SOMERTON MAN: USS NEW ORLEANS,, CA 32, A MATTER OF DETAIL. UPDATED 5th November 2018

 USS NEW ORLEANS:
EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

In the previous post, we reviewed the information that was found in the letter Q on the Somerton Man code page. It very clearly told us that HMAS Deloraine, J232, had at some point been in close proximity to the USS New Orleans. Various official documentation was examined and from those documents, we were able to ascertain that the only time that the two ships were in close proximity was on Sunday <arch 7th 1943 in Sydney Harbour.

A number of questions were raised not the least of which was related to the person who had furtively written down the details of both ships and encoded that information within the letter Q, mainly just where could they have been when this was done?

The answer to that question becomes obvious when we examine the chain of events that saw the USS New Orleans end up in dry dock at Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour, bear with me, it's important:

THE BATTLE OF TASSAFARONGA

On the 30th November 1942, the USS New Orleans was engaged in a sea battle known as the battle of Tasaafaronga off Guadacanal:

In the course of the battle, the USS New Orleans was struck by a single torpedo that hit the ship in the forward magazine, it blew the bow of the ship off back to the second turret.

Before & After the torpedo strike:

8 hours after the strike, 1st December 1942 at Tulagai:

As you can see, it was nothing short of a miracle that the ship survived at all. Nonetheless, it did and the crew and others set to work camouflaging the New Orleans:

New Orleans remained at Tulagi until 12th December with the crew shoring up the damage and making the ship as ready as possible for perilous journey back to Sydney arriving at Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour on Christmas Eve, 1942. the journey was carried out with the ship travelling backward all the way into Sydney Harbour. 

A prefabricated stub bow was made up and fitted, this took a while; it would be fair to say that during that time the enormous damage to the Cruiser would have been well known amongst the local population.

The new bow was attached and in this photograph, you can see the relatively small Hull number '32'. 

Note that the number is on the starboard side of the ship:

Set to go on March 7th 1943, moving up Sydney Harbour to the heads 'I think' although the landscape does not look terribly familiar, it could be a test run part way up the Lane Cove River, note in this photograph we can just see the outlines of the hull number '32' on the starboard side just below the forward gun turret and the numbers appear to be darkened:

Underway on March 7th 1943, she would have steamed past the Deloraine as per the log excerpts in the previous post:

Note that the barrels of the guns from number 2 turret were removed and were actually stored towards the rear of the ship.

This last image shows the New Orleans after the permanent repair had been carried out at Puget Sound shipyard, believed to have been taken on July 30th, 1943:

THE CONCLUSION

What we can conclude is that the ships hull number, 32, may not have been visible from the Port side of the ship, in other words, it would not have been seen from Georges Head, however, given that many people would have known the identity of the strange looking ship then it is possible that the observer knew the ship was the New Orleans.

The bottom line is there is a possibility that the observer was situated on the South Head/Watson's Bay side of the harbour which was a RAN Radar/ ASDIC training installation at the time.

As an aside, the CO of the training school, first opened in January 1943, was a certain Lieutenant Commander Sidney Francis RN. Strange world :)


The Hull number for the Deloraine whilst not painted large was of a reasonable size and it was viewable from the Port side of the vessel which would also mean it would have been visible from George's Head. In fact, you could argue that it would have only been known that both ships departed together from Georges Head or North Head or close by. I don't have the date for the image below, camouflage paint was applied in different colours, in fact, there is an entry in the Deloraine's log regarding their preference for US Navy paint:

UPDATED: 5th November 2018

The Dockyards at Cockatoo Island in Sydney recorded the fact that the USS New Orleans had lost 150 feet of its length due to the torpedo attack.