WW2 Canadian, Australian and New Zealand Transport

[alamotex]

Originally Posted by alamotex

Thanks Mike 86 of those GL III(c) radar sets were shipped to OZ sometime in 1943 (or perhaps early 1944) and we know that all arrived safely. A contingent of Canadian technical personnel was sent out to provide training and assistance. This has been well documented and just one or two of those personnel are still alive today...I correspond with one of them.

Cheers Brian

The following was written by my WW II Canadian Army radar veteran friend reminiscing about an incident that occurred to him and his buddy, shipbound to New Guinea.


>Meanwhile I have been thinking of times past where you and I were
>involved and the sea voyage from San Francisco to New Guinea and
>eventually to Australia came to mind. That was a long voyage from S
>F to Milne Bay, New Guinea; 29 days without stopping or setting foot
>on solid land. Or even seeing land except for a couple of brief
>views of islands which we passed.
>
>You will recall that six of us went on the Norwegian freighter the
>MS Roseville: three warrant officers, you, Blackie and I and three
>officers; Ernie Duvernet, Bruce Brock and Dag Davidge. There were
>quite a few other passengers but we were the only Canadians.
>
>Two or three funny things happened during our voyage and on our way
>from Port Moresby down to Sydney.
>
>The first had to do with the Oerlikon guns which we were assigned to
>man in case of an encounter with Japanese forces. I was paired with
>Bruce Brock and you were on the other side of the ship on another
>gun with Ernie Duvernet.
>There were about eight oerlikons, four on each side of the ship and
>a naval gun fore and aft. We did not expect any excitement but one
>night about halfway across the Pacific the ship's alarm bells
>started to ring and we were rousted out of bed up on deck in the
>pitch black to man our guns. This was getting interesting. The ship
>was zigging and zagging furiously and we fully expected to come
>under fire or be torpedoed at any moment.
>
>Now we had had about five minutes instruction on handling the guns
>and had not even seen one fired. When I arrived at our gun at the
>port side of the ship, Bruce was already there. I said to him "Do
>you remember how to fire this thing?" and he said "No". That was not
>very encouraging!
>
>So we stood by in the dark hoping that a Jap destroyer or sub would
>not appear and feeling pretty useless because if that did happen we
>would not be able to fire our gun.
>
>Finally after quite a long time the all clear sounded and the ship
>steadied up and we went back to bed.
>
>In the morning of course the ship was a-buzz with stories of the
>night before and we began to hear a rumour that the whole thing was
>a false alarm called in by one of the Norwegian gunners on watch who
>had reported that he saw the wake of a torpedo go past our stern.
>
>The theory was that the gunners were not happy with the captain who
>insisted on leaving one mast light on all night despite the ruling
>that all lights had to be doused. The story was that the captain was
>afraid of colliding with another ship during the night because he
>had had that happen previously with the Roseville.
>
>Incidentally just recently I looked up the history of the Roseville
>on the Web and sure enough it had been in a collision with another
>ship a year or so prior to our getting on board. The accident had
>necessitated a lot of repair. It is amazing what you can find on the
>Internet. There was a photo of the Roseville which I sent to you.
>Not a very impressive ship.
>
>It is amazing what time will do to one's memories. One of our
>officers whom I will not name was sure in recent years that a sub
>had surfaced and fired shells at us on that occasion. At one of our
>reunions I assured him that there was no sub and no attack.
>
>Do you remember all that?
>So whether this alarm was a false one or not the story circulating
>sounded somewhat feasible.
>
>The story of this incident got out as four of the passengers were
>old-timer war correspondents and this was grist to their mills. The
>next day a US flying boat appeared circling the ship before flying
>off back to wherever. So obviously radio messages had been sent out
>during the "attack".


This WW II veteran is in his 90's Cheers Brian