1941, Thursday 06 November;
WS.11X was a very significant convoy by Singapore’s standards, although the troopships, cargo ships and a lone tanker, only counted five in number, escorts excepted. Four had originated from the UK, as part of WS.11, leaving at the end of August, the large tanker joined them at Bombay, from the oil refineries at Abadan. Its make-up was a bit rushed, responding to Churchill’s decision to fully reinforce the Far East after the meeting with Roosevelt. And it was special because it carried a British Secret Weapon.
Planning for its arrival had ensured good preparations had been made. A slight change of plan had been enforced on the British, earlier, in the South Atlantic, the troopship Orion had rammed the battleship HMS Revenge, and in doing so, had severely damaged her bow. A temporary repair had been made in Cape Town, but she was immediately unloaded and taken into one of the Keppel Harbour Dry Docks for permanent repair. Also due for dockyard work at the Naval base was the Crown Colony class light cruiser HMS Mauritius, who had been part of the convoys escort. She had severe corrosion problems in the ship’s fire main, which was made of copper, caused by the internal degaussing system, and required replacing.
The heighten tensions in the Far East were reflected in that the Police had made the areas around the main ports and the naval base, restricted areas, requiring identity cards to be shown and checked. Additionally, Special Branch have been closely monitoring known Japanese agents, and three had been detained for questioning, while found in restricted areas, before later being released, after a lengthy delay while SB had satisfied themselves there was no security breach.
Furthermore, the disembarking of troops and unloading of war material would normally take several days, but the authorities had planned for around the clock working. In Singapore, large numbers of motor transport had been assembled to quickly take troops to local transit camps, and numerous empty trains were parked in sidings at various stations on the island, waiting to be called forward for loading.
The two cargo ships left the convoy earlier, and had arrived in Penang, one dropping anchor in Penang Roads while the other was berthed against the railway wharf at Prai. As night fell, so the holds opened and two cranes began to pick out some of her cargo. Under a full moon, with dockyard floodlights throwing a harsh light on them, the tarpaulin covered vehicles were being quickly lowered onto a train pulling 12 specially built flatbeds, with double bogies at either end. A little before midnight, the train, fully loaded, pulled away, at a very sedate 10 mph, bound for Bukit Mertajam, two minutes later, a second train that had been waiting, pulling another 11 special flatbeds, took its place, and the work continued. By 4.30am, the second train had been loaded, and was away, while the cranes would spend most of the rest of the day unloading smaller, less sensitive cargo, emptying the ship. The following two nights, it would be the turn of the second ship, unloading in the same fashion.
The trains arrived at their destination, 7 miles away, at a partly finished barracks, on a rubber plantation, west of the town, just south of Mertajam Hill, fed by a secondary rail line curling away from the mainline before town. Once the trains were unloaded, they were sent back to Prai for tomorrows load. The reason for this was simple, they only had 23 of these special heavy-duty flatbeds, the FMSR workshops in Kuala Lumpur could only convert three a week, and had only started in early September, under great secrecy.
The unloading was immeasurably helped by the troops of the 2nd Northamptonshire Yeomanry, who were crawling all over their Valentine Mk II tanks, filling diesel tanks, fitting batteries, starting engines, and carefully driving off the flatbeds via a ramp, and into pre-sited positions among the rubber trees. 52 Valentine’s had to be accommodated, 6 of which were replacements for the close support tank, which weren’t available. Work on the barracks had been stopped, only half built, due to the desire to maintain secrecy as much as possible, leaving much of the regiment of 600 men, under canvas. Building work would only resume weeks later, when the fighting had begun. By late morning, all the tanks were driven off the train, canvas covered, and snuggled in their new camp under the trees of the rubber plantation.
The weeks previous had seen a step up in cargo ships arriving from the UK, Canada and elsewhere, as the trickle of war material became a steady flow. Another 60 Marmon Harrington armoured cars, fresh from the factory in South Africa, to equip Indian cavalry units, Hurricanes and other crated aircraft, aero engines, a few more ASDIC sets, lots of vehicles, including gun tractors, mobile workshops, a few recovery vehicles. And spares, stores, loads of it, for the cavernous warehouses, required to support this growing army.
Meanwhile, back in Singapore, the unloading of the rest of the convoy began. The motor transport was busy ferrying troops to transit camps, the gunners of the 5th Field Regt RA and the 80th AT Regt RA, along with their 16 4.5-inch howitzers and 48 2-pounder anti-tank guns respectively, were taken to one barracks. The drafts of British infantry, artillery, engineers, ECO’s, a few staff officers, were distributed to various camps and posts. A Royal Navy draft, mostly newly trained with a smattering of experienced being promoted to ships or shore establishments, more Wrens for Kanji, as well as a Royal Marine contingent. And a lot for the RAF, a big number of ground crew, some air crew, administrational and a variety of tradesmen required to keep the units running, 50 pairs of drop tanks for the Hurricanes and somewhere in it all, a small RAF “Y” interception team, 52 Wireless Unit, also heading for Kanji to boost the effort in intercepting Japanese Navy JN-25 Radio Coded messages, providing more material for the decoders. Carried with them was an analogue decrypting machine, built by the Americans, able to decrypt Japanese diplomatic messages. It was the third one built, gifted to the British, and code-named ‘Purple’.
