Alphen, Netherlands. 28
February. For understandable reasons the Allied narrative of the 1939-45 naval
war tend to be dominated by the Royal Navy in the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, and the United States Navy in the Pacific. However, seventy-five
years ago this week, and some three months after the December 7th,
1941 attack of the Imperial Japanese Navy on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl
Harbor, and the December 10th sinking of the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the
battlecruiser HMS Repulse, the Battle
of the Java Sea took place. This battle highlights the sacrifice of other Allies
during World War Two, in this case the officers and men of the Royal
Netherlands Navy.
The
Australian-American-British-Dutch Strike Force (otherwise known as ABDACOM or the
Eastern Strike Force), under the command of the Rear Admiral Karel Doorman, had
sailed to intercept a Japanese invasion force en route to what was then the
Netherlands East Indies. The battle
began on 27 February when a force of the Imperial Japanese Navy, supported by land-based
air power, intercepted the Allied force.
At the time this was the
greatest sea battle since the epic 1916 Battle of Jutland between the Royal Navy
and the Imperial German Navy. The Allied force was routed. During the course of
the three day action the Allied force lost two light cruisers (HMNLS de Ruyter (flagship) and HMNLS Java) and three destroyers. Rear Admiral (Schout-bij-nacht) Doorman and
some 2300 sailors were also lost. The
Japanese suffered damage to one destroyer with the loss of 38 sailors killed.
During the battle the
British ‘8-inch’ heavy cruiser HMS Exeter
was badly damaged by a shell that exploded in her boiler room. Three years
earlier at the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939 HMS Exeter had inflicted serious damage on the German
pocket-battleship and commerce raider Graf
Spee. Then Commodore Harwood’s small force of HMS Exeter and two light cruisers (HMS Ajax and HMS Achilles
(of the New Zealand Division) had forced Kapitain sur zee Hans Langsdorrf to
seek sanctuary in neutral Montevideo, Faced by what he thought was an
overwhelming Royal Navy force waiting for him to leave Langsdorrf chose to
scuttle the Graf Spee rather than
engage in what he thought would have been suicide. The British were bluffing.
After the Battle of Java
Sea the badly damaged HMS Exeter had retreated to what was then called Ceylon,
and today Sri Lanka. After emergency repairs Exeter tried to sail for Australia for repairs escorted by two
destroyers, HMS Encounter and the USS Pope. On 1 March, in what became
known as the Second Battle of the Java Sea, all three Allied ships were sunk
with over 800 British sailors taken captive by the Japanese. That same day the
heavy cruiser USS Houston and the
Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth, together
with the Dutch destroyer HMNLS Evertsen,
all three of which had taken part in Battle of the Java Sea, were sunk by the
Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of the Sunda Strait with over one thousand
Allied sailors killed.
The defeat enabled the Imperial
Japanese Army to invade what is today Indonesia and marked the effective end of
the Dutch far eastern empire. The battle also took place in what has become
known as Yamamoto’s Year. The Fleet Commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy,
Admiral Isokuru Yamamoto had told His Majesty Emperor Hirohito shortly before
Pearl Harbor that his forces could play havoc with those of the Allies for about
a year, but after that he could offer the Emperor no guarantees of success.
He was right. After the
initial shock the United States rapidly organised its immense industrial
potential into the greatest war machine the world had ever seen. The Battle of
Java Sea took place right in the middle of Yamamoto’s Year when the Allies were
only beginning to properly organise, and between Pearl Harbor and the decisive
US naval victory at the Battle of Midway, 4-7 June, 1942.
Both in the Atlantic and
the Pacific the officers and men of the Royal Netherlands Navy served with
distinction even when the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi forces. The bonds
forged between the Royal Navy, the US Navy and the Royal Netherlands Navy
between 1939 and 1945 remain strong today within the framework of the Atlantic
Alliance. It has been my honour in the past to spend time on the ships of the
Royal Netherlands Navy, a force that does a country that I now call home proud.
There is a post-script to
the Battle of the Java Sea. In November 2016 during the making of a television
documentary about the battle it was discovered that between 2002 and 2016 six
of the wrecks of the Allied ships had either been illegally scavenged or
removed completely from the sea floor by scrap metal merchants, most likely
from Indonesia. Somewhere in the Mediterranean the remains of my great uncle
Walter lie interred in the shattered remains of a sunken British warship. The
sanctity of his final resting place matters to me. War graves should be
respected, but sadly too often they are not. The Australian, British, Dutch,
and US governments have protested to Indonesia, but little more will be done to
preserve such sites.
In honour of the officers
and men of the Royal Netherlands Navy who sacrificed their lives during the
epic struggle of 1939-1945.
Julian Lindley-French
