Today in History

1940 Turakina sunk by German raider in Tasman

The New Zealand Shipping Company freighter Turakina, en route to New Zealand from Australia, was sunk by the Orion 260 nautical miles west of Taranaki, following a brief gun battle – the first ever fought in the Tasman Sea. Thirty-six members (some sources say 35) of its largely British crew were killed. Twenty survivors, many of them wounded, were rescued from the sea and taken prisoner. 

The Orion was one of nine German 'auxiliary cruisers' (merchant ships converted into armed raiders) that stalked the world's oceans between 1940 and 1943, laying mines and preying on Allied merchant vessels sailing alone without naval escort. Altogether the raiders sank or captured more than 140 ships. But by 1943, as Allied sea and air power grew in strength, all of the raiders had been sunk or were confined to German ports.

The Turakina's captain had earlier promised that he would fight to the last if intercepted by an enemy raider. But in the end the freighter's solitary 4.7-inch defensive gun proved no match for the six 155-mm (5.9-inch) weapons of the German warship.

Earlier, in June, the Orion's mines had claimed the trans-Pacific liner Niagara off the Northland coast. Soon after sinking the Turakina, the Orion was joined in the South Pacific Ocean by another raider, the Komet, and an unarmed supply ship, the Kulmerland. Operating together, this small flotilla was responsible for the destruction of a further ten Allied vessels in the Pacific. One of their victims, in November 1940, was the NZ Shipping Company liner Rangitane – the biggest merchant vessel sunk by any German warship during the war. In early December, during a raid on the important phosphate island of Nauru, the raiders sank five merchant vessels in quick succession, including the New Zealand freighter Komata.

Image: the Turakina (NZETC)