RNZAF aircraft used to scuttle ships

[baronbeeza]

I refer to this comment in a long running Mosquito thread here.

The ship sunk by the RNZAF Mossies (and it was in Cook Strait, not Bay of Plenty) was the "elderly dredge ARAHURA", which had been offered to the RNZAF to do with whatever they wanted; naturally they choose rockets. Eight Mosquitos led by Squadron Leader E C Gartrell, date 24th January 1952. Do not have to hand details of how ineffectual or otherwise this operation was, but the newspapers of the day might be more enlightening.
David D

There was also mention of another ship being sunk by Mosquito.
I haven't heard much about these sinkings but were they common ?

I was reading up on the fate of the various Westport dredges and happened upon the sinking of the Rubi Seddon.


www.clydeships.co.uk/view.php?ref=16044#v

Would anyone have details of the sinking in August 1952 ?

RUBI SEDDON SS was a New Zealand Steam Suction Dredger of 528 tons built in 1903 by William Simons & Co, Renfrew, Yard No 404 for the Westport Harbour Board, Wellington, Nz. On the 2nd August 1952 she was sunk by a Rnzaf rocket attack. The vessel was dismantled of all of her finery before this event took place. Read more at wrecksite: www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?58946

[davidd]

baronbeeza,
The RNZAF took 23 photographs of this sinking, have the negative numbers somewhere, but no additional information, some of these negatives seem to have survived. Date of these photographs given as 3/8/52.
David D

[Dave Homewood]

One of the ships sunk by Mosquitoes was filmed from one of the Mossies. I have seen the footage. I think it was called the Lutterworth or something like that.

[Peter Lewis]

I am dredging through my few remaining gray brain cells, and can remember a story:

A businessman took over an existing company. He got it for virtually nothing, because one of the main assets was a semi-derelict ship that was tied up at some NZ port.
The local harbour board had demanded that the vessel be removed, and the quote to do so exceeded the value of all the other assets of the company. Thus the company was technically insolvent.
Having bought the company for the literal $1 our friend had a brainwave, and offered the ship to the RNZAF as a target. Thus they arranged for it to be towed out to sea (at no cost to the new owners) and used it for target practice until it sunk. He even got a letter of thanks from the CAS for his kind donation.

A neat solution for all involved.

[Dave Homewood]

I seem to recall someone saying that the RNZAF was rater embarrassed because on their first sortie every aircraft missed the target. Not sure if that is true though.

In the film I saw they were using rockets too by the way, not bombs.

[Dave Homewood]

From Rod Dahlberg's logbook:

Jan 24, 1952 - Mosquito F.B.6 NZ2349 - Rod was pilot, Sgt/Nav McBean was other crewman - "Operation Scuttle" - 16 Rockets (7 a/c) - 1 hour 25 mins

[Dave Homewood]

From Tony Williams' logbook:

Jan 24, 1952 - 16.35hrs - Mosquito F.B.6 NZ2334 - F/O Fraser was pilot, Tony was Nav/W - Rocket Attacks on Arahura - 1 hour 45 mins

[Dave Homewood]

Here we go, from the Wikipedia page on the Arahura:

Demise and sinking
In May 1949 the ship underwent her regular survey. This found that she needed extensive repairs to reach the Lloyds A1 level. As this was uneconomic she was towed to Shelley Bay and laid up. In 1950 B.T. Daniel Ltd of Wellington bought the vessel and partly dismantled her.

The hull was towed into Cook Strait where it was used for target practice in Operation "Scuttle Two" by 75 Squadron RNZAF Mosquito bombers on 24 January 1952 and sunk.[12] This was the second ship sunk as part of training by the squadron's Mosquitos, the first being the barque Lutterworth on 26 June 1950.

Seven Mosquitos under the command of Squadron Leader E C Gartrell, OBE used three-inch solid-headed rockets to sink the ship, while an eighth filmed the event for the National Film Unit. The attack lasted 35 minutes and the ship sank at 3:43 pm in 450 fathoms of water 15 miles south east of Baring Head after taking ten direct hits.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arahura_(twin_screw_ship)

[Dave Homewood]

GISBORNE HERALD, 7 JUNE 1950

PLANES SCUTTLE HULK IN "ATTACK" OFF WELLINGTON

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, June 27 With her holds glowing flames, the 82-year-old former barque and the latterly Wellington coal hulk Lutterworth slid beneath the waves off Wellington Heads yesterday afternoon. She had been battered for nearly half an hour by bombs, rockets and machine-gun fire from R.N.Z A.F. Mosquito and Harvard aircraft.

“Operation scuttle,” as it was called provided valuable and realistic training for the crews of six aircraft which actually did the scuttling. However, there, were also nine other aircraft carrying observers for the Air Force, Army and Navy and other departments.

The rusting old barque was towed outside the Heads by the tug Tapuhi and about 2.30 p.m, the hawsers were cast free and she was left drifting. All the aircraft were circling above the scuttling ground — about three miles south of Turakarae Head. As soon as the tug had steamed clear a wave of Harvards swept across the hulk in a practice run. A few minutes later two Harvards came in low, straffing the ship with machine-gun fire and sending two sticks of bombs down. They were followed by four Mosquitos which streaked into “attack” with rockets and 250 lb. bombs. "Badly holed and taking in water on the port side.” came the official message from observers. A long pall of flame-tinged smoke gushed from the ship as the Harvard? attacked again. At 2.55 p.m. the hulk's bow lurched upward and she slid stern first beneath the sea.

[davidd]

Another vessel was to be sunk by RNZAF off Banks Peninsula on 17/6/78. This was a Tongan cargo ship by the name of KEMPHAAN, which had caught fire during the night on a voyage from Lyttelton to its homeland, and had been severely damaged in the aft section, which killed one of the crewmen, and lost all power. The ship was eventually towed to Lyttelton and beached at, I think, Camp Bay on south eastern side of harbour where it was inspected to assess its future. However some of the (undamaged) radar equipment was removed in the short interval between the beaching and the decision being made to remove the ship promptly from the harbour and sink it at sea. The cargo on board included quite a few (originally frozen but by now decomposing) sheep carcases which had been stacked on top of a large number of sewing machines, the latter having been collected by a NZ women's organisation and donated to the women of Tonga. Unfortunately for this plan it was decided that as the meat was rotting by this time, the whole mess should be taken out to deep water and sunk. The RNZAF must have heard about it (or asked about it?) and it was duly towed out and left to the tender mercies of a small fleet of strike aircraft. It was hoped to film the glorious carnage, with a Strikemaster being designated for this task. However no films were ever shown on public TV (I remember at the time being very disappointed about this!) and it was rumoured that the whole exercise was rather underwhelming, possibly due to unfavourable weather. However the ship was eventually sunk, but exactly how is unknown to me. The official name for this exercise was Mutton Cleaver, and its seems that 75 Squadron (Skyhawks) was to be the "butcher". The official reason given for failure of the filming was that the RNZAF photographer aboard the Strikemaster was airsick, and low cloud made filming all but impossible. Can anybody confirm that this is roughly what happened? David D

[Dave Homewood]

This site confirmed the Kemphaan was used as a target
www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?216520

[jimtheeagle]

I remember this slightly, what stuck in my head was something about a ship in Fiji (clearly I was wrong on the details) that caught fire and that Skyhawks were going to sink it and that they would have film on the evening news. This was reported on one of the short news headline things they had on TV One in the afternoons, or possibly a breaking news item. Anyway, I duly had eyes glued to the 6.30 news - and they announced that the film that came back was unusable or something like that and wouldn't be shown. I was very, very disappointed.

JT

[skyhawkdon]

The decommissioned RAN patrol boat HMAS Adroit was sunk by 2 Sqn Skyhawks off the coast of Perth WA on 8 August 1994 and on 16 December the same year, 75 Sqn Skyhawks dispatched another burnt out trawler (the Don Wong 513) off the coast of Dunedin. I also recall 75 Sqn being tasked with sinking a few shipping containers that had been washed overboard from a ship in the 1990s and were floating just below the surface and presented a navigation hazard to shipping. One of them refused to sink despite several direct hits from rockets and 20mm cannon. Eventually it was blown open to reveal it was full of boogie boards, hence the reason it had refused to sink!

[saratoga]

That would be like the modern day fighter pilot version of 'bogies at 12 o'clock'...to 'Boogie boards at 6 o'clock'.

[davidd]

Have now obtained a much more balanced account of the KEMPHAAN sinking, which removes any unintended slur on the reputation of our Skyhawk pilots in 1978! This from the 75 Squadron Unit History Sheet of that date, and note that I have obtained copies of all relevant Flight Authorisation Books of all aircraft involved in the incident (8 A-4s, one Strikemaster, one UH-1, and one P-3).

Here is how the sinking was covered in the above mentioned document:

16/6/78; "Meanwhile, back at the Squadron, planning was well underway for a strike to sink the Tongan vessel "KEMPHAAN". The KEMPHAAN was en-route from Timaru to Tonga with a cargo of mutton, when, off BANKS PENINSULA fire swept through the ship leaving two crewmembers dead. The disabled vessel was towed into LYTTELTON Harbour, where it was decided that both ship and deteriorating cargo were unsalvageable. 75 Squadron was subsequently given the job of disposal."

17/6/78; "An eight aircraft formation, led by Squadron Leader S D White, took off shortly after mid-day to sink the KAMPHAAN, which had been towed into a danger area off KAIKOURA. The vessel was located with the help of a 5 Squadron Orion aircraft, and subsequently bombed in far from ideal conditions. The ship was sunk without difficulty, for further details see Annex. A."

ANNEX "A" will follow in next post, so long as I can type it up without it disappearing!

[senob]

Oct 28, 2019 10:15:21 GMT 12 davidd said:

ANNEX "A" will follow in next post, so long as I can type it up without it disappearing!

David, type it into a word document then just copy and paste into here. Don't have to worry about disappearing then.

[davidd]

senob,
Have more or less done as you suggest some time ago, and it should appear fairly soon on here, God willing. Not the first time this has happened to me either, should have made it into a Word document in the first place. You will notice that the introduction published above corrects several mistakes contained in my original post on this ship, that the ship sailed from Timaru rather than Lyttelton, and that two crewmembers were killed in the night-time fire, not one. Also note that the eight Skyhawks were originally intended to depart Ohakea at 0900 hours on the 17th June, but this was later put back to 1300, presumably because of the prevailing weather in the "target" area.
David D

[senob]

David D, no probs. It's just a lesson that I've learned from bitter experience. Took me a bit to learn it too.

[davidd]

Still awaiting arrival of the narrative detailing the unfolding of "Operation Mutton Cleaver", so in meantime will provide details of the Skyhawks and aircrew involved. These appear in the same order as listed in FAB, so presume in Section order. Interesting that every second aircraft is a two-seater, and that there are no empty seats! Most of the rockets carried are referred to simply as "Zunis", and the Skyhawk armed only with 4 x Mk. 82's was "03".

Skyhawk 52, S/L White, G/C Gordon.
Skyhawk 01, F/O Howse.
Skyhawk 51, F/L Pond, F/O Coppersmith.
Skyhawk 09, F/O Phillips.
Skyhawk 53, F/O Lee, W/C Rudd (that would be Colin!)
Skyhawk 04, F/O Pilkington.
Skyhawk 54, F/L Forrest, F/L Ashton.
Skyhawk 03, F/O Read.

Also interesting that in Flight Authorisation Books, the writer reverts to World War Two rank abbreviations rather than the official "long" abbreviations introduced in (1960s?) and still in use to this day- I can understand that!

[Dave Homewood]

Mark McGuire found a file in Archives NZ about the Lutterworth sinking and he sent the following information through. He said:

Hi Dave

I came across a file (R21074026) at ArchivesNZ on the sinking of the Lutterworth. I've attached a transcription of the sortie reports. One thing the file noted is that the 25lb rockets sunk the Lutterworth as they pierced the hull below the waterline, whereas the 60lb rockets did the damage above the waterline.

Regards
Mark McGuire