Teddy Sheean VC: Strapped in and firing until his last breath

On December 1, 1942, a young man not long at sea gave his life to save his comrades. Here is what happened that fateful day.

A colourised picture of posthumous VC recipient Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean, who was killed in action aboard the HMAS Armidale.

Five Japanese bombers appeared first, the forerunners of a larger aerial force that would destroy their small, ­unprotected vessel.

Within two hours, HMAS Armidale, a minesweeper known as a corvette, was under attack; the Zero fighters arriving first, swooping in low and strafing the deck.

Then came the torpedo bombers, from all directions. “Two torpedoes struck us and there was a near-miss from a bomb that caused a great explosion,” Ray ­Leonard, then a 19-year-old ordinary seaman, told The Australian in May this year. “The Armidale perceptibly lifted, it seem like a yard in the air, before coming down.

 

“Immediately, we began to take on water … All our guns were firing as fast as they could, until the order was given by the captain to abandon ship. Everyone capable of abandoning ship did so, except one man: Teddy Sheean.”

Sheean, an 18-year-old labourer’s son from rural northwest Tasmania, not long at sea, seeing his mates in the water being mowed down, suddenly turned away from the lifeboat and headed back to his gun post.

“He turned around and made his way back to his gun, the aft Oerlikon (anti-aircraft gun) and he managed to get himself into position,” explained Dr Leonard. “He had to scramble there because of the ship sloping sharply.”

Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Michael Noonan, takes up the story. “Despite being wounded en route, he strapped himself in to shoulder mounts and harness, potentially giving up any chance of survival,” he told a 2019 awards ­appeal tribunal hearing.

“(Sheean) commenced firing the gun at the enemy, shooting down one aircraft and possibly damaging others, whilst also ­attempting to disrupt and distract the enemy aircraft from strafing and killing his defenceless shipmates in the water.

“He sacrificed his life trying to save his shipmates and, despite his severe and possibly fatal wounds, he continued firing the gun as the ship slipped under the waves, dragging him with it to the grave.”

Brendan Nelson’s expert panel, reviewing the 2019 tribunal findings that recommended a VC for Sheean, found fresh, corroborating evidence of such accounts in the Japanese military archives.

While showing no Japanese aircraft were lost, these records showed two bombers were damaged and confirmed the ship continued to return fire as it sank.

“It is clear that both Sheean’s motives and actions are consistent with the Japanese military records,” Dr Nelson concludes in his summary to the Prime Minister. “That is, seeing his shipmates being strafed, he disobeyed the order to abandon ship, went back to the after Oerlikon and, ­although a loader, strapped himself into the gun and under the intense enemy fire, fired the gun, damaging two aircraft until he went to his death.”