Introduction | K17 History | The People

K17
The Dutch submarine K-XVII shared not only the same submarine division as
the O-16 but also its ultimate destiny.

K-XVII left the Naval Base in Surabaya in company of O-16 at the end of
November 1941 with destination Singapore in order to report to their future
operational commander, the Commander in Chief South China Sea. They arrived early December to be briefed by Naval Staff and departed December 6th in the afternoon with orders to keep an eye on the expected movements of Japanese shipping under way from Camranh Bay to the Gulf of Siam (chart 1 yellow book).

After the Japanese forces had successfully executed their landings on the
east coast of Siam and Malay, K-XVII (in company of 0-16 and 3 other boats)
was regrouped so as to be out of the way of the British battleships Prince
of Wales and Repulse in their attempt to surprise and attack the Japanese
landing forces. (chart 2 yellow book)

Later regroupings were based on British naval intelligence which did not
prove to be very reliable, due to adverse weather conditions and
insufficient numbers of aircraft to carry out reconnaissance flights.

In the end K-XVII was ordered to the port of Kuantan where Japanese ships
were expected to arrive. On December 19th she was ordered to return to
Singapore where she failed to arrive. She was reported overdue - which

means missing - and remained so for 41 years with her crew of 35 men.The Royal Netherlands Navy Admiralty did not rule out the possibility that for some reason or other K-XVII had hit a mine in the British mined area where also O-16 was supposed to have sunk. (mine line 4) An official reassessment shortly after the end of WW II reaffirmed the original conclusion and the case was considered closed. Little did the Dutch officials foresee that the case was far from over.

Unexpectedly the case was reopened in 1980 as the result of a sensational
Dutch television program in which a man with his face masked claimed to have engineered the sinking of a Dutch submarine in the Pacific Ocean on orders from Winston Churchill. The boat, he said, had discovered the Japanese fleet on its way to Hawaii, but Churchill had suppressed that information to ensure that a successful Japanese attack would force America's entry into the war.

To hush up this traitorous act, the submarine and its crew had to be eliminated. This bizarre rehash of a discredited conspiracy theory was
apparently perpetrated by a man calling himself Christopher Creighton whose
fantastic claims were used as the basis of a novel by Brian Garfield and later enlarged in a book by Creighton himself.

In the course of the TV program, the interviewer asked whether the submarine in question might have been the missing K-XVII although the sabotage was alleged to have taken place near the Fiji Islands. This speculation and ensuing publicity provoked Hans C. Besançon Jr., the son of the commander of the lost boat and himself a retired officer of The Royal Netherlands Navy, to undertake a crusade to find his father’s resting place and disprove the fabrications of his detractors. Hans Besançon Jr. also agreed to assist in the production of this documentary.

Although the naval authorities declined to provide financial backing for
Besançon, they were able to offer some useful information. In 1981 a treasure diver from Singapore reported having found a sunken Dutch submarine in the South Chinese Sea. Wrecks in the area had become well known to local fishermen who were attracted by the abundance of marine life around the sunken ship, only to have their nets snagged on underwater obstructions.

Pursuing this lead Hans Besançon contacted Mr. Michael Hatcher and in May
1982 they moored over the wreck and send divers down. The divers reported
that the submarine had sunk deeply into the muddy bottom, but they were able to recover the steering wheel from the exposed bridge. When its serial
number was checked against naval records, the boat was positively identified
as K-XVII.

Yet there was still a mystery: why was the wreck lying in that position? No
information was available indicating that there had been clashes between the
enemies.

Nine years later, as a result of correspondence between Besançon and the
keeper of the Japanese naval archives in Tokyo, Mr. N. Kitazawa, it became
clear that in the night of December 7th to December 8th the minelayer
Tatsumiya Maru laid 456 mines across the route later taken by K-XVII and also O-16 on their return to Singapore. It should be noted that this action took
place before the war between Japan and the Western allies was officially
declared. Although in the Japanese archives all documents seemed to have
been lost, Mr Kitazawa succeeded in tracing a book written by a Japanese
reporter describing the first episode of the war. This book included an
interview with the wartime commanding officer of Tatsumiya Maru, where the
geographical position of the starting point of that mine lay was stated. K-XVII's wreck was lying some 800 meters to the east there off. The facts
were now known and the riddle of KXVII's disappearance was solved.

The Tatsumiya Maru, on her way to the Southern end of Tioman Island, where she was ordered to start her mine lay, was intercepted by a flying boat of the Dutch Navy. The ship made a 180 degrees change of course; during daytime shadowed by that plane. Shortly before nightfall the plane had to return to base and the minelayer reversed to its original course and laid the mines some 20 miles northerly than originally planned. Next morning, when on her way back to the Japanese base on the island Hainan she was again spotted by a flying boat. No action could be taken as the war had not been declared yet.