Ships
- HMAS Deloraine (J232) Captain from 22 November 1941
Desmond Aubrey Menlove was born on 24 August 1906 at Temora, New South Wales, the youngest of three children of Edward John Menlove, a bank clerk, and his wife Elsie Bertha, née Smith. On 1 January 1920 he entered the Royal Australian Naval College at Jervis Bay as a cadet midshipman. Defence cuts moved him from the permanent service into the Royal Australian Naval Reserve, and he went to sea in the merchant navy with several shipping lines, rising steadily while he kept up his reserve training. He was made midshipman in 1924 and lieutenant in 1932. On 2 July 1936 he married Hilda Marion Stevens at St Michael's Church of England, Vaucluse, in Sydney.
At the general mobilisation of the reserve he joined the light cruiser Adelaide on 1 September 1939 as a watch-keeping officer. Promotion to lieutenant commander came on 1 August 1940, and he became her navigator. In August 1941 he was appointed to a new Bathurst-class corvette building at Mort's Dock, Balmain. HMAS Deloraine commissioned at Sydney on 22 November 1941 with Menlove, a lieutenant commander of the Seagoing Reserve, as commanding officer. After trials she sailed for Darwin on 26 December and arrived on 7 January 1942. Escort work, anti-submarine patrol and minesweeping in the Arafura Sea began at once.
On 20 January 1942, while Deloraine was at sea off Darwin, she was sent to a position about sixty miles to the west. Japanese minelaying submarines, among them I-124, had been working against Allied ships in those waters. A lookout sighted a torpedo. Menlove turned the ship and the torpedo passed close astern. Sound contact followed, and Deloraine dropped a pattern of six depth charges. Oil and air rose over the position. She expended the rest of her charges, took on a fresh supply, and attacked again in the early hours of 21 January, with the corvettes Katoomba and Lithgow also present. The American destroyer Edsall had already hunted the submarine earlier that day. Study of Japanese records after the war showed that the first attack had destroyed I-124. Credit for the sinking, the first enemy submarine lost in Australian waters, was given jointly to Deloraine, Katoomba, Lithgow and Edsall. Menlove was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his conduct of the action.
Deloraine remained on the northern station under his command. She was in Darwin Harbour on 19 February 1942 when Japanese aircraft made the first raid on the port. The corvette escaped damage, and her company joined the rescue work among the ships and men struck in the harbour. On 5 March, on anti-submarine patrol off Darwin, she was attacked three times by a Japanese four-engined flying boat and again came through unharmed. Through the following weeks she ran escorts and patrols between Darwin and Thursday Island. Menlove left Deloraine on 5 May 1942.
Shore appointments followed at the anti-submarine school Rushcutter in Sydney and at the training depot Cerberus at Westernport, Victoria. On 10 October 1942 he took command of the corvette Kapunda and remained in her into the end of that year. From 15 February to 26 September 1943 he was executive officer of Kanimbla and of Westralia. Early in 1944 he commanded the corvette Latrobe. He then served in the landing ship Manoora during the assaults at Tanahmerah Bay and Wakde Island in April and May 1944. In August 1944 he assumed command of the depot ship Platypus. He was demobilised on 5 October 1945.
Menlove returned to the merchant service and later worked in Sydney as a life-assurance consultant with the Australian Mutual Provident Society. He remained on the reserve until 23 August 1951. Colleagues remembered a sharp, exacting officer with a dry wit, a man who treated work as his chief pastime. His marriage to Hilda ended in divorce in 1961. On 15 December that year, at the registrar general's office in Sydney, he married Jean Ruth Culliford, a secretary. He died at Elizabeth Bay on 1 September 1990 and was cremated. Jean and the two sons of his first marriage survived him.