Ships
- HMAS Arunta (I30) Captain from 30 March 1942
Commander James C. Morrow of the Royal Australian Navy became captain of HMAS Arunta (I30) on 30 March 1942. That was the day the destroyer commissioned at Sydney, and Morrow was the first officer appointed to command her. She was a Tribal-class fleet destroyer, built for the Australian navy at Cockatoo Island, and she entered service while Japanese forces held Rabaul and were pressing down through New Guinea.
Port Moresby depended on seaborne supply. Submarines and aircraft made the run from Australia work for a fast escort that could screen a convoy and fight if a contact appeared. After commissioning, HMAS Arunta (I30) finished her trials and joined that duty, with Morrow in command.
Early in August 1942 the Japanese submarine Ro-33 sank the motor vessel Mamutu off the Papuan coast and fired on people in the water. Few of those aboard survived. On 29 August, off Port Moresby, HMAS Arunta (I30) found Ro-33 and attacked with depth charges. The submarine was sunk. Under Morrow, the destroyer had removed from the approaches to the port the submarine responsible for the Mamutu attack.
Early in September 1942 HMAS Arunta (I30) was off Milne Bay. A Japanese landing force had come ashore there in the last week of August, and Australian infantry were pushing it back at the head of the bay. The destroyer shelled Japanese positions along the shore while that fight was decided on land. The submarine action and the bombardment came within days of each other, both with Morrow in command.
His command of HMAS Arunta (I30) continued from that September. The destroyer stayed on escort and patrol along the Papuan coast, screening the ships that kept the forces ashore supplied and closing the coast when her guns were wanted. In her first half year in commission Morrow had taken her from a commissioning at Sydney into the centre of the New Guinea fighting, sunk a submarine, and bombarded a Japanese landing force.