The Royal Dutch Naval minesweeper HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen survived the wrath of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1942 dressed as a tropical island.
When Japan opened World War Two in the Pacific it did it like a fat kid through cake. The Emperor’s Imperial war machine swept threw the Philippines, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Guam, Malaysia and Singapore within the first two months of the campaign. One road bump on their conquest was the naval forces of the Royal Dutch East Indies. The small force of light cruisers and destroyers was annihilated taking along their Admiral Karel Doorman and a number of allied ships to the bottom at the Battle of the Jave Sea.
This left the Royal Dutch Naval minesweeper HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen, now trapped in Japanese controlled waters, in a very tight spot. The ship was modern but was very small (186 feet long- 460 tons displacement, about the size of a gunboat). Its armament was of token value so it could not fight its way out. Designed to poke around mine fields she was not fast enough to outrun the Japanese Navy. The only option left was to outthink them.
The ships crew disguised the boat as a tropical island, covering it with jungle foliage to make it blend in with the surrounding inlets of the Indonesian coastline. By staying hidden during the day in such a manner and moving only at night the Abraham Crijnssen was able to make Australia and survived the war.
