01:31:30:13

up paddled a dog and a pig that had been on board and the sailors stopped hoisting them in to get the dog and the pig on. Amongst that group of men were 10 allied merchant captains who'd been captured by German armed raiders so the Germans were stuck down below and they were freed.

Q: Was that your last ship of the War?

A: No. I stayed on her a year or

01:32:00:11

so and then I was drafted to the Shropshire which was the replacement ship for the Canberra. Winston Churchill had offered it to the Australian Navy as a gift. The Shropshire had been bought for over £2 million by the citizens of the County of Shropshire and the ship was not renamed and I was in Perth and we didn't know where she was. She was somewhere up in the middle of the Pacific and I flogged

01:32:30:05

round Australia by train up to Brisbane and I think 3 or 4 nights I went out to the airport trying to get a passage north. The only way you could go - the Americans were the only ones flying DC3's up to Manus, a city on the equator which was the big forward base and they kept on saying "No, no you've got no priority" so I went back to the HMAS Morton, the depot and said "For God's sake give me some piece of paper that will get me out of

01:33:00:12

here". They wrote out a South Pacific Transport Order that said, "If Lieutenant M J Gregory does not join the HMAS ship within 24 hours it will seriously hazard the War effort". Well I fronted with this and the Yanks said "My God what do you do?" and I said "It's too secret, I can't tell you". They bundled me into an aircraft and it took 2 days to get to Manus. Sitting on the floor with no heating and the mail and it was dreadful.

01:33:30:14

Got to Manus, it was in a tropical downpour and you couldn't see 10 yards. I said "Where's the Shropshire" and nobody knew where the Shropshire was. I sat for 2 days in the concert hut and the rain cleared and she was about 600 yards away anchored in the Harbour. I joined her just before the - she'd just come back from the battle of Surabaya Straits which was the last great sea battle of all time and we went to the Lingayen Landings

01:34:00:13

in January '45.

Q: Right at the end of the War?

A: We then went off to Tokyo and we were in Tokyo Bay for the surrender which was a great day.

Q: That must have been extraordinary and we'll definitely want to come back and talk to you in very great detail later. How long were you in Tokyo?

A: 3 months. We were part of the occupation force. We were anchored off Yokohama but we got off

01:34:30:17

to Tokyo quite a number of times and I was Mate of the Upper Deck which meant I was the Commander's Assistant, the Executive Officer and we ran all the sailor's work, seamen's work on the Upper Deck. He said "We've been here for ages". We'd acquired a jeep and a landing craft for 2 bottles of whiskey which I'd taken off and swapped.

01:35:00:13

He said "Go up to Tokyo in the jeep and find somewhere for the sailors to go and don't come back until you have". I was able to organise a travel company to send a train down 3 times a week and we put the whole ship's company through Nikko, 3 or 4 days each, gorgeous spot about 150 miles out of Tokyo up in the mountains and we stayed there until late November when we came back to Australia and we stopped on the

01:35:30:20

way at Wewak and picked up 600 army troops and brought them home. I stayed on board Shropshire as a Lieutenant and Watch Keeping Officer and she was picked to take the victory contingent to England and I stayed as Ships Company and we took them to London and I then stayed in England to do a specialist torpedo anti-submarine course which lasted over 12 months.

Q: So this was well

01:36:00:12

after the War now?

A: Yes, all of '47 and a bit of '48.

Q: Then did you come back to Australia?

A: I came back to Australia and went straight back to sea again to the Warramunga, which was the flotilla leader as the specialist TAS Officer for the flotilla with Captain Harrington as the Captain and then I started to get some quite bad headaches and eventually they sent me to the Torpedo Anti-Submarine

01:36:30:10

School and they found I needed to glasses for a stigmatism and I'd been at sea the whole War and I'd been back to England. It had been about 8 years and I'd had a pretty rugged time. I did a bit of teaching at the school and then I came to Navy Office for a year. They had a small group called the Director of Training and Staff Requirements with 3 specialist officers and you really were the eyes

01:37:00:14

and ears of the Naval Board to set policy for that specialisation to the Navy. I was called in one day. We'd had our first child in April 1950 - Nan. When she was a month old she got meningitis and she died. Then the Second Naval member said "How would you like to be Aide de Comp to the Governor-General?" I really didn't

01:37:30:12

know who the Governor-General was and I didn't really know about that. We had a thought and he said "Well, at least it will keep you home for a year. It won't do your career any harm one way or the other. If you say no or if you say yes". So we decided we'd go and we did. It turned out I did 2½ years because the King died, there were various reasons why Sir William McKell didn't want a change and we then had 2 more

01:38:00:12

miscarriages while we were there and then our eldest girl was born in Canberra, Jane. She won't want me telling you this but she's 50 now and she was born while we were at Government House.

Q: Then you?

A: Then I went back to sea again. The top job for your specialisation was on the staff of the Admiral commanding the fleet. I went on Admiral Dowling's staff as the Fleet Torpedo Anti-Submarine Officer on the Aircraft Carrier,

01:38:30:11

Vengeance and we were then escort for the Queen's visit in 1954 and we went right round Australia and we had to produce a guard and a Queen's guard is 120 sailors and a Lieutenant Commander and a Lieutenant. In case one of those gets ill you have a spare and I was the spare. When the Queen was doing the American War Memorial in Canberra

01:39:00:12

I told Lieutenant Stacey that he was going to be sick and Hugh Jarrett and I did the Queen's Guard in 1954 in Canberra.

Q: How long did you stay with the Navy?

A: I stayed until 1954 and at that stage we'd had a little boy. We'd had Jane, and then Anne and then a little boy. He was born with a congenital heart and he died

01:39:30:08

after 10 days so we'd had a rough couple of years and I decided I'd try and get out of the Navy before I was too old. I had 19 years.

Q: At that point you went into civilian life?

A: Yes, I took about a year to find out if I was going to get out of the Navy. Dad was working for Sir Owen Dickson, the Chief Justice of the High Court.

01:40:00:12

I used to see Sir Owen quite regularly. He was very pleasant and I got an unofficial reading on the Naval Discipline Act and he said they can hold you if they want to so be very careful before you resign. I'd talked to Sir Murray Tyrrell who was the Official Secretary and I knew Athol Townley who was the Minister for Defence very well and he said "For your information they've liberalised for officers

01:40:30:20

and we're not going to tell anybody." So I think you should have a go. So we posed a hypothetical case to the Navy Board and I resigned and Admiral Dowling said "Is this right?" and I said "Yes, these are the facts". He said "I'm going to be the next Chief of Naval Staff and you won't have any trouble". Within 10 days the signal came. I could go out without relief.

Q: Now that seems like a good moment to pause.

A: Right

Mr Mackenzie Gregory
0071
02

02:00:11:09

 

Q: Okay Mac, we'd like to take you back right to the very beginning. I was very interested in what you were saying about your father. Could you tell me a little bit more about your father and his experiences in the Navy?

A: Dad was a,

02:00:30:12

eventually became a, Chief Steward and in fact he served the Crown for 50 years continuously and was eventually awarded with a British Empire Medal of which he was very proud. In the First World War he'd been one of the old Contemptibles. This is crowd the Kaiser said "What a contemptible little army" and he fought in Belgium. He was on the Somme. He didn't talk much about the War.

02:01:00:11

He was a very proud person and he came out to Australia. He brought my mother's mother was a widow, my maternal grandmother, Ellen Greening and she was a gorgeous little lady who always took my side. I was a Cub and I think the sub was tuppence and I'd bought 2 Wild Woodbine cigarettes and tried my first attempt at smoking.

02:01:30:13

I would have been 11. I came in and my mother said "Have you been smoking?" and grandma knew I might have and mother was Mini Winifred. She said "Mini, don't be stupid. Of course he wouldn't be smoking" and took my side. Dad took her into the house and she really was one of the household and she was not a burden at all. She died while I was England in the War and I wasn't able to say goodbye to Grandma.

02:02:00:12

Dad wanted to serve and he really did look after the Admirals he had. He went to sea on a number of occasions and was the Steward for Admirals. He served on the Canberra, he served on the Australia and the destroyers. He ran the School for Stewards at the Flinders Naval Depot but essentially he was the guy who looked after the first Naval Member, Sir Agna Colvin

02:02:30:14

and some of those and until we had our own house we lived with them. He stayed until the War was over. They made sure we never served together, the Navy. I was never at sea or in a Depot when he was there. If I was there, they I suppose made sure we weren't together. It would have been pretty invidious having to say

02:03:00:12

Sir to your son. I always thought that it probably helped. I never really knew how I'd got into the Navy. I thought maybe as we've got the token Black Judge maybe I was the token lower deck person's son to get into the Naval College. I was the only one of a serving sailor to get into the Naval College. Whether that's right or not I don't know.

02:03:30:20

Occasionally when I was quite young as a midshipman, the sailors who knew Dad and he was always well-respected would say "Perhaps I wouldn't do that sir" if I was going to get into trouble in some way in what I was doing. In charge of a boat or in charge of a group or doing this or that. The Senior Petty Officer would come and whisper in your ear "I wouldn't to that but can I suggest this?"

Q: So was there a sense of class differences?

02:04:00:11

 

A: Oh fairly big. Not so much in our Navy as in the Royal Navy. Very distinct in the Royal Navy. Very distinct.

Q: Did your father talk about that at all?

A: He was conscious it might cause me a problem the fact that he was on the Lower Deck, as they say. It really didn't and I suppose the fact that he worked for the top people is usually

02:04:30:12

a help and they'd always say "How's your boy going" or "what are they doing". I don't think it was a harm at all ultimately. You asked about the class distinction. In 1940, '41 when we were working out of Liverpool we got friendly with some WRENS and in the very early part of the War the top families' daughters jointed the WRENS. There were 2, Phoebe Sanderman-Allan whose father

02:05:00:13

was a Colonel and Member for Parliament for Birkenhead. She took me home for a weekend. I was cleaning my shoes. Mother came up and said "Naval Officers do not clean shoes. We have servants to do that." Then I had some leave and she said "You can't stay in Liverpool and be bombed, we'll send you down to Anglesea where we've got friends". I said, "They don't want me, I don't know them, they don't know me." She said "Don't worry, they're Canadians.

02:05:30:20

They're Colonials, just like you". That really pointed it out. The other girl was Penelope Evans-Loam whose father was a full Admiral and it was unusual that they went as ordinary serving people but they took it as tradition but that sharp distinction wasn't so much in the Australian Navy but between an

02:06:00:14

officer and a sailor a) there's got to be a distinction because you've got to have someone fulfil an order on the spot without thinking. The same applied to me. Anyone who's a day senior to you in the Navy, they're senior to you and that's it. More than probably the other services you have to rely on each other so much for survival at sea. You've got to do your job, everybody else has got to do their job

02:06:30:09

and you've got to do it properly. It's amazing the camaraderie that still goes on. Here were are 60 years on. The Shropshire Association is still fairly strong. We have 2 reunions a year. Here at Albert Park we get 100 people probably still.

Q: Did the fact that you were senior to your father in the service. Did affect your bond with him in any way?

A: No, not really.

02:07:00:13

I was probably closer to Mother than I was to Dad. It was after that we got closer I guess. Gladys was very good to him. We'd have him over regularly for meals when he was living on his own after Mother died then he formed an association with another lady that didn't please me greatly but it was his business. We drifted a bit until he got older. He lived to be over 90 before he

02:07:30:12

died and wanted to make sure I had his medals and things like that. He went with Sir Owen Dickson to India when he did the Partition for the United Nations and Sir Owen really relied on him. He used to pack for him and look after him like a son. The whole Dickson family were very supportive of my family and Lady Dickson

02:08:00:06

became Raymond's Godmother when he was christened and she was pleased to do it.

Q: When you went into the College, were there any sort of rituals that you underwent as part of your initiation?

A: I suppose you had to fetch and what have you. There was one particular period where they made sure you had to climb through a window.

02:08:30:12

They could jam the window on you so they could belt you from behind so you couldn't get through the window and the usual sort of nasty things that went on. After your first year, you had a year below you that you could kick around. By the time you were 4th year you were absolutely cock of the walk. It was wonderful. It was just superb. Then you went to sea and you were down very much on the bottom of the ladder. Someone defined the midshipman as the

02:09:00:14

lowest form of animal life in the Navy. It was thus. I had a very salutatory experience. I had been at sea less than a month and I was running the Captain's motorboat. The Captain was RR Stewart, Royal Navy. Very tough guy. He called the boat away and you ran the boat for 24 hours with a crew. I was in the heads or the toilet and I didn't hear it which was no excuse and I think

02:09:30:13

half the ship's company were up on the quarter deck waiting to see what happened when I arrived. I rushed up and saluted the Captain who said "Boy, punctuality is the politeness of Kings. It is the duty of a Naval Officer. Don't you bloody-well forget it. Your leave's stopped. Get in the boat and take me to Rose Bay". We were at No. 1 buoy which is right near Man O'War Steps near the present Sydney Opera House. Rose Bay's the other end of the harbour. We got down there and I lined up the wharf with a

02:10:00:17

nice big swing and ran aground before we got in there. He said "Don't stand there. Get out and push". I was in long whites and I'm to here in mud and almost in tears. I got back to the ship and the Commander saw me and he said "My God when did you run ashore, before or after you dropped the old man?" I said "Before". He said "Well, you can stay on board for a month". That was my punishment for that and it probably made me try and be punctual for the rest of my life

02:10:30:11

so much so that my family's like it. My third daughter Sue will say, Captain Stewart will be pleased with me, when she arrives on time for something.

Q: Do you think that the training you received at the College really prepared you?

A: Certainly. Yes. You were confident. You were young but you were ready to take charge. We used

02:11:00:15

to be sent sailing. You'd go off on your own on a weekend. We'd take a 27 foot whaler and we'd sail from Flinders Naval Depot over to Cowes and back. It taught you to be very independent. They had a very nasty habit occasionally of rousing you out in the middle of the night, putting you into a closed truck, taking you maybe 20 miles somewhere along the peninsula. Putting you out at 2 in the morning and say "Get back to the College" and there's a time to do it in. You didn't know

02:11:30:06

what it was but if you got back too soon, you got a lift, they knew that and they'd send you back to do it again. If you got back too late, you did it again. That sort of made you resilient, things like that.

Q: Did you ever get seasick?

A: The very first time I went out in the old destroyer Tattoo into Bass Strait I got queasy but I wasn't sick. No I never have.

Q: A lot of sailors do, don't they?

A: Oh, a lot of sailors do. They get sick for a day or two.

02:12:00:18

Quite terrible. Can never go to sea. Gladys hated ships. She was seasick before we got under the Harbour Bridge on our way to England when she came over in 1947.

Q: When you left the College, you said before that really the War intervened?

A: Yes.

Q: You didn't have the opportunity to graduate properly?

A: No we didn't graduate. We were the only

02:12:30:03

term ever to get out of the College without a passing out exam. They just for your 4 years, that's where you are. I think I was about 9/12. I struggled with Calculus. We had twins in my term, the McDonald twins who were brilliant at everything. Didn't matter what. Sport. There Dad was a Headmaster. They came from a town in South Australia. Academically they were

02:13:00:14

superb. Good cricketers, good rugby players, good everything, tennis players. One got a Distinguished Service Cross as a Sub-Lieutenant on an arctic convoy, Russian convoy. Came out as a Lieutenant and did medicine. His brother stayed in the Navy and became a Rear Admiral and was in command of the fleet. One lives in Melbourne. Hugh lives in Melbourne and Neil is in Sydney. If anything happens the group will come together.

02:13:30:11

 

Q: When War did break out, what was your response to that?

A: I think - because in those days you were - Britain meant a lot. Mum and Dad being English they always talked a lot about home and one always was very proud to hear the National Anthem played. One stood to attention. You'd play it in theatres in those days.

02:14:00:11

It was a different atmosphere. I think we were all looking forward to it. It was going to be an adventure. Now War can be hell, War can be dreadful, it can be boring, it can be agony, you can get scared at wit's end but there's some good times as well.

Q: When do you think you first realised what War was about?

A: Being bombed in Liverpool. Having ships sunk around you and leaving

02:14:30:16

them there. I was ashore in Liverpool one night when there was a bad bombing raid and I was trying to make my way back. I hated going into the shelters and I'd rather take my chance on the street. In London you got shunted into the tube, the railway stations and I was trying to make my way back during a raid and there was an air raid shelter filled with women and children that got a direct

02:15:00:11

hit and probably 500 got killed. Seeing people lying all over the place really brought it home to you and made you hate the opposition really.

Q: Did you carry that hate into battle with you?

A: Not as individuals so much probably. I suppose you don't face them face to face in the Navy. Often battles are some thousands of

02:15:30:13

yards. Later in the War the Kamikazes got very personal when you could physically see them in the aircraft and you got to hate them individually that way. I have probably had no great love for the Japanese and I probably still don't. I've been back to Japan on business a couple of times since the War and I know it's not those individual people but they are still the enemy, I'm afraid.

02:16:00:15

But the Germans weren't quite like that.

Q: What was the difference?

A: I suppose, well we knew how the Japanese were treating our prisoners of war, number one, we knew we had a lot of prisoners of war and we saw them first rate in Japan. We sent out troops of people to go and look for them because a lot of our prisoners of war had been taken up to Japan and put in the coal mines under the sea

02:16:30:18

and were really they were terrible. One of my term was in the Perth, two were in the Perth. One was killed, Jack Lester and Norm White became a prisoner of war. He survived. Went on to become a Commodore. Learned Japanese and earned a living out of advising business people on what to do in Japan. In the last Queen's Honour got a medal of the Order of Australia for

02:17:00:11

what he'd done in fostering interest between Australia and Japan in industry which is ironic.

Q: I'd like to go back to the Kamikaze. What ship were you serving on?

A: Shropshire.

Q: Shropshire. When was your first experience?

A: January 1945 in the Lingayen Gulf landings. Luzon which is the north of - Macarthur

02:17:30:06

had landed at Leyte which is in the south and we were doing a second landing in the Lingayen Gulf which is in the north of Manila and we went up with the second biggest fleet after D-Day. It was enormous and the Kamikazes. They seemed to graduate on Fridays from flying school on a one way ticket and they would send up a 100 aircraft.

02:18:00:14

The combat air patrol and maybe knock some of them down and after Leyte we'd gone back to Manus Island - I joined the ship there and we had Christmas Day on December the 17th because we were going up to the Philippines and the Captain decided we didn't have enough anti-aircraft fire and he said to our gunner officer, Commander Bracegirdle, whose Dad had been Rear Admiral Bracegirdle and

02:18:30:13

official secretary to the Governor General's office "Go ashore and see if you can get some more 40mm guns from the Yanks". He said "Use your initiative" so Brace's got a couple of cases of scotch, took them ashore and was gone for a day or two. A little tug puffed out with a pontoon with 13 single bofers on it, about a million rounds of ammunition, the mountings and the Ordinance Officers

02:19:00:15

to put them on the ship and we stuck them all over the ship, on the turrets, round the quarter deck, 13 40mm guns, anti-aircraft guns. That saved us in Lingayen. Really saved us.

Q: Were the Americans better supplied?

A: Absolutely, in every way, every way. We used to joke about us. The way the Americans won against the Japanese. We were landing on an island. They would land

02:19:30:11

the stores. They'd build them up, they'd build them up until they fell over and crushed the Japs and then they'd go in. This is the way we'd describe the Americans. They had - the second thing to hit the beaches would be the ice-cream machine. They lived absolutely much better than we did food-wise, equipment-wise, everything was just absolutely incredible.

02:20:00:08

When we got up to Lingayen, the Australia had been hit once with a Kamikaze in Leyte in October 1944. The Captain had been killed and whole heap of them had been killed. She was stationed 600 years astern of us and she attracted them and in fact over several days in Lingayen Gulf she got 5 Kamikazes hit on board and

02:20:30:12

it would have been January 6th I had the last dog watch which was 6 o'clock in the evening to 8 at night. We'd had a hell of day with kamikazes. From morning they'd come up and they'd fly round the fleet and then they'd got up to about 1000 feet and then just dive in to any ship and I'd seen about 80 ships physically get

02:21:00:07

hit over a period of a week or two and this particular evening I suddenly looked up into the sun and there's this Japanese aircraft screaming down for the bridge. We cleared the bridge and I flattened out on the deck. There was an explosion, the bridge is 60 feet above the water level. I got wet. I thought it was petrol . I reached out a hand and

02:21:30:12

had a lick and it was salt water. Cazaly who was the Leading Seaman in charge of the port Pom Pom - the son of "Up there Cazaly" from football was Captain of the port Pom Pom which was an 8 barrel anti-aircraft gun that could fire 1200 rounds a minute from each barrel, 2 pound shells had seen this Japanese and in fact had shot him in half. Half went one side of the ship with a bomb on, half

02:22:00:11

went the other side and the explosion splashed the water up onto the bridge. Well that's about the closest I've ever been to being written off. Roy Cazaly was given a Distinguished Service Medal and many years later in Adelaide we were having a Shropshire Reunion. My wife said "Where's Roy Cazaly?" I pointed him out and she went up and kissed him. His wife looked very cross-eyed

02:22:30:10

at her at that stage. She said "I wouldn't have him if it wasn't' for Roy and that's to say thank you". He has since died of asbestosis unfortunately. He lived in Hobart. That was probably a more frightening experience I think than even being sunk in the Canberra. You got to the stage where we hadn't lost a man - you'd keep on seeing your sister ship being hit, you'd see other ships being hit

02:23:00:12

and you got to the stage of saying "Can we go on? When are we going to collect one?" I think Shropshire overall shot down something like 19 Japanese aircraft. We fired the 8 inch guns at them. We had them radar controlled and we could fire an 8 inch shell which weighs 256 pounds all at once, burst at 2500 yards and

02:23:30:07

we would splash them in front of the aircraft if they were flying just above the deck. Sometimes they'd go in. Cazaly was such a good shot. When we working up there'd be an aircraft, a friendly aircraft dragging a drogue, which is a target to shoot at and I've seen him cut the droag in half, go up and cut the wire with his shots he was so good. All by eye until the pilot sort of said "Aah, that's enough" and he'd nick off.

02:24:00:12

An American aircraft followed down behind a Jap one day and Cazaly knocked them both over. The pilot got out of it and we were able to - the destroyer was able to pick him up. They were not supposed to come down that close. If they were that close you shot at them. The only way you survived.

Q: Was it easy to tell who was who?

A: One of the things you had to do was aircraft recognition.

02:24:30:12

You'd got off and do a course and they'd flash up silhouettes of the aircraft and you got very good at picking out all the Japanese aircraft which had names like Zeke and Val and Betty and what have you. They all had a name. From the silhouettes you could pick them unless they were coming out of the sun and they were hard to see.

Q: But you had to have instant recognition?

A: Really, yes. You had an Officer in Charge of the guns. Cazaly would shoot all down the port side and we had

02:25:00:16

a tripod main mast. Three legs main mast just after where his gun was and it had a section, a triangle that he could shoot through that triangle through to the starboard side. The Captain would ring the check fire bell which meant the guns should stop. You'd hear the port Pom Pom chattering on and the old man would say "Get me Cazaly!" and Cazaly would go up to the bridge and he was a Reserve Leading Seamen. He was only in for the War.

02:25:30:10

He'd salute the Captain and he'd say "Cazaly when I ring the check fire bell, you'll stop" and Cazaly would say "Sir, if I can see them, I'll shoot at them". He'd salute and walk off.

Q: And the noise level?

A: Oh, unbelievable. I have a picture in the study of an artist's picture of Shropshire under fire and you might think that it's far fetched. It isn't. You would not believe what an aircraft

02:26:00:12

can survive and will fly through. You just see all this black bursts of fire and Cazaly used to load tracer in every now and then. Tracer lights up as it goes so he could - he used to call it hosepipe - you could follow where the tracer was going. He was just so good with his eyesight and shooting. He had a joystick control which meant he could lay the gun

02:26:30:11

and train it by himself. All he had to do was get his crew to load it, to keep it going. If he yelled they would run. He was absolutely superb as Captain of the port Pom Pom.

Q: Now, you said that it was more frightening, that experience than being sunk?

A: I thought it was. More personal, more intense and over a longer period of time.

Q: So obviously we really need to talk a lot about what happened

02:27:00:10

to the Canberra and where you were at that time?

A: Yes.

Q: What role were you performing on that ship?

A: I was a Watch Keeping Officer which meant you had to be an Executive Officer with a Watch Keeping Certificate from the Captain merely saying you were competent. I had got mine in May 1942. I joined the ship in

02:27:30:11

December. I had done the 3 months with somebody else and Captain George Moore was the Captain who gave me my Watch Keeping Certificate. He'd gone off on 2nd May, I remember and we got a new Captain, Captain Getting who'd only just joined in May. It's interesting, a Cruiser is a big ship 12000 tons, 80000 horsepower,

02:28:00:10

4 propellers. It's not like driving a car where you put your foot down and it goes. They take a while to work up. I was still - although I had a ticket I was still learning. One afternoon we were on 600 yards astern of the flagship and I was a bit out of station, astern station and we'd line ahead so the Admiral's only got to look out and see that you're out of station and he'll send a dirty signal and the Captain hates that

02:28:30:19

when the Admiral says "Get back in station!" The Navigator came up who was a Lieutenant Commander and said "Sub, you're out of station. For God's sake use some of that horsepower and get back in station". I went up a couple of revs and nothing happened. He said "Look, you've got 80000 horsepower use them". I went up a knot, nothing happened, I went up another knot and suddenly we started to charge up and before we know where we are we're about 300 yards instead of 600 yards and the old man, the Captain noticed

02:29:00:11

what was going on and he came up and had a look and said "Sub, I don't believe the Admiral has invited me on board for dinner. Get back into station". I got back again. But he knew I had to practice. After a while you get very good and you can look at it and know you're in station or you're not. You have a little station keeper where you can get the ship down, you can measure the distance exactly but you can do it by eye. These days you've got radar. It's very easy. You navigate by

02:29:30:11

radar. You've got global positioning. It was much harder in those days.

Q: So where were you physically positioned on the bridge?

A: On the bridge. Well, behind the compass. You've got a voice pipe down to the Helmsman who is one deck below and he's also got the controls to the engine room. So you give speed and course orders to the Seaman whose in charge of the steering and you've got 2 Helmsmen

02:30:00:21

Telegraphsmen who will telegraph what speed you want to the engine room. You've got a voice pipe to the Captain.

Q: When you say they telegraph it, is that literally?

A: It's an instrument which you move, Slow Ahead, Full Ahead and it registers in the engine room. Also you say so many revs. You go up in revolutions. You had 4 propellers, 2 each side. 8 boilers with 2 boilers linked to each screw.

02:30:30:16

20000 horsepower could be generated through the steam going through the turbines that drive the propellers.

Q: So if you're travelling in convoy, how do they all manage to stay together. I mean.?

A: in line?

Q: Yes.

A: They don't. They wander all over the place. You try and shepherd them and that was one of your problems. You'd wake up in the morning and you may have 30 ships and you've got

02:31:00:22

to - someone's drifted off and you've got to round them up with a destroyer if you've got one. When you first leave, you'll have a battleship, a carrier, half a dozen destroyers, half a dozen cruisers. When you get well out west of England or Ireland, they'll all nick off and leave 1 or 2 ships to take the rest of the convoy. Actually we travelled from Liverpool to Durban by going around in a circle. Circling the convoy going right round doing

02:31:30:14

much greater speed. There's an old saying, the speed of the convoy is the speed of the slowest ship which is very true. If one ship can't do 14 knots and that's what's ordered still drop back. You've got to cut back the speed to what they can do.

Q: What about supplies during that?

A: You'd only carry what you could but in the Pacific the Americans had what they call the Fleet Train. You'd stay at sea for months. They'd bring a tanker out. You would steam

02:32:00:11

hooked up to the tanker and pump fuel across the 15 feet you'd be steaming apart or 20 feet. Keeping station on the tanker. Then they'd bring a supply ship up and you'd hoist in the supplies while you were underway.

Q: Getting across to Durban from Liverpool would take you how long?

A: 3 weeks.

Q: Was that at the speed of the slowest ship?

A: Yes, might do 10 knots.

Q: Because some of those ships could have actually done it quicker than that?

A: Oh yes.

02:32:30:09

They would try and get ships that were pretty well compatible in making up a convoy but you'd have a tramp steamer, you'd have an Orchades or they were taken over and they would vary from maybe 5000 tons to 40000 tons.

Q: Were u-boats the biggest threat?

A: Oh yes, and the aircraft. The Germans had a big flying boat called a Focke-Wulf Condor. It could fly right out, miles out

02:33:00:06

into the Atlantic and their job was to spot the convoys and then home the U-boats. They'd string the U-boats out in a line across the Atlantic and there was gap that we couldn't cover. From the west with air cover and from the east with air cover and the gap in the middle and that's where they'd go. That's the gap until we got - we were able with. We put aircraft on - old Hurricanes and old Spitfires onto a merchant ship. Squirted it off

02:33:30:12

once and the pilot shot down the Condor and then bailed out hoping to be picked up.

Q: So it was acting like an aircraft carrier?

A: Well, a little catapult on the front of some ships.

Q: And it would.?

A: Squirt it off for once.

Q: And that would be it?

A: That would be it. He'd go up, abandon ship, abandon his aircraft and be picked up.

Q: So they couldn't land again of course?

A: No.

Q: So how many planes did they lose like that?

02:34:00:14

 

A: They used the older aircraft I think and they just fitted a number of them. That was one way they closed the gap.

Q: Right, so it was a deliberate policy of abandoning those aircraft and just trusting that the airman could eject and.?

A: Be picked up.

Q: Yes, so it was a pretty high risk mission?

A: Yes, indeed. Churchill did a deal with Roosevelt for 50 old

02:34:30:20

American destroyers. They took over the bases in the West Indies for 100 years and did a great deal for the Americans and we got 50 old World War I destroyers to help these convoy ships, anti-submarine ships.

Q: Actually I think I read that the Australia had a sea plane?

A: Yes, the Walrus on a catapult.

Q: Was that the same set-up?

A: No, it could land and be picked up again.

Q: How would you get the plane back

02:35:00:13

onto the ship again?

A: Hoist it up by the crane.

Q: Were you ever involved in that operation?

A: Oh, later as a Lieutenant you'd be in charge of that, yes.

Q: And so you would be in the middle of the ocean?

A: Yes

Q: In possibly heavy seas?

A: Well hopefully it wasn't too bad but you could lay an oil slick down. Oil calms water and stops it being so bouncy. So you'd drop some oil, make a slick and the aircraft would land in it.

02:35:30:15

You'd have the crane out and the pilot would get out and hook on his aircraft and we'd hoist him up. Sometimes it would crash into the ship and do a bit of damage and in fact our aircraft at Dakar was shot down by the French and we lost our crew in 1940.

Q: You lost your seaplane?

A: Lost our crew and the plane.

Q: During that operation in support of De Gaulle?

A: Yes. When Operation

02:36:00:11

Menace which was De Gaulle at Dakar, we lost our aircraft.

Q: What were they doing as part of that operation?

A: They were spotting our fall of shot onto the Richelieu and the cruisers in the ports.

Q: What was your feeling about that whole operation?

A: Frustration essentially. A, that we didn't have a force big enough, B, that the French were there and wouldn't do anything. We were shot at by the French. We were bombed by aircraft

02:36:30:12

that the French had been given by the Americans. We sank a destroyer there or a light cruiser the Fantasque. It was all over in about 6 or 8 minutes. The first salvo was over, the second salvo was short, then we hit and just blazed up. We went to pick up survivors and the submarine squirted off torpedos and we just left them.

02:37:00:09

They were French.

Q: But their own ships?

A: And submarines.

Q: They had submarines?

A: They had submarines in there as well.

Q: And did they fire?

A: Oh yes. One of the battleships got torpedoed. The Resolution. That really was an absolute debacle. Destroyers being hit with a 9 inch shell going in one side with a little hole and blasted a hole on the other side you could almost drive a truck through.

Q: And in the end.?

A: No, got nowhere.

02:37:30:11

Had to be abandoned. We didn't get Dakar.

Q: Was De Gaulle actually on one of the ships?

A: Yes he was. Yes.

Q: But he never obviously went ashore at that point?

A: No, he'd sent a motor boat off. I think they were badly advised. They were to drop leaflets and it was to be either sticky or happy. If it was happy it was fine and they signalled happy and we gaily went in and it was foggy. It was the only

02:38:00:11

time I had an action station below decks and I hated it. I was in charge of the 4 inch high angle control position and I had a pair of headphones up to the Chief Petty Officer up in the director who could see. He said "Oh the forts are firing at us. No it's short. No it's gone over". Then you could hear the shrapnel hitting the ship's side where the shells had burst and we were below the waterline. I really loathed that. It was claustrophobic and

02:38:30:17

I didn't like being below decks at all. We had that for 2 or 3 days. We were stuck down there and just having to listen. The French coloured the shell bursts. It was like, green from the battleship, yellow from the forts, red from the cruisers so that they knew what shots were landing. Where they belonged.

Q: Extraordinary. I think probably time for us to change the tape just about. Seems like a good moment to have a

02:39:00:11

break. That's terrific.

Mr Mackenzie Gregory
0071
03

03:00:33:22

 

Q: Okay Mac, just listening to what were you saying earlier, there are a couple of things that I thought we could explore further. Going back to when you returned to Australia in 1941 and then you joined the Adelaide and you went up to Singapore on the Adelaide wasn't it?

A: No, Canberra went to Singapore.

Q: You were on the Adelaide.

03:01:00:18

You'd mentioned that there was an engagement with a German Raider?

A: No, blockade runner. The Ramses.

(Editor's Note: This incident occurred on 28 November 1942.)

Q: Was this ship disguised?

A: Yes she was disguised and flying another flag and our Navigating Officer had been Merchant Navy and said "That ship belongs to such and such German line". He recognised the goal

03:01:30:19

posts where they ran their derricks from. We got a book of German ships and he picked it out and said "That's the Ramses". We'd stayed well clear about 5 or 6 miles away having remembered the Sydney had gone too close to the Kormoran in November '41. Captain Esdale stood off and we asked them to identify themselves which they couldn't.

03:02:00:17

They didn't have the signals. You used to have 4 letters. You'd give the outside 2 the signal of the day and the other ship had to give the inside 2 out of the 4. That was one method of doing recognition at sea. It changed regularly and we decided to open fire. It was interesting, she had a big 6 inch gun on the stern.

Q: Can you see these? When the ship is disguised, how do they disguise a ship apart from running false

03:02:30:17

colours?

A: Generally, sometimes they - well the German raiders used to put false funnels up. They would have woodwork, for instance they'd have guns within a container that looked like deck cargo and they'd drop down the sides of it and have a 6 inch gun there. This one really was not too well disguised. She was just running false colours and she had a 6 inch gun on the stern that didn't

03:03:00:14

open fire and we couldn't really understand this but when she went down it floated off. It was only a wooden dummy and these people were all ready and she'd been in Japan and she was loaded with tin and tea and oils and tungsten and all the things that Germany wanted and she was there hoping to run through - pretty lonely place, the

03:03:30:16

Indian Ocean and the Atlantic and pretty stiff if you get picked up. It just happened that we were with a convoy. We were taking a convoy up to - there was an oil rig for Abadan we were taking up from Australia in merchant ships. We were going up to Ceylon to hand over to the British. You worked a certain part of the Indian Ocean and they worked a certain part. You'd hand over and we with a Dutch ship. After it was identified we opened fire from about 10000

03:04:30:16

yards.

Q: What sort of armaments?

A: We had 6 inch guns. Single 6 inch. It was a very old cruiser built about 1922. Built in Australia opposed to our Perth and that which were all British ships. Perth, Sydney, Hobart, Canberra and Australia were all British yard ships. She was not sort of a front line ship and was there for convoy work and did quite a bit of useful work around there. Was a terrible

03:04:30:21

sea ship would roll on a (UNCLEAR) and used to ship them over most uncomfortable. They then had charges laid so they blew her up as well so we had a combination of them. We took them aboard and put them down below. They'd all bought their suitcases which were crammed with German crosses which the sailors helped themselves to and they complained. The

03:05:00:16

old man made us give them all back again.

Q: You also said that there were some Allied captives?

A: Yes. That had been sunk by - the Germans had a number of armed merchant raiders, the Penguin, the Komet, the Kormoran was one and they sunk a lot of our shipping and they used to keep the Merchant Captains and keep them as Prisoners of War. They were Norwegian and Dutch so they were

03:05:30:18

very pleased to be released while we slammed the Huns down below.

Q: Tell me about what the feeling in the Navy was once the news of the Sydney had come through and how was that news - was it rumour - there wasn't much known of course?

A: There still isn't a great deal known really of how it all happened. Not a great deal was heard about it during the War at all.

03:06:00:08

We knew she was overdue, we knew she was lost and they'd got a couple of Carley floats and they thought they had somebody on Christmas Island, a sailor they thought, a body from the Sydney but they lost 635 which was our worst. It was interesting it would have been 1988 we had an International Naval Convention in Melbourne. We had about

03:06:30:15

several hundred come from overseas and I was given the task of seating them for lunch at the Southern Cross and I looked at the list and I found a Lieutenant or a guy - I recognised the name - he was a Professor from Berlin and I put him on my table. Ahls and

03:07:00:24

I picked a few interesting ones that were going to be on my table and he turned out to have been the Lieutenant who was the Flying Officer in Kormoran and I sat him next to me and said "Tell me about the Kormoran". He wouldn't talk very much other than the familiar line that she came too close so we fired torpedos. She went off under fire and the last thing we saw was her burning in the distance and we sank and

03:07:30:13

we didn't see anymore. That's all I could get out of him which was the line that Captain Detmers had pedalled ever since. We made the mistake of not separating them sufficiently in the beginning and he was able to get to all his crew when we got them ashore. We took them up to Queensland, the Officers. So he'd survived that and came back and became an Engineering Professor in Berlin and came to that. That was an interesting experience too

03:08:00:24

but I couldn't get him to talk.

Q: The Sydney was the premier battleship

A: No, she was a cruiser. Light cruiser. 6 inch cruiser.

Q: Oh right so similar to the Adelaide.

A: Yes but she had twin turrets. She'd sunk the Bartolomeo Colleoni under Collins in the Mediterranean. She was a glamour ship.

Q: Alright. Then you came back to change ship?

A: I went to the

03:08:30:12

Shropshire from the Adelaide.

Q: Oh, so you were on the Adelaide after the Canberra?

A: Yes. Yes.

Q: Okay. Well I want to take you back to your convoy trip to Singapore. You'd come back into Australia late 1941?

A: I came back December 1941. December 7th. Yes. This was about February, early February.

Q: What ship was this?

A: I was in the Canberra and we were escorting the

03:09:00:11

- was it the 6th Div that went into Singapore?

Q: 8th.

A: 8th. The 8th. We took not quite into Singapore. We left the convoy about half a day out. We got it through Banka Strait which is a very narrow channel just north of Indonesia, now Indonesia and they took them into Singapore, virtually into the bag straight away in Singapore. 19th February '42 and they all went in as Prisoners of War.

03:09:30:16

 

Q: So can you remember what date you were in Singapore?

A: We didn't actually go into Singapore. We stopped jut short.

Q: So that was in January?

A: It would have been just 2 or 3 days probably before and we came back through Batavia. Stopped there. I got ashore in now Jakarta and then we came back to Australia and round to Sydney where we did a small re-fit and as I said

03:10:00:14

we were there for the Jap submarine attack.

Q: Again how did that affect nerves and morale on the ship?

A: In Singapore?

Q: No in Sydney.

A: Absolute mayhem that night. It really was. The poor Japs were very unlucky not to get the Chicago. I think probably, the Chicago was a heavy cruiser but she had very top hamper which she looked like a battleship and I suspect

03:10:30:11

that they set the torpedos too deep and passed underneath her. That's the one that ran up and sank the Kuttabul which was a ferry being used as an accommodation ship alongside Garden Island. The torpedo I think hit the wall and exploded underneath and also damaged the Dutch submarine the K-9 which also happened to be around, charging up and down the harbour.

Q: They didn't really fire on the ferry? It was misdirected?

A: No. A torpedo that

03:11:00:13

ran the wrong way. Another one passed up onto the beach at Farm Cove. Of course one got caught in the net. They sank one and one got out. Never to be discovered with Sub-Lieutenant Ban on board and never found it. Still haven't found it to the day. They'd had an anti-boom net across the harbour that wasn't quite finished and also had a hole for the ferry to go through and they had

03:11:30:13

loops on the bottom of the harbour which measured magnetic - the field of the ship as it went over and they read quite clearly read this was the submarines coming in and going out. But it couldn't be a submarine could it. It was probably the ferry. We were inept totally that night. The dockyard lights didn't go off until about 11.00 at night. Captain Cook dock was ablaze. The ships were just silhouetted. It was beautiful and we were at No. 1 buoy

03:12:00:12

in the Canberra. They were that close to Chicago they saw one of them. They had trouble keeping depth one of the submarines and it was bobbing up and down and she was that close they couldn't depress the guns close enough, down enough without knocking of their own guardrails. Then she got down, Ban got it down - I think it was Ban got it under control again and lined up Chicago but ran it too deep

03:12:30:12

and eventually Chicago got fed up and went to sea. We stayed at No.1 buoy and I was Officer Watch that night again.

Q: You wouldn't have known how many there were?

A: Oh, had no idea. We didn't know what it was to start with. There were guns firing and Pinchgut was - searchlights. It was just absolute mayhem and they were very unlucky. Somehow we muddled through and we had only - other than the 23

03:13:00:21

who were on the Kuttabul when she blew up.

Q: On board, you must have thought you were fairly safe in Sydney Harbour before that?

A: Absolutely, particularly No.1 buoy which was a few hundred yards from Man O'War steps which is round from where the Opera House now is. It was that close. It's the prime position for the No.1 cruiser goes to the buoy and there we were.

03:13:30:08

Just lucky.

Q: Did things change on board after that? How did your morale and the watch must have been doubled? How did it change the day to day life on board?

A: I think we became more alert. I think we probably had motorboats then going around the ship to make sure there weren't anybody trying to put a mine on board. You'd have a boat circling the ship. Then we had what you call the Hollywood Fleet which is the pleasure

03:14:00:19

yachts that were taken over by the Navy for harbour patrol. They found - the Lieutenant in charge of one of them actually found the submarine in the net and he asked could he open fire. Could he have permission to open fire instead of getting stuck into it straight away. It was the Watchmen who found it. He sent a boat off and said "I think there's a submarine caught in the net".

03:14:30:15

I think they gave him an award of £10 for alertness in finding it. Rear Admiral Muirhead Gould was an Englishman who was in charge of Sydney Harbour and I thought he made an absolute bog of it. Muirhead Gould was in charge of the Court of Enquiry when I came back after Canberra and I was not impressed. I was a humble Sub-Lieutenant and he was asking me to give judgment on my Captain. How did the Captain

03:15:00:12

perform at the bridge on the night and he'd been killed. That really set me up.

Q: You felt like asking him how he performed the night the night of the..(laughs).

A: Honestly. He had poor old Captain Bode who was Captain of the Chicago. He'd been away from his ship which was a battleship at Pearl Harbour. He was in command of a battleship and he was ashore when that happened. He was away with

03:15:30:13

Muirhead Gould having dinner the night the Japs attacked. In Canberra, at Guadalcanal he was second - he was senior to Getting and he didn't take the lead which he should have after Australia went over.

Q: Let's go to that night. Take us through. You're in the Canberra. You've left

A: Wellington. We went to Wellington.

Q: After Sydney?

A: Yes. We went to Wellington to pick up

03:16:00:16

the troops which were Marines and they were all young fellows.

Q: They were Americans?

A: American Marines under Vandegrift, Major General A A Vandegrift. He was a tough American Marine General. Given an impossible task almost with pretty well raw recruits. Six months before they were in boot camp. He had trouble in Wellington because all the supplies were wrongly packed. He had to

03:16:30:08

pull them apart and re-stow them. The wharfies went on strike, it rained. Everything was against it. They went off to Coro which is an island in the Pacific to do some landings, pretend landings and nothing went right at that. In the end they just said we got to go because King wouldn't give us any more time and they had very little time to plan the whole thing. Nobody really knew anything about Guadalcanal

03:17:00:11

had the barest of maps and the Japs were in Guadalcanal and they were on Tulagi which is a separate little island where they had a flying boat base. So August the 7th was D-Day and Canberra went to bombard Tulagi and about 6 in the morning there were strikes from the carriers and they caught the Japanese flying boats on the water and knocked

03:17:30:12

all those off and put the Marines after the bombardment ashore at Tulagi where they had a hell of a time because the Japs couldn't retreat and it took them a day or two to get hold of Tulagi where on Guadalcanal they had absolutely bombed the daylights out of it with the 6 and 8 inch guns you throw a lot of lead. You can fire probably 4 salvos of 8 by 8 and each shell 256 pounds plus

03:18:00:16

bombs from the aircraft. They didn't have much trouble getting ashore and they got the unfinished airfield fairly quickly on Guadalcanal and then the Seabees went in.

Q: Seabees?

A: Seabees are the American Construction Corps and they made the landing strip out of interlocking metal strips. They laid it down over the beach or over the jungle. They'd run in a bulldozer, clear everything down and then put metal matting

03:18:30:17

which was the runway and they weren't too long before they had Henderson Field named after a Marine Pilot who was killed at Midway I think and so the first night, that's the night of August 7, 7/8, we were given the task with Australia, Canberra, Chicago, 2 destroyers, the Bagley and the Patterson to patrol

03:19:00:16

up and down at 12 knots altering course without orders 180° to starboard on the hour. We'd do a patrol 12 miles up and 12 miles back from the edge of Savo back towards Guadalcanal up and down as a group. That's the south side of Savo Island which squats in the middle. You've got Guadalcanal coming down, Savo, an entrance to the south

03:19:30:09

and an entrance to the east of it. The eastern side was blocked off with the 3 American heavy cruisers, Quincy, Astoria, Vincennes and 2 destroyers doing a box patrol. A box is a square. They drove round a square at 12 knots perhaps 5 mile sides. Then about 20 miles away they're still landing the troops and supplies at Guadalcanal. All the troopships with about

03:20:00:16

8 screening destroyers are anchored off Guadalcanal getting the stuff ashore on the beach. Night time is a good time because there's no aircraft. In the meantime the Japs had found out the landing was on and Mikawa who was Japanese Admiral was in Rabaul with the 8th Fleet and he gathered up some 8 inch cruisers, some 6 inch cruisers a destroyer and came screaming down from

03:20:30:06

Rabaul. He was seen by one of our Hudson aircraft flying out of Milne Bay run by Flight Sergeant Bill Stutt who subsequently became the Chairman of the Moonee Valley Racing Club. Bill was about a 20 year old Sergeant Pilot flying out of Milne Bay. They had just moved up camping in tents a squadron of Hudsons to do patrols.

03:21:00:10

They were not told that Guadalcanal was happening. They told they might see some Japanese. He in fact came out of the clouds and there's this Japanese Fleet. He broke silence to report them. The American Naval Historian, Morrison subsequently wrote years later he didn't break silence. He staggered back, had his afternoon tea, had his tea, then was

03:21:30:13

debriefed, total lie. It so happened that when he broke silence, Milne Bay was being bombed and they closed down the station and he couldn't get through. When he did get back to report them it then went from Milne Bay to Australia to Canberra to Washington, back to us and it was hours before we even heard that they were in the area. A second Hudson

03:22:00:12

with Flight Lieutenant Milne saw them, got shot at, got hit but got back and all reported them differently and they didn't have much recognition practice. It was very difficult in an aircraft and they reported them having a couple of seaplane tenders with them. Now this threw everybody out because the day before an American carrier had shot down a Japanese seaplane

03:22:30:05

on an island to the north of Guadalcanal. Everybody believed that's where they were going to set up a seaplane position at Rendell Island north of Guadalcanal. They were seen by one of Macarthur's B17's but it was probably - I knew when I went on watch at midnight that the Japanese force had been seen but nobody believed they were making for Guadalcanal

(Editor's note: Rendell Island could mean Rennell Island but this is south of Guadalcanal)

03:23:00:10

and nobody believed they could arrive before the next morning. We had been under severe torpedo and aircraft high level bombing attacks for 2 days. We had been at our action stations very little sleep. We'd gone into the second degree of readiness which means half were at their action stations. Two turrets manned, 4 inch gun but the guns were not loaded but it only

03:23:30:11

takes you seconds to load. The Yanks were in an even lesser degree of readiness than we were. All the opinion was, it couldn't happen at least before the morning if they were coming down. So on the morning of the 9th we are doing the same patrol as the previous night. I had the Middle Watch which means I had to be on the Bridge by midnight as the 8th turned into

03:24:00:11

the 9th August 1942. Sub-Lieutenant Dorborne handed over the watch to me and the Captain was on the Bridge and the Navigator was on the Bridge at that time. I had Lieutenant Commander in Charge of the Armament, Lieutenant Commander White but I was in command of the ship's navigation and safety as the Officer Watch.

Q: What's your rank at this stage?

A: Sub-Lieutenant. I was 20.

03:24:30:15

I'd had it for 6 months so I was relatively new at it but I was competent. He said we were doing 12 knots. He told me the course. We would alter course 180° to starboard on the hour without signal. The Australia had been pulled to of the line by Admiral Turner and as Guadalcanal was 20 miles away Admiral

03:25:00:13

Crutchley, the Englishman but in charge of the Australian fleet and nominated second in command to Rear Admiral Turner who was in charge of the landing operations and over above that was Vice Admiral Fletcher in the carriers that were 300 miles south east and South East Pacific Command was Vice Admiral Chormley sitting away in Fiji who had not bothered to go to

03:25:30:13

the briefing at Coro but had sent a Captain over. Fletcher wasn't too keen about the whole arrangement anyway and he said he didn't think it would be a success and he had already been sunk in 2 carriers before and he was apparently fairly tired. Anyway he was the overall Commander. Out of the blue he suddenly rescinded on his promise to be for 3 days and said he was running out oil, which he wasn't. He said he was

03:26:00:11

running out of aircraft, which he wasn't and actually nicked off with the carriers before we had approval. He didn't tell Turner he was going. Turner intercepted his message and that's the only way we knew. So Turner had called Vandegrift from the land and Rear Admiral Crutchley from the Australia to meet him on board his ship off Guadalcanal, 20 miles from where we were. So rather than take a boat in the middle of the night he went off about half past nine

03:26:30:12

in the evening so we were left with the Chicago, the Australia and the 2 destroyers. I was also told Captain Bode in Chicago had decided to stay astern of us and we would lead. So we've got the Bagley 2500 yards on our starboard bow.

Q: That's a destroyer?

A: Destroyer, American Destroyer. Patterson 2500 yards

03:27:00:12

on our port bow.

Q: What's the armament on these destroyers?

A: 5 inch guns and torpedo tubes. About 3000 tons.

Q: And the Canberra is about?

A: 12000. 10000 nominally but she was a Washington Treaty which meant they had to keep them under 10000 but they'd gone heavier than that with extra armament, radar and all sorts of additives and we had a bigger crew. We had about 800 and later in the War Shropshire had

03:27:30:09

1280 on a ship designed for 600 or 700 but that's jumping ahead. Dorborne also said there'd been aircraft engines overhead during the night and the water was quite phosphorescent and you could see your destroyer's wake. Lights - phosphorous in the water lights up the ship's wake. So from above you would be able to see a course very clearly.

03:28:00:12

The Captain had been told about the aircraft and they thought they were probably ours because we had seaplanes and the carriers had planes although we didn't really know the carriers were not doing night flying at that time. We are bereft of any air cover for the morning and subsequently they decided, but we didn't know then, that

03:28:30:14

they would withdraw in the morning. The whole force would withdraw and leave the Marines onshore without a great deal of food and without all their supplies. We couldn't afford to stay there without air cover. Everybody was fairly dirty on Fletcher which I have continued to be my whole life. However. So we did our first hour and we altered course. The Navigator told me he wanted to be called at 1.45am

03:29:00:16

so he could fix the ship before we turned at 2 o'clock and we were making towards the Savo end. There was no moon. It was misty. Visibility was not good. There were dark clouds scudding around and it was a pretty foreboding sort of feeling. There was sort of an air about the thing and we were tired. It was 1.43am because I had to look at the clock.

03:29:30:12

I'd just looked at the Chart Table clock. Now the Chart Table is a little table with a covered hood on it with a little light because you couldn't afford to show a light. You could stick your head in there, look at the chart and at a clock and I was watching the time because I had to give the Navigator a yell in 2 minutes time to get him up out of his sea cabin which is immediately below the Bridge. He'd sleep with his clothes on and take his shoes off. The Captain was also in his sea cabin at the end of a voice pipe fully dressed. You only had to

03:30:00:11

lift the lid of the voice pipe and say "Captain Sir" and he'd be "yes" straight away. He was as quick as that. There was suddenly an explosion to the north which was probably 20° or 30° on our starboard side. I think it was one of the Japanese torpedos that had been fired a long way away exploding and the Japs had the long lance torpedo which is a 24 inch diameter torpedo opposed to our 21 inch

03:30:30:16

diameter. They carried a big load of explosive.

Q: And that's fired from a?

A: Cruiser or destroyer. Submarines only ran 21 inch but the long lance ran fast and ran an immense distance and was the best torpedo in the world. They were running on enriched air which was virtually oxygen. It is very volatile, mixed with oil it is liable to blow up. Canberra was the last

03:31:00:11

cruiser in the British Navies to ever run enriched air torpedos and we'd got rid of them because we thought they were a safety hazard. We happened to be the last ship to get rid of them. We'd gone to an air driven torpedo opposed to an oxygen driven torpedo. Then the port lookout reported seeing a ship ahead in the distance. I couldn't see it. Lieutenant Commander White the

03:31:30:12

Principal Control Officer in charge of the armament couldn't see it. The signalman couldn't see it. Then we called the Captain. I called the Navigator, the Gunnery Officer. We went to action stations. You sound the action alarm and everybody goes to their full action stations. We loaded the guns. The Principal Control Officer suddenly saw 3 ships. He told the

03:32:00:11

- you had what was called an Enemy Bearing Indicator. It is a control that when you follow with binoculars on it the director that controls the guns automatically follows it. Suddenly there is an enormous explosion. Probably where the Walrus is on the aircraft and the 4 inch gun deck. The 4 inch anti-aircraft guns.

Q: Forward or astern?

A: No, astern of the Bridge. About

03:32:30:14

amid-ships. Just after the funnels or level with the funnels there is a raised platform that had 2 to port side and 2 to starboard side with ready use ammunition and that went up. The aircraft's on fire and it had bombs on it. Then the Bridge is suddenly - I saw torpedos coming down our starboard side. We went hard to starboard. The Captain was on the Bridge very quickly went full ahead. We gone hard to port he went hard to

03:33:00:11

starboard. The Navigator came up and he was a bit slow getting up because he had to put his shoes on. He then becomes the Acting Officer of the Watch. He took over from me. He said "I've got the con" which means I'm then absolved from being in control of the ship and the Navigator's got it under the Captain's direction. My action station was in the Fore Control which is immediately above the Bridge but up above it so you look down onto the Bridge.

03:33:30:12

I was to really work out the ship's enemy's course and speed visually and pass that down to the torpedo to the Control Station. By the time I get there the Bridge has been hit on the port side.

Q: Is this from the air now?

A: Beg your pardon?

Q: From the air?

A: No no. Japanese cruisers. They'd approached in line ahead. They'd swept round the south of Savo Island

03:34:00:20

and we had 2 picket destroyers outside of Savo Island. The Blue and the Ralph Talbot that had been picked because they had the best radar and the best anti-submarine in the destroyer flotilla. They were stationed so they would come together leaving a small gap. Well the Japanese saw them visually, slowed down, steamed through the middle. The

03:34:30:12

approaching pack of dingos on the unsuspecting sheep. They were not seen by either Blue or the Talbot. The Jarvis who'd been clobbered the day before, another American Destroyer had been torpedoed was limping around Savo on her way to Australia. They saw the Jarvis, slowed down. Jarvis didn't see them. The Japs were supposedly not able to see at night. They were no good at night fighting.

03:35:00:11

They had slanty eyes. They could not see. In fact they trained lookouts especially. They had special night glasses. They picked us visually at 18000 yards which is 9 miles away and nobody saw them. They are now something like 3000 yards from us blasting away with 8 inch guns. The one that came under the Bridge decapitated the Gunnery Officer,

03:35:30:17

mortally wounded the Captain and filled up the Torpedo Officer, Lieutenant Commander Plunket Cole with shrapnel who was dashing around the Bridge saying I've been shot in the bum. Midshipman Loxton was an absolute mess. He was the Captain's midshipman. Dreadful stomach wound. Midshipman Sanderson filled with shrapnel.

03:36:00:12

The Navigator, Lieutenant Commander White had gone. The Gunnery Officer had relieved him and he got away before that. I had to wait for the Navigator. I walked off the Bridge, walked around about 3 shells immediately under the Fore Control. The plot was wiped out and the Navigator had told them to send an enemy report. We were off the air before that could happen and the plot was wiped out. Immediately behind the Fore Control was

03:36:30:07

the Signal Bridge. That got hit. We had had something like 25, 26 8 inch shells all down the port side. In between the boiler rooms and we stopped. We started to take a list to starboard. Some said they could feel a torpedo hit. I wasn't aware. I knew there'd been some sort of a bump but I was never absolutely sure that we'd been torpedoed but apparently post-War it's been -

03:37:00:10

Bruce Loxton who wrote a book "The Shame of Savo" who was the Captain's midshipman and he survived and I'll talk about him in a minute - believed we picked up the Bagley's torpedo from our starboard American destroyer. That's the only torpedo we hit. The Japs fired something like 20 long lance torpedos and we dodged the lot. Two went on to hit the Chicago, one took off 16 feet of bow and the other didn't explode. So Chicago

03:37:30:11

went charging off into the night. We didn't see her. The Bagley went off. Patterson was the only one to open fire and engage the enemy. Patterson just about at quarter to two used her talk between ships, which was the ship's radio, where she said "Warning, warning, warning, strange ships entering harbour". In fact we didn't have TBS. Canberra wasn't fitted. Can you believe it. We are working

03:38:00:11

with Americans with ship radio and we haven't got it so we didn't get that.

Q: Okay, well it's pretty exciting stuff. We've got to change a tape now so we'll do that quickly and keep going with this night.

Mr Mackenzie Gregory
0071
04

04:00:18:14

 

Q: Okay, so.

A: Well I got up to Fore Control and I could look down on the Bridge and I could see the Captain lying down on the Bridge. I could see the Gunnery Officer was obviously

04:00:30:12

dead and it was just carnage. We started to list to starboard and I had a sailor standing close to me probably as close as you are and he suddenly moaned. He'd been hit in the head with a lump of shrapnel, you know it was that sort of close. I can remember with my binoculars looking out and I could see the trunked funnel of a big Japanese cruiser, this big funnel and it was a Mogami.

04:01:00:12

I recognised it as a Mogami type cruiser just blasting away about just over a mile away. I can remember saying "My God this is bloody awful".

Q: Do some people panic in this situation?

A: No. Not really. No no. I suppose you got a nasty feeling at the bottom of your gut, it's churning over. I did say earlier, everybody had a job to do and

04:01:30:10

if you let somebody down it's not going to work and I think that's what drives you on. You might be scared as hell but you're going to do your job.

Q: And does that override any - if your best mate is lying there needing some medical attention but you've got a job to do?

A: I think you'd do your job first. I gave this young man some morphia. We had a pack of morphia in the first aid kit up there and I think he survived in the end. I'm not sure, I didn't really find

04:02:00:14

out what happened. We then abandoned the Fore Control because it was - I'd worn my cap up there and taken it off and thrown it in the corner and it was a very special cap because I'd come back from England and the Navy issued caps were just ordinary and at that time the Officer's cap badge in Australia was stamped out of metal and I'd got a gold braid one from Geeves the

04:02:30:10

outfitters in London and I had this cap and I put it in the corner when I put the tin hat on. We abandoned the Fore Control and we went to fight fires and get rid of ammunition and I got sent below to look for anybody that was wounded or dead. No lights and the ship's got a list on it. I had a torch that's all and I was down about 3 decks and it gave a dreadful lurch and that was an awful feeling. I said

04:03:00:19

"Oh this is it, I'm not going to get out of here". I was in the sick bay flat and there was a sailor there who was alive but he virtually had an arm and a shoulder that had been shot off with a shell coming into the sick bay flat. He was in shock and hadn't really realised it was his. He was still conscious and he looked out and saw the hand with a ring on it and realised it was his own.

04:03:30:05

We eventually got him out and they patched him up and he managed to survive.

Q: Without his arm?

A: Without an arm. They took his other arm and grafted it onto the shoulder and got some more skin and eventually saved him - he survived without his arm.

Q: On a ship this size, do you know everyone?

A: No, no. They all know you because you're one of the Officers and you had a Division.

04:04:00:09

I was the Quarter Deck Sub Lieutenant which meant there were 100 sailors in the Quarter Deck Division. I would know all of them. I would know their family history. I would have to keep their records and I was a shoulder if there was a compassionate problem they'd come and talk and you'd censor their letters. You got to know them extremely well and you knew most of the sailors but not the Stokers or the people

04:04:30:20

below decks.

Q: So the Captain's been killed at this stage?

A: Yes.

Q: Who's making the decisions?

A: The Commander was Second in Command, Commander John Walsh. He would have been in the After Control which is the other end of the ship just in case something happens. He lost an eye in the action so he's out of action and the Gunnery Officer is dead so the next is the Navigator as a Lieutenant Commander Jack Mesley who went on to become a Rear Admiral.

04:05:00:14

He's now in command so you might have an Engineer Commander or a Doctor who's a Commander but the Senior Executive Officer, even if he's only a Sub-Lieutenant would be the one who would command the ship if it got down to the level. So Lieutenant Commander Mesley is now in charge and the Patterson, our port destroyer came along side and we're listing to starboard, came alongside port side and started to take the wounded

04:05:30:10

off. We had loaded a lot of wounded into our boats but when we lowered them they were all full of holes, they'd all been full of shrapnel and we had to get them all out again. So we got the Captain, who was still alive over to the Patterson and most of our wounded. They just put a Mess Deck table over and of course she's much shorter than we are. It's a nasty gap and in the middle of it, in the distance

04:06:00:14

at this stage I've still got my binoculars and I'm on the fokesall by A turret. We've got 4 turrets, A, B, X and Y each with 2 8 inch guns, 2 on the focsle, 2 aft. I look through my binoculars and said "That's the Chicago". I recognised her and she started to open fire and she thought we were a burning Jap I assume. Well Commander Walker, the Captain of the Patterson said "Don't worry fella,

04:06:30:05

I'll be back". He cut all the lines with an axe and took his ship off, put a search light on. Eventually identified that he was good and we were good and off he went. We, at this stage were left, we had nothing to fight the fires with and the ship started to roll and Lieutenant Commander Mesley said "Standby to abandon ship". That's a real decision, do I get rid of my binoculars

04:07:00:12

or do I keep my boots. So I took my boots off, hung on to the binoculars, got outside the guardrail. You've always got to jump off the high side because if she rolls on the other side you'd get sucked in. We were about to jump off at this stage we were about 40 feet up I suppose with the roll and suddenly she stopped rolling. "Don't!' So we all got back again. It's raining by this stage, very miserable

04:07:30:12

and it's probably half past 4 in the morning. Well Patterson came back and she went starboard side of the Quarter Deck, down aft. You couldn't get through from one end of the ship to the other because of the fires. My cabin happened to be on the upper deck and I had a little panic bag packed that I was desperately wanting to get if I was going to abandon ship but I never got to it. I did have

04:08:00:08

a photo of Gladys and the Bugler went in there and he got my great coat out and he got my photo which he broke the frame and he put it in his pocket which he promptly gave back to me later with my great coat and it had water all around the edge of it. It eventually got lost somewhere in changing houses. We saved that. That's all we got out of the ship at the time. We then, the Blue, which is one of the 2 that had been

04:08:30:14

outside and missed Mikawa and his fleet steaming in came along side our port side and took off about 300 and at the time we abandoned ship the only people were the 84 dead that were still aboard. Some died of wounds later. The Captain did a couple of days later and the Blue then took us off to one of the transports, the Fuller.

Q: What are the Japanese

04:09:00:18

ships doing at this stage?

A: Ah! The Japanese after cleaning us up in about 3 minutes, swept past. The northern group were not aware what was going on. They split into 2 groups, went both sides of the American cruisers, knocked over the 3 of them, the Quincy, Astoria and Vincennes, 1000 dead in the Americans, swept on out and got away.

04:09:30:12

Were picked up by a submarine on the way back and one of the light cruisers were sunk by the submarine with a loss of only about 35. Now Mikawa was criticised for not going after the transports but he was not aware that the carriers had gone and he was frightened that he was going to get caught in the daylight by the carriers and he got back with his fleet to Rabaul.

Q: After sinking 4 cruisers.

A: Yep. Great victory.

04:10:00:09

 

Q: And the Chicago just got out of it?

A: Yes she survived. Bode got very much criticised later for not leading, for virtually doing very little. My understanding is the Captain of the Bagley who didn't do well got relieved at pistol point by his First Lieutenant and he went charging off and did nothing. The Patterson was the only one that really performed.

Q: So there was a

04:10:30:12

mutiny on board the other destroyer?

A: The Bagley? No. The Captain, he was locked up by his - he went a bit crazy apparently so Bruce Loxton found later in writing his book and the ship was taken over by his First Lieutenant. Bode eventually got relieved of his ship. Fletcher and Chormley were taken ashore by King and they never had a seagoing command again. Fletcher was

04:11:00:11

in charge of the carriers, Jack Fletcher.

Q: How does it, your lives are in, you know, does it cross your mind sometimes if the Captain goes ga-ga, what do you do?

A: Oh, well the next Officer has got to take command. Yes.

Q: Is that - hopefully that doesn't happen on a ship.

A: I never thought about it. We had strong Captains. Getting was only there a short time but he was a strong

04:11:30:-6
Captain. He'd been a Submariner, first Australian to train as a Submariner. He was in the first college lot from Osborne House where Dad's submarines were in Geelong. It was the first Naval College before it moved to Jervis Bay and before it went to Flinders Naval Depot in my time.

Q: When things are looking bad on the Canberra, you've been down 3 decks, you got that guy back up.

04:12:00:12

You say you've got a job to do but what are the other sorts of things that are flashing through your mind?

A: Oh, we were dumping ammunition, we were trying to fight fires with - initially the Patterson gave us hoses with water which she could pump but then we had to get rid of that. We had no electricity so we were stopped and in fact the torpedo I believe went in between both boiler rooms and we had no steam, no

04:12:30:12

power and nobody got out of the boiler rooms at all. That was the greatest loss. The 2 total crews in the boiler rooms were dead. At the time we abandoned ship and she had to be sunk the next morning by our own forces and it took the Selfridge and the Ellett something like 6 torpedos. Some didn't go off and the Americans had a bad pistol, firing pistol on their torpedos at the time

04:13:00:12

and they fired something like 256 5 inch shells before she went down and I didn't actually see her go down but she slipped beneath the waves at about 8 o'clock on the morning of the 9th.

Q: You were on board a destroyer at this stage?

A: Yes on our way to - the Patterson took them off to the Barnett and I got taken to the Fuller.

Q: What are you doing, you're talking with your fellow seamen

04:13:30:10

after this. Is there much discussion of what went wrong, who was responsible?

A: Oh, what happened, yes. How did it happen? We knew there were 2 destroyers outside. How did they get there? In fact the aircraft that were flying overhead were Japanese float planes and they dropped flares which just lit us up like a Sunday dinner or Christmas tree and they'd obviously been able to pick the course, that was just straight up and down

04:14:00:16

with the phosphorous in the water and they knew exactly what we were doing. It was just too easy.

Q: How's your confidence in you allies, in the communications at this stage?

A: Well, we were upset that we didn't have TBS is the first thing that would seem silly. We were the first Australian ship to get radar. It was a fairly limited set. It was probably not working all that well and

04:14:30:07

you'd get echoes of the land when you were close to land which didn't help. We were cross that we really hadn't got the messages that Stan Judd had picked up, that the messages never got through. We were upset later that the Yanks blamed us for it and it was only post-War that - a few years ago that the wife of the second pilot, he'd died,

04:15:00:12

Nancy Milne found out that a Sub Lieutenant in Mikawa's flag ship had taken an illegal copy of the signal which read Stan Judd's message and they found this in the archives in Tokyo which said they'd picked up the message of him reporting sighting the fleet. So we were vindicated and Morrison was totally wrong and now we are - I still find on the internet

04:15:30:13

people giving Morrison's story that the Australian crew did not report the Japanese.

Q: When was Morrison's version published?

A: Oh, probably '50's.

Q: And that's for an American audience?

A: No, well worldwide audience really. He believed that's what happened.

Q: Who's Morrison writing for?

A: He was an American Rear Admiral, writing the history of the American Navy. There's about 8 or 9 volumes.

04:16:00:12

 

Q: So that's the official history?

A: Oh yes, yes. He was taken to task by Gill in our history by being wrong and I've been beating that drum ever since. I've eventually had a couple of websites changed by sheer persistence.

Q: After this, you've come back to Sydney for the investigation? Was that correct?

A: Court of Enquiry.

Q: Court of Enquiry. Tell us a bit about that?

04:16:30:15

 

A: Well we lobbed in Sydney and I've got what I stand up in and an old mate of mine arrived with a sports jacket and a pair of pants. I had a mean pair of pants and a shirt and maroon boots that they'd issued us with in the Fuller. They were the most beautiful boots I've ever seen. They lasted for about 15 years I think. They were the softest of leather and the best quality. You know our rough old uniforms our Army had compared to the beautiful material the Marines

04:17:00:13

had in theirs. I got called up before the Court of Enquiry as Officer of the Watch and I think I had something like 180 questions and Muirhead Gould was the President of the Court and he wanted to know how did my Captain perform, what did he do and take us through what happened. I said "Well I, as a Sub-Lieutenant was not going to stand in judgment

04:17:30:10

of my Captain who was now deceased." As far as I was concerned he'd performed admirably and was nothing to do with him. He didn't get the message and nobody knew that they were going to be there. The Americans - we'd set up a force outside and I still couldn't believe why they weren't seen visually or by radar. Nobody could understand that. We'd fought the ship as best we could and it was a force of circumstances and he blamed -

04:18:00:12

when Bruce Loxton came back he'd been very badly hit and to go back to the Canberra one has silly pride. As I said I prized my cap and badge and I said "I'll go back and get that". I staggered back up onto the Bridge in the middle of the night in the wet and it was a shambles and I had to shin up a rope to get onto the Fore Control to get the cap and where I'd thrown it in the corner was a great big hole where a shell had come in

04:18:30:12

and no cap, no badge. I was coming down and there was a body on a stretcher with 2 sailors carrying it and they lifted the body up and drained about a gallon of blood out of it and it was Bruce Loxton. I was the Sub-Lieutenant of the Gun Room which meant I was in charge of the midshipmen and he was one of my mids. Dreadful stomach wound and he was conscious. I said "How you going Bruce" and he said "Oh, I'll be right". I wrote him off mentally

04:19:00:13

but he survived and went on to become a Commodore and he was very distinguished. Then when he came back, Muirhead Gould met them and accused them of not fighting the ship properly and how to you feel and that's why he called his book "The Shame of Savo". It so incensed him he then did a lot of research and I did all his research in Melbourne

04:19:30:12

because he lives in Sydney and all the archives are in Melbourne so I went through what we had in Melbourne about it and did a lot of basic research which he acknowledges in the book and it's probably the definitive one on the sinking of Canberra. The bible that everyone talks about the Canberra when he categorically said it was the Bagley's torpedo that hit us and for months he'd ring me up and say "Where was the Bagley the last time you saw her?" I said "Bruce it won't change.

04:20:00:10

She was astern of station" and she was beyond her station, she was further out, maybe 3000 yards and this happened regularly. I'd say "Bruce, same story" and eventually he rang and said "Its all right. I found a signalman who was aboard the Bagley and now lives in Adelaide. He corroborates exactly what you've told me." He then drew up the diagrams and it says "Gregory looked for the ship in this arc and it wasn't there which proves she was beyond station.

04:20:30:14

Now taking her to be there if she fired torpedos from there, this is where they went and we picked up one of them."

Q: And you believe that's what happened?

A: Absolutely. Well I was asked were we hit by a torpedo and I said I couldn't say definitively that we were. As I said I had about 180 odd questions asked "What had I done? What had happened? What had the Captain done? What had everybody done? Did the Captain do the right thing?" I wasn't going to criticise him. I was in

04:21:00:08

no position to as a Sub Lieutenant and a very experienced Captain. He virtually helped us miss all the torpedos. He was going to starboard between the enemy and the troop transports that were still landing. He handled the ship very well in the time he handled it. We were ready to go within a minute it was only that no power before we could even get the guns trained. When Ballard

04:21:30:16

found the ship, which he has. She's 2500 feet down sitting upright on the bottom, the guns are trained to port, where the enemy was. I met him when he came to Melbourne to launch the book and I said "Where is it?" He gave me the latitude and the longitude of the ship which is in my bit about the Canberra. I said "Can you find the Sydney?" He said "It's a hell of an Ocean".

04:22:00:10

He said "You'd really have to pin that down before I find the Sydney".

Q: Yes, well there's a few tales there.

A: Yes.

Q: After the Court of Enquiry, you're in Sydney for how long?

A: Oh, I went home to Melbourne for 2 weeks leave and re-kit.

Q: Then you transfer to the Shropshire?

A: No, to the Adelaide.

Q: Oh, to the Adelaide. That's right, sorry.

A: I picked up the Adelaide and in fact.

Q: Did you have many crew from the Canberra with you?

A: No, most of the

04:22:30:10

Canberra crew went back to the Shropshire. Went to join Shropshire. They were drafted - Shropshire was given to us in '43. She was commissioned, she'd been commissioned in '27 but Churchill wrote a memo saying, "Australia has lost of their cruisers. I think it would be great for morale if we should give as an outright gift one of our cruisers"

04:23:00:12

and we decided to keep the name and not change it and the Americans had named their ship Canberra so we couldn't have 2. That's the only time the Americans have named a Warship after a foreign country. They named her USS Canberra.

Q: When was that?

A: In '43. So I went off to the Adelaide and she was subsequently came to Melbourne and we were at that time my fiancé had

04:23:30:12

appendicitis and was getting over that. We sailed and went to Perth. I got acute appendicitis on that trip in the middle of the Bight and it was too rough to operate. They were really trying to keep this thing quiet and I was quite happy because I wasn't too confident on the surgeon we had on board. (Laughs) Dentists in the Navy are great but doctors are not that special in our experience generally.

04:24:00:20

All right for the general run of things but you wouldn't want to put your life in their hands too often. We got to Rottnest and I got taken off in a boat and I was taken to St John of God Hospital which our dear sailors call "Jack of the Christ" and I had an emergency operation and it burst on the table and I had a month in hospital getting over this wretched thing and then I got flown home to have a couple of weeks leave then I went back to the ship

04:24:30:14

and got over it.

Q: Worked out quite well then?

A: Yes.

Q: Then you described that it took a bit of a journey to get to the Shropshire?

A: Yes, that was a funny trip.

Q: You joined the Shropshire, what part of the.?

A: Manus, she was at Manus.

Q: What month is this now?

A: November 1944.

Q: November '44.

A: Yes. I flew into the strip and Manus at that time was the greatest fleet base

04:25:00:06

in the Pacific. It was huge.

Q: How many ships?

A: Oh, hundreds.

Q: Is there any danger of collisions when you've got that many ships?

A: Occasionally, yep. In fact one of the ammunition ships blew up in the harbour. It was a terrible time. We sat in - you came back to Manus and you replenished, you occasionally got ashore at Coral Island

04:25:30:09

and had a baseball match and we had a very good baseball team because we had a number of American Liaison Officers who worked decoding machines because the Yanks didn't trust us with their decoding machines. They bought their own people on board and they were all Lieutenants Junior Grade or Lieutenants that ran decoding machines with all the wheels that used to go in.

Q: So you had Americans on board your ships?

A: Yes, we did. One of them was killed

04:26:00:08

on the Canberra. Lieutenant Vance and in fact I just had, would you believe, yesterday, there's a guy in Poland who's very interested in the Canberra. Is writing about the Canberra for a Polish audience on its sinking. He wrote to me yesterday and said "I've just found out you had an American called Lieutenant Junior Grade Vance who was killed on the Canberra", which he was, "and they named a destroyer after him.

04:26:30:12

Can you remember him?" It was yesterday.

Q: The Americans named a destroyer after him?

A: Yes the Americans named a destroyer after Vance. The USS Vance. You've got to get killed to get a ship named after you. There's the Gregory too. Denise was an O'Brien before we got married and they named a destroyer the O'Brien and a Destroyer the Gregory. Both got sunk in battles around the Solomons in 1942. (Laughs).

04:27:00:12

 

Q: What sort of work are you doing on the Shropshire in '45?

A: In '45? Me?

Q: Well, what's the ship?

A: Oh the ship. The ship was in all the landings all the way from New Guinea. She was in everything. Absolutely everything. Just before I joined her she'd been in the landings at Leyte and it was at Leyte that the first kamikaze hit the Australia and probably the first

04:27:30:14

kamikaze of the War. We had Captain Dechaineux killed and a lot of Officers and a lot of sailors and then they had the Battle of Surabaya Straits which was the greatest sea battle of all time. The last great sea battle in which the Shropshire helped sink a Japanese battleship. I just missed that. She'd just got back from that to re-ammunition and

04:28:00:13

get the Bofors that I mentioned earlier for the whiskey and we had Christmas Day on December the 17th because we were going to do the landings. We were going to be at sea and we happened to get the old Mercer, our supply ship up and for once we were in front of the Yanks and we had turkey and they had Australian beer that day. Every sailor got a bottle of beer and there's a tradition in our Navies that on Christmas

04:28:30:12

Day the Junior Sailor becomes the Captain for the day. The Officers serve the sailors for their meal. Do all the washing up and we had the first cafeteria system on the Shropshire and I was in the washing up crew. It was about 110° and the sailors were deliberately dirtying all the dishes so you had plenty piled to wash up. We had the band marching around the upper deck

04:29:00:12

with a great big conga line with the noise emanating unbelievable. The Captain is on the bottom of the gangway dressed as a sailor and an American Admiral is coming to call who could not believe this noise. His barge is going slowly round the ship. The Captain there as the side boy and the junior sailor with the Captain's uniform on. This Yank just shook his head and wandered off and didn't come on board. (Laughs). We sailed the next day and went up

04:29:30:17

for the Lingayen landing.

Q: Morale must have been pretty good at this stage?

A: Oh yes. Magnificent ship. Magnificent ship's company. Best ship I ever served in. Absolutely superb. Everybody knew what they had to do. They were great at what they did. We had a lot of good Senior Officers. A lot of seasoned Officers who'd been at sea the whole War. The Lieutenants,

04:30:00:12

we had Duncan Stevens who is a Lieutenant who happened to go and be Captain on the Voyager when she was knocked over by the Melbourne. We had John Stevenson who was later in the Melbourne when he ran over the American destroyer later and got blamed. They were all serving as Lieutenants with me on the Shropshire. They had a magnificent ship's company. We had Farncomb for a while who was the Commodore. We had Collins as the Commodore

04:30:30:14

before we had our first Rear Admiral. We were the Flagship at times. We had an R.N. Captain Nichols who was quite magnificent and usually the Australians don't take well to RN Officers but this guy was superb. He could handle the ship, he was cool. He used to sleep in his pyjamas in the wing of the Bridge on a little bed. We caught a mine in our paravane one morning. Paravanes are 2

04:31:00:14

bits of equipment you tow from the ship with cutters on and the wire picks up a mine. It's moored. It runs down into the cutters, the wheels go round and hopefully cut the mine. Under international convention they are supposed to be rendered safe as they come to the surface. The Gunnery Officer woke him up and said "Sir, we've got a mine caught in the port paravane." "What have you done". "Well sir, I've tried to shake it out. I've got somebody here with a rifle to shoot it when we get it out. I've got an

04:31:30:19

oxyacetylene torch if need be. We've got some brooms to push it off if it gets a bit close." He said "Oh, you've got it in hand. Get on with it" and went back to sleep.

Q: Where about is this?

A: Oh, going up to Lingayen Gulf in convoy for the landing. Biggest convoy of ships. We had an aircraft carrier blow up just about 2 or 3 miles away the Ommaney Bay.

Q: Hit a mine?

A: No, Japanese an aircraft crashed into it and she just went pfftt.

04:32:00:12

Went through the decks and exploded.

Q: Kamikaze?

A: Oh, light carrier probably 10000 tons. The Americans had wooden decks on their carriers. We had steel decks and steel made all the difference. They didn't penetrate but the Americans often had them penetrate. Then they just flew into the deck. If you didn't shoot them down pfftt! You saw the photograph, it was just like that, unbelievable.

(Editor's Note: USS Ommaney Bay, hit by Kamikaze attack 4th January 1945)

04:32:30:12

 

Q: Now the Shropshire