abraham cransen.

Abraham Cransen: Disguised warships that evaded the enemy's terrible guard

Huge sea. The roar of thick waves all around. War ships equipped with heavy weapons and artillery of the enemy are patrolling the distant borders. Bombers are flying overhead from time to time. Everyone else is the enemy of a ship at sea. There is no way to survive the war, the 45 soldiers of the ship can avoid death only if they can cross the difficult encirclement of this terrible guard and escape to the naval borders of the friendly country. In 1942, during World War II, the Allied warship HNLMS Abraham Cransen was struck by a Japanese onslaught on the Indonesian sea border. And overcoming this death trap, the ship's crew reached Australia with a great deal of intelligence. Today's article is about the story of that adventurous journey.



HNLMS Abraham Cransen

HNLMS Abraham Cransen was a minesweeper warship of the Dutch Navy, the Royal Netherlands Navy. Minesweeper means that the ship's job was to detect and deactivate mines in the waterway. Built in the 1930s, the ship was stationed in the then Dutch colony of the Netherlands East Indies during World War II. Today's Indonesia and Malaysia were under that colony. In late 1941, Japan, one of the Axis powers, invaded the region. Allied warships stationed there were then instructed to retreat to Australia, another Allied power. After receiving this instruction, Abraham Cransen left for Australia.

Abraham Cransen is one of eight Ian van Amstel-class minesweepers built for the Dutch Navy in the late 1930s. It was incorporated into the Navy in 1936. With a crew capacity of 45, the 48-ton ship was 184 feet long. It contained an automatic heavy weapon, two cannons and a submarine destructive explosive. The ship is named after the famous 16th century Dutch naval commander Abraham Cransen.



Equipped warship Abraham Cransen

The then Dutch colony was based in Surabaya, present-day Indonesia, where Abraham Krensen invaded Japan in 1941. In 1942, the Japanese navy, the Imperial Japanese Navy, defeated the Allies in two successive battles on the Java Sea and the Sunday Strait. The largest naval battle since World War I was the Battle of the Sea of ​​Java, where the combined navies of the United States, England, the Netherlands, and Australia were defeated by the Japanese navy. In this battle six warships of the allied forces sank and 2300 soldiers were killed. Shortly afterwards, another Japanese attack on Sunday sank three warships in the United States, Australia and the Netherlands, killing 1,071 Allied troops. After these two extreme defeats, the rest of the Allied ships stationed in the region were instructed to quickly return to Australian waters.

When this order was given, there were only four Allied warships left. The Japanese navy and air force are on full-time patrol, equipped with extensive combat equipment. There is no way to escape to Australia as instructed. In this situation, the soldiers of the two ships dug their own ships and sunk them so that the Japanese could not capture the two ships. Another ship sank while fleeing through the Lombok Strait and was attacked by a Japanese warship. Three of the four were devastated. Abraham Cransen was left completely alone in the face of Japanese naval patrols at sea and air strikes from the air.



Abraham Cransen at the base

As I mentioned earlier, Creonson's military might was limited to one automatic heavy weapon, two cannons and a submarine destroyer. At that time it was not possible for it to stop any attack of the terribly powerful warships of Japan, the victory was much later. If a bomb is dropped from a bomber, then there is no point. Meanwhile, the speed of the ship was only 15 knots, that is, only 26 kilometers per hour. With this snail's speed and weak weapons, it was almost impossible for the ship to evade the Japanese guard.

What can be done? Creensen's army set an example of how the eagerness to survive can sharpen the human intellect. There were then about eighteen thousand islands across the Indonesian Sea, each island filled with vegetation. They decided to disguise the whole ship as if it were one of those jungle islands! The island ship will then be taken to Australia. The ship's soldiers were desperate to use this strange and adventurous intellect.

The shipwreck is off the coast of the islands. The ship's crew all went down. They started cutting down trees from the jungles of the island. He is an outstanding hard worker. The tree should be cut in such a way that the shape of the cut tree remains the same as the original tree. They began to pick up the whole tree with the call of the ship. One can only guess how many trees are needed to cover the whole of this huge ship. There is the fear of attacking Japan at every moment. Once the planes patrolling the sky caught my eye. That's where Salil ends. In this life-and-death situation, the soldiers began to cut down the trees and bring them to the ship. The trees were placed on the ship in such a way that from above it looked like a green canopy of forest.



A part of the cransen covered with trees

It is no longer possible to cover the whole ship with trees every inch. That's why I came up with the idea. They painted the parts of the ship that looked like mud and stones. Seen from above, it seems that there is a little soil around the forest.

The task of disguising the whole ship is finally over. But even then the word remains. Although it looks like an island full of trees from the sky, if the Japanese pilots see a part of the island moving at the speed of a ship with a structure as high as a ship's antenna, they will not have any difficulty in catching the matter. . It is a matter of moment for them to set fire to the moving forest with bombs. So we have to make arrangements so that the eyes of the air force can be deceived.



Who can find the islander Cransen?

Such a large ship has been transformed into an island who will solve this problem in their minds. The solution is that no movement can be made in daylight. The ship will be carried forward only at night.

As soon as daylight broke, they anchored the ship near the islands of the sea. And when it got dark, the ship began to sail every night. There were still 16,508 islands in the Indonesian Sea. Of these, the number of islands has risen to 16,509, which the Japanese have never noticed. And their eyes have also escaped the fact that this latest island is changing its location every night, thinking of what would happen if they realized it, and Creonson's crew began to pray that life would be saved on this voyage after so much hard work and ingenuity. .

With this great fear the ship sailed away. The Japanese troops could not catch the clever loophole. After eight days on the death trap of Japanese aircraft and warships, Abraham Cransen finally reached Fremantle, Australia, on March 20, 1942. Victory is human intellect and wisdom. In the midst of a dire crisis, he is determined to find a way out of the crisis

One of his teachings was written in the pages of history by the soldiers of the warship Abraham Kreensen.



Abraham Cransen kept in the Naval Museum

After the Netherlands arrived in Australia in 1942 as the last ship of the East Indies, the ship was added to the HMAS Abraham Cransen in the Royal Australian Navy, where it was assigned as a patrol vessel to ward off submarine attacks. It was later recaptured by the Dutch navy in 1943, but the ship operated on Australian waters for most of World War II. At the end of the war, the ship was incorporated into the rebel forces in the East Indies. It was brought back to the Netherlands in 1956. It was awarded in 1960 for the training of naval cadets in the Netherlands. The last time Abraham Cransen was housed in the Dutch Navy Museum was in 1995 for a museum exhibition. The ship is now there to witness the adventurous voyage of history.