Seventy years old in October 2011, the Royal New Zealand Navy is today an integral part of the New Zealand Defence Force. But its 1941 establishment was the result of a long process of naval development.
When the Royal New Zealand Navy came into being on 1 October 1941, its main combat units were two Leander-class cruisers: Achilles and Leander. Although its early war was quieter than the Achilles, the Leander was to see dramtic action in the Pacific War.
When HMS Achilles opened fire on the German ‘pocket battleship’ Admiral Graf Spee on 13 December 1939, it became the first NZ unit to engage the enemy in the Second World War. Seventy one years on, the Battle of the River Plate still holds a special place in this country's naval history.
Although some gunboats were acquired by the colonial government during the New Zealand Wars in the 1860s and torpedo boats for the coast defences in the 1880s, the genesis of the modern RNZN dates from 1887.
New Zealand was one of the first states to answer the Security Council's call with combat assistance (sixteen would eventually do so). On 29 June, the government offered two frigates, and HMNZS Tutira and Pukaki left Auckland on 3 July.
By mid-1940 the Leander was escorting convoys in the Red Sea and Aden areas. In between escorting merchant ships, the cruiser further pummelled the Italian submarine Torricelli, crippled and driven ashore by British warships, and shot up shore facilities.
The Leander was hit just abaft the ‘A’ boiler room. Four hundred and ninety kilograms of high explosive killed everyone in that boiler room and the blast, venting up through the boiler room duct, also blew eight men from the No.1 102 mm mount over the side, where any survivors drowned.
