NZCW - Threats and Attacks

This article discusses Second World War occasions when the threat of war was on our doorstep - well within the range of coast-watchers eyes and radio operators ears.

German Raiders

On 25 November 1940 at 2.30 AM the small coastal steamer Holmwood departed Waitangi on the Chatham Islands for Lytellton, the port of Christchurch. A recently purchased  ship of the Holm Shipping Co., Wellington it was on its second voyage from the Chathams, this time carrying 29 passengers, 1370 sheep, two dogs and a horse. Unexpectedly, over the horizon from the south came a Japanese commercial ship - which was unusual! Approaching closer the ship suddenly transformed itself into the German commerce raider Komet, which took the passengers and some sheep prisoner, then fired on the Holmwood until it sank. Then, along with its partner raider Orion and their supply ship Kulmerland they departed north.

Off East Cape in the early hours of 27 November 1940 they encountered the New Zealand Shipping Company vessel Rangitane which, after a brief skirmish hove to and submitted. Again, its passengers and crew were transferred to the German vessels and the Rangitane was sunk by shellfire. The German ships then headed north, fast. The captured prisoners were later landed on Emirau Island in the vicinity of Nauru.

Later, in May 1941 the Komet returned to southern New Zealand waters, this time in company with a captured Norwegian whaler which was recommissioned as the Adjutant. Twenty magnetic ground mines were transferred onto the Adjutant which was then dispatched north to the Chatham Islands.

 On the evening of 24 June the Adjutant headed due west and in the early morning hours of 25 June 1941 laid ten mines across the entrance of Lytellton Harbour, even though her engine was knocking and beginning to fail. Her skipper then steered her further north towards Wellington.

Just after 11 PM that night the Adjutant started laying mines at the entrance to Wellington Harbour, though she was not yet at the planned location. Four mines had gone overboard when a shore searchlight picked them up. They made smoke, and put the fifth and six mines over the side, then after turning back into the smoke, laid the last four mines under its protection. While still hidden from the searchlights by smoke they turned and, in the early morning hours of 26 June 1941 made their way off into the dark to the east.

On 1 July the Adjutant met up with the Komet where she was scuttled because of her failing engine.

In the following days there was no understanding that mines had been laid and shipping continued in and out of both harbours. None of the mines ever exploded.

Video: Piracy in the Pacific, the story of Chatham Islander Hetty Idiens and the capture of passengers and crew from the Holmwood by the German Raider Komet. A DVD from 'Taonga - Treasures Of Our Past'. [No online source found]

 Chatham Islands

From the first days of New Zealand's radio communication services the Government had established a radio station on the Chatham Islands. Over time the technical capability of the station had been upgraded and by the time of the war years had permanently deployed Post and Telegraph radio operators supporting the Island's domestic and commercial needs. At this time there was no airport on the island and all transport was via ship - a principle service provider being Holm and Company, ship owners based in Wellington.

Should the German vessel's orders have been different, the outcome of a raider visit could have had significant impact on Waitangi, its citizens, and the civilian Post and Telegraph operators conducting military duties as a part of their work.

The 6th Reinforcements

In Invercargill on 3 June 1940 a self-employed fruiterer, Percy Johnson registered for military service. At age 25 he had just become a soldier. In October he 'marched in' to Trentham Army Camp where he was given the rank of Private in the NZ Medical Corps. He was assigned to B Force troops that were soon to depart for Fiji to undertake six months of training in the Pacific. On final home leave in Invercargill he asked his girlfriend, Tui Ferns, to marry him. She agreed and they went off to buy her an engagement ring. On 11 November 1940, his leave over, Percy and the troops of B Force embarked on the Rangatira at Auckland and sailed for Suva, Fiji.

The men of B Force commenced their training. In January and February 1941 the men experienced their first rainy season, where warm, moisture-laden air would produce mildew overnight inside hats, boots and even tin trunks. On 20 February a hurricane broke - the worst experienced in Fiji for 21 years and the army camps were in disarray. Three ships anchored in port were driven high on the mudbanks - these having escaped shelling at Nauru by the raiders Orion and Komet in December. The soldiers turned their hand to hurricane repair work, then continued their field training until replacement troops arrived in May 1941. The B Force troops returned to Trentham, marching in on 2 June 1941.

After further home leave, On 26 June 1941 Percy Johnson and the men of Trentham Camp, now designated as the 6th Reinforcements, boarded the vessel HMT 29 in Wellington Harbour. With some 4000 soldiers embarked, 'His Majesty's Troopship' (the re-branded Aquitania) and her escort Achilles sailed out of Wellington Harbour on 27 June traveling safely across the minefield laid early the previous morning. The vessels joined the Australian section of their convoy in Bass Straight on 30 June and proceeded to Egypt.

The author of this narrative, Rex Johnson, was stunned when his family history research uncovered the probability that he should not be in existence. How likely is it that 20 mines laid across the entrance to two major New Zealand ports would fail to explode as intended, and that his future father would survive leaving a  home port, let alone the following years of war. The actions of the Komet, Orion and Adjutant could well have held a totally different outcome for many families in New Zealand.

Coast Watching (CW) - by Radar

This program aimed at a close surveillance of shipping movements around the New Zealand coast (low-flying planes could also be detected). At first thought it might be felt that New Zealand was too remote from the active war for such surveillance to be necessary. 

But post-war examination of German records showed that German raiders had laid mine-fields at Auckland, Wellington and Lyttelton. The Germans obviously underestimated the ferocity of the Southern Ocean, since the last two of these mine-fields were never even noticed by New Zealand.

The Auckland mine-field sank the large liner RMS Niagara, complete with a cargo of gold bullion. The German raider Orion sank the SS Turakina in the Tasman Sea, and the raider Komet sank the SS Holmwood off the Chatham Islands. Both raiders then combined to sink the 17,000 ton liner SS Rangitane only one day out of Auckland.

A Japanese submarine audaciously sailed through Cook Strait at night on the surface, observed by radar stations on both sides of the Strait. In March 1942, a Japanese airplane over-flew Auckland, no doubt launched from a surfaced submarine. It was not observed, since the air-warning radar was in course of being relocated.

(Torpedo Bay Navy Museum - Radar: https://navymuseum.co.nz/explore/by-themes/technology-and-weapons/radar/)

Japanese Submarines

Japanese submarines ranged south during the next few months [of 1942] – in small numbers – including I-29, which entered Cook Strait in February, apparently looking for troop transports. The submarine then surfaced and launched its small float plane, flown by Fujita Nobuo, reconoitring Port Nicholson and finding ‘four or five merchants’ in harbour. They then found one of the inter-island ferries connecting New Zealand’s North and South Islands, but had been forbidden to attack civilian shipping.

I-25 arrived in the South Pacific during March, encountering the armed merchant Tongariro.  The Japanese boat went on to Cook Strait and made a further reconnaissance flight over the capital, then coasted north to the Hauraki Gulf apparently unseen — though the minesweeper HMNZS Viti reported a dubious hydrophone detection.

I-21 made a similar sortie into New Zealand waters in May. The boat surfaced off Mayor Island in the Bay of Plenty, and Lieutenant Isumo Ito took a floatplane across the Hauraki Gulf.  Low cloud and rain hampered his effort, but he ‘circled Auckland at about 1200 feet and observed some small boats which he thought were fishing craft lying in the harbour.’  The submarine was meant to then scout Wellington waters and Port Nicholson, but news came that a simultaneous midget submarine attack into Sydney harbour had essentially failed, and the mission was abandoned.

There were more reports of submarines in New Zealand waters during June, and although the Solomons campaign of late 1942 diverted Japanese attentions there, the I-boats were back in the Tasman by early 1943.  One passed through Cook Strait in February.

NGB: https://www.navygeneralboard.com/japans-pacific-submarine-campaign-encounter-off-fiji-1942/

Stephens Island

Newly married Rosaline Hosking lived on Stephens Island from 1943 until 1947 — a time when the normal contingent of lighthouse keepers and their families was supplemented by 38 naval personnel associated with a secret wartime radar and radio station.

"One calm evening in 1944, while strolling down to the gate, Hosking noticed a strange craft in the bay below. She mentioned it to her husband, then to the watch at the radar station, who assured her there were no boats in the area. Later, she noticed two figures moving about outside, and was sure that they were not naval staff. Next morning an embarrassed young man inquired where she had seen the craft, and what it was like. It transpired that it had been a Japanese submarine that had slipped through Cook Strait, but been spotted from Cape Campbell. The airforce later destroyed it off the coast of Wairarapa."

(Article: New Zealand Geographic - Island Refuge by Graeme Ure, OCT-DEC 1996)

... and U Boats

By January 1945 the Second World War had long turned in favour of the Allies. Germany was on the retreat across Europe, and Japan had been pushed back to a shrinking perimeter around the Home Islands. The idea of a U-boat turning up off the New Zealand coast that month was unthinkable. But a U-boat attack in strange waters is exactly what happened.

The German Type IX-D2 submarine U-862, Käpitanleutnant Heinrich Timm, was a long-range boat with a secondary role shipping high-value, small-volume cargoes. In December 1944,  Captain Timm took the U-boat on a long patrol into southern waters, running down Australia’s west coast, south of Tasmania, then towards Sydney. Then he took the boat across the Tasman and down the eastern coastline of New Zealand’s North Island.

At dusk on 16 January 1945 he motored on the surface across Hawke's Bay to Napier. The moment has been thoroughly mythologised; there were even suggestions that he entered Napier’s breakwater harbour, or that the crew went ashore and milked cows – which led to a stage play, U-boat Down Under, performed in Wellington during 2006. It was all untrue, merely part of a bragging competition between wartime commanders years later when they both worked at NATO.

It was a hot summer night. Napier enjoyed a Californian climate; and the German sailors saw what they thought were street cafes, watching what they imagined were couples dancing to jazz music that echoed across the quiet water. For the U-boat crew the sight was significant; they had been beset by war since 1939, and here was a town apparently enjoying peacetime life. Napier had no waterfront cafes in 1945. However, there was a popular roller-skating venue on the main foreshore, near a Soundshell that had been deliberately styled after the Hollywood Bowl. In all likelihood private citizens were gliding across the concrete, probably appearing as dancers.

A few hours later the coastal freighter Pukeko left harbour with running lights on as if it were peacetime. Timm followed, attacked as dawn came — and missed. A sailor on deck saw the trail of a torpedo running past, but the idea of a torpedo attack off Napier – at any stage in the war – was so remote he thought he had imagined it. However, the ship had indeed been attacked, and the torpedo is still at the bottom of the bay. 

Timm stalked Pukeko until she began signalling the Portland Island signal station northeast of Napier, at which point he decided his U-boat had been seen and abandoned the pursuit.

NGB: https://www.navygeneralboard.com/a-u-boat-attack-in-strange-waters/

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