page_title: Royal New Zealand Navy
section_title: Post-war
hierarchical_section_title: Royal New Zealand Navy / History / Post-war
caption_attribution_description: English: &#160; HMNZS Royalist after dropping anchor in Waitemata Harbour, December, 1956 shows Royalist configuation in the days building up to Operation Musketter with the RNZN cruiser with the British fleet, and the British CNS pressing the civilian First Lord Hailsham, to tell NZ PM Sydney Holland, that the NZ cruiser capabilities were essential to support Musketter while NZ diplomats McIntosh and Frank Corner, told Holland he was being asked to participate in illegal warfare and collaboration in violation of the UN Charter and NZ was quite likely to join France and the UK in the World Court dock for unprovoked criminal aggression.They rejected RN and British arguments for the cruisers value, on the common sense grounds that it was unique, and why did they sell it to us?? ( of course the ruling assumption of the UK establishment was NZ was us- Eden was about to discover, Corner and McIntosh certain I y weren't us) Excellent photo, showing the full, radar and AA defence, angle coverage of 5.25 &amp; 40mm STAAG Mk 2 AC CIWS mounts, the position of the forward Q position STAAG and its 262 radar antenna on the mount is nb, fitted lower than the 40mm quad pom pom on Black Prince and Bellona or US quad Bofors in Q on Phoebe and Cleopatra in Q position 1944-51. From a collection of photographs depicting the return of the HMNZS Royalist for Christmas, 1956, published in:"Royalist home for Christmas". The Weekly News (Auckland, New Zealand: Wilson and Horton): p. 30. 26 December 1956. OCLC 29121953. Photograph taken 1956 by an unidentified photographer. Original page physical description: Photolithograph on page, 435 x 310 mm. This version has been cropped, and has had brightness/contrast adjustments. The bottom right corner has had a caption removed using a clone tool.
context_page_description: The Royal New Zealand Navy is the maritime arm of the New Zealand Defence Force. The fleet currently consists of nine ships.
context_section_description: During April 1947 a series of non-violent mutinies occurred amongst the sailors and non-commissioned officers of four RNZN ships and two shore bases. Overall, up to 20% of the sailors in the RNZN were involved in the mutinies. The resulting manpower shortage forced the RNZN to remove the light cruiser Black Prince, one of their most powerful warships, from service and set the navy's development and expansion back by a decade. Despite this impact, the size and scope of the events have been downplayed over time.
  RNZN ships participated in the Korean War. On 29 June, just four days after 135,000 North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel in Korea, the New Zealand government ordered two Loch-class frigates – Tutira and Pukaki to prepare to make for Korean waters, and for the whole of the war, at least two NZ vessels would be on station in the theater.
  On 3 July, these two first ships left Devonport Naval Base, Auckland and joined other Commonwealth forces at Sasebo, Japan, on 2 August. These vessels served under the command of a British flag officer (seemingly Flag Officer Second in Command Far East Fleet) and formed part of the US Navy screening force during the Battle of Inchon, performing shore raids and inland bombardment. Further RNZN Loch-class frigates joined these later – Rotoiti, Hawea, Taupo and Kaniere, as well as a number of smaller craft. Only one RNZN sailor was killed during the conflict – during the Inchon bombardments.
  The Navy later participated in the Malayan Emergency. In 1954 a New Zealand frigate, HMNZS Pukaki, carried out a bombardment of a suspected guerilla camp, while operating with the Royal Navy's Far East Fleet – the first of a number of bombardments by RNZN ships over the next five years. Jack Welch, later to become Chief of Naval Staff decades later, wrote that in 1959, the RNZN "was still very much part of the Royal Navy supported by New Zealand tax-payers. The officer corps and senior specialist ratings were very dependent on loan and exchange RN personnel, while our own [New Zealand] officers and senior ratings were almost exclusively trained in the UK. We simply borrowed the RN's administrative regulations and amended them to local conditions. The Empire was alive and well. Operationally we were still very strongly tied to the UK."
  Later the Navy return to Malayan waters during the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation. These operations were the RNZN's last large-scale operation with the Royal Navy. In a security crisis and threat to Malaysia and Sarawak and Brunei, two-thirds of the Royal Navy's operational warships were deployed from 1963 to the end of 1966 with Royalist, Taranaki, and Otago, heavily involved in boarding ships, shore patrols, presence, maintaining the use of seaways and support of the RN's amphibious carriers. The commitment, wrote Welch, "involved the whole fleet, as ships rotated though Pearl Harbour for workup with the USN before deploying on to the Far East to relieve ships on station."
  Until the 1960s, the RNZN had, in common with other Dominion navies, flown the White Ensign as a common ensign. After 1945, the foreign policies of the now-independent states had become more distinctive. There was a growing wish and a need for separate identities, particularly if one Dominion was engaged in hostilities where another was not. Thus, in 1968, the RNZN adopted its own ensign, which retained the Union Flag in a top quarter but replaces the St George's Cross with the Southern Cross constellation that is displayed on the national flag.
  Since 1946, the Navy has policed New Zealand's territorial waters and exclusive economic zone for fisheries protection. It also aids New Zealand's scientific activities in Antarctica, at Scott Base.
  One of the best-known roles that the RNZN played on the world stage was when the frigates Canterbury and Otago were sent by the Labour Government of Norman Kirk to Moruroa Atoll in 1973 to protest against French nuclear testing there. The frigates were sent into the potential blast zone of the weapons, where both ships witnessed one airburst test each
caption: HMNZS Royalist in Waitemata Harbour, 1956
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