Ships
- HMAS Vendetta (D69) Captain from 31 May 1945
William Keith Tapp (born 26 May 1915) was an officer of the Royal Australian Navy, born at Rockdale, New South Wales, who entered the Royal Australian Naval College as a thirteen-year-old cadet in 1929 and retired as a captain in 1963. In the last months of the Second World War, as a lieutenant, then an acting lieutenant commander, he commanded the old destroyer Vendetta, one of the surviving ships of the "Scrap Iron Flotilla," through her final refit at Brisbane and her last weeks of service in New Guinea waters. In September 1945 she carried the Australian officers who met Japanese envoys off Rabaul to arrange the surrender of the Japanese forces in the area. He had earlier been mentioned in despatches. The public record of the rest of his career is thin, and this account is correspondingly short.
He was born on 26 May 1915 at Rockdale, a suburb on the southern shore of Botany Bay in Sydney. Nothing of his parents, family or schooling was found in the sources examined here. The record begins with his entry to the naval college.
The college's published list of entrants shows Tapp, W. K., in the 1929 entry, graduated, with a final rank of captain and a mention in despatches. The uboat.net record dates his entry as a cadet to 1 January 1929, when he was thirteen years and seven months old, and his rank as midshipman to 1 May 1933, at seventeen. His later steps are given as acting sub-lieutenant on 1 September 1935 (aged twenty), sub-lieutenant on 16 March 1936, and lieutenant on 16 February 1938, at twenty-two. The ships in which he served as a midshipman and junior officer before and in the first years of the war were not found.
The only wartime record of Tapp's service in the sources examined here is two entries. The first is a gazette entry. The London Gazette supplement of 8 September 1942 prints "Lieutenant William Keith Tapp, Royal Australian Navy" among those Mentioned in Despatches. The page follows awards to Royal Australian Navy men for the cruiser Hobart's convoy work in the China and Java seas under sustained air attack, but the heading under which his name is printed does not appear on the page, and the sources examined here do not say which ship or action his mention concerned.
The second is his command of the Vendetta. She was a V-class destroyer, built at Govan and commissioned in 1917, transferred to the Royal Australian Navy in 1933, and one of five old destroyers that served in the Mediterranean from 1939. After her escape from Singapore under tow in 1942 and a long refit, she served as a troop and convoy escort around Australia and New Guinea. She reached Brisbane on 20 March 1945 for another refit. According to uboat.net, Lieutenant Tapp took command on 31 May 1945, five days after his thirtieth birthday, while she was in dockyard hands. The earlier captain listed was Lieutenant Commander Gilbert S. Gordon.
The ship's movements through the summer follow the monthly reports of proceedings that uboat.net draws on. She was in the Cairncross Dry Dock at Brisbane on 23 June, astern of HMS Woodcock, and undocked on 11 July. She was fumigated on 28 July. He was promoted to acting lieutenant commander on 30 July 1945. The refit was complete in August, with basin trials on 10–14 and 17 August and trials of her dynamos on the 18th; on 21 and 22 August she carried out trials in Moreton Bay, and on the 22nd set course for New Guinea. The war with Japan had ended on 15 August, during the trials.
She reached Madang on 27 August after a fuel stop at Langemak Bay, sailed that evening for Aitape, and arrived there on the 28th; after embarking two generators she returned to Madang that night. According to a summary of the Royal Australian Navy's ship history, on 2 September she embarked Brigadier Sheehan and his staff for Rabaul, and on 4 September, off Rabaul, Japanese envoys came aboard to discuss the arrangements for the surrender, among them Colonel Takahashi of the Japanese Army and Captain Sanagi of the Japanese Navy, with Brigadier Sheehan and Commander Morris on the Australian side. The formal surrender of Japanese forces in New Guinea, New Britain and the Solomons took place two days later, on 6 September, aboard the British carrier Glory, to Lieutenant General Sturdee of the Australian Army. The ship returned to Sydney on 3 October 1945. Tapp's command ended on 15 October.
Nothing in the sources examined here records what Tapp himself did, said, or wrote on those days off Rabaul.
The ranks listed by uboat.net give the outline of a peacetime career: lieutenant commander from 16 February 1946, commander from 31 December 1950 at thirty-five, and a retired captain from 15 February 1963, at forty-seven. The naval college's list gives his final rank as captain. No postwar command, appointment or decoration was found in the sources examined here. His marriage, children, death and burial were not found.