HMAS Ballarat (J184)
|
|
|---|---|
.jpg)
|
|
| period of service | |
| Builder: | Melbourne Harbor Trust , Williamstown , Victoria |
| Keel laying: | April 19, 1940 |
| Launch: | December 10, 1940 |
| Commissioning: | August 30, 1941 |
| Fate: | Decommissioned on September 27, 1946, scrapped in 1953. |
| Technical specifications | |
| Ship type : | corvette |
| Displacement : | 650 ts standard 1025 ts maximum |
| Length: | 57.7 m |
| Width: | 9.1 m |
| Draft : | 2.6 m |
| Drive : | 2 Admirality 3-drum steam boilers 2 3-way expansion steam engines 1,750 WPS on 2 screws |
| Speed : | 15 kn |
| Crew : | 80 |
| Armament: | 1 x 4 inches - gun 1 × 40 mm Bofors - Flak 3 x 20 mm Oerlikon -Flak up to 40 water bombs |
The HMAS Ballarat (J184) was a Bathurst-class corvette of the Royal Australian Navy named after the city of Ballarat , Victoria during World War II . A total of 60 ships of this class were built during the war in Australia as part of the war emergency program as mine sweepers, 36 for the Royal Australian Navy, 20 (including the Ballarat ) on behalf of the British Admiralty , but manned and used by the Royal Australian Navy, and four more for the Royal Indian Navy .
history
After its commissioning and test drives, the Ballarat was assigned to the 21st mine clearing flotilla in Sydney on September 20, 1941 . There she was used as an escort for coastal convoys. Among other things, she escorted the Queen Mary , who was used as a troop transport , to the assembly point of convoy US-13 in November . On November 14th, she took an oil-laden barge in Sydney in tow and pulled it along the east coast of Australia to Darwin , where she arrived on December 8th. She was an escort ship between Darwin, Timor and Ambon all through December , until she was moved to Singapore at the beginning of January 1942 together with her sister ships HMAS Wollongong and HMAS Toowoomba . In the next 1½ months to the end of February, it carried out numerous escort missions, patrols and evacuation missions in the areas of Malaysia , Sumatra and Java , while the Allied ABDA forces tried in vain to stop the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia .
Her tasks during this time also included rescuing castaways from the numerous ships sunk by Japanese bombers, as well as sinking seriously damaged, no longer maneuverable Allied ships. The Ballarat carried out one of the largest rescue operations in this area on February 14th when it picked up the survivors of the freighter Derrymore , which was sunk by a Japanese submarine . Among the 215 people rescued was the Australian Air Force pilot and later Prime Minister John Gorton . During the evacuation of Sumatra and Java, the ship and its crew helped both with the evacuation and with the destruction of military installations. On March 2, she sank the non-seaworthy minesweeper HMS Gemas in Tanjung Priok and then left Java as the last Australian ship. Back in Australia, the Ballarat took over escort duties in convoys between Australia and New Guinea in the following months . On November 28th, she and HMAS Katoomba survived an air raid by ten Japanese dive bombers . In December 1942, she was used together with her sister ships HMAS Broome and HMAS Colac as a troop transport to drop troops behind enemy lines in the Buna area .
From April 1943 to January 1944 escort missions followed on the east coast of Australia, after which the mine sweeper was used again in the area between Darwin and New Guinea. In August 1944, the Ballarat transported troops from the area of the Eilanden River to Merak . At the beginning of 1945 one of the ship's few minesweeping operations followed, when the area around Sydney Harbor was searched for sea mines in preparation for the arrival of the British Pacific Fleet . As part of the Pacific Fleet, the ship was relocated to the Philippines in early March and took part in the conquest of Okinawa between March and May 1945 . On September 2, the Ballarat was present at the signing of Japan's surrender in Tokyo Bay , before clearing the minefields in the Hong Kong area with the other units of the 20th and 21st demining flotilla in the following weeks . It was damaged on November 6th by a mine detonated off Amoy and then returned to Australia. There she was decommissioned on September 27, 1946.
On July 10th, the ship was sold to China Traders Ltd. sold in Hong Kong but stayed in Australia. In December 1950, it was sold to Ta Hing Company Ltd., also based in Hong Kong. sold, who renamed the ship Carmencita and had it converted to a coastal freighter. In 1951, however, the Australian government banned the ship's export, possibly because the same company had acquired the former corvette HMAS Bendigo in 1947 and later sold it to the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army , which then used this ship as a warship again. In 1953 the Ballarat was finally scrapped in Sydney.