Special Operations Australia

Special Operations Australia was part of the British clandestine organization SOE, some of whose members became its local nucleus after they had escaped from Singapore. It was proposed in March 1942 by the C-in-C Australian Forces, General Blamey, and approved by the Allied commander of the South-West Pacific Area (SWPA), General MacArthur. It was initially given the local cover name of Inter-Allied Services Department, or ISD, but when relations with its parent organization, SWPA's Allied Intelligence Bureau, became strained it was reorganized the following year and given a new cover name, the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD). ‘Z special Unit’ administered its Australian personnel and is the name by which SOA is most commonly known in Australia. Until May 1943, it also had a Dutch section, the head of which later ran Section III (Secret Intelligence and Special Operations) of the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service (NEFIS) based in Melbourne. It operated principally within SWPA, but also had the remit to operate in Thailand and China.

During 1942 SOA infiltrated parties to support guerrilla actions by Australian army units in Portuguese Timor and landed eight intelligence parties in Japanese-occupied Netherlands East Indies territory, six of which were betrayed and captured. (Other parties were dispatched there by NEFIS-III during the following years, with no success.) In September 1943 SOA canoeists mounted a successful operation (JAYWICK) against Japanese shipping in Singapore but a repeat operation (RIMAU) mounted the following year ended in disaster. Equally disastrous was the capture of a SOA signaller in Portuguese Timor in September 1943. He was forced to reveal his cipher and to contact SOA's HQ with messages written by his captors. This enabled the Japanese to ambush other SOE parties sent to Timor and though the Australian signallers deliberately broke their security procedures SOA HQ ignored their warnings and assumed they were still free. (For other examples of what the Germans called a Funkspiel, ‘radio game’, see Englandspiel and Rote Kapelle.)

From February 1945 SOA supported Australian forces operating against the Japanese in British and Dutch colonies in the SWPA by raising local resistance groups and undertaking various reconnaissance missions which preceded Australian landings at Balikpapan, Tarakan, and elsewhere. In Sarawak, for example, SOA-led guerrillas killed 1,500 Japanese and captured another 240. Altogether SOA sent 81 parties, totalling 380 men, into Japanese-occupied territory from 1942 to 1945. Its casualties were 69 dead and 7 captured. At 15 August 1945 its total strength was 1,700, 1,250 of whom were Australian.

Bibliography

Courtney, G. B. , Silent Feet (Melbourne, 1993).