THIS week marked the anniversary in the Hunter of one of Australia's worst army disasters - at sea.
March 8, 1954, was the date that many people could now almost be forgiven for forgetting. But who could blame them? After all, it's 69 years since a large army convoy from Wave Trap Beach (Horseshoe Beach) at Camp Shortland (now parkland near Nobbys) set out at 2am to cross Stockton Bight in calm weather.
The convoy, however, with 184 men onboard, never made it. Many amphibious vessels were later swamped by high seas whipped up by a sudden south-easterly wind. Two servicemen drowned and another was lost, presumed drowned, but wild rumours circulated for years after that he had been trapped under a refrigerator onboard a sinking craft.
About 100 soldiers, most "Nashos" or national servicemen, were pitched headlong into a raging sea amid sharks after the squall sank eight out of 21 craft. The soldiers were about to attend their annual Citizen Military Forces (CMF) camp and comprised members of the 15th Northern River Lancers plus 16th Company, RAASC (Royal Australian Army Service Corps). Dubbed "Operation Seagull", it quickly became a tragic peace-time training exercise.
What partly makes this convoy seem so unusual now, to civilian eyes anyway, was the number of "cans", or amphibious armoured "tanks" involved. Today's official tally of vehicles is listed as eight LVT (A) 4s, or Landing Vehicle Tracked (armoured - i.e. "tank"), five LVT4s (cargo craft), a workboat and seven of the once very familiar army "ducks" (DUKW), the ungainly but war-winning "floating lorries" of WWII.
The unexpected weather hit the convoy hardest about 4am creating mountainous seas, causing some heavy amphibious vehicles to sink and others to later capsize.
Other vehicles broke down and then sank while under tow.
Radios, normally used to communicate between craft, became wet and useless.
The drama, which lasted hours, occurred about 10 nautical miles from Morna Point and about two miles out to sea. Originally the flotilla had set out in darkness going north towards the ominously named Cemetery Point. The sea was initially reported as being very calm.
When daylight broke, the convoy was scattered 16kms along Stockton Bight beach. Witnesses would later testify that, with equipment bobbing in the boiling surf, exhausted soldiers on the sand and discarded Mae Wests (lifejackets) lying about, it resembled a scene from the wartime evacuation of Dunkirk.
Drowned were Corporal N. Moran, Trooper N. Mornement, and missing was Private R. Blackie. One drowned soldier and WWII veteran, Noel Moran, had bought a boat ticket and packed his bags in anticipation of a six-month holiday in England as soon as the CMF camp was over. It was to be his first real holiday in probably eight years.
A closed inquiry into the Stockton Bight disaster, which was held in Raymond Terrace immediately after, found that the deaths were due to bad luck and not carelessness on anybody's part.
Memories of the 1954 maritime tragedy came into focus recently when Peter 'Wheelie' Edwards, of Port Stephens, a former Lieutenant Colonel of the 16th Coy RAASC, showed Weekender a scrapbook of press clippings, rare photos and an official hand-written report about the infamous incident. The scrapbook had been loaned to him by a relative of a former national serviceman who had survived the tragedy.
The first item Edwards showed was a Herald clipping from 1984. It revealed three Newcastle divers having just found the wreck of one of the amphibious tanks lying upright in deep water three nautical miles off Stockton Beach. The tank's actual position was not disclosed because of fears of other divers taking souvenirs.
(The official hero of the 1954 disaster was the late Don McHattie, then a sergeant, who later received the George Medal for continuous rescues. Also mentioned in dispatches was police constable Bruce Wheeler and five Stockton Surf Club lifesavers.)
Edwards, now 83, wanted to draw the public's attention to the tragedy, now fading from most memories. Each year, he and others put remembrance ads in the Herald on March 8, or organise a memorial service.
The scrapbook also revealed comments made in 1990 at a commemoration service in Civic Park by Newcastle solicitor Cliff McDonald, once a 24-year-old captain with the army reservists. He recalled that during the drama it took six hours before his craft reached shore in wild seas.
"Most of the amphibious tanks broke down and were being towed by the (seven-ton) DUKWs, which were then pulled down in the heavy seas with the extra 16-ton weight behind them," McDonald said.
Edwards has a lot of affection for the army's versatile "ducks". Made in 1943, they serviced the invasion in Sicily, then during D-Day in 944 and the crossing of The Rhine and also in the Pacific War. Later, the DUKWs saw action in the Korean War, in Vietnam under the French in the 1950s.
Many of the surviving amphibians are now in the hands of private collectors.
Between 1941-45, more than 21,000 of the innovative DUKWS were made in the US. Australian forces were equipped with almost 600 of them in wartime.
"Replacing them here in Australia with a later amphibian craft called the LARC was, I believe, one of the worst decisions ever made by our defence top brass," Edwards said.
"The DUKW was a GMC (General Motors Corporation) truck with a watertight hull wrapped around it.
"So, the DUKW was a truck that could go in water, but a LARC was a boat that could drive on land, but things would go wrong, like hubs seizing up.
"Down in Antarctica when we were re-supplying our bases down there, they had to put a crane on land to unload the LARCs at the water's edge while the DUKWs would drive straight up onshore to unload."
Edwards also commanded army DUKWs as part of rescue and supply missions during the 1962 Port Macquarie floods.
"But getting back now to the 1954 Stockton Bight disaster and all those rescues, I've always felt that those Stockton lifesavers involved - Harry Rowlatt, Frank Littlewood, Bill Arthur, Barry Jones and Col Whyte - never got the enough proper recognition for the bravery they showed that morning," he said.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Join the discussion in the comment section below.
Find out how to register or become a subscriber here.
