Aerial port side view of the Broken Hill Pty Ltd (BHP) cargo vessel Iron Chieftain. The 4,812 ton ...

Aerial port side view of the Broken Hill Pty Ltd (BHP) cargo vessel Iron Chieftain. The 4,812 ton ship regularly sailed between Newcastle and Whyalla carrying coke and other material for shipbuilding. She was armed under the Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS) program in 1939 and carried a single 4 inch gun aft. The Iron Chieftain was sunk around 11.00 pm on 3 June 1942 about 27 miles east of Sydney in the general area where the coastal steamer Age had been shelled by a submarine only an hour earlier. Survivors reported that the ship's master, Captain Haddelsey, and the third officer, Mr Kennedy, sighted the submarine on the surface on the port side and watched it for about five minutes until the captain ordered "hard a'starboard", but before the ship could respond, a torpedo struck amidships on the port side. The Iron Chieftain sank in about five minutes with the loss of twelve of the crew. The names, in alphabetical order, of the men lost on the Iron Chieftain are: Harold Henry Bennett, Fourth Engineer Officer; Thomas Clarke, Bosun; Thomas R Glossop, Able Seaman; Marcus Gunn, Chief Engineer Officer; Lionel Haddelsey, Captain; Archibald Cook Kennedy, Third Officer; John Lander Kerr, Fireman; John Welblund Lindemann, Deck Boy, aged 17; Sidney Henry Shaw Sargent, Fireman; Sidney Francis Stafford, Wireless Operator; George Winchester Stronach, Fireman; and George Sutherland Swainson, Fifth Engineer Officer. The Japanese submarine responsible for the loss was thought to be either I 21 or I 24.