The clandestine activities of our two most famous but unsung units of the Pacific war were the M & Z Units of the Australian Army commonly referred to as Commandos. The lack of knowledge about these units was due to the fact that they were clouded in secrecy by the sheer nature of their existence and The Official Secrets Act (OSA). Their most well-known exploits were the two raids made on shipping in Singapore Harbour. (See also my article named Heroes and Headhunters)
One was an outstanding success. The other was a tragic stuff up.
These units were the forerunners of today’s SAS and Commando Regiments.
The men who served in them were the bravest of the brave. All volunteers from the ranks of volunteers, they undertook their missions in the clear knowledge that it was more than a 50/50 chance of it being a one way street. They were mainly trained at Wilson’s Promontory in Victoria, now a national park and Refuge Bay in NSW, an arm of the Hawkesbury River.
Here is an outline of their activities drawn from the official records of the various organisations, many long after the war ended due to the OSA.
M SPECIAL UNIT
M Special Unit, was a special reconnaissance unit, part of the Services Reconnaissance Department, in the South West Pacific theatre of World War II.
A joint organisation whose members were drawn from Australian, New Zealand, Dutch and British military intelligence units.
It was formed in 1943, as a successor to The Coastwatchers organisation which was largely under the control of the RAN. M Special Unit's role was confined to gathering intelligence on Japanese shipping and troop movements rather than overt raiding and harassing of Japanese installations.. Small teams from the unit were landed behind enemy lines by sea, air or land. M Special Unit operated behind enemy lines for extended periods to collect intelligence undetected and as such rarely tried to engage the enemy except in self-defence.
The members were trained on Fraser Island in Queensland.
Filmed in October 2016 the boys from 4x4 Aussie Mates, meet Jimmy Swan and learn all about the Z Force based on Fraser island during the 2nd World War. The Episode first went on air April 2017. The show is produced and directed by Richard Brown founder of Sunset Films.
Units were deployed in both the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. In late 1943 the unit was split into smaller units code named ‘Whiting’ and ‘Locust’ where both units continued to collect intelligence. Although consistently successful, the consequences for those captured by the enemy were serve. One of the more prominent members of “M” Special Unit was Sergeant Leonard Siffleet who was executed by Japanese forces via beheading.
When the war was won in late 1945, “M” Special Unit was disbanded and has never been reformed.
Z SPECIAL UNIT
Z Special Unit was another joint Allied special forces unit formed during the Second World War to operate behind Japanese lines in South East Asia. Predominantly Australian, Z Special Unit was both a sabotage and reconnaissance unit. Its operations were predominantly in Timor, New Guinea and the former Netherland East Indies.
The unit carried out a total of 81 covert operations in the South West Pacific theatre. Small parties were mainly inserted by parachute or submarine to provide intelligence and conduct guerrilla warfare. The best known of these missions were Operations Jaywick and Rimau, both of which involved raids on Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour. Jaywick was an outstanding success.
Rimau was at the opposite end of the spectrum.
OPERATION JAYWICK
In 1943, a British officer, Captain Ivan Lyon (of the Allied Intelligence Bureau) and a 61-year-old Australian civilian, Bill Reynolds, devised a plan to attack Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour. The plan was for Commandos to travel to a spot near to Singapore Harbour in a vessel disguised as an Asian fishing boat. They would then transfer to folboats (collapsible canoes) to attach limpet mines to Japanese ships. These were the same craft that feature in the British commando raid made famous by the movie Cockleshell Heroes. They were made of a waterproof fabric over cane frame with dimensions that allowed them to fit, fully rigged, through the forward hatch of a submarine. They had a rubberised air filled tube along each side for stability and sat very low in the water. A suitable craft was procured, a Japanese coastal fishing boat named the Kofuku Maru, which he had been used to evacuate refugees from Singapore. The boat be shipped from India to Australia. Upon its arrival, it was renamed as MV KRAIT, after the small but deadly Asian snake. The Krait travelled from Broken Bay, New South Wales to Thursday Island. Aboard was a complement of 14 men from Z Special Unit made up of three British and eleven Australians.
On 13 August 1943, the Krait left Thursday Island for Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia, whereit was refuelled and fitted out for its task. This repair work cause delays in departure, but the folboats which had been specially ordered for the attack from England only arrived at the last minute. They were found to be faulty, lacked some important parts and were not according to the specified design. Despite the unexpected delays the canoes were loaded onto the KRAIT.
On 2 September 1943, the Krait left Exmouth Gulf bound for Singapore. The team's safety depended on maintaining the disguise of a local fishing boat. The men stained their skin brown with dye to appear more Asiatic and were meticulous in what sort of rubbish they threw overboard, lest a trail of European garbage arouse suspicion.
This video is a mutch watch. It is absolutely excellent.
After any uneventful voyage, the Krait arrived off Singapore on September 24. That night, six men left the boat and paddled in 3 canoes 31 miles to establish a forward base in a cave on a small island near the harbour. On the night of 26 September 1943, they paddled into the harbour and, undetected, placed limpet mines on several Japanese ships before returning to their hiding spot.
The resulting explosions, sank 39,000 tons of Japanese shipping and seriously damaged another seven. The commandos waited until the commotion over the attack had subsided and then returned to the Krait on 2 October. Their return to Australia was mostly uneventful, except for a close call in the Lombok Strait by a Japanese patrol boat. The Krait was not challenged and she arrived back at Exmouth Gulf on 19th October.
The Japanese in Singapore never suspected such an attack was possible and they assumed it had been carried out by local saboteurs. Their response was to blame local saboteur organisations and a wave of arrests, torture and executions of local Chinese and Malays, interned POWs and European civilians. The incident became known as the Double Tenth, for 10 October, the day that Japanese secret police began the mass arrests.
OPERATION RIMAU
Following the success of Operation Jaywick, another mission was formulated to be named Operation Rimau. The plan was to deliver commandos to enemy waters via submarine but with a different design of canoe. These were to be one-man, motorised submersible canoes known as "Sleeping Beauties" (SBs) and there were 15 of them. These could be used on the surface or travel semi-submerged, with the operator’s head above the water or fully submerged similar to a small submarine, the operator using artificial breathing apparatus.
The plan was to travel to the uninhabited Merapas Island in Indonesia which would be use as a base, and place enough supplies for three months. Then the commandoes would capture a small local fishing boat and sail towards Singapore Harbour undetected. On 9 October 1944 an officer to was to carry out a reconnaissance from a nearby island, observe targets and later rendezvous with the junk. From there they would attack relocate the junk to a closer and secure a hiding place. The attack plan was to use the "Sleeping Beauties", to attach limpet mines to Japanese ships, sink thirty of them, damage another thirty, and escape to their base on Merapas Island by paddling their way back in two-man folboats (collapsible canoes), seventy miles to the east of Singapore.
They were then to return to a rendezvous with a British submarine, HMS PORPOISE on 7/8 November 1944 at Merapas Island. If the submarine failed to make contact with them it would stay in the area, returning to the designated point every night until 8 December 1944.
On the afternoon of 28 September 1944, the Porpoise stopped a junk named Mustika off the west coast of Borneo near Pontianak. Seven commandos boarded the boat and nine Malay crew were taken aboard the submarine. Twelve minutes later, Porpoise submerged with both vessels making their way back west towards a forward operational base at Pedjantan Island.
Over the next two nights, 29–30 September 1944, the Rimau commandos, the SBs, folboats and other stores were transferred from Porpoise to Mustika.
Mustika returned via the Java Sea Merapas Island. The Rimau Commandos disguised themselves as Malays by wearing sarongs and dyeing their skin. The Mustika had no engine so the commandos were dependent on winds.The Mustika arrived at Merapas on 4 October 1944. It was then decided to divide the party into two groups: 19 commandos to take part in the raid, while four men would be left behind. Carey, The Mustika then headed towards Singapore Harbour, reaching the vicinity around 6 October 1944. On 10 October 1944, two hours before sunset and an hour before the raid was to commence, disaster struck. A coastal Malay Police patrol boat, the HeiHo, challenged the Mustika. The Japanese had increased surveillance of the area since Operation Jaywick but it is unclear why the patrol boat approached the Mustika.
Shots were fired between the vessels – it was later deduced one of the Australian commandos aboard panicked and started firing at the approaching patrol boat. Some of the patrol boat crew were killed but at least one escaped and report the incident. At that point it was decided to abort the mission. The junk was scuttledas were Sleeping Beauties (which were top secret weapons at the time) with explosive charges. The men were divide into four groups to make their way back to Merapas by using the folboats that they had stored on Mustika.
Three of the groups headed to Merapas immediately. One group of 7 decided to proceed into Singapore Harbour. They are believed to have sunk three ships with limpet mines but there is little supporting evidence to confirm this. The Singapore Garrison of the Imperial Japanese Army did unleash a punitive force of at least 100 soldiers including army, navy and native police to find the commandos.
On 15th October, five of the group were caught by a Japanese patrol. A gun battle ensued. The Australians withdrew to two selected defensive positions in an unexposed area. The Australians ambushed the Japanese and their native auxiliaries. A further gun battle ensued in which two of the men were severely wounded. The survivors stayed on to hold off the Japanese so that the wounded could escape. These survivors held off 80-90 opposing soldiers forcing them to fight for 9 hours and inflicting heavy casualties but they were eventually brought down by grenades. One survivor remained at large, his folboat was taken and he was found days later on a sweep of the island.
On 4 November eighteen of the group were together on Merapas Island. A small Japanese force landed on the island, and was attacked by the commandos. Two of the Rimau commandos were killed in combat on the island, while the remainder now split into two groups and went to different islands.
Australian forces intercepted a Japanese coded message reporting activity by about 20 commandos in the attack area. However, if the Australians had responded, the appointed rescue submarine was not told of the sudden urgency of the situation. The orders to the commander of the rescue submarine, HMS Tantalus, Lieutenant Commander Hugh Mackenzie, were to go to the rescue rendezvous area of Merapas Island on 7th November, 1944 and to remain there until 7th December if necessary.
On 7 November 1944 ten of the Rimau commandos were in place to meet the rescue submarine, but it did not appear. Mackenzie had, instead, chosen to hunt enemy shipping in the area. He made this decision in consultation with Major Chapman, Z Special Unit's contact on the submarine. Tantalus' main objective was offensive action against the Japanese and the orders to the Rimau party were that they might expect to be picked up at any time within a month of the initial rendezvous date.
On 21 November 1944 the submarine reached Merapas Island. Chapman and another commando, Corporal Croton, were worried about the surf and tracked their landing canoe around the island to calmer waters, away from the set position at 0200. Chapman wanted to head back to the submarine but Croton drew his pistol and forced Chapman on. They arrived at the designated meeting point the next day but there were no commandos to be found.Only an abandoned camp site.
It was assumed and agreed that the operation had likely been a failure so no purpose could be served in returning to Merapas, contrary to what had been planned. Tantalus resumed its patrol and arrived back in Fremantle on 6 December 1944 having never returned to Merapas Island. None of the officials in Australia who knew that the Rimau commandos were in trouble tried to contact the submarine and order them to remain in the area for any survivors.
The remaining survivors tried to make their way back to Australia in their folboats with varying degrees of success but in the end they all failed. In all, eleven members of the contingent were captured and brought to Outram Road Prison in Singapore. One commando died of malaria. During the imprisonment, the men were tortured and provided starvation rations similar to those provided to other prisoners in the facility. On 3 July 1945, they were put on trial for perfidy and espionage. They were found guilty and sentenced to death. Official Japanese records state that the ten men were beheaded at Pasir Panjang on 7 July 1945, approximately one month before.
World War II in the Pacific came to an end. Later evidence stated it took guards more than half an hour to execute the men, sometimes requiring two or three blows to complete beheading.
STRIKE SWIFTLY - WITHOUT WARNING
