Nov. 29, 1939: cruiser HMAS PERTH [I] passes through the Culbra Cut in the Panama Canal, with spies behind every tree - RAN Historical.

6988. As we have mentioned previously, the RAN's newly acquired Modified Leander Class cruiser HMAS PERTH [I] was at Kingston Jamaica on her delivery voyage to Australia when WWII was declared. As a consequence she was detained on the West Indies Station mainly to protect oil tankers passing between Venezuela and Trinidad until RN ships could be sent to fill their post. It was at Kingston that PERTH's CO, Capt [later RADM] Harold Farncomb, an intelligence expert, had the famous canvas baffles erected on her funnels - ostensibly to confuse the rangefinders on an enemy ship by blurring the cruiser's outline at a distance: they may have also been conceived by Farncomb to deceive spies in Caribbean ports, and conceal the fact the Britain only had one ship on station at the time. To squeeze his imaginary squadron out even further, Farncomb was also known to have had a false third funnel erected on PERTH now and then to make her look like a County Class heavy cruiser. All this is pertinent to the image here, which we are seeing for the first time. In Nov. 1939 PERTH passed through through the Panama Canal and proceeded to Cocos Island, off Costa Rica, with orders to fuel the Royal Canadian Navy destroyers OTTAWA and RESTIGOUCHE. But Capt. 'Fearless Frank' Farncomb must have still been seeing still seeing Axis spies behind every second palm. For her return voyage through the Canal, as seen here, Farncomb has had the canvas baffles taken down and laid along the decks, so the spies will think this is another ship - not that Australian one that passed out the a week or two before, and which had been steaming around the Caribbean for the past three months with canvas baffles attached to her funnels. PERTH is returning here to Kingston, and will resume her escort and patrol duties from there until early March the following year. On March 2, 1940, homeward-bound HMAS PERTH passed through the Canal once more and indeed wearing her canvas baffles again - which must have thrown the Axis spies into confusion. How did she get back on this side of the canal again again? It is a story that illustrates both how the RAN had followed the Royal Navy tradition of encouraging lateral thinking and innovation on the part of its commanders, and - in short, how we won the war. POSTSCRIPT: There is a belief, reported in Mike Carlton's HMAS PERTH book 'Cruiser,' that the Australian ship may have passed within a ship's length of the German Pocket battleship ADMIRAL SCHEER at the height of a Caribbean hurricane that year. It seems lookouts on both ships had only enough time to be startled before each, going in opposite directions, disappeared into the spume. Moreover, it may have been this incident that led to Harold Farncomb acquiring his nickname 'Fearless Frank.' Escorting a convoy he signaled the policy he would be adopting on the appearance of a raider to the other ships. "My intention is to engage the enemy with my main armament and close him until I am in torpedo firing range," Farncomb is said to have signaled. " If gun-fire and torpedoes are not sufficient in disabling the raider, I intend to ram the enemy ship" As it turned out, when Farncomb DID encounter a suspected German raider in HMAS CANBERRA [I] in the Indian Ocean 15 months later [it actually turned out to be the raider's supply ship COBURG, joined by captured tanker KETTY BROVIG], Farncomb stood off at 21,000-19,000 yards [around 20 to 17 kms] and expended a Kings Ransom in 8-inch ammunition [a reported 280 shells] in encouraging the two merchant ships to scuttle, which they eventually did. Photo: Naval Historical Collection, It appears on the RAN Seapower Centre' history webpage for HMAS PERTH [I].

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