HMAS Bendigo (J187)
 
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| period of service | |
| Builder: | Cockatoo Island Dockyards , Sydney |
| Keel laying: | August 12, 1940 |
| Launch: | March 1, 1941 |
| Commissioning: | May 10, 1941 |
| Fate: | Decommissioned on September 27, 1946, sold as Cheung Hing to Ta Hing Co. in Hong Kong on May 5, 1947 . Later used again as the Loyang warship by the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army . |
| 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 Bendigo (J187) was a Bathurst-class corvette of the Royal Australian Navy named after the city of Bendigo , 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 Bendigo ) on behalf of the British Admiralty , but manned and used by the Royal Australian Navy, and four more for the Royal Indian Navy .
The minesweeper was stationed in Darwin for the first two months after commissioning , before being transferred to Singapore on September 21, where it became part of the China squadron. The remaining months until the war in the Pacific broke out , the Bendigo spent with escorts, mine search and patrols in the area around Singapore. At the end of November 1941, she and her sister ships HMAS Maryborough , HMAS Burnie and HMAS Goulburn formed the 21st mine clearing flotilla. Until the end of January 1942, the ships from Singapore carried out their escort and mine clearance activities in the area around the city to the south of Berhala and the Bangka Strait , in order to keep the reinforcement convoys free of the way to Singapore. On February 2, the minesweeper suffered extensive splinter damage from two close hits in a Japanese air raid. Three days later he helped evacuate the large troop carrier RMS Empress of Asia . The fully loaded transporter, part of the last convoy that reached Singapore, was hit in an air raid shortly before reaching the port, whereupon large fires broke out amidships that could no longer be controlled. Together with HMAS Yarra , HMAS Wollongong , HMIS Sutlej and HMS Danae , however, almost all of the more than 2500 people on board were rescued, with only 20 dead being lost when the ship was lost. On the evening of February 6, the Bendigo left Singapore, she only took on the role of a lightship for a few hours to guide a departing convoy through the minefields in front of the city and then ran together with the Wollongong to Palembang , where the two ships with the minesweepers HMAS Ballarat and HMAS Toowoomba met. As part of the ABDA fleet , the ships then operated in the area between Sumatra and Java .
When the situation in this theater of war became finally hopeless after the lost battle in the Java Sea and the ABDA command was disbanded, the Bendigo moved together with most of the other minesweepers to Tjilatjap on the south coast of Java. On the way there, she and the Burnie separated from the other ships in search of survivors of the Dutch freighter Boero . 15 crew members of the freighter were found and rescued. Shortly after their arrival in Tjilatjap, both minesweepers left the port to look for the freighter Sloter-Dijk , which had been attacked by a submarine , but the ship could not be found. Back in Tjilatjap, the Bendigo took several members of the staff from Commodore J.A. Collins as well as some civilians and 72 crew members of the destroyer HMS Jupiter, sunk in the Battle of the Java Sea, on board and finally left Java with a course for Fremantle . The ship arrived there on March 8, 1942 with almost exhausted fuel reserves.
After his return to Australia, the Bendigo escorted convoys in the Australian coastal waters and on the Australia – New Guinea route until early 1944 . On March 8, 1943, she rescued 153 survivors of the freighter Jacob , who was sunk in an air raid off Oro while he was in the escort of the Bendigo and the HMAS Kapunda . On April 11, 1943, a submarine sank the Yugoslav freighter Recina from an escort of the Bendigo , but the search for the submarine carried out together with the sloop HMAS Moresby was unsuccessful. From February 1944, the ship was used exclusively in the area around New Guinea until it joined the British Pacific Fleet in the Philippines in March 1945 , with which the Bendigo stayed until the surrender of Japan and as part of which she joined the fleet between March and May 1945 Battle of Okinawa participated. After the end of the war, she cleared mines in the area off Hong Kong by November and finally returned to Australia in December 1945. In February 1946 the Bendigo ended her active career in the Australian Navy and was finally decommissioned on September 27, 1946.
On May 5, 1947, the now disarmed ship was sold to the Ta Hing Co. in Hong Kong and used as a coastal freighter under the name Cheung Hing . The Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army later bought the former corvette and re-equipped it as a warship. As Loyang (after a writing reform in 1982 Luoyang ) the ship is said to have been in service there until 1988.
