The US Army Small Ships Section was an improvised civilian fleet that provided logistical support to Allied Operations in the South West Pacific Area during World War II. Between 1942 and 1945, more than 4,000 Allied personnel served aboard its vessels.
The section has its origins in Mission X, a project initiated by brothers John Sheridan Fahnestock and Adam Bruce Fahnestock of the Fahnestock South Sea Expeditions fame. The section operated ships acquired in Australia and New Zealand under Reverse Lend-Lease. The section operated schooners, ketches, and even a converted to a freighter, but the preferred type was seine trawlers. These were sturdy diesel-powered, wooden fishing boats, built to withstand the rough waters of the Bass Strait and Tasman Sea. They also had powerful winches that allowed them to beach and retract at high tide.
The Small Ships Section was critically important to the logistics of the Buna–Gona campaign in late 1942. The northern coastline of Papua was exceptionally dangerous: Japanese aircraft and ships patrolled the routes, while reefs and shoals were poorly charted. Until Royal Australian Navy survey vessels could chart and mark safe passages, the small ships were in danger of running aground on sandbars or reefs. The supply route became known as the "Red Arrow Line", after the insignia of the US 32nd Infantry Division. Losses were heavy, but during the campaign, the small ships delivered three times the tonnage of supplies delivered by air.
Organisation During the Philippines campaign of World War II, the Japanese offensive led to the entrapment of U.S. Forces at Bataan. As the campaign wore on, brothers John Sheridan Fahnestock and Adam Bruce Fahnestock, known for the Fahnestock South Sea Expeditions, conceived the idea of improvising a fleet of small ships to deliver supplies to the American forces in the Philippines. They were from an affluent yachting family and were acquaintances of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While the amount of cargo and passengers that small ships could carry was limited, small ships could blend in with local traffic and hide among the thousands of islands in the Philippines archipelago. The mission was authorised under the codename "Mission X".
The Fahnestocks recruited other crewmen from their previous expeditions, including Dawson "Gubby" Glover, Phil Farley, Bob Wilson, and Ladislaw "Laddie" Reday. Sheridan Fahnestock was commissioned in the United States Army as a captain, Bruce Fahnestock as a first lieutenant, and the others as second lieutenants. Mission X arrived in Melbourne in early March 1942. On 10 March, Brigadier General Arthur R. Wilson, the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, of United States Army Forces in Australia (USAFIA), designated Mission X as the Small Ships Supply Command and appointed Colonel Harry H. Cullins as its commanding officer, answerable directly to the commanding general of USAFIA. The Small Ships Supply Command became responsible for the acquisition, manning and operation of small ships in waters north of Australia.
In early May 1942, the Small Ships Supply Command moved to Sydney, Australia's largest port. It established its headquarters in the Grace Building and assembled an improvised flotilla at No. 10 Pier in Walsh Bay. On 29 May, the Small Ships Supply Command ceased to come under USAFIA and was placed under the theater chief of the Transportation Service, Colonel Thomas B. Wilson, a former head of the Alaska Steamship Company. On 5 June, it was redesignated the Small Ships Section of the Transportation Service. On 15 June, Cullins was succeeded by his executive officer, Major George P. Bradford, a former executive with the Everett Steamship Corporation, an American company based in Shanghai before the war. Major Reeford P. Shea was his executive officer until he was succeeded by Major George T. Wright on 16 January 1943. The Small Ships Section headquarters had five branches: personnel; supply; planning and development; construction and refitting; and maintenance and repair.
Ships and personnel The first Australian recruited for Mission X was Jack Savage, a Melbourne boat builder who owned a shipyard in Williamstown, Victoria. He provided advice on what ships to acquire, and assumed responsibility for their reconstruction and repair. The acquisition of ships was controlled by the Australian Shipping Board. Subject to the approval of the board, the United States Army had the authority to lease, purchase or compulsorily acquire if need be privately owned vessels. Payments were made by the board and charged to the Reverse Lend-Lease account.
While several types of ships were acquired, the most suitable were seine trawlers. These were diesel-powered, long, wooden fishing boats, solidly built to withstand the rough waters of the Bass Strait and Tasman Sea. Their hulls were often sheathed in Kauri Pine, which resisted the shipworms that attacked wood in the tropics. They were equipped with heavy-duty winches that allowed them to beach at low tide and unload where there were no wharves, using the winch to pull them off the beach at high tide, a process called "fishtailing". They were also ideal for towing barges. Seventeen seine trawlers were acquired. They were stripped, painted battleship grey, and outfitted with machine guns.
Other ships acquired included the Argosy Lemal, a three-masted schooner that was fitted out as a communications ship, as was the ketch Harold. The Hilda Norling was a two-masted crayfish ketch with a copious hold. The Mactan was a freighter converted to a hospital ship that had escaped from the Philippines with a crew that consisted mostly of Filipinos, many of whom could not speak English. The Kurimarua was a Lever Brothers ship crewed by four Europeans and eighteen Solomon Islanders. The Masaya was a converted to a freighter. Not part of the Small Ships Section but often working with them were the 21 Dutch freighters of 1,213 to 9,312 tons of the (KPM) that were chartered by the US Army.
When ships were taken up, their crews were offered employment with the Small Ships Section. Others were recruited. Most of the crews were Australians; at least twenty sailors were Aboriginal Australians or Torres Strait Islanders. Under an agreement with the Australian government, Australian citizens could be hired as sailors if they were male and aged between 15 and 17 years old, over 45, or 18 to 45 but with a medical exemption from military service. Many of those recruited had disabilities which prevented them from actively serving in the armed forces, others were veterans of the Boer War or First World War. Seamen were hired on six-month contracts that specified that they would be required to serve in New Guinea. If their service was deemed satisfactory, the contract could be extended for another six months. Crews were issued the uniform of the US Army Transport Service, but normally wore civilian clothes when aboard their ships. They were paid at US Army rates, which were higher than Australian rates. Although the ships flew the US flag, few were US registered vessels.
In addition to ships' crews, the Small Ships Section also recruited skilled tradesmen such as carpenters, mechanics and shipwrights to maintain the ships. The US Army's normal practice was to hire workers through local trade unions, but since these workers would be located in northern Australia in places subject to Japanese air raids and there were strict union rules relating to work in war zones, the Small Ships Section was granted a special exemption allowing it to hire non-union labour. Sheridan Fahnestock went to Cairns in July to personally oversee the establishment of a base there, and bases were subsequently established in Townsville, Port Moresby and Milne Bay.
Operations Geography
The small ships began leaving Sydney and sailing to Northern Australia in July 1942. In October, they were ordered to Milne Bay in support of the Buna–Gona campaign. Mactan was anchored in Milne Bay and served as a barracks ship and mess hall for ships' crews between voyages. The north coast of Papua was extremely hazardous. Sailing north of Goodenough Island meant operating at the extreme range of Allied aircraft operating from Port Moresby but within easy range of Japanese aircraft from Rabaul and areas patrolled by Japanese surface ships and submarines. The rainy season was beginning, so the Owen Stanley Range was often shrouded in dense clouds that made flying dangerous. On the other hand, the waters south of Goodenough were criss-crossed with uncharted reefs and shoals. The latest maps were from 1895, and new coral formations grew quickly in the warm tropical waters. Colonel Thomas B. Wilson considered it "the most dangerous coastline in the world".
The Royal Australian Navy survey ship was given the task of surveying the route from Cape Nelson to Oro Bay and marking it with buoys, beacons and lights. It also located suitable harbours and anchorages and landed shore parties that scouted the hinterland, where they established radio stations and tended to navigational lights emplaced ashore. In October, surveyed a safe channel from Milne Bay to Cape Nelson through the Goschen and Ward Hunt Straits. The following month, it was joined by the survey ships and . This work eased the task of the small ships' crews, who also made their own charts. Until this work was complete, the small ships could only sail in daylight, when they could spot the uncharted reefs.
Friendly fire incident On 18 October 1942, the Section conducted its first amphibious assault. Lieutenant Colonel Laurence A. McKenny, the quartermaster of the US 32nd Infantry Division, was placed in charge of the small ships beyond Milne Bay. On 15 October, the trawlers King John and Timoshenko set out from Milne Bay with supplies for the troops who were arriving by air at Wanigela. McKenny and Bruce Fahnestock were aboard Timoshenko, as they wanted to see conditions in the forward area for themselves. When they got to Wanigela, Brigadier General Hanford MacNider ordered McKenny to take some infantrymen of the US 128th Infantry to Pongani, further up the coast.
Fifty-six infantrymen were taken aboard King John and forty-six on Timoshenko. Also on King John was Byron Darnton, a war correspondent for The New York Times who had served with the 32nd Infantry Division in the First World War. The ships rounded Cape Nelson during the night and anchored off Pongani at 03:00, but unloading was deferred until daylight. There were no piers or jetties, so unloading had to be done with rowboats and native outrigger canoes. Before that could occur, the ships were attacked by an American North American B-25 Mitchell bomber of the 13th Bombardment Squadron, which dropped two bombs, both of which missed, and strafed King John. Fahnestock and Darnton were killed and several others were wounded, including McKenny. The two men were buried at the Port Moresby (Bomana) War Cemetery with full military honours. In attendance were senior officers and officials, including Lieutenant General Sir Edmund Herring, the commander of New Guinea Force, Errol Knox, the Australian Army's Director-General of Public Relations, and Sheridan Fahnestock. Bruce Fahnestock's coffin was carried by US servicemen, while Darnton's was born by American, Australian and British war correspondents.
Red Arrow Line