President George W Bush, left, and Prime Minister John Howard at the presentation of the bell of the USS Canberra on September 10, 2001.
Canberra resident TOM ANDERSON worked at the Australian embassy in Washington from late 1999 to early 2003 as the senior Australian Customs representative and shares the amazing tale of a man who survived war and disaster… twice.
PRIME Minister John Howard had come to Washington and on September 10, 2001 – a day before the terrible terrorist attack on the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre – and was to appear at a ceremony with President George W Bush at the Naval Dockyard where President Bush was to hand over the bell of the USS Canberra to him.
But how did a US ship came to bear the name Canberra?
The USS Canberra pictured at sea in 1961.
In 1942 HMAS Canberra was part of a group of ships off Savo Island in the Solomon Islands when they encountered a group of Japanese warships.
The Canberra was sunk by the Japanese during a fierce fight. The officer of the watch that night was a 20-year-old, who survived the sinking.
The Americans were so impressed by the fight put up by the Canberra they decided to name a ship after it. My understanding is that this ship was the only ship named after a non-American place. It served from 1943 in World War II and later in the Vietnam War before being decommissioned in 1970 and scrapped in 1980.
My wife Margaret and I were up early for the ceremony and found ourselves six rows from the front. I said to Margaret that we would probably not get any closer to the US President than this.
The ceremony went well and at the end the President and the Prime Minister approached an old man sitting in front of us. It turned out that he was the same man who had been the officer of the watch when the HMAS Canberra was sunk.
So what was he to do next? He said he was due to fly out of Washington on American Airlines Flight 77 the next day, September 11 and the flight was the one that was crashed into the Pentagon.
Our Defence colleagues told him that Mrs Howard was due to plant a tree at the site of the only Australian buried in Arlington Cemetery the next day and he should also come along to that. So he changed his flight and the rest as you say is good fortune and history.
A little more on that only Australian to be buried in Arlington: RAAF Pilot Officer Francis Milne:
“Pilot Officer Milne died on a World War II air mission while serving with a U. S. Aircrew on November 26, 1942. He was a member of a multinational flight crew whose remains were discovered in New Guinea in 1989. Since his remains, and those of the United States Army Air Corps Technical Sergeant (Joseph E. Paul), were individually unidentifiable, they were buried together in the same casket in grave 4754, Section 34, Arlington National Cemetery”.(http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/milne.htm)
And a little more details:
“On November 26, 1942, Francis was flying as Co-Pilot on a C-47 Dakota Transport aircraft dubbed “Swamp Rat”, because on its nose, was painted a distinctive large white rat. It included the following crew members:
There is a very human propensity to change history when history does not suit. Having recently lost our two decades-long Afghanistan War, it is more important than ever to try to get our war facts right. Why? Because that at least gives us a chance to learn from defeat as well as from victory. It is also a matter of integrity. We can’t honor our war dead properly when we perpetuate fake history about the circumstances of their deaths.
The Japanese did not sink HMAS Canberra. They damaged it very severely. Whether torpedo hits from USN ships launched during the battle also helped damage HMAS Canberra will probably never be known. The USN then scuttled HMAS Canberra. This action outraged at least some Australians at the time. They thought that the Canberra might have been saved. To salve wounded feelings, the RN made a replacement heavy cruiser available to the RAN.
As for the USN being ‘impressed’ by the fight put up by HMAS Canberra, there is little or no evidence that it put up an actual fight at all. I can’t find a record that it fired a shot, let alone that any of its shots hit a Japanese ship. That said, staying for a doomed fight was somewhat better than the USS Chicago achieved during the same battle. It sailed away from the fight at high speed. In shame, its captain subsequently committed suicide.
HMAS Canberra’s guns were trained in the general direction of the IJN ships but it was completely overwhelmed by superior force in a matter of minutes. HMAS Canberra’s part in the Battle of Savo Island was an abrupt and one-sided massacre which cost the lives of 84 of the crew.
The Battle of Savo Island was one of the very worst defeats of the USN. The one true shining light was that in the face of overwhelming defeat, and on board burning and sinking ships, the surviving crews responded with courage as they risked their lives to try to save their ships and their shipmates.
The USN habit of naming USN ships after HMAS Canberra is, in all the circumstances, peculiar indeed.
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