kookaburra
23-08-2009, 04:37
I fear some may not entirely thank me for posting this, but it's a little cursory reseach I was doing for something else, and thought I would share it for discussion.
In the decades after WW11 the RAN began to acquire a reputation as a somewhat mishap-prone Navy, with a litany of fatal and/or serious accidents culminating in the February 10, 1964 collision between HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Voyager - the Navy's worst peacetime disaster.
The press began to do some adding up, and it became a broader public perception.
Was it fair? Operating high performance military equipment, simulating war and testing ships and aircraft their limits, always involves risk. In the scale of total naval operations, I'm not sure it is that unusual compared to experience elsewhere ... but here's a preliminary list of fatal and serious RAN accidents to ponder:
* Sept 13, 1947: Minesweeper corvette HMAS Warrnambool lost in minesweeping operations near Cockburn Reef north of Cairns Queensland. Four lives lost.
* Jan 25, 1950: HMAS Tarakan, LST refrigeration unit gas explosion and fire alongside at Garden Island. Eight lives lost.
* Sept 1960: Destroyer HMAS Tobruk holed by sister ship Anzac in mis-directed gunnery exercise. No casulaties but Tobruk's operational life foreshortened.
* Oct 11, 1960: HMAS Woomera, sunk by explosion and fire while dumping obsolete ammunition at sea off Sydney. Caused by ignition of an obsolete aircraft flare. Two lives lost.
* Oct 22-25, 1963: Midshipmen from carrier HMAS Sydney lost in a whaleboat exercise when bad weather struck, and - ignoring local advice -a search went in the wrong direction. Four lives lost.
* Feb 10 1964, the Melbourne- Voyager collision. 82 lives lost.
* Numerous aircraft lost in carrier operations, a fact of life taken as a given in inherently risky operations, but not assisted by a mid-air collision of two sea venom jets over Sydney Harbour c1961 during a public flying demonstration.
It may have been press talk, and I've never seen an actual statistical comparison, but for a time Australian newspapers began to talk of the RAN as - hull-for-hull - the world's most accident-prone Navy. After Voyager [and excluding the 1974 Melbourne-USS Evans collision, the USN ship's error] the bad luck mercifully abated. But it still re-appeared occasionally.
*Dec 14, 1981: An Army cadet died aboard the then recently commissioned Landing Ship Heavy HMAS Tobruk [11] in another sullage gases leak.
*October 22, 1985: Escort maintenance ship HMAS Stalwart 11 suffered a sullage gases leak 200 miles out of Darwin. Three lives lost, 60 hospitalized.
*May 5, 1998: Engineroom fire aboard the amphibious warfare ship HMAS Westralia [11]. Four lives lost.
This is not comprehensive, but I think it covers the main and best-known incidents. I would be interested to hear if other Navy forumers find this level of incidence over 51 years [Warrnambool 1947 to Westralia, 1998] particularly striking or unusual - accepting, of course, that Voyager's loss was a major tragedy, and that the Melbourne-Evans collision heightened Melbourne's 'jinx ship' reputation, although the carrier was not at fault.
Excluding aicraft crew losses, of which there were a number, this list appears to indicate at least 109 peacetime deaths in
eight major RAN postwar naval incidents, 1947-1998, again, dominated by Voyager's loss. I am aware, however, from passing references that there have been other single-life losses in various accidents, but for which I don't have the details.
In the decades after WW11 the RAN began to acquire a reputation as a somewhat mishap-prone Navy, with a litany of fatal and/or serious accidents culminating in the February 10, 1964 collision between HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Voyager - the Navy's worst peacetime disaster.
The press began to do some adding up, and it became a broader public perception.
Was it fair? Operating high performance military equipment, simulating war and testing ships and aircraft their limits, always involves risk. In the scale of total naval operations, I'm not sure it is that unusual compared to experience elsewhere ... but here's a preliminary list of fatal and serious RAN accidents to ponder:
* Sept 13, 1947: Minesweeper corvette HMAS Warrnambool lost in minesweeping operations near Cockburn Reef north of Cairns Queensland. Four lives lost.
* Jan 25, 1950: HMAS Tarakan, LST refrigeration unit gas explosion and fire alongside at Garden Island. Eight lives lost.
* Sept 1960: Destroyer HMAS Tobruk holed by sister ship Anzac in mis-directed gunnery exercise. No casulaties but Tobruk's operational life foreshortened.
* Oct 11, 1960: HMAS Woomera, sunk by explosion and fire while dumping obsolete ammunition at sea off Sydney. Caused by ignition of an obsolete aircraft flare. Two lives lost.
* Oct 22-25, 1963: Midshipmen from carrier HMAS Sydney lost in a whaleboat exercise when bad weather struck, and - ignoring local advice -a search went in the wrong direction. Four lives lost.
* Feb 10 1964, the Melbourne- Voyager collision. 82 lives lost.
* Numerous aircraft lost in carrier operations, a fact of life taken as a given in inherently risky operations, but not assisted by a mid-air collision of two sea venom jets over Sydney Harbour c1961 during a public flying demonstration.
It may have been press talk, and I've never seen an actual statistical comparison, but for a time Australian newspapers began to talk of the RAN as - hull-for-hull - the world's most accident-prone Navy. After Voyager [and excluding the 1974 Melbourne-USS Evans collision, the USN ship's error] the bad luck mercifully abated. But it still re-appeared occasionally.
*Dec 14, 1981: An Army cadet died aboard the then recently commissioned Landing Ship Heavy HMAS Tobruk [11] in another sullage gases leak.
*October 22, 1985: Escort maintenance ship HMAS Stalwart 11 suffered a sullage gases leak 200 miles out of Darwin. Three lives lost, 60 hospitalized.
*May 5, 1998: Engineroom fire aboard the amphibious warfare ship HMAS Westralia [11]. Four lives lost.
This is not comprehensive, but I think it covers the main and best-known incidents. I would be interested to hear if other Navy forumers find this level of incidence over 51 years [Warrnambool 1947 to Westralia, 1998] particularly striking or unusual - accepting, of course, that Voyager's loss was a major tragedy, and that the Melbourne-Evans collision heightened Melbourne's 'jinx ship' reputation, although the carrier was not at fault.
Excluding aicraft crew losses, of which there were a number, this list appears to indicate at least 109 peacetime deaths in
eight major RAN postwar naval incidents, 1947-1998, again, dominated by Voyager's loss. I am aware, however, from passing references that there have been other single-life losses in various accidents, but for which I don't have the details.