NAVY NEWS
NAVY OPERATION RENDERS HARBOUR SAFE
BY ENSIGN A KING RNZN
Ordnance discovered during Operation Render Safe in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea
ABOVE: Explosion sequence of Second World War ordnance being "made safe" by the Royal New Zealand Navy's explosive ordinance disposal team
LEFT: Crew from HMNZS Wellington help remove Second World War munitions from tunnels around Rabaul, Papua New Guinea
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apua New Guinea was heavily bombed by the Japanese in 1942 during the Second World War, with 3000 Japanese Marines landing on the shores of East New Britain. In the city of Rabaul, numbers grew as large as 110,000 Japanese by 1943. During the war, Rabaul was the most heavily defended
target in the southwestern Pacific. The Japanese military had prisoners of war dig approximately 700km of tunnels into the hills to evade attack from Allied forces. These tunnels served many uses, not only as hospitals, but also for hiding artillery and housing ammunition. Rabaul's war tunnels were also used for storing cargo and ammunition for submarines. The Japanese submarines would sail up to the outer part of the shallow reef, which dropped off steeply to 300m, and this enabled them to evade Allied air attacks. In 1994, two volcanoes on either side of Simpson Harbour erupted, covering Rabaul in ash and leaving thousands without homes. The city of Rabaul was no more and a new city was formed in Kokopo, east of Rabaul. In October 2011, HMNZS Wellington deployed for Operation Render Safe, a joint operation between the New Zealand, Australian and Papua New Guinean Defence Forces. The task was to remove remnants of war around Rabaul and to render Simpson Harbour, the entrance to Rabaul, safe. HMNZS Resolution surveyed Simpson Harbour in early October, mapping subsurface contacts for the Australian mine hunters HMAS Gascoyne and Diamantina to investigate. During
70 Professional Skipper January/February 2012
the survey a number of Second World War wrecks, including aircraft, other small craft and two previously unchartered wrecks, were discovered.
This information was then processed by the two mine hunters, who believed one of the contacts uncovered was of an almost intact Second World War submarine, in the centre of Simpson Harbour. Without Resolution conducting this survey, the wreck would otherwise have remained undiscovered. It is the first time that imagery showing this level of detail has been captured, with Resolution utilising her multi-beam echo-sounder for hydrographic data. The mine counter measures team then used their Remus autonomous underwater vehicle to progress the search into shallower water using its higher frequency sonar to identify smaller targets. Wellington worked as an operational platform for the New Zealand explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) and MCM teams, providing support on the water and ashore.
Each day the EOD team went ashore to locate, identify, neutralise and dispose of remnants of war. Many of the bombs located were in suburban areas around schools, alongside soccer fields and even within small eastern New Britain villages. One of the most significant finds saw 115 5in shells located in a remote tunnel in Kokopo, a suburb of Rabaul. The New Zealand, Australian and Papua New Guinean EOD teams, along with several members of the ship's company from the Wellington, transferred the explosives from the cave along a creek bed of altering terrain to four-wheel-drive vehicles located
