On the night of 28 February to 1 March 1942 the American heavy cruiser USS Houston and the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth, the last large Allied warships left afloat after the Battle of the Java Sea, tried to slip out of the Java Sea through the Sunda Strait. Off Bantam Bay, at the north-western tip of Java, they ran straight into the Japanese fleet that was landing an army on the island. In a confused fight that lasted little more than an hour both cruisers were sunk, together with their captains and more than a thousand men.
After the Java Sea
By February 1942 Singapore had fallen and Japan was closing in on Java, the heart of the Netherlands East Indies. On 27 February the Allied striking force under the Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman went out to stop an invasion convoy and was defeated in the Battle of the Java Sea. That night the Dutch cruisers De Ruyter and Java were torpedoed and sunk.1 › Battle of the Java Sea, 1942
Houston and Perth were the only cruisers of Doorman's battle line to survive. They put in at Tanjung Priok, the port of Batavia, on 28 February. There was little fuel and no fresh ammunition to be had, and Perth sailed with only half her usual load of oil. Both ships, together with the Dutch destroyer Evertsen, were ordered to pass through the Sunda Strait that night and make for Tjilatjap on the south coast of Java.2
Into Bantam Bay
Houston and Perth left Tanjung Priok that evening, with Perth's Captain Hector Waller in the lead. The time is given differently: Andrew Robertson puts the departure at about 7 p.m., the US Navy's 1943 combat narrative at about 9:20 p.m.. The crews believed that the only ships in the strait were Australian corvettes on patrol. In fact the Japanese Western Attack Force was at that moment landing the 16th Army of Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura in Bantam Bay. The size of the convoy is given differently: the Naval History and Heritage Command speaks of 29 troop transports, the Australian War Memorials in London site of over 50.3
At about 11 p.m. lookouts on Perth sighted a ship near St. Nicholas Point that failed to answer her challenge. It was a Japanese destroyer, and within minutes cruisers and destroyers were closing in from several directions. The two Allied ships twisted and turned through the dark, firing at targets on every side. Japanese ships fired a great many torpedoes, 85 according to the Australian War Memorial and 87 according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.4
Two cruisers lost
Some of the torpedoes hit the wrong ships. Torpedoes fired by the heavy cruiser Mogami sank a minesweeper and a transport, and Japanese torpedoes damaged three more transports. Who sank what is still disputed: the Australian War Memorial credits Perth and Houston with sinking a transport and a minesweeper, while the Naval History and Heritage Command and Andrew Robertson, writing in the Journal of Military and Veterans' Health, put the losses down to Japanese fire.5
Around midnight, low on ammunition, Waller tried to force a way through to the strait. Perth was hit by a torpedo, then a second, and Waller ordered the crew to abandon ship. She sank at about 12.25 a.m. on 1 March. Houston fought on alone, hit by torpedoes and shells. Captain Albert H. Rooks was killed by a shell burst, and his executive officer, Commander David Roberts, gave the order to abandon ship at 12.33 a.m.. Houston rolled over and sank about 20 minutes after Perth. Both captains went down with their ships.6
Survivors and the count of the dead
The figures differ from source to source. The Naval History and Heritage Command gives Houston's complement as 1,061, of whom 693 died and 368 survived. For Perth, the Australian War Memorial's account of the ship's bell gives 681 men aboard, 353 killed, four more who died soon after reaching shore and 324 survivors taken prisoner, while a Memorial speech gives 686 aboard and 320 captured. Robertson gives 375 dead from Perth and 698 from Houston.7
The survivors were picked up by the Japanese and spent the rest of the war in prison camps. According to the Australian War Memorial and the Naval History and Heritage Command, 106 of Perth's men died in captivity. Rooks was awarded the Medal of Honor after his death. Perth's wreck was found in 1967 by the South Australian diver David Burchell. For the wider war at sea that year, see our guide to the greatest battles of the Pacific War and the Battle of the Coral Sea, fought two months later.8
Also on this day
- 1638: Battle of Rheinfelden. A French-allied army under Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar fought Imperial and Bavarian forces under Johann von Werth and Federico Savelli near Rheinfelden on the Rhine, in the Thirty Years' War.
