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Re: HMS Bulolo
Posted by:
Peter Browne
()
Date: February 03, 2008 09:21PM
My interest in HMS Bulolo stems from the latter part of my Father's RAF service while he was serving as a Wireless Operator on board HMS Hilary, when she was the flagship for Force J, for the Normandy landings in June 1944 and then in Bulolo in 1945 when she went to the Far East.
He and others from the RAF unit on the Hilary were transferred to the Bulolo in the Spring of 1945 following a winter refit, including repairs to the damage she received off Gold Beach on the 7th June. They were destined for the Far East for the invasion of the Malay States which took place in September. This a journey I have already researched at some length, principally through the Bulolo's log books which are preserved at the Public Record Office at Kew.
Landing Ships Headquarters (Large) - or LSH(L)s
There were four LSH(L)s. They were, in approximate order of precedence according to their operational contribution:
HMS Bulolo: was MV Bulolo requisitioned from Burns Philps (erroneously spelled 'Phillips' elsewhere)
HMS Largs: was the seized French passenger liner Charles Plumier
HMS Hilary: was RMS Hilary requisitioned from the Booth Steam Ship Co
HMS Lothian: was the City of Edinburgh requisitioned from the Ellerman Line (not converted until 1944)
There is no doubt that the Bulolo was the doyenne amongst the LSH(L)s. The Hilary and Largs were both also key ships, but the Lothian was a late entrant in this particular role and was not completed in time for Normandy. All had served in other capacities while under requisition before being converted for the flagship role for amphibious assault forces with Combined Operations.
The LSH(L)s off Normandy
The three LSH(L)s were each acting as flagships for one of the so called British beaches - Juno of course had a large Canadian element. Whereas Bulolo was the flagship for Gold, the Hilary had command of the landings on Juno and HMS Largs did similarly for Sword. All three ships were the target of attacks and/or were damaged during Neptune.
The Bulolo was the only one of the three to suffer casualties - as a consequence of the air attack on June 7th. She had also come under fire from a shore battery at Longues within half an hour of anchoring early on D-Day; and only an hour earlier, the Largs had been forced to take evasive action and narrowly avoided a torpedo which passed under her bows during an attack by German Motor Torpedo Boats on the run in to Sword Beach - an escorting Norwegian destroyer, the Svenner, was sunk in the attack.
The Hilary and Largs were the targets of attacks by the Lutwaffe on the night of 12th/13th June. Both suffered near. Hilary identified a radio controlled glider bomb flying towards her on 22nd June which veered away in response, it was concluded, to electronic, or radio jamming, counter measures.
The Bulolo To Malaya for Operation Zipper
Operation Zipper was the planned invasion of the West coast of the Malay Peninsula to cut off the Japanese prior to the assault on Singapore. The invasion group was known as Force W.
The Bulolo had been fitted with air conditioning during the preceding winter's refit and, as my father recalls, had fresh water available for baths where the Hilary had fresh water for drinking only. He thinks Bulolo had a desalination plant fitted. Hilary was excluded from consideration for the Far East according to the post war analysis as she was a coal burner and so, for logistical reasons, was deemed unsuitable. The Bulolo was however supported by the Largs, already in the Far East for Operation Dracula, the landings at Rangoon earlier in the year. The Largs was reckoned to be pretty much unsuitable in the LSH(L) role being too cramped, though she was present on more operations than any of the other three ships.
The story that emerges from the log books is that the Bulolo left Southampton during the first week of June 1945 having worked up in the Solent during the latter part of May following her refit. She called at Greenock for further working up and loading before leaving for Gibraltar, Malta (very briefly, to offload an injured seaman who broke a leg falling down a hold), Alexandria, Port Said, Port Taufiq, Aden, and then at Bombay where the Bulolo was based for most of July. While in Bombay, a Court of Inquiry was held – presumably into the death of a stoker, who is reported in the log book during the passage across the Bay of Arabia from Aden to Bombay, as having been electrocuted.
Bulolo then sailed around the sub continent during August to Mandapam on the Northern shore at the Indian end of the broken isthmus with Ceylon. After sailing back to Bombay she travelled once more round to the East coast to Madras. During this rushing about, presumably to review preparations as the flag ship, Bulolo also called on one or more occasions at Colombo, Trincomalee and Cochin. All were ports from which the invasion fleet sailed eventually for Zipper.
She sailed in convoy from Madras at the beginning of September across the Bay of Bengal for Operation Zipper. This Operation, launched from an armada of ships of which Bulolo was again the flagship, took place on 9th September, initially across the Morib Beaches between Port Swettenham to the North and Port Dickson to the South - best located on a modern map as being the stretch of coast immediately South of Kelang, itself West of Kuala Lumpur.
Hundreds of first wave and follow up ships sailed from all of Bulolo's ports of call as above, at different times in a stream of fast and slow convoys converging somewhere to the South of the Nicobar Islands. Bernard Fergusson, in 'The Watery Maze', quotes figures of 300 ocean going ships with their naval escorts, more than 50 LSTs and ‘about 140 major landing craft’. This was a remarkable invasion - the nearest port from which the armada sailed was Madras some 1400 miles from the landing beaches.
The landings were conducted at dawn on 9th September to the original operational plan and timetable set earlier in the year. The landings took place with some trepidation. Although a week after the surrender to MacArthur in Tokyo Bay, it was still before the surrender at Singapore to Mountbatten and the Commonwealth Forces on 12th September. The Commanders of the landing force are reported as having been still uncertain about whether all the Japanese forces had ceased hostilities: the local Japanese Army Commander had vowed to fight on.
Whilst the landings took place unopposed, the subsequent co-ordination ashore was reportedly all the worse for the Bulolo’s hasty departure for the surrender ceremony at Singapore. More significantly, the beach conditions proved to be appallingly unsuitable. The reconnaissance party sent to test beach conditions some time earlier had failed to return. Tanks and other vehicles became stuck up to their axles, and further, in mud, and the fortifications were formidable. It seems to have been a disaster that didn't happen.
Elements from the Bulolo were present at the surrender ceremony in Singapore. She returned to the Morib Beaches on the evening of the 12th and remained in the area, mainly at anchor off Port Swettenham, until the beginning of October when the RAF unit disembarked and returned home. I am afraid that my researches then took me away from the Bulolo to follow the RAF unit home on an assortment of ships.
My Father - who spent the best part of 6 months in her - always speaks warmly of the Bulolo, rather than of the operation on which they had set out to undertake.
Public Record Office Kew
The log books of the Bulolo during her service with Royal Navy are available for inspection at Kew in the ADM / 53 file series. There is break from August 1944 to March 1945 for her post Normandy refit, but I believe they are complete going back to the beginning of her Naval service. Although they contain primarily details of the ship's speed and movements they do refer to some detailed events - for example, the timing of liberty boats ashore and sighting of other ships.
A post war analysis and evaluation of Landing Ships Headquarters (Large) undertaken by the Admiralty in the immediate post war period is on DEFE / 2 / 1301. This is a small goldmine of information running to some 20 pages of foolscap. It makes clear that the Bulolo was the best of all the ships who saw active service in that role.
The Captain’s report of the attack on the Bulolo on 7th June 1944 is also preserved on file. As I was only researching the Hilary at the time, I did not make a specific record of the file number. It cites an attack under cover of low cloud by what were believed, from brief sightings, to be 3 Focke Wulf 190s.
A good photograph of the Bulolo at anchor in the Solent in April or May 1945 exists on DEFE / 2 / 1113. I found this by chance tucked away in the file which lists minor modifications made to the Bulolo and other LSH(L)s, and is what I assume to be an otherwise unknown photograph. It is not in the IWM's collection, nor have I seen it in any of the reference books I have consulted. It represents Bulolo following the 1944/45 refit adorned with her new, and extensive, communications equipment - there appear to have been some extensive modifications to the bridge. It was in this form that she sailed out to the Far East from Greenock in June 1945 for Operation Zipper.
IWM
The Imperial War Museum have several photographs. One is an aerial shot of the Bulolo while an Armed Merchant Cruiser. There are also two of her as an LSH(L) at anchor in the Medway from the port and starboard quarters - the former appears in Warships of World War II - see the reference to this book below; and the latter is on page 129 of 'The D-Day Encyclopaedia' by David G Chandler (Helicon 1994). The IWM also has at least one long shot photograph of her in the Mediterranean and, as far as I can recall, there are some of the crew including in the operations and communications rooms. The collection is very well indexed.
The Bulolo in Books
The Bulolo is referred to in many of the accounts of the operations in which she was involved, mainly in the context of decisions made by her commanders, but hard information on her as a ship is difficult to come by.
'Warships of World War II' (by Lenton and Colledge, Ian Allan, 1964) is an authoritative summary of British and Dominion Ships over the period. That says:
"The importance of maintaining communications with the large number of military units involved in a large scale invasion, until a G.H.Q. was established ashore, cannot be overstressed. In fact it would not be overstating the case to say that success or failure, in operations of these sorts, was largely dependent on the maintenance of this communications link. This resulted in LSH's which were extensively fitted with communications equipment by which the naval and military commanders could exercise control and co-relate the activities of their many small and dispersed units. The LSH(L)s were all mercantile conversions, but the LSH(S)s [the 'S' being for Small] were naval flotilla vessels and were less elaborately equipped."
I would commend ‘The Watery Maze’ by Sir Bernard Ferguson (Collins, London 1961) which is subtitled ‘The Story of Combined Operations’. This mentions all the operations in which Bulolo was involved as an LSH(L) and runs to more than 400 pages. It is however more an account of the development of Combined Operations as an organisation, rather than as an account of the operations themselves, though some operations are described in outline. There are a dozen or so references to the Bulolo, including another fine photograph, which again I have not seen elsewhere, of her in Algiers Harbour after Operation Torch in November 1942 - a rough copy is attached. This is of course during the period you were in her. The book also contains an undated photograph of her Operations Room on the same plate opposite page 225; neither of these photographs are in the IWM’s Photographic Library.
Anthony Cooke of Carmania Press who advertises in the shipping press, has wrtten a book with a chapter on the Bulolo. However, it covers her mercantile career with refrenmce to his naval exploits.
I have also just discovered a DVD - on sale on Amazon entitled "Royal Navy at War in Colour" which has a short but very good quality colour sequence of the Bulolo under way, presumably somewhere in the Channel, shortly prior to her departure for the Far East. winter of 1944/45.
He and others from the RAF unit on the Hilary were transferred to the Bulolo in the Spring of 1945 following a winter refit, including repairs to the damage she received off Gold Beach on the 7th June. They were destined for the Far East for the invasion of the Malay States which took place in September. This a journey I have already researched at some length, principally through the Bulolo's log books which are preserved at the Public Record Office at Kew.
Landing Ships Headquarters (Large) - or LSH(L)s
There were four LSH(L)s. They were, in approximate order of precedence according to their operational contribution:
HMS Bulolo: was MV Bulolo requisitioned from Burns Philps (erroneously spelled 'Phillips' elsewhere)
HMS Largs: was the seized French passenger liner Charles Plumier
HMS Hilary: was RMS Hilary requisitioned from the Booth Steam Ship Co
HMS Lothian: was the City of Edinburgh requisitioned from the Ellerman Line (not converted until 1944)
There is no doubt that the Bulolo was the doyenne amongst the LSH(L)s. The Hilary and Largs were both also key ships, but the Lothian was a late entrant in this particular role and was not completed in time for Normandy. All had served in other capacities while under requisition before being converted for the flagship role for amphibious assault forces with Combined Operations.
The LSH(L)s off Normandy
The three LSH(L)s were each acting as flagships for one of the so called British beaches - Juno of course had a large Canadian element. Whereas Bulolo was the flagship for Gold, the Hilary had command of the landings on Juno and HMS Largs did similarly for Sword. All three ships were the target of attacks and/or were damaged during Neptune.
The Bulolo was the only one of the three to suffer casualties - as a consequence of the air attack on June 7th. She had also come under fire from a shore battery at Longues within half an hour of anchoring early on D-Day; and only an hour earlier, the Largs had been forced to take evasive action and narrowly avoided a torpedo which passed under her bows during an attack by German Motor Torpedo Boats on the run in to Sword Beach - an escorting Norwegian destroyer, the Svenner, was sunk in the attack.
The Hilary and Largs were the targets of attacks by the Lutwaffe on the night of 12th/13th June. Both suffered near. Hilary identified a radio controlled glider bomb flying towards her on 22nd June which veered away in response, it was concluded, to electronic, or radio jamming, counter measures.
The Bulolo To Malaya for Operation Zipper
Operation Zipper was the planned invasion of the West coast of the Malay Peninsula to cut off the Japanese prior to the assault on Singapore. The invasion group was known as Force W.
The Bulolo had been fitted with air conditioning during the preceding winter's refit and, as my father recalls, had fresh water available for baths where the Hilary had fresh water for drinking only. He thinks Bulolo had a desalination plant fitted. Hilary was excluded from consideration for the Far East according to the post war analysis as she was a coal burner and so, for logistical reasons, was deemed unsuitable. The Bulolo was however supported by the Largs, already in the Far East for Operation Dracula, the landings at Rangoon earlier in the year. The Largs was reckoned to be pretty much unsuitable in the LSH(L) role being too cramped, though she was present on more operations than any of the other three ships.
The story that emerges from the log books is that the Bulolo left Southampton during the first week of June 1945 having worked up in the Solent during the latter part of May following her refit. She called at Greenock for further working up and loading before leaving for Gibraltar, Malta (very briefly, to offload an injured seaman who broke a leg falling down a hold), Alexandria, Port Said, Port Taufiq, Aden, and then at Bombay where the Bulolo was based for most of July. While in Bombay, a Court of Inquiry was held – presumably into the death of a stoker, who is reported in the log book during the passage across the Bay of Arabia from Aden to Bombay, as having been electrocuted.
Bulolo then sailed around the sub continent during August to Mandapam on the Northern shore at the Indian end of the broken isthmus with Ceylon. After sailing back to Bombay she travelled once more round to the East coast to Madras. During this rushing about, presumably to review preparations as the flag ship, Bulolo also called on one or more occasions at Colombo, Trincomalee and Cochin. All were ports from which the invasion fleet sailed eventually for Zipper.
She sailed in convoy from Madras at the beginning of September across the Bay of Bengal for Operation Zipper. This Operation, launched from an armada of ships of which Bulolo was again the flagship, took place on 9th September, initially across the Morib Beaches between Port Swettenham to the North and Port Dickson to the South - best located on a modern map as being the stretch of coast immediately South of Kelang, itself West of Kuala Lumpur.
Hundreds of first wave and follow up ships sailed from all of Bulolo's ports of call as above, at different times in a stream of fast and slow convoys converging somewhere to the South of the Nicobar Islands. Bernard Fergusson, in 'The Watery Maze', quotes figures of 300 ocean going ships with their naval escorts, more than 50 LSTs and ‘about 140 major landing craft’. This was a remarkable invasion - the nearest port from which the armada sailed was Madras some 1400 miles from the landing beaches.
The landings were conducted at dawn on 9th September to the original operational plan and timetable set earlier in the year. The landings took place with some trepidation. Although a week after the surrender to MacArthur in Tokyo Bay, it was still before the surrender at Singapore to Mountbatten and the Commonwealth Forces on 12th September. The Commanders of the landing force are reported as having been still uncertain about whether all the Japanese forces had ceased hostilities: the local Japanese Army Commander had vowed to fight on.
Whilst the landings took place unopposed, the subsequent co-ordination ashore was reportedly all the worse for the Bulolo’s hasty departure for the surrender ceremony at Singapore. More significantly, the beach conditions proved to be appallingly unsuitable. The reconnaissance party sent to test beach conditions some time earlier had failed to return. Tanks and other vehicles became stuck up to their axles, and further, in mud, and the fortifications were formidable. It seems to have been a disaster that didn't happen.
Elements from the Bulolo were present at the surrender ceremony in Singapore. She returned to the Morib Beaches on the evening of the 12th and remained in the area, mainly at anchor off Port Swettenham, until the beginning of October when the RAF unit disembarked and returned home. I am afraid that my researches then took me away from the Bulolo to follow the RAF unit home on an assortment of ships.
My Father - who spent the best part of 6 months in her - always speaks warmly of the Bulolo, rather than of the operation on which they had set out to undertake.
Public Record Office Kew
The log books of the Bulolo during her service with Royal Navy are available for inspection at Kew in the ADM / 53 file series. There is break from August 1944 to March 1945 for her post Normandy refit, but I believe they are complete going back to the beginning of her Naval service. Although they contain primarily details of the ship's speed and movements they do refer to some detailed events - for example, the timing of liberty boats ashore and sighting of other ships.
A post war analysis and evaluation of Landing Ships Headquarters (Large) undertaken by the Admiralty in the immediate post war period is on DEFE / 2 / 1301. This is a small goldmine of information running to some 20 pages of foolscap. It makes clear that the Bulolo was the best of all the ships who saw active service in that role.
The Captain’s report of the attack on the Bulolo on 7th June 1944 is also preserved on file. As I was only researching the Hilary at the time, I did not make a specific record of the file number. It cites an attack under cover of low cloud by what were believed, from brief sightings, to be 3 Focke Wulf 190s.
A good photograph of the Bulolo at anchor in the Solent in April or May 1945 exists on DEFE / 2 / 1113. I found this by chance tucked away in the file which lists minor modifications made to the Bulolo and other LSH(L)s, and is what I assume to be an otherwise unknown photograph. It is not in the IWM's collection, nor have I seen it in any of the reference books I have consulted. It represents Bulolo following the 1944/45 refit adorned with her new, and extensive, communications equipment - there appear to have been some extensive modifications to the bridge. It was in this form that she sailed out to the Far East from Greenock in June 1945 for Operation Zipper.
IWM
The Imperial War Museum have several photographs. One is an aerial shot of the Bulolo while an Armed Merchant Cruiser. There are also two of her as an LSH(L) at anchor in the Medway from the port and starboard quarters - the former appears in Warships of World War II - see the reference to this book below; and the latter is on page 129 of 'The D-Day Encyclopaedia' by David G Chandler (Helicon 1994). The IWM also has at least one long shot photograph of her in the Mediterranean and, as far as I can recall, there are some of the crew including in the operations and communications rooms. The collection is very well indexed.
The Bulolo in Books
The Bulolo is referred to in many of the accounts of the operations in which she was involved, mainly in the context of decisions made by her commanders, but hard information on her as a ship is difficult to come by.
'Warships of World War II' (by Lenton and Colledge, Ian Allan, 1964) is an authoritative summary of British and Dominion Ships over the period. That says:
"The importance of maintaining communications with the large number of military units involved in a large scale invasion, until a G.H.Q. was established ashore, cannot be overstressed. In fact it would not be overstating the case to say that success or failure, in operations of these sorts, was largely dependent on the maintenance of this communications link. This resulted in LSH's which were extensively fitted with communications equipment by which the naval and military commanders could exercise control and co-relate the activities of their many small and dispersed units. The LSH(L)s were all mercantile conversions, but the LSH(S)s [the 'S' being for Small] were naval flotilla vessels and were less elaborately equipped."
I would commend ‘The Watery Maze’ by Sir Bernard Ferguson (Collins, London 1961) which is subtitled ‘The Story of Combined Operations’. This mentions all the operations in which Bulolo was involved as an LSH(L) and runs to more than 400 pages. It is however more an account of the development of Combined Operations as an organisation, rather than as an account of the operations themselves, though some operations are described in outline. There are a dozen or so references to the Bulolo, including another fine photograph, which again I have not seen elsewhere, of her in Algiers Harbour after Operation Torch in November 1942 - a rough copy is attached. This is of course during the period you were in her. The book also contains an undated photograph of her Operations Room on the same plate opposite page 225; neither of these photographs are in the IWM’s Photographic Library.
Anthony Cooke of Carmania Press who advertises in the shipping press, has wrtten a book with a chapter on the Bulolo. However, it covers her mercantile career with refrenmce to his naval exploits.
I have also just discovered a DVD - on sale on Amazon entitled "Royal Navy at War in Colour" which has a short but very good quality colour sequence of the Bulolo under way, presumably somewhere in the Channel, shortly prior to her departure for the Far East. winter of 1944/45.
