Ships
- HMAS Vampire (D68) Captain from 13 October 1941 · In command when she was lost, 9 April 1942
William Thomas Alldis Moran was born at Fremantle, Western Australia, on 11 December 1903, the son of William and Rose Moran. He entered the Royal Australian Navy as a cadet in January 1917 and was rated midshipman in January 1921. He specialised in torpedo work, rose through the ranks in the usual way, and was promoted commander on 30 June 1939.
From October 1939 until September 1941 he was executive officer of the cruiser HMAS Canberra, second in command through the early years of the war. On 13 October 1941 he took command of the old destroyer HMAS Vampire, pendant number D68, then at Singapore. After her refit she ran trials off the port in mid-November. On the way back in she collided with the British merchant ship Perak and took some damage to her hull.
When Japan opened the Pacific war, Vampire formed part of the screen for the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse. On 10 December 1941 Japanese aircraft sank both heavy ships off the east coast of Malaya. Repulse was hit by torpedoes first and rolled over. Vampire and the destroyer Electra were sent to pick up men from the water. Under continuing air attack Moran brought 223 survivors from Repulse aboard. Prince of Wales was also lost, most of her people being taken off by the destroyer Express, which went alongside the battleship.
On the night of 26–27 January 1942 Vampire and the destroyer Thanet were sent against a Japanese invasion force off Endau, on the east coast of Malaya. The two small ships ran into a much stronger enemy formation. Moran handled the pair with care in the dark, but the action went badly: Thanet was sunk, and gunfire from the Allied ships hit only one Japanese vessel. Vampire got clear.
In April Vampire was in the Indian Ocean with the carrier Hermes. On 9 April 1942, off Ceylon, Japanese dive bombers found them. Hermes was sunk. Bombs then hit Vampire. Moran ordered the ship abandoned. As the crew were getting rafts and floats away, further bombs broke the destroyer in half. The forward part went down at once. The stern stayed up for a few minutes until a bomb reached the after magazine and the explosion finished her. Moran was last seen on the bridge and was not among those saved. He was thirty-eight.
He and seven others of Vampire’s company were killed in the attack: six stokers and a Royal Navy signalman. The rest of the ship’s company, several of them wounded, were picked up later that day by the hospital ship Vita. Petty Officer Ronald MacDonald, who held the Distinguished Service Medal, died of his wounds on 13 April 1942 and was buried at sea.
Two posthumous Mentions in Despatches followed. The first was gazetted on 11 June 1942 for his service in Canberra. The second, gazetted on 16 June 1942, recognised his conduct in the night action off Endau: the way he handled Vampire and Thanet against a superior Japanese force, and his gallantry and steadiness in that fight. His body was not recovered. His name is on the Plymouth Naval Memorial in Devon and on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial.