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The ship that escaped capture disguised as a tropical island - World War II
HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen was a Dutch minesweeper built in the 1930s.
There were many Allied ships present in Java,
but the HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen would be one of the few-- and last-- to escape
from the overwhelming Japanese forces in 1942, because of one ingenious idea.
The minesweeper, belonging to the Royal Netherlands Navy,
was stationed at Surabaya in the Netherlands East Indies
along with several other ships when the Japanese forces were sweeping through the Pacific
and crushing the Allies.
By February 1942, the situation was growing critical
as the Japanese were approaching closer and closer after defeating a combined American British Dutch
Australian fleet at the Battle of the Java Sea and the medal of soon as straight the next day
The sea was now swarming with Japanese warships
and the skies were covered with Japanese aircraft.
Considering there were destroyed allied cruisers and destroyers everywhere,
there was zero chance of surviving an attack for a small minesweeper.
All of the remaining allied vessels were ordered to withdraw to Australia,
those remaining being HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen and three other ships.
HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen was an easy target, slow-moving
and very lightly armed with a 3-inch gun and two Oerlikon 20 mm cannons.
The other escaping minesweepers, HNLMS pierre de bitte and HNLMS Ilan du Bois,
were scuttled to prevent them from getting into enemy hands,
and HNLMS Yan van Amstel was destroyed by a Japanese destroyer in the Madura Strait with many lives lost.
The only way to make it out alive was to come up with a creative idea.
The idea? To turn the ship into a tropical island.
The captain ordered the crew to get to work.
They cut down trees and branches to camouflage the ship to look like a jungle canopy,
and painted the hull to look like rocks.
All 184 feet of the ship had to be covered to convey the deception.
Because the enemy was nearby, the Dutch crew couldn't risk them spotting a moving island.
So they only moved under the cover of night, moving from island to island
anchoring close during the daylight to blend in so the Japanese wouldn't notice them.
For eight days, the HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen and her crew
sneaked past the Japanese ships and aircraft and reached Fremantle, Western Australia, on March 20th, 1942;
the only minesweeper of the four to make it out, and the last vessel to successfully escape from Java.
The HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen's service did not end there
however, once the minesweeper arrives in Australian waters
It was commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy as an anti-submarine convoy escort vessel
It's Dutch crew were joined by British survivors of HMS Jupiter and Australian personnel
This led to a small feud as the Dutch and British both
Insisted that a portrait of their monarch should hang from the officers mess hall as was tradition
Eventually, it was decided that Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands would stay up instead of King George the sixth of the United Kingdom
Once again, thank you to our sponsor World of Warships for sponsoring this episode.
Click the link below to play World of Warships and collect an exclusive bonus starter pack.
New players can register with the code PLAYLANGLEY2019 to receive
300 doubloons, one million credits, the USS Langley premium aircraft carrier, three days of premium time, and more.