HMAS Swan (U74/F74/A427), named for the Swan River, was a Grimsby-class sloop of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) that served during World War II.
The Bombing of Darwin, also known as the Battle of Darwin, on 19 February 1942 was the largest single attack ever mounted by a foreign power on Australia. On that day, 242 Japanese aircraft, in two separate raids, attacked the town, ships in Darwin's harbour and the town's two airfields in an attempt to prevent the Allies from using them as bases to contest the invasion of Timor and Java during World War II.
USS Peary (DD-226) was a Clemson-class destroyer of the United States Navy. She was commissioned in 1920 and sunk by Japanese aircraft at Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, on 19 February 1942.
Norddeutscher Lloyd was a German shipping company. It was founded by Hermann Henrich Meier and Eduard Crüsemann in Bremen on 20 February 1857. It developed into one of the most important German shipping companies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was instrumental in the economic development of Bremen and Bremerhaven. On 1 September 1970, the company merged with Hamburg America Line (HAPAG) to form Hapag-Lloyd AG.
HMAS Mavie was a 19-ton auxiliary patrol boat operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) during World War II.
Burns Philp was once a major Australian shipping line and merchant that operated in the South Pacific. When the well-populated islands around New Guinea were targeted for blackbirding in the 1880s, a new rush for labour from these islands began. James Burns and Robert Philp purchased several well-known blackbirding ships to quickly exploit the human resource in this region, and Burns Philp entered the slave trade. The company ended its involvement in blackbirding in 1886. In later years the company was a major player in the food manufacturing business. Since its delisting from the Australian Securities Exchange in December 2006 and the subsequent sale of its assets, the company has mainly become a cashed up shell company. It is wholly owned by Graeme Hart's Rank Group.
The motor vessel MV Mamutu was an Australian merchant ship built in Hong Kong in 1938. She was of 300 gross tons, 113 feet (34.4 m) in length, and had a beam of 25 feet (7.6 m). She operated on an inter-island trade route for Burns Philp & Company, and at the outbreak of World War II, she was engaged in the evacuation of civilians ahead of advancing Japanese forces in New Guinea. The Mamutu sunk in August 1942 after being attacked by a Japanese submarine Ro-33 in the Gulf of Papua near Murray Island.
SS Zealandia, nicknamed "Z", was an Australian cargo and passenger steamship. She served as a troopship in both World War I and World War II. Zealandia transported the Australian 8th Division. Her crew were the last Allied personnel to see HMAS Sydney, which was lost with all hands in 1941. Zealandia was sunk in the air raids on Darwin of 19 February 1942.
I-124, originally named Submarine Minelayer No. 52 and then named I-24 from before her launch until June 1938, was an I-121-class submarine of the Imperial Japanese Navy that served during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. During the latter conflict, she operated in support of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and was sunk during anti-shipping operations off Australia in January 1942.
HMAS Matafele was a small cargo and passenger vessel which was operated by Burns Philp from 1938 to 1942 and the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) from 1943 until she was lost with all of her crew as a result of an accident in June 1944.
SS Scharnhorst was a Norddeutscher Lloyd ocean liner, launched in 1934, completed in 1935 and made her maiden voyage on 8 May 1935. She was the first big passenger liner built by the Third Reich. Under the German merchant flag, she was the second liner named after General Gerhard J. D. von Scharnhorst. She was one of three ships on the Far Eastern route between Bremen and Yokohama; her sister ships were SS Potsdam and SS Gneisenau. These three ships were planned to shorten the journey time between Bremen and Shanghai from the usual 50 days to 34. She was trapped in Japan in September 1939 and later converted into an Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier named Shinyo in 1942 and sunk by US submarine USS Spadefish in 1944.
SS Mauna Loa was a steam-powered cargo ship of the Matson Navigation Company that was sunk in the bombing of Darwin in February 1942. She was christened SS West Conob in 1919 and renamed SS Golden Eagle in 1928. At the time of her completion in 1919, the ship was inspected by the United States Navy for possible use as USS West Conob (ID-4033) but was neither taken into the Navy nor commissioned.
MV British Motorist was a 6,891 ton tanker, built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Newcastle upon Tyne in 1924 for the British Tanker Company.
MV Macdhui was a steel-hulled passenger and cargo motor ship built by Barclay Curle & Company at the Clydeholm Yard, Whiteinch, Scotland for Burns, Philp & Company, Limited, Sydney NSW, Australia. She was launched on 23 December 1930 and completed during March 1931. She operated with the company's Burns, Philp Line with service to Papua and New Guinea. She was sunk in 1942, as a result of damage suffered by being hit by bombs from Japanese aircraft, near Port Moresby.
HMAS Wato (W127) was a tug boat operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) during World War II. During World War I she was operated by the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean Sea. She later operated as a tug boat for the Adelaide Steam Tug Company before being requisitioned by the RAN. She was scrapped in 1955.
MV Merkur was a 5,952 tons passenger cargo vessel that was requitioned into the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) during the Second World War as a victualling stores and supply vessel.
HMS Bulolo was a 6,267 ton passenger and cargo ship of the Burns, Philp Shipping Company operating in the South Pacific. In 1939 she was converted into an Armed Merchant Cruiser, then a Landing Ship Headquarters (LSH) in 1942. She directed the landings in North Africa, Sicily, Anzio and Normandy during World War II.
The MV Tulagi was a merchant ship built in 1939 and operated by the Burns Philp shipping line to carry cargo between the Pacific Islands and Australian ports. With the outbreak of World War II the Tulagi formed part of the Allied merchant navy fleet supplying the war effort throughout the Pacific and Indian Ocean theatres.
The Fujita salvage operation was a two-year marine salvage operation of World War II shipwrecks in Darwin Harbour in the Northern Territory of Australia from 1959 to 1961.
Boniface, George W. "The Bombing of the MV Neptuna by Japanese in Darwin 1942" in Smith, Alan Carnegie. Outback Corridor. Plympton, S. Aust. : A.C. Smith, 2002. p. 205-213
Buckley, K. and Klugman, K. The Australian presence in the Pacific : Burns Philp, 1914–1946. Sydney : George Allen & Unwin, 1983.
McCarthy, Sophie. World War II shipwrecks and the first Japanese air raid on Darwin, 19 February 1942. Darwin : Northern Territory Museum of Arts & Sciences, 1992.
Smith, Neil C. With the red duster : Gardenvale, Vic. : Mostly Unsung Military History Research and Publications, c 2006.
Steinberg, David Raising the war: Japanese salvage divers and allied shipwrecks in post-war Darwin Bulletin of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology, v.33, 2009: 11–18
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