Centaur (ship, 1924)
 The Centaur after the transformation into a hospital ship (1943)
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The AHS Centaur (Australian Hospital Ship Centaur ) was an Australian hospital ship that was sunk by the Japanese submarine I-177 by a single torpedo on May 14, 1943 off the coast of the Australian state of Queensland . Of the 332 crew members, military personnel, doctors and nurses, 268 were killed. The 64 survivors had to wait 36 hours for rescue. The sinking caused a public and political outcry and was considered a war crime , as the ship was unmistakably marked as a hospital ship according to the Hague Peace Conference .
The Australian and British governments protested the Japanese government and called for those responsible to be tried. Japan, however, rejected all responsibility; the case was closed in 1948 without any conviction. The submarine that sank the Centaur could only be identified after much controversy in the 1970s. The wreck of the ship was only found in December 2009.
Construction and early years as a merchant ship
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The Centaur was commissioned by the British shipping company Blue Funnel Line , based in Liverpool , to replace the outdated Charon steamer from 1903 on the Australia - Singapore route . The ship should be suitable for the transport of cargo and livestock, but also passengers and also had to be able to sit on shallow sand and mud banks, as the waters at the northwestern end of Western Australia could fluctuate by up to eight meters due to the tides.
The Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Greenock , Scotland, was commissioned with the construction , where the 3222 GRT motor ship was laid down on November 16, 1923 and launched on June 5, 1924. The construction costs totaled 146,750 pounds sterling (in monetary value at the time ). The ship, which was named after the Centaur , a figure from Greek mythology , was 96.22 meters long, 14.69 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 6.55 meters. It was powered by a six-cylinder diesel engine from the Danish shipbuilding company Burmeister & Wain , which acted on a single propeller and made 355 nominal horsepower. She was one of the first civilian ships to be equipped with a diesel engine. The top speed was 14 knots. The ship was a tower decker , a type of ship in which the lower decks are wider than the higher ones. The eleven meter high chimney was also particularly striking.
The Centaur was built as a combined passenger and cargo ship for the shipping company's Australia and Asia service. It could carry 72 passengers, 50 of them in the first class and 22 in the second class, as well as 450 cattle and also had four cargo holds for the cargo. The crew consisted of 39 officers and 29 lower ranks. The transfer to the Blue Funnel Line took place on August 10, 1924 and the final completion on August 29, 1924. The Centaur was registered in Liverpool and sailed under the British flag, but her actual home port was Fremantle , Australia.
When the Centaur began its service on the Fremantle - Java - Singapore route in late 1924 , the Blue Funnel Line operated two other ships on this route, the Gorgon and the Charon , which was replaced by the Centaur . On the crossing from Fremantle to Singapore, the ship called, among other things, ports in the Bali Strait as well as Surabaya , Semarang and Batavia , with the stopovers varied. From 1928 until the 1930s she was the only ship on the Blue Funnel Line on the route, but increasing trade led the shipping company to put the Gorgon back into service. In 1936 a new ship named Charon was added. In 1938 the Centaur came to the aid of the Japanese whaler Kyo Maru (385 t), who had a problem with the boilers on the return journey from Antarctica and had asked for help by radio. The Centaur received this distress call and towed the ship to Geraldton on the west coast of Western Australia.
Second World War
As a ship of the British merchant navy , the Centaur was affected by the regulations of the British Parliament that came into force in 1939 with regard to the entry of merchant ships for military service. After the outbreak of the Second World War , the Centaur was equipped with a 100 mm naval gun, two Vickers machine guns (one for each wing of the bridge), two paravane mine deflectors and devices for demagnetization to protect the ship for magnetic mines and demagnetization Equipped to make torpedoes harder to find.
In December 1939, renovation work was carried out in Hong Kong , whereby a new propeller was installed and the diesel engine was equipped with engine charging technology . This technology to increase the efficiency of the engine was canceled in April 1942 and could not be replaced because the war caused a shortage of materials and the shipyard capacity was always fully booked. After these changes, the ship initially remained on its previous route.
On November 19, 1941, a sea battle broke out on the northwest coast of Australia between the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran . While 316 of the 397 men of the cormorant survived, HMAS Sydney sank with all 645 people on board. When the Sydney did not enter Fremantle, the search for the ship began.
On November 26th, an aircraft discovered a damaged lifeboat that had 62 members of the Navy on board. The plane directed the Centaur to the site. First, food was lowered into the boat and one of the men was taken on board to report. He initially pretended to be a Norwegian trade officer, but soon confessed to being the first mate of the cormorant , which had gone down in battle with the Sydney seven days earlier . Captain Dark of the Centaur feared the Germans would capture his ship, but did not want to leave the shipwrecked to their fate. He allowed nine injured men to board the Centaur and then towed the boat.
During the journey to Carnarvon , however, the lifeboat was flooded, so that the men of the Kormoran , including the ship's commander, Theodor Detmers , were brought on board by two Centaur boats . At Carnarvon they were brought together with other Cormorant survivors who had been picked up by other ships. The Centaur brought them to Fremantle closed.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of the Japanese invasion of the Malay Peninsula on December 7, 1941, the route of the Centaur to Broome in northern Western Australia was changed. From October 6, 1942, she was ordered to Queensland , from where she commuted between eastern Australia and New Guinea . She transported war material.
Australian hospital ship
After Japan entered World War II, it became apparent that the three hospital ships already in service with Australia - the Manunda (ex-Adelaide Steamship Company), the Wanganella (ex-Huddart Parker Ltd.) and the Oranje (ex- Netherland Line ) - were not suitable for traffic in the shallow waters of Southeast Asia . From the ships of the Australian Merchant Navy (Australian Merchant Navy) none of the ships proved to be useful, so the British Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) was contacted. So it was that the Centaur was made available to the Australian government on January 4, 1943.
The conversion work from the merchant to the hospital ship began on January 9, 1943. According to Section 10, Article 5 of the Hague Peace Conference of 1907, the Centaur was painted in the specified colors for a hospital ship. This included white superstructures, a white hull with a green vertical stripe and red crosses that could be seen from both sides as well as from above. The identification number 47 was also painted on. At night, the markings were illuminated for better recognition. In addition, the armament that had been installed in 1939 was dismantled. The conversion of the ship and the identification data were transmitted to the Red Cross on February 5, 1943 , which in turn passed this on directly to Japan. The information was also made public through the press.
On March 1, 1943, the ship officially entered service as the AHS (Australian Hospital Ship) Centaur and on March 12, sea trials were carried out to check the suitability of the ship. After the first trip from Melbourne to Sydney , the captain, the chief officer and the chief medical officer put together a list of defects. After the corresponding repairs, the Centaur undertook another test drive from Townsville to Brisbane and transported wounded soldiers for the first time. After the ship had now proven to be suitable for its new purpose, the Centaur was commissioned to bring medical personnel from Sydney to Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea) on March 21 and wounded Australian and American soldiers as well as some Japanese soldiers on the return voyage Transport prisoners of war .
The last ride
Start of the trip in Sydney
After returning from the first voyage to Sydney on May 8, 1943, the Centaur was sent to Darling Harbor . There she ran on Wednesday, May 12, 1943 at 10:44 a.m. under the command of the 53-year-old Captain George Alexander Murray for her second voyage to Port Moresby. On board 332 people were 75 crew members, eight Army officers, 46 lower army ranks, 192 Australian soldiers of the 2 / 12th Field Ambulance, the Torres-roads - pilot Richard Mumford Salt and twelve Australian nurses of the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS ) under the direction of 39-year-old head nurse Sarah Anne Jewell. While the male Army personnel had been assigned directly to the Centaur , the majority of the nurses came from the Orange .
An incident occurred while the ship was being loaded when the field ambulance drivers tried to bring their personal weapons and ammunition on board. They encountered opposition from Captain Murray and the Chief Medical Officer, and raised concerns among crew and dock workers that the Centaur might bring military equipment such as weapons to New Guinea. According to Article 8 of the Hague Peace Conference, weapons were only allowed on board if it was officially confirmed to the captain that they were only used to “maintain order and defend the wounded”. The rest of the ship's cargo was searched for further armament, but nothing was found.
The Centaur left Sydney without any armament, without escorts and without combat-capable troops on board. The first stop on the trip should be Cairns in the north of Queensland. At night, the exterior paintwork was illuminated so that the ship was clearly recognizable as a hospital ship.
Sinking
Two days after leaving port , on Friday, May 14, 1943, the Centaur was torpedoed by an unseen submarine at around 04:10 in the morning at position 25 ° 17'S 154 ° 05'E . Most of the people on board were still asleep at that time. The torpedo hit the oil tanks on the port side about two meters below the waterline and tore a eight to ten meter wide hole in the hull. The explosion set the oil on fire and let the ship from the bridge to the stern up in flames. The bridge collapsed and the chimney fell on the deck.
Many of the people on board were killed directly by the explosion and the uncontrollably spreading fire. Others could not get on deck because of the rapidly increasing lean angle and the incoming water and drowned in their cabins. Still others who made it off the ship succumbed to their injuries or drowned from finding nothing to hold on to. The pull of the sinking ship pulled many people down. The survivors also reported shark attacks and that the animals were not afraid to swim through oil.
The Centaur developed a severe list to port, capsized finally and dropped just three minutes after the torpedo hit the bow first into about 2,000 meters deep water. In the short time, no lifeboats could be launched and no emergency calls could be made. However, due to the sinking, two lifeboats and several rafts were torn loose and floated on the water. The attack occurred approximately 24 nautical miles east-northeast of Point Lookout headland on North Stradbroke Island on the Queensland coast.
268 people were killed in the sinking, including Captain Murray, 44 other crew members, all eight Army officers, 45 of the 46 other Army ranks, 160 Australian soldiers and 11 of the twelve nurses.
Rescue the survivors
64 people survived the sinking. Many suffered burns, broken bones and other injuries. They spent 36 hours in the water, holding onto barrels, wreckage and damaged rafts. One of the rafts had provisions and water on board, both of which were strictly rationed. During the time in the water, the current drove them about 20 nautical miles in a northeasterly direction away from the sinking point and drifted about two nautical miles apart. The survivors saw at least four ships one after the other, but they could not attract their attention despite signal rockets . They could also hear the noises of airplanes.
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On the morning of May 15, 1943, the American destroyer Mugford ran out of Brisbane to escort the 11,063-ton New Zealand freighter Sussex on its journey to Tasmania . Around 2 p.m., a lookout aboard the Mugford spotted something on the horizon. At the same time, the same object was sighted by an Avro Anson of the 71st Air Force Squadron of the Royal Australian Air Force . The aircraft, which was on a submarine search patrol, approached the object and returned shortly afterwards to the Mugford to signal that it was a shipwrecked person in need.
The captain of the Mugford , Commander Howard Grant Corey of the United States Navy , sent the Sussex on alone and began to rescue the survivors. At the time of their rescue, the Centaur survivors had formed into two large and three smaller groups, while a few were floating alone in the water. Riflemen were posted on board the Mugford to shoot sharks if necessary. Other men stood by to jump into the water and help survivors if necessary. Mugford medical staff examined each and every one of them. The crew of the destroyer learned from the survivors that they were from the hospital ship Centaur .
At 2:14 p.m. the Mugford contacted the naval officer-in-charge on duty in Brisbane, Captain Edward Penry Thomas, and informed him of the sinking of the Centaur and the recovery of the survivors. The rescue operation lasted 80 minutes, but the destroyer searched the area for more survivors until after dark. On the evening of May 15, the Mugford left for Brisbane, where she arrived shortly before midnight. Further rescue attempts in the waters off North Stradbroke Island were carried out on May 16 by the Helm and from May 16 to 21 by the Lithgow and four motor torpedo boats . However, no other survivors were found.
Among those rescued were the pilot Richard Salt, the only survivor of the 19 doctors on board the Centaur Lieut. Colonel Leslie McDonald Outridge and Second Officer Richard Gordon Rippon, senior surviving officer. Of the twelve nurses, 30-year-old Ellen Savage was the only one who survived. At the time of the attack, she had slept like most on board the Centaur and met Lt. on deck with her cabin neighbor Myrtle Moston. Colonel Clement P. Manson, officer in charge of the medical staff. He told them "That's right girlies, jump for it now" (something like "Ok girls, jump now"). The pull of the sinking ship drove Savage into a maelstrom of metal and wood, breaking her nose and several ribs. She also suffered bruises and a torn eardrum . She pierced the surface in a film of oil and was able to hold onto debris. During the 36 hours on the open sea, Savage displayed great courage, maintained morale and tended to other wounded despite her own injuries. For this service, Ellen Savage was awarded the George Medal on August 22, 1944 .
The submarine
No one on board the Centaur had seen the submarine before the attack, so it could not be identified at first. Based on the position of the ship, the distance to land and the water depth, it was assumed that it must have been one of the Japanese submarines operating off the Australian coast at the time. Several survivors said they heard the submarine move on the surface after the attack. The ship's cook Francis Martin also testified to have seen the submarine after the sinking, while he was floating alone on a hatch seal away from the larger groups. After the Centaur survivors were brought ashore by the USS Mugford , Martin described the submarine to the local Naval Intelligence. His description matched the type Kadai VII of the Kadai class of submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy .
At the time of the attack, three submarines of this type were active in the waters off the Australian coast: I-177 under the command of Kaigun-Shōsa (Corvette Captain) Hajime Nakagawa, I-178 under Kaigun-Shōsa Hidejiro Utsuki and I-180 under Kaigun-Shosa Toshio Kusaka. None of the three submarines survived the war. I-177 was sunk on October 3, 1944 by the American destroyer escort Samuel S. Miles , I-178 on August 25, 1943 by the American destroyer Patterson and I-180 on April 26, 1944 by the American destroyer escort Gilmore . Nakagawa and Kusaka were transferred to other submarines before their units were lost, while Utsuki was killed in the sinking of I-178 .
In December 1943, the Japanese government issued an official statement that denied any responsibility for the sinking of the Centaur . Any responsibility was also denied in other Japanese documents that were available after the war. Although the sinking was a war crime , no one was convicted of it. Investigations took place between 1944 and 1948, during which Japanese submarine commanders, their superiors and other crew members were interviewed. Although the suspicion of the submarine I-177 and its commander Hajime Nakagawa fell during the investigation , its involvement could not be clearly proven. The Centaur's file was closed on December 14, 1948 without anyone being held accountable.
The British Navy officer, naval historian and author George Hermon Gill (1895–1973) came to the conclusion in his 1968 work Royal Australian Navy, 1942–1945 that the submarine was either I-178 or I. -180 must have acted. The former seemed more likely, as it had operated the longest in Australian waters of any Japanese submarine. According to official information, however , I-178 was not responsible for any deaths during the Centaur's sinking . The German military historian Jürgen Rohwer claimed in his Chronicle of the Sea War 1939–1945 (German first edition 1968, English first edition Chronology of the War at Sea , 1972) that I-177 was the submarine he was looking for. He relied on a Japanese report from which it emerged that I-177 had sunk a ship on May 14, 1943 in the same area in which the Centaur had sunk . Kaigun-Shōshō (Rear Admiral) Kaneyoshi Sakamoto, who had shown the report to Rohwer , stated in his book The History of Submarine Warfare (1979) that I-177 was responsible for sinking the Centaur .
A certified work on the history of the Japanese Navy, Sakamoto's book was considered an official document and I-177 was recognized as the submarine that sank the AHS Centaur . Subsequent works took up the role of I-177 and Commander Nakawaga in connection with the Centaur . Nakawaga refused to give any statement about the sinking until the end of his life. He spent four years in prison for other war crimes including shooting at castaways and died in 1991.
Reactions
The media were informed of the sinking on May 17, 1943. At the same time, they were instructed not to spread the news until the news was released by Southwest Pacific Area headquarters at noon on May 18 and by Prime Minister John Curtin the following afternoon . The news of the sinking made headlines around the world and made front pages in the Times in London , the New York Times in New York and the Gazette in Québec . In some daily papers the incident trumped that of No. 617 Squadron ("Dam Busters") carried out Operation Chastise , which took place on 16./17. May 1943 took place.
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The sinking of the hospital ship Centaur caused a public outcry. Perceived as a disregard for the Hague Peace Conferences and a war crime, the incident sparked violent reactions from Prime Minister John Curtin , opposition leader Arthur Fadden and General Douglas MacArthur . The Australian politicians instrumentalized the sinking and used it as a symbol of how resolute Australia had to fight against a "brutal and uncompromising enemy". Propaganda posters were printed to encourage people to buy war bonds or join the armed forces. Donations and funds came from several sources, such as the Ansett Australia airline and also the shipyard, which had converted the Centaur into a hospital ship, in order to be able to provide a replacement for the Centaur .
At first, large parts of the public could not believe that a Japanese submarine had actually sunk an unarmed hospital ship, so immediately after the incident was announced, the rumor arose that the ship had transported ammunition or weapons. The Japanese would have known this and sunk the ship for this reason. The Australian military believed that the Japanese were fully aware that the Centaur was a hospital ship and that they sank it on purpose.
On May 29, 1943, the Japanese government received an official protest note, which had been drawn up in cooperation with the Australian government, the military, the Admiralty and General McArthur. The reply came on December 26, 1943. Japan stated that it had no information regarding the allegations made and therefore declined any responsibility. In return, it was further alleged that nine Japanese hospital ships had been attacked by the Allies , although this allegation was directed against the United States and not against Australia. Around the same time, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent a letter of protest to the Japanese Red Cross. Although there was further written exchange afterwards, due to the slow progress of the matter, the British government informed the Australian Prime Minister Curtin on November 14, 1944 that no further communication would take place with regard to the Centaur .
Search for the wreck
The first searches at North Stradbroke Island and the neighboring Moreton Island took place after the end of the Second World War, but brought no results. The position given by surviving second mate Richard Rippon has been questioned from some quarters. In the following years, further assumptions were made about the location of the wreck, which were not correct. In 1995, the diver Donald Dennis discovered a shipwreck nine nautical miles from the lighthouse on Moreton Island, which he attributed to the Centaur . He claimed the Queensland Maritime Museum and the Australian War Memorial confirmed the identity of the wreck. However, due to Officer Rippon's named position and the location where the USS Mugford found the Centaur survivors , Dennis's claim had been in doubt for years.
On May 14, 2002, the two wreck divers Trevor Jackson and Simon Mitchell examined the affected wreck. They thought it was too small and rather believed that it was the cargo ship Kyogle , which was sunk by the Royal Australian Air Force on May 12, 1951 as part of a bomb exercise. It turned out that no one at the Queensland Naval Museum had ever seen Dennis's pictures of the wreck. The Australian Navy dispatched three ships to investigate the wreck site for two months before declaring it was not the Centaur .
After the wreck of the Sydney was found in the spring of 2008, 67 years after its sinking, voices were raised calling for another extensive search for the Centaur . By the end of 2008, the Australian state government and the federal government of Queensland had put together a corresponding committee. Both parties provided two million Australian dollars each. The search was led by the American oceanographer David Mearns and carried out on board the ship Seahorse Spirit , which was provided by Defense Maritime Services.
Between December 15 and 18, 2009, a total of six objects were located by sonar , which came into question in terms of size. On December 20, 2009, Mearns confirmed that they had found the Centaur wreck . It is located 35 miles east of Moreton Island at position 27 ° 16 '59 " S , 153 ° 59' 13" O in 2059 meters depth. The position deviates by only one nautical mile from the information given by Second Officer Richard Rippon. Between January 10 and 12, 2010, four dives were made to the wreck in order to document it photographically and on film. During the last of these dives, a memorial plaque was placed on the foredeck. The wreck has since been declared a war grave and is protected by the Historic Shipwrecks Act of 1986.
Commemoration
In 1948, Queensland nurses established the Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses in Brisbane. The money raised was used to finance the construction of Centaur House, an accommodation and meeting place for nurses. The Centaur House no longer exists today, but the Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses still exists.
On September 15, 1968, a stone tomb sponsored by the local Rotary International Club was unveiled in Caloundra . In 1990, a stained glass window was installed in the Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Sydney showing the Centaur and listing the names of the dead. The Australian War Memorial also had a diagram showing a model of the ship presented by the Blue Funnel Line and contributions from survivors, including a life jacket, flare and first aid kit. In 1992 it was removed to make way for a chart for the Vietnam War .
On May 14, 1993, a memorial was unveiled by Senator John Faulkner on the 50th anniversary of the sinking in Coolangatta , a suburb of the Gold Coast . It is made of a large stone topped by a pyramid and surrounded by plaques commemorating the Centaur and other ships lost by the Australian Merchant Navy and Royal Australian Navy in World War II.
literature
- George Hermon Gill: Royal Australian Navy, 1942-1945 . Canberra (1968)
- Jürgen Rohwer : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945 . Oldenburg , Gerhard Stalling (1968)
- Kaneyoshi Sakamoto: The History of Submarine Warfare . (1979)
- Alan E. Smith: Three Minutes of Time - the Torpedoing of the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur . Tugun (Queensland), Lower Tweed River Historical Society (1991)
- Christopher S. Milligan: Australian Hospital -ship 'Centaur': The Myth of Immunity . Hendra (Queensland), Nairana Publications (1993)
- Brian James Crabb: Beyond the Call of Duty . Shaun Tyas (June 1, 2006)
Web links
- Overview in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- Summary of the history of the Centaur
- The sinking of the Centaur on the official website of the Australian Department of Veteran's Affairs
- Collection of contemporary reports and documents as well as photos
- Detailed list of crew members, military personnel and care personnel from the last trip
- The Centaur Nurses
- Information on Ellen Savage, the only surviving nurse