Ships
- HMAS Vendetta (D69) Captain from 18 May 1943
- HMAS Napier (G97) In command, 21 October 1944
John Plunkett-Cole was born on 4 September 1906 in East Melbourne, Victoria. He entered the Royal Australian Navy as a cadet on 1 January 1920 and was rated midshipman on 15 May 1924. He became an acting sub-lieutenant on 15 September 1926, a sub-lieutenant on 30 March 1927, and a lieutenant on 30 March 1929. Promotion to lieutenant commander followed on 30 March 1937, and it was in that rank that he held his wartime sea commands.
On 18 May 1943 he was appointed captain of HMAS Vendetta (D69), taking the ship from David Logan. Vendetta was a V-class destroyer of the old Australian flotilla, already marked by hard service in the Mediterranean and on the New Guinea run, and in May 1943 she had settled into escort work on the Queensland coast. His first day in command put him to sea with convoy BT 60, which left Caloundra, near Brisbane, for Townsville. Vendetta sailed in company with the minesweeper HMAS Geelong, the submarine chaser USS SC 748, and the motor launch HMAS ML 425, covering the transports Admiral Halstead, Giang Ann, Sarpen, Van den Bosch, and William M. Meredith. Around midnight on 19 May she parted from the convoy and returned to Brisbane, arriving on 20 May.
The months that followed were steady coastal duty. In June Vendetta went back to escorting special ships along the Queensland shore. From then until the end of September she worked in Queensland and New South Wales waters, on those escorts and on anti-submarine exercises. Little broke the routine, yet the mileage was heavy: in the quarter ending September 1943 the ship steamed more than 18,000 miles. Plunkett-Cole left Vendetta on 9 December 1943.
He next commanded the N-class destroyer HMAS Nepal, from 31 March 1944 to 7 October 1944. On 8 October 1944 he took HMAS Napier (G97). Napier had come home from the Eastern Fleet for a long refit at Melbourne. When that refit ended she sailed for Fremantle under his command, and on 21 October 1944 he was in command as she proceeded to Trincomalee to rejoin the Eastern Fleet. The ship arrived at the fleet base on 1 November. His command of Napier ended on 2 November 1944.
That day he took over the sister ship HMAS Norman and kept her until 2 September 1945, through the closing months of the Pacific war. On 31 December 1944 he was promoted commander.
He remained in the Royal Australian Navy after the war and was promoted captain on 31 December 1951. He transferred to the Emergency List on 1 March 1962 and retired on 4 September 1966.