A Warship Disguised As A Pacific Island

Written By Southpoint Collective

Hiding something in plain sight is not a new tactic, in or outside of war, and yet it still manages to be an incredibly effective tactic when you have no other option. Something in our brains filters out all the stuff it thinks we don’t need to be paying attention to in order to free up space for all of the really important things we need to think about,  like “where did I leave my keys?” or “I wonder what’s for lunch?”.

So maybe it’s no surprise then no-one seemed to notice that not only had a new, strange, tiny little island seemingly appeared out of nowhere, but that, if you looked really closely..it seemed to be…moving? 

Today, we’re exploring the truly fascinating story of how a Dutch naval vessel, when faced with certain doom, made the call to rather beat a very slow, and very stealthy retreat, by disguising itself as a Pacific island.

I think it’s helpful to start by giving some context to how a Dutch ship in the middle of the Pacific could possibly have found itself in such a bizarre scenario.

The year was 1941 and Japan was in the midst of a rapid and aggressive military expansion across the Asia Pacific region  They had recently advanced into Southern Indochina and the Japanese war machine only appeared to be gathering momentum. America, not at all happy with this situation, retaliated bynot only  freezing all Japanese assets in the United States, but also placed an oil embargo against them, knowing this was a crucial element for the Japanese war effort.

At the time, Japan was only managing to produce just 6% of their own oil needs and this left them with a rather large quandary. They had to do something, and do it quickly, and the best solution they could come up with, was to take the oil they needed, and take it by force.

Now they were smart enough to realise that if they simply continued their expansion and seized the resources from either British Malaya or the Dutch East Indies, then this would cause the United States to undoubtedly retaliate further. They figured that if they could, at the very least, cripple the US navy in the Pacific, it might either buy them time to smash and grab the oil and hightail it back to Japan, or at best cause the Americans to second guess engaging them any further in combat, and maybe even push them to negotiate peace.

It was a two-fold plan. The oil shortages, along with their need for other swiftly depleting natural resources, was of course a major driving force behind this decision. But there was also a sentiment from higher up in the Japanese political machine that desired to take over control from America as the dominant military power in the Pacific.

And this, is how the plan to attack the fleet at Pearl Harbour was born.

So on December 7th, 1941, The Japanese launched a surprise attack on the US Naval base stationed on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

The effects of the attack were devastating, killing or wounding over 3500 Americans and causing significant damage to the US Pacific Fleet.

The attack itself may have been a great success for Japan, but in the grand scheme of things, it was a horrendous miscalculation. Rather than causing the US to shrink back in fear as they had hoped, it was instead the catalyst that kickstarted the American War Machine into life. Up until that point there had been mixed public opinion about America entering the conflict raging around the world, as their political allies found themselves in the midst of World War II.

Now, the American public, shocked and furious at this unprecedented attack, was finally galvanised into one overarching sentiment, it was time for war!

As World War II was already in full swing, America found itself in the middle of two vast theatres of war. Europe and the Pacific.

As a result of this globe spanning conflict, one of the ideas was to form a joint South East Asia focused Supreme Allied command structure. And it became known as ABDACOM – the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command. Just rolls off the tongue. 

This supreme command unfortunately would go on to last just two months and became a textbook example of how not to run a supreme headquarters. 

It was originally created at the Arcadia Conference in Washington in December 1941 with President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and their advisors all in attendance.

The only problem with this rapid amalgamation of various countries' forces, was that every army tended to do things differently from the way other armies did them. They had never run joint military exercises or gone on manoeuvres together, they never got to work out common communication techniques and with the Japanese already having established complete air supremacy in the Pacific, ABDACOM was already trailing far behind.

Now, anyone who’s ever heard Australian slang will immediately understand that, even though you may both technically be speaking English, one of these is not like the other. And so it was with ABDACOM. Their communication was almost non-existent due to having no common military language between them, there was no way to translate each other's codes, flag signals or even the plain radio chatter.  Orders were simply given by the higher ups and then just assumed that everyone understood. 

ABDACOM officially launched in early January of 1942 with the mandate to shore up the South East Asia region, and prevent the Japanese forces from gaining any more ground.

But just a month later the situation was rapidly deteriorating for the Allies. Japan had continued to launch a series of successful campaigns into the region and had rapidly gained control of the Phillipines and British Malaya.

Conflict raged on all fronts. On the 13th of February, the Japanese captured the major port of Palemban in eastern Sumatra, before Allied forces launched an attack on Japans Eastern invasion force just a week later off Bali in the Battle of Badung Strait. On that same day, the 19th of February, the Japanese made two air raids on Darwin, on the Northern Australian mainland, rendering it useless as a naval supply base supporting Allied operations in the East Indies.

In amongst all of this conflict, Singapore was captured on the 15th of February, effectively spelling disaster for the ABDACOM Command.

They were hanging on by a thread, but the Japanese forces were relentless.  It was clear that they were amassing an invasion force to strike at the last remaining stronghold of the Dutch East Indies, namely Java. As Japanese ships and amphibious vehicles began staging for their attack, it was all that ABDACOM could do to muster their own disparate forces to counter the coming onslaught. 

And on 27 February 1942 the main Allied naval force, sailed northeast from Surabaya to intercept the Japanese convoy which was approaching from the Makassar Strait. 

The Royal Dutch Navy had a few warships including their light Cruiser the The De Ruyter. Accompanying them was a rag tag bunch of smaller ships who aimed to provide assistance wherever or however they could. One of these smaller ships, is the long awaited subject of todays story, the Abraham Crijnssen. This vessel was one of 4 steel minesweeper ships that had been stationed nearby in northeastern Java, and was not particularly well equipped for all out naval conflict.

As the combined Allied fleet sailed to meet the Japanese invasion force, almost all of them knew it was not going to go well for them The Japanese jammed the Allied radio frequencies and this left them to communicate via other more traditional means, which, as eluded to earlier, only served to sow confusion amongst the ranks. In fact, the Japanese victory was complete, that the Allied forces, attempting to strike at the main invasion fleet, were beaten simply by the fleets peripheral escort ships. And so, despite their brave resistance, they were ultimately outmaneuvered and outgunned, leading to significant losses. The result was a crippling blow to the Allied naval presence in the region, and left Java completely vulnerable.

As the dust settled on the seven-hour battle, the combined ABDACOM fleet was left in tatters with only four Dutch ships left in the surrounding waters, one of them being the Abraham Crijnssen.

They had actually been given orders earlier that month to retreat from the area, but either due to the mixed messages coming from the higher ups, or from some desire to assist wherever they could, they had found themselves on the periphery of the Java Sea battle. When it became clear that there was no hope of victory for them, the four minesweeper ships sailed back to their port in Surabaya, Northeast of Java. During this time the Japanese forces had taken full control of the region and due to their overwhelming presence, both on sea, land and air, each hour that passed by made escaping more and more difficult.

Orders were once again passed down for them to retreat to either Colombo, or strike out for Australia. If at any point they felt they could not make it, or were under threat of capture, they were ordered to sink their ships so that they would not fall into the hands of the enemy.

As they prepared to leave port the division commander told the ships captains they could choose to attempt a retreat, or to simply blow their ship up in port. This however was in direct contradiction to their official orders.

3 of the four captains resolved to make the treacherous escape attempt, hoping they would not be spotted by either Japanese ships, or aerial reconnaissance planes. The 4th however, Lieutenant Commander Dekker, the commanding officer of the ship Pieter de Bitter would not take responsibility for endangering his crew during what he labelled “a reckless dash to Australia” and instead set timebombs at strategic positions along the hull and blew up his vessel right there at the dock.

Rear Admiral Koenraad of the Dutch Navy happened to be aboard a nearby submarine at the time and upon hearing the underwater explosions, sent a telegram saying that if Commander Dekker had truly sunk his ship without a valid reason, well, then he was to be executed.. 

The other commanding officers made preparations and as soon as everything was in place, fired up their engines and set off for Australia.

We’re going to take a short break, but when we come back, we’ll finally get to hear the truly remarkable story of how the Abraham Crijnssen managed to sneak their way through the Japanese lines.

The Abraham Crijnssen faced a truly grim choice. Attempt to flee to a friendly territory, or risk being destroyed or captured by the Japanese forces.

The sheer might and scale of the Japanese advance into the region was truly astonishing. They had invaded in such numbers that now, after the battle of the Java sea, the surrounding waters were absolutely teeming with Japanese warships and submarines, while above them fighter jets and reconnaissance planes were actively searching for any remaining Allied presence in the region in order to completely wipe them out.

The Abraham Crijnssen was by no means a fighting ship. In fact, due to her specified role as a minesweeper, usually coming into regions long after any conflict has ceased, she was not at all built for combat.

The ship had hardly any guns and was excruciatingly slow. 

On the evening of March 6th 1942 at roughly 9:30pm she topped off her tanks with around 110 tons of fuel and sailed out of Surabaya harbour in an Easterly direction through the straits of Madura.

The other two ships that had been in the harbour with her had left almost 12 hours earlier as they were anxious to set sail, but this meant they hadn’t given themselves enough time to fully top up their tanks with fuel.

Early the next morning The Abraham Crijnssen reached a sheltered stretch of water outside Gili Radja and dropped anchor. It was here that they rendezvoused with her sister ships, but the commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Van Miert, soon realised that they were very conspicuous when all anchored together like that. So he swiftly hoisted the ships anchor and set sail for another nearby bay where it was safe to rest, named Gili Genteng.

This would prove to be an inspired decision.

You see, not long afterwards, the other two ships, the Jan Van Amstel and the Eland Dubois were spotted by a Japanese plane that happened to be flying overhead. They knew they were done for, and were sitting ducks in the water, especially the Eland Dubois, who had developed a problem with one of her boilers.

The crew members from that ship hopped across to the Jan Van Amstel and detonated a depth charge underneath the crippled vessel, before fleeing as fast as their very slow minesweeper ship could take them. It didn’t take long for the Japanese to locate them again however, and one of their destroyers in the area, the Arashio fired upon the fleeing vessel and sunk it within a matter of minutes. 23 of the crew were killed during the sinking, including the commanding officer.

The commanding officer of the Abraham Crijnssen knew that if they were to avoid a similar fate, they would have to come up with a plan so brilliant, so fantastically audacious, that it might just work.

Despite her relatively small size when compared to other larger war vessels, she was after all, still a warship and compared to most other things, that’s still a rather large and noticeable object, especially amidst the wide open spaces of the Pacific.

Coming in at 55 meters (180 feet) long and 7 meters (25ft) wide, she would have easily been spotted by any roving aircraft as soon as they made a run for Australia, and then would have been subsequently bombed into oblivion.

It was obvious to them that the best time for them to travel the wide open expanse of sea, would be by night, when everything blurred into one rolling mass as the suns rays dipped below the horizon.

But what would they do during the day to make sure they remained undetected? All they could do was use what they had at their disposal.

In a moment where everything seemed to be going against them one thing they did have in their favour was that the pacific ocean, besides its vast expansiveness, was dotted with literally thousands of lush green islands..

So the plan then was to sail as far as they could each night before finding a nearby island just before the sun rose, and then anchor as close as they possibly could to it. Now, this alone might stop them from being seen if the planes were only flying on the opposite side of the island, so they needed to take their plan one step further.

Why not make the ship look like an island too!?

Before setting off from Gili Genteng, the crew made their way to the nearby shore and using, axes, hatchets, large kitchen knives and anything else at their disposal, began to hack away at the local trees and shrubs. They would then transport these lush green branches and vegetation back to the ship and stack them on the deck, before meticulously covering every exposed piece of metal with greenery. Slowly but surely the ship began to blend in to the tropical jungle right next to it. Any exposed turrets, or vertical surfaces which could not hold the vegetation properly were painted in stone-like colours and made to look like rock cliffs. 

Once they felt the camouflage was sufficient, they waited until the sun went down and then set sail once again in an Easterly direction.

They hugged the coastlines as much as possible, even at night, at one point even having to navigate the treacherous coral reefs near Goa-Goa in the dark.

By the Sunday morning of March 8th the curious floating shrubbery arrived at the northern shores of Kangean Island and dropped their anchor just before the sun peeked it’s head over the horizon. Now any of you who have ever tried to keep plant cuttings indoors will know that, once separated from their source of nutrients they tend to turn brown, wilt and die fairly quickly. The same was unfortunately true for a vast swathe of the foliage covering the ship. So before they set off once more the crew had to head to the shore and refresh the ships jungle camouflage. You might think these men would just take anything big and green, but they took their job incredibly seriously, They noticed that on this island, and the ones surrounding it, there were quite a few plants that were noticeably different from the ones they had retrieved from Gili Genteng, and so, if they were to truly blend in to their surroundings, they would need to make sure that they were harvesting the correct local plant species to properly sell the ruse.

Just before 7pm that night, they once again threw caution to the wind and their little oddly shaped jungle sailed away from the Kangean islands and through the dangerous passage of the Bali Sea where their risk of being spotted was exponentially increased.  With no coastlines in sight, they spent a nervy night navigating without any running lights, with even smoking on deck being outlawed upon pain of death. They knew that if they could make it through tonight, the worst would be over, and by morning they would be safely anchored in the bay of Poto Paddu on the northern shore of Sumbawa. Morning came and the crew heaved a sigh of relied once more as the anchor crashed through the surface of the water and down to the depths below.

But there was no sleep to be had just yet. The crew immediately got to work once again refreshing the tropical island camouflage while some of their fellow crew members went ashore in small motorised dinghy to collect drinking water from the local people. While conversing with the locals they learnt that no Japanese troops had been sighted on the island yet and that crucially no planes had been seen in the area for at least the last four days.  Lieutenant Commander Van Miert was reassured by this that either the Japanese were looking for them in the wrong place or better still, they weren’t looking for them at all any more.

The Abraham Crijnssen sailed out that evening and at 10.15pm, entered the Alas Strait.   During the next day, they once again took cover nearby to an island coastline and for the last time, refreshed their jungle canopy.  

They were almost through the worst of it, but they had one more big test to come.

That night they set off once again and very soon found themselves in the Indian Ocean. The island chains dried up they were now in open waters, with only Australia ahead of them. 

Knowing that they had just about enough fuel to make it there, they didn’t want to take any chances by coming up short, and so once out into the ocean proper, the crew began to strip the jungle foliage from the ship and threw it overboard in an attempt to lighten the load and thereby conserve as much fuel as possible.

After a few days of chugging along through the seemingly never ending swells, dawn broke on what today may have seemed like an ominous omen. For the crew however, that day, Friday the 13th of March, was an unimaginably joyous occasion. A shout went up somewhere on the deck, before more and more sailors began whooping and hollering with delight, you see, the endless horizon now finally had a small black speck that was growing ever larger as they sailed towards. What they had spotted was the northwest cape of Australia.  

After eight tension filled days and nights, their ordeal was finally over. Wanting to sail as far as possible with his remaining fuel, Lieutenant Commander van Miert finally arrived at Geraldton, Western Australia at around noon on March 15th.  The ship was resupplied and a few days later, left for the port city of Freemantle, where she arrived on the 20th of March.  

After a good rest for the sailors, which I’m sure they needed, she was commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy as HMAS Abraham Crijnssen and spent the rest of the war operating as an anti-submarine escort.

A side note to this whole saga however involves the fate of Lieutenant Commander Dekker, the Officer who wouldn’t risk the lives of his crew, and disobeyed the direct order to make the suicidal dash to Australia. Due to scuppering his own vessel and having no other means of escape, he was eventually captured by the Japanes and suffered for three years in a prisoner of war camp. Then, upon his release, was promptly returned to the Netherlands where he was court-martialed for his actions. On April 13th 1948, he was dishonourably discharged from the navy, but he should probably still count himself lucky that the Rear Admiral who had called for his execution wasn’t a part of the trial.

The Commanding Officer of the Abraham Crijnssen however, Lieutenant Commander van Miert and nine of his crew experienced a very different outcome. Each of them were decorated with the Cross of Merits, for their courage displayed during the escape and, more than 20 years later in 1967, van Miert retired from the Navy a hero. 

So what happened to the ship itself? Well, following the end of the war, it was used in anti-revolution patrols in the Dutch East Indies before finally making its way back home to the Netherlands in 1951.

It was officially removed from the Navy list in 1960 before finally settling down at the Dutch Navy Museum in Den Helder. For anyone who might be interested, you can go and visit her at the Navy museum but you probably won’t have any trouble spotting her as unfortunately she now just looks like a regular old ship, i assume, owing to the fact that it’s just a bit too far to go to keep refreshing the foliage, as the crew once did, every two to three days. 

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