On the night of 28 February 1942 the American heavy cruiser USS Houston and the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth, the only large Allied ships to survive the Battle of the Java Sea, ran into a Japanese invasion convoy near the Sunda Strait, off Java. Both cruisers were sunk soon after midnight.
Battle of Sunda Strait
28 February 1942 · 84 years ago
After the Java Sea
On 27 February 1942 an Allied force of cruisers and destroyers went out to stop the Japanese invasion of Java and was defeated in the Battle of the Java Sea. Houston and Perth were the only large Allied ships to survive it.1 › Battle of the Java Sea, 1942
On 28 February the two cruisers put in at Tanjung Priok, the port of Batavia, where they could take on only a little fuel and ammunition. They were ordered to sail that night through the Sunda Strait to Tjilatjap on the south coast of Java, and they left Tanjung Priok that evening.2
Into the invasion fleet
That night the Japanese Western Java invasion convoy was landing troops in Bantam Bay, on the coast of Java, guarded by cruisers and destroyers. At about 11 p.m. the Allied cruisers, near St. Nicholas Point, met a Japanese destroyer and opened fire. Japanese destroyers and cruisers closed in and fired a great many torpedoes at the two ships.3
Who sank the Japanese ships lost that night is disputed. The Australian War Memorial credits Perth and Houston with sinking a transport and a minesweeper and damaging others. Andrew Robertson, writing in the Journal of Military and Veterans' Health, puts those losses down to torpedoes fired by the Japanese heavy cruiser Mogami.4
Two cruisers lost
Perth was hit by several torpedoes and sank at about 12:25 a.m. on 1 March. Houston, on fire and still fighting, was hit by more torpedoes and sank soon after Perth. Both captains, Hector Waller of Perth and Albert H. Rooks of Houston, were killed.5
Survivors and the count of the dead
More than 350 of Perth's men died, and just over 300 survivors were taken prisoner by the Japanese. Of Houston's crew of about 1,000, 368 survived to become prisoners. The figures differ in detail from source to source: Robertson, for example, counts 375 dead from Perth, while the Australian War Memorial gives 353 killed in the battle and four more who died soon after reaching shore.6
For the wider war at sea that year, see our guide to the greatest battles of the Pacific War and the Battle of the Coral Sea, fought two months later.
Battle of Rheinfelden, 1638: beaten on Sunday, victorious on Wednesday
28 February 1638 · 388 years ago
A French-allied army under Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar fought Imperial and Bavarian forces under Johann von Werth and Federico Savelli near Rheinfelden on the Rhine, in the Thirty Years' War. Beaten in the first clash, Bernhard struck back days later and captured both enemy leaders.
Read the full story of Battle of Rheinfelden, 1638: beaten on Sunday, victorious on Wednesday ›
