Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 16, 2010 22:53:52 GMT 12
I interviewed a WWII Navy veteran today who was a specialist in anti-submarine warfare. In 1944 after serving in the Atlantic and round Britain on ships, he returned home to NZ and was posted to Devonport where he was training others in anti-submarine warfare. He told me that the kiwis had laid massive minefields all over Auckland Harbour, and there were narrow channels between them that the ships used. There were underwater devices laid between the mainland and Turiturimatangi and other islands that monitored magnetic fields and each of these was connected to a monitoring station on remote islands, etc. Basically the defence was if a ship passed over these devices it was detected by the sensors and the stations - if they recognised it as not being an Allied vessel in the place it should have been, at the time it should have been, etc - then they could remotely detonate the tethered floating minefields and the whole section of the harbour where the ship was detected would have gone up. Wow, it seems utterly mindboggling that such a complicated defence was created around our main port. I knew we had patrol ships, coastal reconnaissance aircraft and minefileds, but this is way beyond what I'd thought before. All this was dismatled straight after the war. It must have been a huge relief for pleasure yachties, etc who could then again roam freely around the harbour.
This lead me to think about something else. Devonport was our main Navy port in NZ, and it is situated in the heart of the biggest city with the city centre basically facing it. Unlike many military establishments where secrecy could be maintained, surely Devonport must have been easy to see from many people's workplaces and homes, and the activities that went on there would have been quite well known to Aucklanders. Things such as ships arriving and leaving, and which ships were arriving back from battle with damage. Was there any means taken to try to screen this sort of activity from the public? Was there any law enforced to stop people putting past in their boats or photographing the docks there perhaps?
This lead me to think about something else. Devonport was our main Navy port in NZ, and it is situated in the heart of the biggest city with the city centre basically facing it. Unlike many military establishments where secrecy could be maintained, surely Devonport must have been easy to see from many people's workplaces and homes, and the activities that went on there would have been quite well known to Aucklanders. Things such as ships arriving and leaving, and which ships were arriving back from battle with damage. Was there any means taken to try to screen this sort of activity from the public? Was there any law enforced to stop people putting past in their boats or photographing the docks there perhaps?