Collins
Vice Admiral Sir John Augustine Collins KBE,CB, RAN (1899-1989) is the RAN’s most distinguished past Admiral and certainly the most dominant figure in Australian naval history during the 20th century.
VADM Collins was a graduate of the first intake of Cadet Midshipman in the 1913 founding of the Royal Australian Naval College at Osborne House, Geelong. Tasmanian by birth he was the first of this first class to achieve the position of First Naval Member of the Naval Board and Chief of Naval Staff (1948-1955) which position found him heading the RAN during the Korean War.
In command of the cruiser HMAS Sydney in the Mediterranean on 19 July 1940 the then Captain Collins and his crew sank the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni by gunfire off Crete recording the RAN’S most famous early victory of World War Two.
In 1942 the newly promoted Commodore Collins commanded all British Naval Forces in the East Indies /Malaya area after the fall of Singapore and suffered the Japanese victory in the Battle of the Java Sea.
After a year’s command of HMAS Shropshire (1943-1944) Collins took command of the Australian Squadron hoisting his pennant in HMAS Australia. In October 1944 he was wounded in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Recovered from his wounds he was the senior Naval Officer present at the surrender of the Japanese Forces aboard the battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945 in Tokyo Bay.
As a Rear Admiral John Collins was elected president of the Naval and Military Club in 1949 serving one year in that position.
It was universally accepted by the RAN family that VADM Collins should give his name to Australia’s largest and most expensive Naval project ever - the construction of the six Collins class submarines.
A firm believer in luck VADM Collins once wrote that:
“the hardest part of a naval career is that one’s future hangs on a thread and there are more chances of that thread breaking than in most walks of life”.
CAPT Joe Lukaitis RFD RANR