VISIT TO NEW ZEALAND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 30 July 1945, Page 6

VISIT TO NEW ZEALAND

FIRST BRITISH SUBMARINE Auckland, July 27. The first British submarine New Zealand has seen recently visited Auckland. Of About 700 tons, she was built by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow, and was first commissioned in November. 1013. She sank a total of 13 enemy ships in the Aegean Sea, four by torpedoes and nine by gunfire, before the end of the ■war in Europe resulted in her transfer to the British Pacific Fleet. Following the custom of the submarine service, the submarine had its own “Jolly Roger” flag, with four bars to record its sinkings by torpedoes and nine stars for its surface successes, but this flag was lost at Sydney. How it happened no one in the submarine knows. It was flying from the ship one day and gone the next. The captain is a younj? Australian, Lieutenant W. E. Littlejohn, KA. N.V.R., who before the war was a medical student. He had sailed to England round Cape Horn in a square-rigged sailing-ship and had returned to his own country as a sort of supernumerary greaser in the engine-room of a cargo ship. He has spent most of- the war in Submarines, first of all in Tuna, then ax first lieutenant of Shakespeare, later in Trusty, and finally in his present command. He has had much service in the Mediterranean, where he tvon the Distinguished Service Cross in Shakespeare, and in the North Sea. Lieutenant Littlejohn's first lieutenant is Lieutenant R. A. Hedgecocks, R.X., tke only regular naval officer in the “boat.” as submarines are generally called. The torpedo officer is Lieutenant M. H. H. Friend, R.N.V.R., who was a student before the war, and the navigating officer is Sub-Lieutenant G. F. Dacorabe, R.N.V.R., who was still at school when the war broke out. The average age of the officers is about 25, and the average age of the ship’s company is about 23. About 75 per cent, of them are “hostilities only” ratings, which means that they are not making the navy their career, but they have taken to the peculiar demands and stresses of the submarine service as if they were born to it.