With the fall of Borneo, Sumatra, and all the islands culminating with beautiful Bali, the attention of both sides focused on the crown jewel of the Dutch East Indies. Java now found itself in the crosshairs at the center of a rapidly narrowing circle of carnage, surrounded by a raging tempest. Within those turbulent seas, the last half of February 1942, the two weeks following Singapore’s demise, were filled with a cascading series of naval actions.
As the perimeter contracted, so too did General Archibald Wavell’s ABDA Command. After the battle of Balikpapan, when four USN destroyers had laid waste to the Japanese invasion fleet off lightly defended Borneo, the mission of the ABDA combined fleet fell into line with that compressed strategic outlook. Recognizing ABDA’s limitations, Wavell now focused his attention on protecting Java.
On February 2, after Allied reconnaissance aircraft had observed an invasion fleet being assembled at the island of Jolo, Dutch Vice Admiral Conrad Emil Lambert Helfrich, the Dutch naval commander in the Indies, suggested to the USN’s Admiral Thomas Hart, the overall commander of all ABDA naval assets, that a combined strike force should be created for the express purpose of stopping the Japanese invasion of Java.
The ABDA Combined Strike Force was placed under the command of Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman, and headquartered at the big Dutch naval base at the port of Surabaya (in Dutch, Soerebaja), the second largest city on Java.
The Allied naval strength in the seas between Malaya and the Philippines and through the waters surrounding the Dutch East Indies was clearly inferior to that of the IJN. With the loss of the heart of the USN’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the USN presence consisted of the former Asiatic Fleet, which had escaped from the Philippines. Doorman’s strike force had no battleships or aircraft carriers, and just two heavy cruisers, the USS Houston and the HMS Exeter, the latter famous for having helped to defeat the German pocket battleship Graf Spee in 1939. His light cruisers included the Dutch warships HNMLS Tromp, HNMLS Java, and HNMLS De Ruyter, his flagship, as well as the USS Marblehead and HMAS Perth.
The great battleships of the USN and the RN had been knocked out of action in the first three days of the war in the Pacific, and the Dutch had none to begin with. It might not have been that way, had farsightedness in Amsterdam been rewarded, not ignored. Even before World War I, noting the increased Japanese expansionism in northeast Asia, and the lopsided Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War, a Dutch Royal Commission had proposed in 1913 that the Koninklijke Marine should build nine large battleships. The idea was to use four to ensure Dutch neutrality in Europe, and five to augment the modest naval forces in the Indies.
Parliamentary debate about funding ensued, the idea came and went during the interwar years before emerging on the eve of World War II with a proposal to buy three battle cruisers. Nothing had been done about this by the time that the Netherlands surrendered to Germany. The biggest Dutch ships in the Indies at the time were light cruisers. Indeed, corners had been cut and armament was limited to less-than-6-inch guns on these, including Admiral Doorman’s flagship in the Indies, the De Ruyter, which had been launched in 1936 during the depths of the Great Depression.
By contrast, the IJN, the beneficiary of a prewar naval building boom, was able to concentrate multiple task forces on the scale of the total ABDA Command at various locations throughout the South China Sea and the Dutch East Indies. Furthermore, with the myriad airfields that the IJA had captured from Malaya to Borneo, and which the IJN had captured in Celebes, Japanese airpower from both services dominated the skies throughout the region as the shrinking Allied perimeter withdrew into Java.
For the final assault on Java, the two IJN surface fleets, which had been operating independently since December, would converge. The Western Force under Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, commander of the Southern Expeditionary Fleet, fresh from the operations off Sumatra, would support landings in western Java, while the Eastern Force under Vice Admiral Ibo Takahashi would support the invasion of eastern Java.
The ABDA Combined Strike Force barely had the opportunity to form up in the waters north of Java when it was put through the same wringer from Japanese airpower that had sunk the Prince of Wales and Repulse two months earlier. The specific place was off the Kangean Islands in the Flores Sea about 300 miles east of Surabaya, south of the Makassar Strait between Borneo and Celebes, and north of the Lombok Strait near Bali. The battle is known variously as the “Battle of” one or the other of these areas of ocean.
On February 3, as the ABDA Strike Force was heading north into the mouth of the Makassar Strait, it was observed but not attacked by Japanese aircraft. Shortly before 10:00 am the following morning, though, Japanese land-based bombers came overhead in force, and the bombs began to fall. The Japanese bombardiers naturally targeted the cruisers, the largest ships in the fleet below. The Japanese pilots returned to their bases, proudly bragging of having sunk three Allied cruisers, but in fact, only two had been damaged, albeit seriously.
The Marblehead was effectively put out of action, although she limped west to Ceylon, and was eventually repaired in South Africa. The Japanese believed they had sunk the Houston, but she was soon able to rejoin combat operations after repairs in Surabaya. She had, however, lost the use of her aft turret.
One of the Houston’s next assignments was to join the task force that departed Darwin, Australia on February 15, escorting reinforcements bound for the garrison at Timor. The convoy came under heavy air attack the following day and turned back to Australia upon learning that a substantial IJN surface fleet was offshore to support the invasion of Timor, and that it was supported by aircraft carriers. By now, the crew of the Houston, aware that the Japanese had reported her sunk at least once, had given her the nickname “Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast.”
The next major surface action in the Dutch East Indies came in the late evening of February 19, the same day as the widely separated Japanese invasions of Timor and Bali, and the infamous Japanese air attack on Darwin. The place was the Badung Strait, east of Bali, and the antagonists were the Bali invasion fleet versus an ABDA fleet headed by the Dutch cruisers HNMLS Java and HNMLS De Ruyter, the Dutch destroyer HNMLS Piet Hein, and two USN veterans of the battle of Balikpapan, USS John D. Ford and USS Pope.
The two troop ships had just landed the Kanemura Detachment for its unopposed landing on Bali’s south coast, and were pulling away, escorted by the destroyers Arashio, Asashio, Michishio, and Oshio. All five Allied ships opened fire at 10:25 pm, with little effect, and the destroyers proceeded to fire torpedoes. The Japanese destroyers replied with their own torpedoes, with the Asashio scoring a fatal hit on the Piet Hein. Rear Admiral Kyuji Kubo, aboard cruiser Nagara and accompanied by another three destroyers, steamed toward the battle, but remained out of range.
The two sides disengaged, but at around 1:30 am on February 20, the Japanese invasion fleet was intercepted by a second ABDA force, the cruiser HNMLS Tromp and the destroyers USS John D. Edwards, USS Parrott, USS Pilsbury, and USS Stewart. When the Tromp engaged the Asashio and the Oshio, all three suffered damage. Michishio was badly damaged by gunfire from the Tromp and two of the American destroyers. As the two sides disengaged, she was left dead in the water, but she did not sink and came under tow. Once again, as in the earlier engagement, Kubo and his contingent were out of range.
In the space of three weeks, the last of Celebes, followed by Ambon, Timor, Bali, and most of Sumatra had each slipped under the big roof of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, destined for bleak years of no prosperity. During those weeks, the great invasion fleet tasked with the final subjugation of the Dutch East Indies embarked from Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, bound for the beaches and jungles of Java.
The instrument of this subjugation, the IJA 16th Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura, was comprised of two components. That which was tasked with invading western Java and capturing Batavia assembled at Cam Ranh Bay, and was comprised of Imamura’s 16th Army headquarters, as well as the 2nd Division and the 230th Infantry Regiment from the 38th Division, which had taken part in the conquest of Hong Kong. The second detachment, assigned to land in eastern Java, assembled at Jolo Island in the Philippines, and consisted of the 56th Infantry Group, which had served in the Borneo operations, and the 48th Division, which had spearheaded the initial 14th Army victories in the Philippines.
The IJN support for Imamura’s assault included perhaps the largest concentration of Japanese warships in Southeast Asia thus far. Divided into two detachments, they were under the overall command of Vice Admiral Ibo Takahashi, whose flagship, the cruiser Ashigara, was flanked by the cruiser Myoko and the destroyers Ikazuchi and Akebono.
Imamura and the force targeting western Java embarked on February 18 aboard a huge convoy of 56 transports escorted by the cruisers Yura and Natori, as well as 14 destroyers and other ships under the command of Rear Admiral Kenzaburo Hara. They were joined by another force under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, whose cruisers Mogami and Mikuma had participated in the battle for Sumatra.
Imamura’s second detachment, bound for eastern Java, was to be supported by the IJN Eastern Force. They departed from Jolo Island on February 19, a day after Imamura, aboard 41 troop ships. Their escort, commanded by Rear Admiral Shoji Nishimura, included the light cruisers Naka and Jintsu, supported by 14 destroyers. Covering the convoy and these escorts, and commanded by Rear Admiral Takeo Takagi, were the heavy cruisers Nachi and Haguro, as well as the destroyers Ushio and Sazanami. When the Eastern Force met the ABDA Combined Strike Force, the warships would operate under Takagi’s command.
On the ground inside Java, General Archibald Wavell, the commander of the ABDA Command, pondered his situation. The plan to pull the majority of Allied assets into Java after having committed relatively few to the defense of the other islands had looked good on paper, but now that it was done, his hand did not look so strong after all. The combined ABDA fleet had been essentially obliterated. ABDA airpower was scarcely more intact than the ABDA fleet, consisting mainly of battered remnants. The ABDA ground troops, which had been preserved for a last stand in Java, were comprised of brave men, but they were exhausted men who knew they were a match for the Japanese only in the remotest corners of the imagination. ABDA was no longer a cohesive Joint American–British–Dutch–Australian force, but the KNIL, with small contingents from the other armies attached. Wavell decided that the short-lived command should be deactivated, and that command of the Allied defense of Java should go to a Dutch general. He proposed this to Winston Churchill on February 21. Only two weeks had passed since the fall of Singapore.
“I am afraid that the defence of ABDA area has broken down, and that defence of Java cannot now last long,” a despondent Wavell wired Churchill.
It always hinged on the air battle … Anything put into Java now can do little to prolong the struggle; it is more [a] question of what you will choose to save … I see little further usefulness for this HQ. Last about myself. I am, as ever, entirely willing to do my best where you think best to send me. I have failed you and President [Roosevelt] here, where a better man might perhaps have succeeded. If you fancy I can best serve by returning to India I will of course do so … I hate the idea of leaving these stout-hearted Dutchmen, and will remain here and fight it out with them as long as possible if you consider this would help at all. Good wishes. I am afraid you are having [a] very difficult period, but I know your courage will shine through it.
The following day, the prime minister wrote back, telling Wavell, “When you cease to command the ABDA area you should proceed yourself to India, where we require you to resume your position as Commander-in-Chief to carry on the war against Japan from this main base.” In The Hinge of Fate, the fourth volume of his wartime memoirs, Churchill observed that “I admired the composure and firmness of mind with which Wavell had faced the cataract of disaster which had been assigned to him with so much formality and precision.”
ABDA officially went out of business at 9:00 am on February 25, and Wavell departed two days later, winging his way to New Delhi to resume his post as commander-in-chief of the British India Command. In 1943, by then promoted to field marshal, Wavell became the penultimate viceroy of British India.
On the ground in Java, ter Poorten accepted his new role as Allied commander, firmly stating in a broadcast that he thought it better to “die standing rather than to live on our knees.”
On February 27, even as Wavell was in the air, having left Java for the final time, things were reaching a climactic moment in the seas north of the crown jewel island. Admiral Doorman and what had been earlier been known as the ABDA Combined Strike Force had departed from Surabaya the day before to intercept the IJN Eastern Force and the invasion fleet bound for eastern Java.
Doorman had two heavy cruisers to match the Japanese two, the Nachi and Haguro. These were the HMS Exeter and the USS Houston, which had just returned to Surabaya after the failed mission escorting reinforcements to Timor. The Japanese heavies, however, outgunned the Allied ships, especially the Houston, which had just four 8-inch guns after having lost her aft turret. This compared to ten guns of the same caliber aboard the Japanese heavy cruisers.
Doorman’s strike force also included three light cruisers, the HMAS Perth, the HNLMS Java, and his flagship, the HNLMS De Ruyter, as well as nine destroyers, the USS Alden, HMS Electra, HMS Encounter, HMS Jupiter, USS John D. Edwards, USS John D. Ford, HNLMS Kortenaer, USS Paul Jones, and HNLMS Witte de With.
Meanwhile the IJN fleet, commanded by Rear Admiral Takeo Takagi, consisted of two heavy cruisers, Nachi and Haguro, and two light cruisers, Naka and Jintsu, as well as 14 destroyers, the Amatsukaze, Asagumo, Harusame, Hatsukaze, Kawakaze, Minegumo, Murasame, Samidare, Sazanami, Tokitsukaze, Ushio, Yamakaze, Yudachi, and Yukikaze.
At about 4:15 pm on February 26, Doorman was alerted by Admiral Helfrich to the presence of the Japanese invasion fleet. They were reported to be 200 miles, north by northwest, from the Allied fleet. Doorman was ordered to intercept and attack the Japanese that night under cover of darkness. He sailed north at about 6:30 pm conducting a sweep of the Java coast north of Madura Island, near Surabaya, where the Japanese seemed to be headed. The Allies saw no sign of the Japanese during the night, but at about 9:00 am several Japanese aircraft attacked. They did little damage, but they were able to report the location of the Allied fleet.
Around 2:30 pm on February 27, Doorman was returning once again to Surabaya when he received word that Allied reconnaissance aircraft had observed not one, but two, Japanese convoys within a short distance of Java. From the air, or indeed from the surface, the convoy, strung out across the Java Sea for 20 miles, was hard to miss. In his postwar memoirs, Commander Tameichi Hara, the captain of the IJN destroyer Amatsukaze, observed that the convoy “was quite a spectacle. An obvious laxity prevailed in the transports with their ill-trained crews. Many transports emitted huge clouds of black smoke from their funnels … Most disturbing, however, was the dreadfully slow pace of the trailing heavy cruisers.”
Turning his strike force about, Doorman led his five cruisers and nine destroyers to engage the enemy. The British destroyers formed a screening force, while the USN ships brought up the rear. Japanese aircraft had also spotted the Allied ships, and attacked. As with the Japanese aircraft observed that morning, there was no effort at a serious air strike, and the Allied force steamed ahead.
Clouds of black smoke aside, the two battle fleets first had eyes on one another shortly after 4:00 pm and the first salvo erupted from the Japanese cruisers at 4:16 pm at a range of about 16 miles. The guns of the Houston replied a few minutes later, though the majority of the smaller-gunned Allied cruisers remained out of range, and the battle of the Java Sea was joined.
Takagi aimed for the classic “Crossing the T” maneuver, in which his fleet would pass perpendicular to the line of the Allied ships, each one able to fire broadside with all main turrets at the Allied ships, who would be in line, and therefore unable to use all their turrets. In the meantime, the Japanese ships began laying down a smokescreen. They fired two salvos of torpedoes in the battle’s first 45 minutes, sinking the Kortenaer and severely damaging the Exeter.
Doorman reformed his fleet for an attack, which was led by the destroyers Electra, Encounter, and Jupiter shortly after 6:00 pm. The Electra managed to hit the Asagumo’s engine room, but, in response, a withering barrage of Japanese fire blanketed the Electra, which was sunk at 6:16 pm.
As the sun went down, Doorman broke off the attack, and was leading his cruisers in an effort to get around the Japanese warships and attack the troop ships. The problem was that he had not seen them, and his only notion of where they might be relative to the warships was based on hours-old intelligence from aerial reconnaissance flights which had to be relayed to him from ashore.
Having failed at this effort, Doorman then led his warships back toward the north coast of Java by the light of a full moon to wait for the Japanese fleet. The Jupiter exploded at 9:16 pm, having struck a Dutch mine laid earlier in the day, and sank. With this, Doorman moved his ships farther offshore to search for the Japanese.
Shortly after 11:00 pm, the Allied ships spotted and engaged Takagi’s two heavy cruisers, Nachi and Haguro, at a distance of about seven miles. Both Japanese vessels responded with gunfire and torpedoes, which found their mark shortly after 11:30 pm. The Java and the De Ruyter, Doorman’s flagship, were each hit by single torpedoes moments apart. The order to abandon ship was given, but the ships sank quickly. Doorman’s last order was to the surviving cruisers Houston and Perth, instructing them to break off the attack and withdraw to Batavia. Doorman was witnessed on the bridge of the De Ruyter, going down with his ship.
The other Allied ships also broke off the attack and retired toward Surabaya, while the Japanese fleet regrouped. The Allies had lost two cruisers and three destroyers sunk, and the Exeter seriously damaged. She would be repaired, but she was lost in her next battle.
The Japanese had suffered only the Asagumo, left dead in the water, but later repaired to fight again and again in later battles. The Eastern Force troop ships were never touched by Allied guns. Eastern Java had not been spared the invasion that was supposed to have taken place overnight on February 27–28, but this “inevitable” had been delayed by one day.
As the Houston and Perth headed west, the Allied destroyers that survived the battle of the Java Sea followed the Exeter, escorted by the Witte de With, south to Surabaya. Because the big Dutch naval base was vulnerable to air attack, and the Allies were thin on fighters capable of flying top cover, the decision was made to get the ships back out to safe ports as soon as they could be patched up and refueled. By the end of the day, four of the American destroyers, Alden, John D. Edwards, John D. Ford, and Paul Jones departed for Australia by way of the Bali Strait east of Java.
The badly damaged, but seaworthy Exeter was ordered to sail from Surabaya to Ceylon for repairs. The ideal route would have been to follow the other ships, and to steer west toward Ceylon after they were safely south of Java. However, the Bali Strait was too shallow for the Exeter, so she departed westward through the Java Sea, escorted by the HMS Encounter and the USS Pope, intending to turn south through the Sunda Strait at the western end of Java.
By the end of the day on February 28, the only major warship left in Surabaya was the Witte de With, which had developed mechanical issues.
At the same time that the disbursal of vessels was taking place at Surabaya, the HMAS Perth and USS Houston, the “Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast,” were galloping westward across the Java coast by themselves, reaching Tanjung Priok, the port of Batavia, at 1:30 pm on February 28.
The two cruisers arrived amid the chaos of both Tanjung Priok and Batavia being under continuous Japanese air raids, and found a safe harbor. Indeed, they sailed in just as there was a great flurry of urgency for ships to evacuate the port. A couple of hours later, as soon as they were refueled, the Perth and Houston departed. They did not even have time to wait for the Dutch destroyer HNLMS Evertsen, which had been ordered to accompany them.
They sailed west, planning to transit the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, and to gallop the south coast of Java toward Tjilatjap (now Cilacap), and rest the crews, who had slept little if at all for several days, before resuming the fight.
At around 11:30 pm, as they passed Bantam Bay (now Banten Bay), on the northwest tip of Java, near the mouth of the Sunda Strait, the Perth spotted another ship, five miles ahead in the darkness. Thinking it to be an Australian corvette that they expected to meet, signal lights were flashed. When the reply came back unintelligible, the Perth realized what was going on. Much to their surprise, the two Allied cruisers had run into the midst of an enormous amphibious landing operation.
The Allies knew that this landing was coming, but if aerial reconnaissance had ascertained the when and where, nobody had told Captain Hector Waller of the Perth, or Captain Albert Rooks of the Houston. The Japanese, in contrast, were aware of the two cruisers, and the destroyer Fukubi had been shadowing them at a discreet distance, unseen by them in the inky darkness.
The night before, they had chased about on the Java Sea, searching in vain for the troop ships of the Japanese eastern landing force. Now, 24 hours later, as they approached the Sunda Strait, they found themselves in the midst of the Japanese western landing force disgorging its troops at Bantam Bay.
There were 56 troop ships carrying the bulk of Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura’s 16th Army, including Imamura himself, traveling aboard the Ryujo Maru, coincidentally the same transport that had delivered General Tomoyuki Yamashita to the Malay Peninsula in the early morning hours of December 8, 1941.
Surrounding these ships and sailing about screening them, was Rear Admiral Kenzaburo Hara’s battle fleet, including the light cruiser Natori and the destroyers Asakaze, Fubuki, Harukaze, Hatakaze, Hatsuyuki, Murakumo, Shirakumo, and Shirayuki. Farther away from the transports, and out of range for the ensuing battle, was the force commanded by Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita that included the cruisers Mogami and Mikuma, recent veterans of the Sumatra operations, as well as cruisers Kumano and Suzuya, and the aircraft carrier Ryujo, another veteran of the Sumatra campaign.
The first salvo, a brace of torpedoes, in the battle of the Sunda Strait was fired by the ship that the Perth had mistakenly signaled, possibly the Harukaze. Both Allied cruisers returned fire.
In the ensuing naval battle, which lasted until after midnight, the Harukaze, Mikuma, and Shirayki all suffered serious damage, but remained seaworthy. A minesweeper and four of the troop transports were sunk – two by friendly fire – with these including the Ryujo Maru, with Hitoshi Imamura still aboard.
Both of the Allied cruisers were sunk, with the Perth losing 55 percent of her crewmen, and the Houston losing 65 percent. The fate of these ships was unknown to the Allies until late in 1942, and details of the battle were not known until the captured survivors were released from Japanese custody after the war. Both Rook and Waller, like Doorman the night before, went down with their ships.
Imamura also went down with his ship, but he was rescued from the water and taken ashore soaking wet. It was not the way he had hoped to first set foot on Java.
The HNLMS Evertsen arrived on the scene as the battle was ongoing, and steered away. She was, however, ambushed by the destroyers Murakumo and Shirakumo, and damaged so severely that she was deliberately run aground.
At 4:00 am on March 1, as the swirling muck on the bottom of the Sunda Strait was still settling over the Perth and the Houston, and as the grounded Evertsen still burned, the HMS Exeter and her escorts, the HMS Encounter and the USS Pope, turned into the Sunda Strait. Observing Hara’s fleet, and being in no shape to engage it, the three Allied ships turned about and attempted to escape to the northwest, back into the Java Sea.
Had they been able to escape south of Java, they might have had clear sailing all the way to Ceylon. To the north, however, they sailed into the massing of Japanese naval power that was forming the noose around Java.
At 9:35 am, by the light of day, the three Allied ships sighted the heavy cruisers Haguro and Nachi and other ships from Takagi’s fleet, which had mauled the Allies so badly less than two days earlier. Again, they turned to escape, but when they were about 100 miles south of Borneo, they found themselves on a collision course with Vice Admiral Ibo Takahashi’s flagship, the cruiser Ashigara, which was accompanied by the cruiser Myoko and other ships.
The Japanese gunners opened fire at 11:20 am. The Exeter returned fire, but was blanketed with a relentless barrage. She wound up dead in the water, and the coup de grace was delivered in the form of a torpedo from the destroyer Inazuma at around 11:45 am.
The Allied destroyers, laying a smoke screen, attempted to escape into a rainstorm. The Pope did manage to elude the enemy, but the Encounter was sunk by gunfire from the cruisers. Shortly before 2:00 pm, though, aircraft from the carrier Ryujo found the Pope, and sent her to the bottom as well.
At about the same time, back at the harbor at Surabaya, other Japanese aircraft destroyed the crippled destroyer Witte de With, the last Allied surface warship left in the Dutch East Indies.
Just as the IJA had developed a well-justified reputation for invincibility, the IJN had wiped the Dutch East Indies clean of an Allied naval presence, and they had done so in less than 48 hours without the loss of a single warship.