Bathurst Class Corvettes

[herakles]

These ships were made in Australia during WW2. A total of 60 were produced.

20 went to the British Admiralty though crewed by Australians, 4 were for the Indian navy, the rest went to the RAN. They were based on the RN Bangor class design but all were designed and constructed in Australia.

Whilst designed as minesweepers, they ended up in many roles from convoy work, anti-submarine work, transporting troops and hydrographic duties.

Typical of them was HMAS Toowoomba. (a town in Queensland) She was launched March 1941.

Class and type: Bathurst class corvette
Displacement: 650 tons (standard), 1,025 tons (full war load)
Length: 186 feet
Beam: 31 feet
Draught: 8.5 feet
Propulsion: triple expansion engine, 2 shafts
Speed: 15 knots at 1,750 hp
Complement: 85
Armament: 1 x 4-inch gun (later replaced by 1 x 12-pounder gun, then reinstalled)
3 x 20 mm Oerlikons (later 2)
1 x 40 mm Bofors (installed later)
Machine guns
Depth charges chutes and throwers

There was some variation in armaments amongst the others.

She was ordered to Batavia in Jan 1942 and was in constant action. She was the last warship to enter Singapore Harbour before Singapore fell.

She joined the British Eastern Fleet in Nov 42 working in the Indian Ocean. On Nov 1944 she was assigned to the British Pacific Fleet.

Decommissioned in Jul 1946, she was commissioned into the Royal Netherland Navy (RNN). Renamed HNLMS Boeroe, she served with the RNN until 1958.

There is an HMAS Toowoomba in the RAN now, an Anzac Class frigate, commissioned Oct 2005.

[astraltrader]

A good post, Herk.
It is easy to overlook these sturdy and enduring maids of all work.
Two of these Australian built corvettes survive today as maritime-museum ships at the places they were named after - Castlemaine and Whyalla...

[John Brown]

Very interesting Herk

I must confess, I have never previously given much thought to the shipbuilding industry in Australia.

John

[astraltrader]

Sadly John I fear they might well end up outlasting our own!

[Maritime Michael Ian]

When I was in Melbourne in 2006 the Williamstown Naval Dockyard launched the latest ( and I was told the last ) ship for the RAN. I understood that the dockyard was due for closure but don't know whether it had a stay of execution as it were.

Ian

[herakles]

Hadn't heard about Williamstown possibly closing. It's a very yuppy area now.

Those Bathurst ships were built at about 6 different sites as I recall.

I am confident there are no plans to close Cockatoo.

[Robert McDougall]

Bathursts were sweepers, I served in HMNZS Inverell during the mid 70's. She was decommissioned August 76. This was my first draft as a buff stoker. Inverell, Kiama, Stawell and Echuca were given to New Zealand by Australia after WW2. Inverell was by built by Morts Dock; Cockatoo Island; Sydney laid down 1941.
Inverell and Kiama were turned into training ships, by removing the aft winch and sweep gear and new mess built in place. Two 40mm Bofors guns fitted one fore one aft. They spent their time on fisheries patrols and training cruises for midshipmen.
Inverell had 2 Admiralty 3 drum boilers powering 2 x 900hp triple expansion engines. Full power got her up to 15 knots, though we managed nearly 16 knots with a following sea, and tail gale off the Corromandel coast once. The most unusual aspect of her main engines and propellers was that they were inward turning, opposite to the normal outward turning on most ships.
This presented a problem for the Captain when manouevering she handled differently. I found that out when I was in HQ1 as we were coming alongside in Wellington, we thumped the wharf so hard that large piece of paint hit the deck. There was a dent in the plating.
She was a strongly built ship, that one story I was told that during exercises in the late 60,s early 70's she had run in with destroyer, ending up with bent guardrails and the destroyer with far more damage.
As for seakeeping, with my limited experience she was ok. I used to watch the clinometer in the engine room swing off the scale as we rolled during storms. The scarey part was oiling the engine bearings during roughers, large flaying counter weights ready to give you a nasty injury if you weren't careful. I only got seasick once onboard her. Morning watch, hungry, cleaning the sprayers, the smell of hot dieso, off the Snare Islands. I was good after breakfast. Strangely, the same thing happened to me two years later in a frigate, same watch same place.
There were no soot blowers fitted to the boiler, so one time we went up Auckland harbour under the bridge to the ammunition depot. The boiler room POME asked permission to blow soot. Permission given let out a large cloud of black smoke straight under the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
I feel kind of proud to get some experience of serving in a WW2 ship, old style mess decks, the sea keeping ability akin to a corvette, old styles engines, looking back, its bragging rights
I really had no idea how many were built, sixty? thats alot of ships built.

[herakles]

How very interesting Robert. I did enjoy reading this!

[Robert McDougall]

Thanks very much, I'll try to post more.

[TACKLINE]

How very interesting Robert. I did enjoy reading this!

You may like to read this piece too herakles. I found it on line. I was the "little Englishman".http://www.australiansatwar.gov.au/stories/stories.asp?war=W2&id=220
Tackline

[kookaburra]

I was so glad to see Herk has posted this thread on the Bathurst Class corvettes, small ships (700 tons) which saw heaps of action up close and personal, and did prodigous war service, from the Mediterrean to the Indian Ocean and Southwest Pacific particularly.

I wanted to try and give some sense of the service of the 56 R.A.N. Bathurst Class corvettes (the 20 ordered by the R.N. were in fact all absorbed into the R.A.N., Australian manned and named after Australian towns from the beginning).

There were four Australian corvettes in Singapore and they soon were joined by a fifth when the Japanese struck there, and were involved in many rescue works and evacuations; others were in Darwin Harbour when 281 Japanese aircraft bombed the northern Australian port on February 19, 1942, and the most famous image of that huge attack (below) is HMAS Deloraine below a nuclear-like mushroom cloud of expoloding oil storage tanks. Deloraine had taken a leading role in the sinking of the Japanese fleet submarine 1-124 near Manus Island a month earlier. It was the first R.A.N. success against a Japanese sub. (and it was this submarine, incidentally, that figured in decades of spurious rumour about being involved in the sinking of HMAS Sydney the preceding November, three weeks before Pearl Harbour).

The corvettes were also involved in escort work during the extensive but little-known Japanese submarine campaign down Australia's East Coast (another thread sometime) in the two years that followed, when many merchant vessels were sunk, and both Sydney and Newcastle were bombarded by Japanese submarines offshore, as well as the midget submarine raid into Sydney Harbour.

The corvettes were at Milne Bay, the first Japanese land defeat of the Pacific War, and a flotilla of 14 of them were used to ferry troops and supplies into Buna for the battles that followed there ( the corvettes role was designated 'Operation Lilliput'). There seemed to be a bond between the men of the AIF and these little ships that carried them to the island battles (they could carry 500 troops for a short duration at a pinch), supported them with close shore bombardments, brought supplies, and often carried the wounded out again.

Even before the Pacific War there was an extreme shortage of escort vessels and during 1941 and for much of 1942 the Bathurst Class corvettes were being launched from Australian shipyards at the rate of two a month, with the peak reached in August 1941, when five were launched within the four week period. In addition to the 56 Australian ships, four were built for the Royal Indian Navy, along with the R.A.N. tribal class destroyers, River and Bay Class frigates, sloops and many smaller naval vessels built in Australia during WW11.

The story of HMAS Armidale and the gallant action of Ordinary Seaman Teddy Sheehan has been told on another thread. The corvettes were notorious 'rollers' at sea, and cramped at the best of times, but they were regarded with affection, and like so many small ships in a large conflict, there was ever something heroic in their actions, which were almost always against the odds.

Much of their work was mundane, but they had that ubiquitous quality of being somewhere around in moments of trouble: part of the side shows, but always in harm's way.

Among the pictures below, the first is a large scale image of HMAS Armidale ; next is HMAS Whyalla (now a museum ship ashore near the city of that name, seen in an earlier post) ; two views of the Deloraine at Darwin; HMAS Broome taking troops to Buna; the wounded troops from Kokoda are on HMAS Bendigo; J248 is HMAS Shepparton the depth-charging is on HMAS Castlemaine, now a museum ship at Melbourne's Williamstown (oh, the Tenix naval dockyard there is very much still operating, upgrading the Anzac frigates built there, and it will assemble the two 27,000 ton Spanish-designed amphibious command ships now on order); the Japanese surrender ceremony off Borneo is on HMAS Kapunda ; next two are HMAS Ballarat; and HMAS Ararat; and finally HMAS Ballarat, Ji84, in New Guinea waters.

[astraltrader]

A most interesting account of these Corvettes Jeff, thank you.

[herakles]

Very interesting K and some great pics too!

Someone should do something about the Spanish ship-building industry. It seems to be very big and highly productive. What do they know that we don't?

[kookaburra]

Thanks for the interest in my additions: here are some record extracts which show just a few action highlights in the varied service lives of these little ships.

I find the first, HMAS Glenelg's close inshore jungle river action particularly appealing. Some pictures from Flickr of the museum ships HMAS Castlemaine and HMAS Whyalla follow.

After the war these little ships were sold off to many navies - Holland; Indonesia; Turkey; New Zealand - one even ended up with the PLAN, but I'll have to track down how that happened.

HMAS Glenelg

In October 1944 GLENELG was able to render signal aid to a sorely harassed American patrol at the mouth of the Woske River near Maffin Bay, Dutch New Guinea. On 20 October the ship, proceeding close inshore, observed the American detachment under severe mortar fire. An appeal for assistance to evacuate wounded met with a ready response from volunteers to man GLENELG's whaler and it was quickly despatched under Lieutenant W.H. Pennington. Swamped by heavy surf the waterlogged boat was beached by her crew, and its bottom boards used as improvised stretchers to carry the wounded to the American held bank of the river.
Meanwhile, on a request for bombardment support, GLENELG opened fire with her 4-inch gun. Under cover of this fire (31 rounds), which effectively silenced the Japanese mortars, the American party was able to withdraw to cover with all wounded, leaving five dead on the beach. Lieutenant Peebles (United States Army), the senior surviving officer, was emphatic that the fire laid down by GLENELG and directed from the open beach by Lieutenant Pennington and Signalman Greet, was the decisive factor in the successful withdrawal.

HMAS Colac

In April 1944, Colac was assigned to escort and patrol duties in New Guinea waters, which continued until April 1945, when the corvette was one of four RAN ships providing gunfire support for operations in the Wewak area.[1] In mid-May, Colac was assigned to harass Japanese bases in the Solomon Islands area. On 26 May, the ship suffered her first casualties of the war, two hits from Japanese shore batteries killed two sailers, wounded two others, and holed Colac at the waterline.[1] The corvette jettisoned stores, her depth charge payload, and replaceable pieces of equipment to avoid sinking and escape, and later limped to the Treasury Islands under tow for repairs.[1]


HMAS Cootamundra

On 15 Jun 1943, a thirteen-ship convoy heading for Brisbane and escorted by Cootamundra and sister ships Bundaberg, Deloraine, Kalgoorlie, and Warrnambool, was attacked off Smoky Cape.[1] The United States Army Transport Portmar and the US Navy Landing ship LST-469 were torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-174: the former sinking in minutes with the loss of only two lives, while 26 were killed aboard the latter ship, which survived and was towed to port.[1][2] This was the last submarine attack to be made on the east coast of Australia during World War II.[2]

HMAS Ipswich

From 3 November 1942 until 21 January 1945, Ipswich was assigned to the British Eastern Fleet, primarily serving in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, but spending May to October 1943 in the Mediterranean.[1] During this time, Ipswich was credited with shooting down a twin engined bomber near Syracuse on 25 July 1943, and on 11 February 1944 worked with HMAS Launceston and HIMS Jumna to sink Japanese submarine RO-110.[1]
Upon leaving the British Eastern Fleet, Ipswich returned to Australia, where she was assigned to the British Pacific Fleet.[1] Ipswich was present in Tokyo Bay on Victory over Japan Day (2 September 1945)

HMAS Kapunda

Initially operating between Sydney and Brisbane, she was reassigned to the Queensland-New Guinea run in March 1943.[1] Kapunda fired in anger for the first time during March, when eight Japanese bombers and twelve Japanese fighter aircraft attacked a convoy escorted by Kapunda and sister ship Bendigo.[1] Anti-aircraft fire from the two corvettes drove the aircraft off.[1] On 12 April, a convoy under escort by the corvette was attacked by a formation of 37 Japanese aircraft.[1] Several aircraft were destroyed by combined fire from Kapunda and the merchant ships, but the merchantman MV Gorgon was successfully hit and started to burn.[1] Kapunda manoeuvered alongside the damaged ship and sent firefighting parties aboard, extinguishing the flames and helping Gorgon to proceed to port.[1


HMAS Katoomba

Present during the Japanese bombing of Darwin on 19 February, but was not significantly damaged.[1]
At the end of June, Katoomba was reassigned as a convoy escort and anti-submarine patrol ship in the waters of northern Queensland and New Guinea.[1] On 14 August, Katoomba was sent to assist United States submarine USS S-39, which had run aground on a reef off Rossel Island.[1] Attempts to refloat the submarine were unsuccessful, and on 16 August, the corvette left Rossel Island with S-39’s entire crew of 47 embarked.[1] The submarine was gutted and left to break up naturally.[1] On 28 November, Katoomba and sister ship Ballarat were attacked by a force of ten Japanese dive bombers.[1] The corvettes escaped without serious damage.[1] Katoomba was attacked again during January 1943, when a force of six Japanese aircraft attacked the corvette and the Dutch merchant ship Van Heutz.[1] Katoomba escaped serious damage, but the merchantman was hit, with one man killed and three injured.[1]


HMAS Pirie

On 11 April 1943, while escorting a British supply ship to Oro Bay, Pirie was attacked by a large number of Japanese dive bombers.[1] At least seven bombs were dropped; the first six were near-misses, but the seventh penetrated the armoured bridge canopy, deflected off the hemsman's station, struck and killed the Gunnery Officer, then detonated on the upper deck.[1] Six other sailors were killed and four more wounded.[1] Anti-aircraft fire drove off the fighters before they could attack again, and downed several planes.[1]



HMAS Warrnambool

was in Darwin during the Bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942, although she was not damaged.[1] A day later, the corvette was involved in the rescue of 73 crew from the Filipino merchant vessel Don Isidro, following attacks by Japanese dive bombers.[1] During the rescue, Warrnambool was attacked by the Japanese, but only received minor damage. Over the next twelve months Warrnambool was invovled in five evacuations or rescues (including that of HMAS Voyager’s crew following the destroyer running aground in September 1942), present for eighteen Japanese air raids, and transported over 4,000 troops to New Guinea.[1]


HMAS Whyalla

was in Sydney Harbour during the Japanese midget submarine attack of 31 May 1942.[1][2] 12 days later, Whyalla was escorting a southbound convoy when the freighter Guatemala was torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-21, the only ship to be lost in a convoy escorted by Whyalla.[1]
In December 1942, the corvette was assigned to New Guinea, where she performed convoy escort, hydrographic survey work, and was involved in the leadup to the battle of Buna-Gona.[1] On 2 January 1943, Whyalla and two small Australian survey ships were attacked by Japanese dive-bombers while in McLaren Harbour, Cape Nelson, New Guinea.[1] The corvette received minor damage from near-misses, with two crew injured by shrapnel.[1] The corvette continued survey work until relieved by sister ship Shepparton in April 1943.[1] Whyalla proceeded to Milne Bay, and was present when the anchorage was attacked by a force of approximately 100 Japanese aircraft.[1] Again, Whyalla was not seriously damaged, and the corvette assisted sister ships Kapunda and Wagga in the rescue and salvage effort.[1]


Museum ship photos: HMAS Castlemaine is at Gem Pier in very quaint and historic Williamstown, looking across Hobson's Bay to Melbourne. Although Flickr poster Charles Bray made me smile when he refers to 'the mighty' Castlemaine, it's actually a charming little museum ship maintained by a volunteer group and has an excellent array of old Navy artefacts and historic RAN video presentation down on the mess decks.


Although I have not been there, the setting for HMAS Whyalla, on the sandy shores of the Spencer Gulf near the South Australian industrial city of that name is clearly very different. Still, looks good.


The photos from Flickr are by Luke Tscharke; Yewenji; Spitfirelas; Gruntfuttock, and Charles Bray.

[herakles]

They certainly saw plenty of action!

I hope other members find these stories interesting especially as they will have little knowledge of the fighting in this part of the world.

[TACKLINE]

Here are three photo's of HMAS Maryborough.I served on her in'43 on the East Indies and Med stations. The one of her at the Sicily landings,is a painting by an Aussie artist,as is also the one "Convoy Duty".

[TACKLINE]

A piece about Maryborough by one of the ship's company.

http://www.australiansatwar.gov.au/stories/stories.asp?war=W2&id=220

[spruso]

A nice post. Busy little ships that we tend to forget about.

If I remember rightly, at the end of the war, HMAS Maryborough searched the islands in Sunda Strait to see if there were any survivors of HMAS Perth still marooned there.
Cheers
Bruce

[kookaburra]

Tackline's post of a sailor's personal account of actions involving Tack's old ship HMAS Maryborough in the Mediterranean is a terrific read if anyone was inclined to bypass that link.

In addition to the truncated list of other navies where these little ships ended up after WW11, which I mentioned in an earlier post, some other countries that took them were Israel and Sweden.

And the ship that ended up with the Peoples Liberation Army Navy was ex-HMAS Bendigo, which eventually became the PLAN's gunboat Loyang.
Like a number of RAN corvettes, Bendigo had finished the war mine sweeping off Hong Kong and involved in anti-piracy patrols there. De-commissioned, she was sold to a Hong Kong shipping company and served as a merchant vessel for several years, but somehow got sold on to PLAN and re-armed.

The story is here:

http://www.afloat.com.au/images/magazine-articles/MAGAZINE/2003/0603/0603_MT_Bendigo.pdf


BTW, congrats again to Herk for creating this thread and all who participated. With 60 ships built it was a bit of a challenge, but somehow I feel we have managed to get an excellent representation of their war service here.

[herakles]

My pleasure K! They were a grand class who contributed so much.

And yes that link to the story of HMAS Maryborough is a great read.

[John Odom]

That was an interesting link! Thanks!

[airlana]

Walkers Ltd in Bundaberg, Queensland built 7 of the Bathurst Class Corvettes, and I was going to post some photos from an old publication of theirs but now remember I sold it a few years back on ebay.

However, I've still got a picture of the front cover which might help if anyone is interested and looking for the book in second hand shops etc.

From memory there was quite a bit of detail on their WW2 ship building activities and numerous photos.

Ash

[Bear]

Yes, the Bathursts were great little 'Maids of all work', but the fact is that they were built as minesweepers and pressed into all sorts of other roles for which they were less well suited. For example, HMAS Armidale was lost on a mission to Timor to re-supply the guerrilla force there and take off Dutch civilians. She was too lightly armed for the task and was a sitting duck for the Japanese air force.
The crews served bravely and well, but the ships themselves were rather poor sea ships, too slow and lightly armed for much of what they were asked to do. A top speed of 16 knots could barely keep up with a Japanese WWII era submarine on the surface. As convoy escorts they were valuable in an anti-submarine role provided that the escort included ships well armed for AA.
It is much the same for the British designed Fairmiles. They did yeoman service in roles they were not designed for. Our chronic lack of ships, especially for convoy escort work meant we often had to make do with what was available.
Compare the Fairmiles specifications with the German E-boat or the American torpedo boat. Our small craft were too slow by half. The British Fairmiles were no match for the German E-boats when they came up against them.

I think HMAS Castlemain is still in the water at Williamstown and not at Castlemain City as suggested earlier in this thread. Well, she was last time I was in Melbourne, but that is a few years ago.

[kookaburra]

More Corvette Adventures:

Among the 56 Bathhurst Class corvettes commissioned into the RAN during WW11, 23 were involved in the New Guinea campaign, constantly transporting, supplying and supporting troops through enemy-controlled waters.
It was an effort that naval historian Lew Lind, in his book marking the RAN's 75th Anniversary in 1986, likened to the famous 'Scrap Iron Flotilla' destroyers on the Tobruk Ferry run.

I won't try to cover all that here, but simply add a few snippetts about several to go with these new pictures:


Pic 1 & 2 HMAS Ballarat: She had been in the thick of many actions during the fall of the Dutch East Indies, and was the last Allied vessel to leave Java, having remained behind in Tjilatjap to scuttle HMS Gemas, a small unseaworthy minesweeper. Having run the gauntlet of the advancing Japanese she reached Fremantle, and was later heavily involved in the fightback in New Guinea, ferrying troops behind enemy lines during the battles at Buna and Gona.

On February 12, 1942, Ballarat rescued survivors on a crowded raft from a torpedoed ammunition ship,HMS Derrymore, near Batavia, including a badly injured young RAAF Hurricane fighter pilot named John Grey Gorton, who was being repatriated to Australia after his face was wrecked in a crash landing. In 1968, John Gorton became the 19th Prime Minister of Australia.

The second pic here is a better version of a previous post, badly marred by a page crease.

Pic 3. HMAS Deloraine: This is a close-up of the little ship shown in perhaps the most dramatic RAN photograph of the war (post #11 here), crossing Darwin Harbour under an immense fireball during the first big raid there on February 19, 1942. Unlike many others she escaped damage. A month earlier, on January 20, she had played the major role in the sinking of the Japanese mine-laying submarine I-124.


Pic 4: HMAS Wollongong : She had been the last RAN ship to leave Singapore, and her service extended from the fall of Java, to the Invasion of Sicily, to Okinawa, and the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. On September 11, 1943, Wollongong shared in the destruction of the German submarine U-617 off Morocco with HM Ships Hyacinth and Haarlem and two RAF Welington bombers. The submarine actually scuttled on a reef when seeking to escape its attackers.

Pic 5: HMAS Bathurst: Name ship of the Class, served from the Red Sea, where she was fired upon by a Vichy French battery, to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

Pic 7: HMAS Armidale : the only ship of the class lost to enemy action, the Japanese aircraft attack in which Oerlikon Gunner Terry Sheean became posthumously famous, and has one of the Collins Class subs named after him (other threads on that here).

Pic 6 is HMAS Gympie, and Pic 8 is HMAS Broome

Pic 9 is HMAS Bendigo, the ship that postwar went through private hands in Hong Kong to end up with the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), two views of HMAS Mildura, and the last pic is HMAS Warrnambool sinking, after striking one of our own mines during clearance operations on the Great Barrier Reef in 1947.

[kookaburra]

Here's the missing picture of Ballarat, badly marred by a page crease in a previous post. It's a good pic, and I thought worth having without that heavy blemish. This is the operation where she, Broome and Colac were transporting troops up behind enemy lines in Oro Bay at night , and Japanese planes started dropping flares trying to find them. They withdrew and are seen sheltering here in McLaren Bay, before completing the operation that night.

[Blaydon]

Great thread and great history, so much was done by little ships that didn't hit the headlines but proved so vital to final victory.

[designeraccd]

Another example of a mimimal, lo-co$t, but VERY EFFECTIVE ship class that gave outstanding performance in its day. Perhaps todays "sophisticated" naval architects etc would do well to think in terms of a modern version........and forget the "gold plating"??! Especially the, IMO, USN! DFO ;)

[kookaburra]

Yes, thanks DFO and Blaydon - in the Island campaigns they were vital to the war effort at a critical time. And by operating in groups, with the one exception (Armidale) they were able to survive.

When the lead ship, Bathhurst and companions first arrived in the Med they were sent back to the Red Sea theatre because it was felt their AA armament was inadequate to survive the concentrations of Axis aircraft operating over the Mediterranean at that time.

But eventually eight of them operated as a group in the Med, and some went as far as the Atlantic on one occasion to bring a convoy in.

I'm attempting to gradually build up a complete pictorial record, so here's three more.

HMAS Bowen was part of the famous Operation Lilliput fleet that supported US and Australia troops in the pushes around Buna and Gona.


HMAS Cessnock was attached to the British Eastern Fleet and operated in the Persian Gulf and the East Africa coast from Aden, and later joined the BPF and saw service around New Guinea and the Philippines.

HMAS Cootamundra - on June 16 1943 she was one of the escorts in a convoy attacked by a Japanese submarine in which SS Portmar was lost and another vessel damaged. On August 8 while escorting SS Macumba she fought off a determined Japanese air attack off Thursday Island, and later carried out bombardments and recovered PoWs from Ambon at the war's end.

[Blaydon]

Yes they did absoloutly sterling service and in all probability and as harsh as it seems they were probably considered expendable. What we need today is something like this low cost mass produced but able to effectively carry out a task if it was faster it could do Littoral combat and anti piracy.

[kookaburra]

Continuing my occasional but on-going efforts to build up representative pic files on the Bathurst Class corvettes.

Shown here are two new photos of HMAS Cootamundra by newspaper photographer Ern McQuillan (SLNSW), postwar I think, as it shows more clearly than previous post that she is carrying 40mm bofors rather and four-inch gun on the foredeck.

Next, HMAS Whyalla again.

4. is Lismore and Maryborough in Tripoli, c. 1940

5. Bundaberg.

6. is a repeat at larger size of Shepparton - interesting in that she achieves a taller look with canopied structure above the bridge and draped flags from the foremast.

[kookaburra]

Further additions in the on-going quest for Bathurst Class completeness:

In this post we get Bunbury and Townsville, Townsville, (again), Deloraine, Horsham in distinctive camouflage, Castlemaine, part-stripped prior to museum restoration, Kiama, Kalgoolie, Inverell, Gympie, Junee, Ararat, and Glenelg.

[kookaburra]

Several more ...

The first pic below shows HMAS Pirie leaving her name port in South Australia. Pirie was the ship whose crew suffered seven killed and others wounded in a bombing attack off Oro Bay New Guinea on April 11, 1943 (see post #14 below).


She was also the ship caught up in the so-called Pirie Mutiny, which saw her C/O relieved some six weeks later. Story in Post#27 here:

http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3602

Also here are HMAS Maryborough in unusual camouflate pattern, HMAS Goulburn, HMAS Ipswich and HMAS Gladstone.

[kookaburra]

Just pressing on with unposted images of these Bathurst Class ships as I acquire them, in the hope that one day I'll realize that we've managed to get them all.

These are ships that have been posted before, but new images, large and both rather strong ones I feel. HMAS Junee framed by the Harbour Bridge, and HMAS Mildura leaving Fremantle.

[John O'Callaghan]

I was on board Castlemaine at Williamstown during March of this year.She is in great hands with a crew of dedicated volunteers working hard at restoration and upkeep.
The group have refitted much of her armament and sweeping gear and the main messdeck has been set up as a museum with many momentoes of the RAN and pre Federation Victorian Navy.
I arrived on board about standeasy so the working party gave me a brew and made me an honoury Corvetteman (for a day) based on my having sailed Castlemaine from Williamstown to Hanns Inlet (HMAS Cerberus),an overnight cruise, back in the 1960s when Castlemaine was being used as an alongside training vessel.
It's great to see that not all these ships are being scrapped or turned into dive sites.

[kookaburra]

Damn. Look will you look at this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/Bronteboy/MARYBOROUGH1941-1953.jpg

Why has one of our good dinky-di Aussie Bathurst Class corvettes got this woggy-froggy look about her?

She looks like some swarthy Anatolean with a waxed moustache and bad breath has got her in his grip, and had his wicked way with her.

All this ship needs is a sun umbrella and capuccino machine up on the foredeck, and she'd be perfect in a Bosporus setting.

Tackline of the forum, front and forward.

If you read Post #16, you'll see that Tackline served on HMAS Maryborough, and I feel we're now owed an explanation for this ship's appearance.

For many years I felt secure in the knowledge that I could always identify a Bathurst Class by that flat no-nonsense Aussie bridge and the pole mast with the little crows nest two-thirds up.

Now, I suddenly discover, some were 'tarted up ' and did not conform to totally standard design, as required. Not only HMAS Maryborough, but it appears HMAS Lismore had caught the same disease - God knows, there may have been others.

At first, I thought that this was a pic of one of the little Bathursts that got sold off to places like Greece and Turkey after the war.

But no, built by Walkers at Maryborough in Queensland in June 1941, HMAS Maryborough was sold off to a Sydney shipping syndicate and re-named Isobel Queen. Hmmm. Appropriate. Sold again to Carr Enterprises of Sydney in 1953, and scrapped in bloody Brisbane. She was in the Mediterrean at the invasion of Sicily in 1943, and that's probably where this influence happened.

What I have been able to glean is that both Maryborough and Lismore [a pic of them together in Post #30] were two of the 20 Bathurst Class built on the British Admiralty's account.

Ah, I see it all. Colourful, hot-blooded Continental-type Englishmen. Never trusted 'em myself.


Some more pics here of the way the Bathurst Class were supposed to look, just to help us over this 'gin palace' shock.

[kookaburra]

Yet another somewhat eccentric view of HMAS Maryborough. Good pic, though - from the John Oxley Library, Queensland.

[kookaburra]

Continuing with some more of these, while still reaching to get a complete set. Pics 2,3,4,5 show HMAS Gladstone, and her postwar conversion to the Port Phillip pilot boat Akuna, and she became an international relief ship later.

Built at Walkers in Maryborough Qld, Gladstone was commissioned on March 21, 1943, served in the Coral Sea, shelled Japanese positions in the Halmaheras, and became a training ship at Flinders Naval Depot after the war.
She was sold in 1958 to the Port Phillip Pilots Association and became Akuna - a name fist used in the Pilots Service by the WW1 captured German yacht Komet, which had served in the RAN as HMAS Una.

The second Akuna [ex-Gladstone] was again sold in 1973, and became a private yacht, Akuna 11 The story seemed to get little messy for a couple of years after that, with another sale that fell through as the ship was moved first to Sydney and then to Brisbane, and was at one point re-possessed.

In September 1978 she was sold to Food for The Hungry International, a non-government organisation based in Vancouver. Akuna, operated out of Singapore after delivery there in October 1978, and she was involved in the rescue of Vietnamese boat people. In 1981 she was re-named Bamboo Cross, and was still operating as refugee relief vessel from Singapore then, but the last reference I can find had the ship based at Songkhla in Thailand.

The rest of the pics are just part of the on-going picture survey of the 56 RAN Bathurst Class corvettes. Pic 10 shows HMAS Gawler, which was sold to the Turkish Navy, and later to Indonesia. Some more to come later.

[CGRET]

Kook,

A standard of excellence, well done! As many years as I have spent at sea i am amaze at the quality of information you post and a real pleasure to read.

Regards
Charles

[Wafu]

Hi Kookaburra,would you please look at my thread,"What is it?" please.

[Keegan]

Hi All,

My girlfriend's parents owned the Akuna from '73 to 75'. This was during the time it was used as a private yacht. I am new to the wonderful world of naval ships, although my grandfather was in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy. I want to try and find out what happened to the Akuna (ex-gladestone/bamboo cross), as kookaburra states I also loose track of it's fate after about 1991. If anyone has any ideas of what happened to the Akuna after it arrived in Songkhla or how I might find out please could you reply.

Many Thanks

[fearless_rs]

I was on board Castlemaine at Williamstown during March of this year.She is in great hands with a crew of dedicated volunteers working hard at restoration and upkeep.
The group have refitted much of her armament and sweeping gear and the main messdeck has been set up as a museum with many momentoes of the RAN and pre Federation Victorian Navy.
I arrived on board about standeasy so the working party gave me a brew and made me an honoury Corvetteman (for a day) based on my having sailed Castlemaine from Williamstown to Hanns Inlet (HMAS Cerberus),an overnight cruise, back in the 1960s when Castlemaine was being used as an alongside training vessel.
It's great to see that not all these ships are being scrapped or turned into dive sites.

I was shown round the Castlemaine in early 1978. She was a rusty shell stripped completely bare. Your dedicated volunteers have done an incredible job restoring her. I dont know what Williamstown is like nowadays, but if I remember correctly, the only place to get a beer on a sunday was at the RSL. That said Mohawk and our friends on RHYL had a great time during our maintenance period.

[John O'Callaghan]

Hi Fearless rs. Williamstown has gone from an Industrial/port town about 15km from the city of Melbourne to a very desirable suburb(ask the Real Estate Agents) much loved by many urbanites. The sight of many people sipping their latte along the front in the pubs where in my navy days the boys would go on a run is some what of a culture shock.
As for the Castlemaine she has been almost restored to her WW2 days much to the credit of those enthusiasts who have worked on herr
Cheers John O'C.

[Bern]

Hi All,

My girlfriend's parents owned the Akuna from '73 to 75'. This was during the time it was used as a private yacht. I am new to the wonderful world of naval ships, although my grandfather was in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy. I want to try and find out what happened to the Akuna (ex-gladestone/bamboo cross), as kookaburra states I also loose track of it's fate after about 1991. If anyone has any ideas of what happened to the Akuna after it arrived in Songkhla or how I might find out please could you reply.

Many Thanks

Hi Keegan

I have knowledge of the Akuna, previously HMAS Gladstone, in the later years of her life but I would need to consult documentation again to provide dates etc.

I first saw her in the Brisbane River around 1979. As I recall, from talking to people on board, she had been a private yacht but was to be used in some sort of youth training venture. I don't believe that ever eventuated.

She was registered in Melbourne as a British ship and acquired by Food for the Hungry International, a Christian ("Southern Baptist") charity based in the United States, to be used assisting Vietnamese boat people. Thousands of them were pouring out of Vietnam and many were dying at sea from thirst, starvation, drowning or pirate attacks.

I was told the nominal owner was a Canadian so the Akuna was able to retain her British registry. In Singapore, Australian officials visited the Akuna, however, and applied heavy pressure to have the registration changed. The owners told the Australian representatives that they would eventually do it.

At that time United Nations High Commission for Refugees had secured agreements with various countries that the flag countries of ships which rescued boat people would accept them as refugees if no country would take them. (A woman in the UNHCR office in Singapore told me that even India had been good enough to sign the agreement, but obviously the UNHCR would not ask that country to take Vietnamese, except as an extreme last resort). Australia obviously did not want a mercy ship rescuing people whom Australia might be obliged to accept. Little has changed!

The Akuna did in fact save hundreds if not thousands of people. Asian countries were extremely reluctant to allow them to land, however, so the political situation for the half-dozen mercy ships that operated out of Singapore was almost impossible.

An Akuna crew member told me her usual practise, after she picked up refugees, was to tow their boat during darkness, as close as possible to shore, then to send them on their way and depart herself as rapidly as possible. Indonesia was the most common destination, partly, I think, because it had a long coastline which could not be kept under adequate surveillance.

Indonesian military or paramilitary authorities could be extremely rough on refugees, but it seemed that ordinary Indonesian people were kinder and more tolerant towards Vietnamese than were those in neighbouring countries. At least that is my impression. Other more knowledgeable people may wish to comment.

Around 1980, in Singapore, I was signed aboard Akuna as a supernumary and sailed aboard her for just one voyage. We picked up a boatload of 27 Vietnamese refugees and after some adventures and difficulties, succeeded in gaining permission to enter the Thai port of Songkhla. I left Akuna there and the Vietnamese people were put in a refugee camp. Many months later, Canada accepted most of them, though a few went to the United States.

It should be noted that at that time the vessel was named Akuna (and this is shown in my passport). I have an idea that her name was later changed to Akuna II. I assume this happened when her registration was changed, but I know no further details. The name Bamboo Cross definitely rings a bell for me, but unfortunately I recall nothing more about that.

Perhaps it was in 1983 that I was traveling in Thailand and re-visited Songkhla. Another traveler had seen a vessel named Akuna in port so I visited and was invited aboard. I think she was named Akuna III (and this accords with a name recorded in an newspaper report I found online). This ship was most decisively NOT the Akuna so well known to me. She was a [/I]much[/I] smaller vessel which had evidently been designed for fishing, with refrigerated storage space.

Aboard the Akuna III I met an American man whose name escapes me, and renewed my acquaintance with "Albert", an Indonesian who had been mate aboard the Akuna but was now described as master of the Akuna III.

These men told me that the original Akuna had been "broken up in Bangkok." That's all I know.

The purpose of the Akuna III, I understood, was still to rescue boat people.

At that time Bo Gritz had been in Thailand with companions hoping to rescue American service personnel "missing in action" (MIA) since the Viet Nam war whom they believed were being held in primitive jungle camps. I had seen the repeated adverse publicity about Bo Gritz and his crew in English-language Thai newspapers and remarked on the undesirability of being publicly associated with them. The Akuna III representatives seemed to agree.

Since that time there have been reports on the Internet claiming that a vessel named Akuna was moored in Songkhla for years with Americans running a scam, soliciting donations and claiming she was being used to pick up boat people. It was said they were also seeking money to rescue MIA prisoners.

It disappoints me that the good name of the original Akuna has no doubt been tarnished because most people would be unaware that she was not the ship involved in what is described as a notorious scam.

Probably very few if any other people would know the details I have related above. For those interested, I hope eventually to provide corroboration.

[Bern]

Dear Admiral Kookaburra:

Your images of SS Akuna (previously HMAS Gladstone) in post #37 show her much as I remember her. I've given some information about her later life in post #43.

[joelgnas]

Dear Admiral Kookaburra:

Your images of SS Akuna (previously HMAS Gladstone) in post #37 show her much as I remember her. I've given some information about her later life in post #43.

hi all.
my names joel and im just trying to find as much information and more importantly images of hmas gladstone. im enquiring as my grandfather served on this vessel and he has a 90th birthday coming up so am trying to get a few things together. any information and images would be highly appeciated.

kind regards
joel nas

[Bear]

I just skimmed this entire thread because I'm researching the 3 Bathursts we lost between 1942-48 and there is so much good stuff on here. I realised that you made a statement in your opening post that the Bathursts were based on the Bangor Class, Herc. For a contrary view take a look at this link

http://www.navyhistory.org.au/bathurst-class-minesweepers-corvettes/

I've just finished reading Frank B. Walker's book 'Corvettes--Little Ships for Big men', which is an excellent read. Far better than Iris Neesdale's book on the same topic. Walker was a former Corvette officer. The book is hard to find, but available at online bookshops for a reasonable price if anyone is interested in following up this thread in a more detailed way.
One interesting fact I've come up with in my research is that the engines for the Bathursts were manufactured in railway workshops around the country. One of the reasons the ships were underpowered was because the engines could only be a certain size because of the railway workshop machinery.
Someone said earlier in this thread that they were tough and robust ships. Their plating was in fact five sixteenths of an inch thick. Not much to keep the water out let alone withstand bombs or shells.

[alanbenn]

hi all.
my names joel and im just trying to find as much information and more importantly images of hmas gladstone. im enquiring as my grandfather served on this vessel and he has a 90th birthday coming up so am trying to get a few things together. any information and images would be highly appeciated.

kind regards
joel nas



Hiya Joel, welcome to the forum. Although I have no info about HMAS Gladstone, here's a very good photo of her taken from the state library collection.

Regards
Alan

[Jackaroo]

I just skimmed this entire thread because I'm researching the 3 Bathursts we lost between 1942-48 and there is so much good stuff on here. I realised that you made a statement in your opening post that the Bathursts were based on the Bangor Class, Herc. For a contrary view take a look at this link

http://www.navyhistory.org.au/bathurst-class-minesweepers-corvettes/

I've just finished reading Frank B. Walker's book 'Corvettes--Little Ships for Big men', which is an excellent read. Far better than Iris Neesdale's book on the same topic. Walker was a former Corvette officer. The book is hard to find, but available at online bookshops for a reasonable price if anyone is interested in following up this thread in a more detailed way.
One interesting fact I've come up with in my research is that the engines for the Bathursts were manufactured in railway workshops around the country. One of the reasons the ships were underpowered was because the engines could only be a certain size because of the railway workshop machinery.
Someone said earlier in this thread that they were tough and robust ships. Their plating was in fact five sixteenths of an inch thick. Not much to keep the water out let alone withstand bombs or shells.


Thanks for that link bear and book suggestions very interesting. How is the theatre restaurant stuff going?

[MyBoatJourney1979]

Hello,
My name is Nam Nguyen. I am a Vietnamese American and a former refugee and boat person from Vietnam. In April 1979, our small boat carried 78 people in the Gulf of Thailand was rescued by the ship AKUNA, after repeated attacks by Thai pirates and violent sea storms. I am compiling my boat journey experience on Facebook and I am looking for any information on the fate of the ship AKUNA. I am also very much love to see pictures of rescuing boat people during the years 1979-1980 taken by captain and crews on the AKUNA. I have included a number of pictures and comments from this forums on my Facebook, with appropriate credit. Please let me know if anyone have concerns. Again, please visit my Facebook "MY BOAT JOURNEY 1979" for more information. Any help with stories, photos, people contacts, would be very much appreciated.
Nam Nguyen
California, USA
Mobile: 916.601.8579
FACEBOOK "MY BOAT JOURNEY 1979":
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39700&id=1515356158
-------------------------------------------

[Bear]

Thanks for that link bear and book suggestions very interesting. How is the theatre restaurant stuff going?

This is our quiet time of year, Jackaroo, which suits me as I can get lots of writing and research done
Cheers.

[kookaburra]

Hello All. Below is one of the more interesting and unusual RAN corvette photos, which is included in the unofficial RAN Centenary photostream to which I've now drawn everyone's attention on another thread, and which has been taking up my time lately. Thanks for the many kind comments back there, btw.

This pic, from the Whyalla Maritime Museum, shows HMAS Whyalla covered in mangrove foliage as she and the little survey tenders HMAS Stella and HMAS Polaris attempted to disguise themselves from patrolling Japanese aircraft as the trio were conducting an ultra-dangerous survey of MacLaren Harbour in New Guinea in December 1942-January 1943.

I think I have mentioned the story here previously. The three little ships were conducting the surveys in advance of the Allied landings at Buna and Gona on the north side of New Guinea, and spent weeks working within 12 miles of the Japanese held mainland.

They were subject to frequent air attacks, and on January 12, 1943, 18 Japanese aircraft attacked them, concentrating on Whyalla, which was near missed and inundated so severely that the precious new charts they had made were washed off the bridge and overboard, and two men were wounded.

Anyway, I'll leave this [quite factual] comic book from the Whyalla Maritime Museum website to tell the rest of the story. There were several decorations awarded for duty during these hazardous surveys, as, again, I think I've detailed earlier.

[astraltrader]

Thanks for those Jeff.

The other half loved the cartoon but felt that the Stella could have been more prominently featured!

[kookaburra]

Thanks for those Jeff.

The other half loved the cartoon but felt that the Stella could have been more prominently featured!

Definitely right T. That attractive little Stella should be on the cover of the comics.

Meantime, here's a good postwar group scene of WW11 corvettes gathered at Williamstown in Melbourne. The ship in the foreground, J232, is HMAS Deloraine, the little ship that will be forever remembered under the mushroom-cloud of the ammunition ship Neptunia's explosion in Darwin in Feb. 1942 - one of the most famous Australian war photos.

The reason for the concentration of ships here I guess is that many of the corvettes, and quite a few of the frigates a bit later, were laid up in Corio Bay, Geelong [in Port Phillip Bay] in the first years after the war. Then, in 1956 they were all towed up to Sydney where the Reserve Fleet was consolidated Athol Bight, opposite Garden Island with all its maintenance facilities.

I've looked in vain for a photo of the second reserve fleet at Geelong up to 1956, and have never seen one. Well, sometime. The photo here was taken by Allan C. Green [1878-1954] and is from the Green Collection at the State Library of Victoria. It's another from the RAN Centenary photostream I've been developing, and which has now been discussed on its separate thread over the past couple of days.

Again thank you everyone for the wonderfully generous comments on that. They have been truly humbling.

[kookaburra]

Since the A.C. Green Collection opened up at the State Library of Victoria I'm hoping we may now get much closer to a representation of all the ships in this Class.

This one is HMAS Cowra, built by Poole and Steel Ltd in Balmain, Sydney and completed on Oct. 15, 1943.

She served in New Guinea and adjacent Islands, carrying out patrols, escort work, and occasional bombardment assignments. Her wartime CO was Lt W.J. Gillies RANR. On January 9-10 with sister ship Kapunda and the sloop HMAS Swan she participated in a group bombardment of the Galela Bay area on Halmahera Island.

In the immediate postwar period, HMAS Cowra - named for the town which of course in 1944 became famous for the mass Japanese prisoner-of-war breakout that left 235 dead, including four Australian guards - engaged with other corvettes of the 20th Minesweeping Flotilla in sweeping duties around northern Australia and the islands. Eventually placed in reserve, she was sold to Japanese interest for scrapping, and was towed out of Port Jackson [Sydney Harbour] with her sister ships Kapunda and Rockhampton on May 21, 1962.

Here she is ...These two have NOT appeared in the unofficial RAN Centenary photostream yet, so we're ahead of that here:

[kookaburra]

hi all.
my names joel and im just trying to find as much information and more importantly images of hmas gladstone. im enquiring as my grandfather served on this vessel and he has a 90th birthday coming up so am trying to get a few things together. any information and images would be highly appeciated.

kind regards
joel nas

I'm so sorry to have missed this request, and would like to compliment Bern for his posts below #45 and #43 for the terrific information on the humanitarian work of the Akuna and other things that happened to her. Just invaluable close insight.

There seems to have been three strands strands of discussion/requests regarding Gladstone and her latter life as Akuna going on and I'm a bit muddled how to respond with pics, so ...just uploading this little portfolio
in its entirety and please pick what you need.

Joel I hope this turns up in time for your granddad's 90th - if not, a late present maybe. bests, K.

[Geoff Brebner]

A tangible relic of New Zealand's four Bathhursts,Echuca,Stawell,Inverell,Kiama, gifted to NZ in the early 1950's by Australia,is the mast of Kiama preserved at the Historical Maritime Park at Paeroa .Regards to all,Geoff.

[Rob Hoole]

See Post #69 at www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2937 (http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2937) for images of Kiama's mast in its original setting.

[kookaburra]

There was a lot of interest a couple of months or more back on the former corvette HMAS Gladstone which became the Victorian Ports and Harbours lighthouse tender S.S. Akuna.

It was then sold, and went through a 'lost' period when it was acquired by a private owner in Melbourne, taken over in turn by some kind of Sydney-based lifestyle group to become a youth training ship, got repossessed in Brisbane, sold again, and finally ended up as a much admired humanitarian relief vessel working out of Singapore, and rescuing Vietnamese boat refugees. The group that were operating this was called Food for the Hungry International, nominally Vancouver-based, but as someone on one of the connected sites has said, were a US Southern Baptist group.

I was out of circulation when the topics were raised here, but the interest seemed to come from Nam Nguyen, who was one of those saved from Thai pirates the South China Sea by Akuna, and someone whom I think was a family member of the first private owners.

Anyway, the point is I've been kindly sent a a group of new photos of her from the 1974-75 period when she first went into private ownership, and one in Brisbane during the re-possession period.

They're on the Kookaburra unofficial RAN Centenary 1911-2011 photostream on Flickr, in a mixed group of five pics starting here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/4600847034/

I'll post one sample here that amused me: the 'repossession period, which shows her with a station wagon with its wheels off on the dock beside her.
Oh, the photos are from the collection of Chris Howell of Bluff, New Zealand, and Chris kindly sent them to me on a disc.

Here's the re-possessor's special: bests K.

[austheritage]

Hi

Austheritage produced a film on the Bathurst Corvettes - what you think

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=austheritage&aq=f

[Jan7]

.....Austheritage produced a film on the Bathurst Corvettes - what you think....


Well done!

Congratulations for this video, Austheritage, and wellcome to World Naval Ships Forums:)!

A petit short, but excellent documentation and footagehttp://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/images/icons/icon14.gif!



Jan.

[kookaburra]

My congratulations too. Very nicely done, accurate well-researched commentary, interesting stills and a good breadth of film footage, with a few nice little 'special effects' touches [the rain]. Excellent job!

[sabre66]

Hello to all

Some great reading and some great images.

I am building a 1/72 scale Bathurst H.M.A.S Ipswich. I was wondering if anyone had some images of her as the net seems to have little on her.

Also I was wondering if anyone knew what ship would have looked like her so I can get some clearing understanding of deck layouts and weapon placements.

Regards

Ian

[thunderchild]

Good Day All

Sorry to change the subject, Ian, p.m. me, I'm also building a 1/72 Bathurst, HMAS Fremantle.

Take Care
Richard

[kookaburra]

Hello to all

Some great reading and some great images.

I am building a 1/72 scale Bathurst H.M.A.S Ipswich. I was wondering if anyone had some images of her as the net seems to have little on her.

Also I was wondering if anyone knew what ship would have looked like her so I can get some clearing understanding of deck layouts and weapon placements.

Regards

Ian

Ian I'm afraid I don't have a sharp image of HMAS Ipswich. A couple of second-rates below, which seem to show she was the standard Bathurst Class lay-out, and some line drawings of Bathurst [note no 4-inch gun shield on that one] and Geelong that may help.

Good luck with your project. K.

[kookaburra]

Book with illustrations on HMAS Ipswich, available from address at the bottom ...


A history of H.M.A.S. Ipswich / Alan R. Grimmer.

Author/Creator: Alan R. Grimmer ;
Contributor(s): H.M.A.S. Ipswich Association ;
Publisher: Beecroft, N.S.W. : H.M.A.S. Ipswich Association

Date(s): 1993

Description: 81 p. : ill. ; 31 cm.

Identifier(s): ISBN 0646128310

Subjects: Ipswich (Ship) ; World War, 1939-1945 -- Naval operations, Australian ;
Notes: Available from H.M.A.S. Ipswich Association, c/- Lt. Commander N.E. Goodwin, 1 Mawson Ave, Beecroft NSW 2119.


And another pretty poor image from the John Bastock book 'Australia's Ships of War' - you really need a clearer view of that forward gun, which doesn't seem to have a full shield. K.