GREAT BARRIER REEF – CHINA PASSAGE

LEON EMERSON QM 1/c                                         USS YUMA ATF – 94

The Great Barrier Reef is a reef that extends from the upper Northeastern part of Australia from Darwin almost all the way South to Sydney a few miles from shore. Few ships navigate through the reef or inland from the reef to Australia proper without a pilot.  

In the New Guinea campaign our forces were leapfrogging the Jap strong points. We had few ships, guns, ammunition and supplies. They were just beginning to arrive from America. The Australian Army was mostly in North Africa. Most of the able bodied men were in North Australia preparing for a possible invasion by Japan. MacArthur was trying out a new strategy of going around the Japanese strong points, the so-called “leap frog” method.   

We were in Hollandia, New Guinea when a Victory type cargo ship was torpedoed in its engine room. They were able to save the ship. The cargo was unloaded and our ship was ordered to take it to Townsend, Australia where they needed it as storage and general warehouse space. 

We hooked up our towline to the ship and started south. When we got to the Great Barrier Reef, China Passage, (one of the few passageways through the barrier reef) a Destroyer signaled us that there was a Jap sub in the area that had torpedoed several ships. They had been unable to sink it. The reefs were so shallow that their antisubmarine gear would not work well. That had not been able to catch it on the surface. We were advised of the situation and told to be careful. (This was a way of telling us that we went through at our own risk.) They were not going to escort us through.  We thought that was excellent advise but our options were limited. We were advised that they needed this ship as soon as possible.  

The sky was overcast and misting rain. We knew it would be very dark that night. The passage was shallow with many twists and turns and lots of rocks and shoals. The alternative way though the Great Barrier Reef was almost 150 miles south, out of the way. Captain Hayes and Navigator Hardman discussed this and the Skipper decided to wait around and try our luck at night. The darkness, with almost no light, would prevent a sub from getting a fix on us for a torpedo. Intelligence kept telling us that the Japs did not have Radar as far as they knew. We hoped that this was the case with that sub. The Captain felt it was better to go through now than wait until light the next day when we would make a tempting target.  

The Captain asked us if the LORAN could take us through in view of the unreliability of all of our navigational aids. We discussed what the LORAN set could do in assisting our navigation, and plotting of courses, our lack of training and trust of this system. I explained my worry and lack of reliable knowledge.  

Our first generation surface search RADAR (SO-1) was not too useful unless there was an island or rock outcropping that it could pick up. When the rocks are barely out of the water it is almost totally unreliable. It must also be shown on the charts to take a bearing on it. We often used it in navigation when we could get a clear bearing cut on a spit of land clearly marked on the charts. There were many twists and turns in the passage way through this reef. 

The charts covering this area in early 1944 were fairly unreliable. Most were compiled from photographs taken on the Amelia Earhart search expedition. We found lots of hidden reefs, rocks and shoals that were uncharted. Our navigation methods of taking star, sun and moon shots sights with the sextant and the estimation system of dead reckoning was not accurate within several hundred yards. All are useless on a cloudy, stormy night. The usual methods were almost useless under these circumstances, and, especially at night with almost no ambient light.  There are no buoys or lighthouses through the barrier reef. 

Let me digress a bit about our dilemma. In Sydney, our last port, they had installed on our ship a new navigation system called LORAN, which had two oscilloscopes, which were supposed to give you the latitude and longitude allowing you to plot the course on the LORAN navigation charts. This assumed you knew how to use it. The books were poorly written in tech talk, which was a lot of Greek to an untrained layman such as me. I had gone over the technical books and probably understood about 20% of it.  The installers tried to explain the system but it was clear that they had never used it in navigation. Their job was installations. We were told that we would have to send a key person to Pearl Harbor, the nearest school to receive instruction. I naturally started fantasizing about getting some liberty in Honolulu. The installation technician spent a little time trying to explain it to me but most of the time he was talking over my head. (Those liberty fantasies probably diverted my attention.) It was clear that he had never used it himself. Being sent to Pearl Harbor for training was most unlikely; I knew that it was wishful thinking. When I mentioned it to the Executive Officer he told me to “zip it up”. “You are going no where”! We were short in all departments and I was leading quartermaster on the bridge and no one else was trained for my duties. 

The technician left me two manuals on operation, each about three inches thick. The books said that the operator was to line up the two sign waves and the intersection would give you the latitude and longitude, which you could then plot to the special LORAN charts, which in turn you could re–plot on the regular navigation charts. According to the books this would always tell us where we were. There was lots of warning that each wave must be either a ground wave or a sky wave but no way of knowing which one and they must not be mixed.  

I knew enough about radio to know that the ground waves had to be close to the transmitting station, but the location of each station was a “secret” not even available to the operators (or the technicians). I could only guess that the enemy could easily knock them out if published. Books had extensive cautions set out in the directions. Most of these cautions were technical words not explained and I had no dictionary explaining, not even a glossary of terms.  

One emphatic caution kept pointing out not to mix ground waves (when you were near the transmitting station) and air waves when you were some distance from the LORAN transmitting stations. I found that the reason they did not tell us where the stations were was to protect them from enemy destruction. However, each of the waves seems to look the same on the scope and in the book illustrations. After several days of trying to figure out what the books was trying to tell me I concluded that this navigation system was a method of trusting to faith without telling me how faith looked. I was thoroughly perplexed. Maybe I had to have faith and trust to our fate. I did not have much of either. I spent hours playing with the system and knew only a little more when I finished as when I started.  

Navigator, Mr. Hardman, Ensign Green, the communications officer, and I finally concluded we did not know what or how it was supposed to be used and under no circumstances could we use this to navigate.  

I kept playing with it in my spare time trying to figure it out. I got fairly proficient with it when it agreed with our regular navigation plots. The biggest problem was the time it took to make the conversions. This was the first generation of LORAN (which is now an excellent navigation system – now being replaced with GPS {Global Positioning System}), 

Leave it to fate, the first time when we really needed it was when we were going through the China Passage of the Great Barrier Reef. We started out using dead reckoning, RADAR and the LORAN gear. Between Peterson on the Radar, myself on the LORAN gear, the Navigator, Communications Officer and native wisdom of the Captain we made it through the harrowing passage in that Great Barrier Reef. I think we all regarded that as a crowning achievement. 

Back to reality, we had to get through that passage without ending up another victim and we had to do it tonight.  

We started through with everybody at full attention and each working at their assigned stations. Mr. Hardman was plotting on the charts and calling courses out to the Captain who had the con. Mr. Green was plotting on the LORAN charts and calling coordinates to Mr. Hardman. The soundman was watching for reefs and depth Fathometer trying to keep us off the rocks. Streeter and the Deck officer were trying to see that the towed ship was not hitting the rocks as we carefully picked our way through the passage. The passage was narrow and lots of twists and turns.  

I felt that all of the LORAN waves I was receiving were sky waves and not ground waves as the probabilities were that the stations were located on the mainland of Australia and not on any islands in the barrier reef.  

We finally made it through after several hours of by guess and by God navigation in the dead of night and light rain. We all wiped our respective brows and heaved sighs of relief and giving each other kudos and well done. We felt that getting through the reef was our fate as opposed to our entry when we thought it was our faith that would take us through. Maybe it was a lot of both. 

As soon as we got into Townsend, got that ship tied up to a dock the next morning, the Auzzies seem to be bringing up trucks with material and supplies and loading them into the ship. They built a platform and were running their Lorries on to the ship and unloading a lot of supplies and materials into the holds within the hour after arriving. They were really glad to see us. We were all invited to go ashore and party. We did not need much encouragement. We could not buy a drink. I think half of the Australian men were in Townsend. Everyone thought the Japs could be hitting any time. They were all anxious about the potential of invasion so we were the visiting heroes for one night.  

We had a good time ashore that night. I do believe the whole crew that got ashore got plastered. I know I did. The following day we were loaded with supplies and fuel and put to sea again not to see another liberty port for many months.  

I have often looked back on this as a great adventure in my young life. It certainly is vivid in my memory, thankful that we made it.

Leon Emerson QM 1/c

USS Yuma ATF 94

2004