Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

PETTY OFFICER RICHARD NICHOLAS MCCONNELL 16393 RAN

Richard McConnell was born in Mount Morgan Queensland on the 15th of October 1905 and he enlisted in the RAN in April 1925.  He was the last of six children born to James and Annie McConnell. His father James, a publican passed away in 1910, leaving Annie to raise six children under the age of seventeen alone.

Richard was a good sailor, regularly having his Ability assessed as “Superior” and his character always as “Very Good”. He progressed quickly through the ranks, being rated as an Acting Leading Seaman in 1931 and being advanced to Petty Officer in 1933.  He served on the ships HMAS Tasmania, HMAS Sydney (1), HMAS Melbourne (1), HMAS Australia (2), HMAS Albatross, HMAS Moresby, HMAS Vendetta (1), HMAS Swan (2) before joining the Light Cruiser HMAS Perth in March 1940 when it arrived in Australia from the UK.

In 1931, Richard had married Florence Sorenson in Canterbury NSW, the couple had no children. They initially lived in Sydney before settling in Crib Point in Victoria when Richard was on a shore posting to Flinders Naval Depot, and then returning to Sydney when war broke out.

He served on Perth during escort duties in the Indian Ocean and in the Mediterranean, including taking part in the Battle of Matapan, and in the evacuation of troops from Crete. Perth returned to Sydney in August 1941 for a much-needed refit at Cockatoo Dockyard.  She would return to sea in December and she departed Sydney on her final deployment on the 26th of January and that would be the last time Richard would see Florence. Perth would sail via Western Australia before heading north to become part of the doomed ABDA Force defending the Dutch East Indies.

HMAS Perth was sunk in the Battle of Sunda Strait fighting alongside the USS Houston. Of the 681 men in Perth, only 328 survived the sinking of whom106, including Richard would die as POWs.

Those who survived did so in a myriad of ways.  Some swum to shore, others were picked up by Japanese ships and others survived in boats and rafts from the Perth and Japanese ships sunk in the battle.  Eventually most of the Perth men, along with survivors of Houston were housed in POW Camps on Java.  In the middle of 1942, they were shipped to Changi in Singapore and very soon after to Thailand and Burma to work on the infamous Burma Railway. Richard would survive the Burma Railway and in 1944 he was shipped to Japan to work as a slave labourer.

The men were immediately put to work under brutal conditions, they were already dreadfully malnourished after years of slave labour and poor food. Richard would pass away on the 30 March 1945 a little over three years after being taken prisoner. He was 39 years old. His body was later reinterred in the Yokohama Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery. His wife Florence, never remarried, passing away in Queensland in 1992.