Godley Head (Canterbury) Traditional Cache

This cache has been archived.

Aslan*: Not sure when I will be able to get out here so have decided to close this one off. Thank for all those who visited here. Aslan

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Hidden : 6/14/2015
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

You are looking for a small camo container BYO Pen please.

Godley Head never saw active service. However, it came within a hair's breadth in June 1941. A captured Norwegian whale chase boat, renamed Adjutant, acted as an auxiliary for the German armed merchant raider Komet. The Adjutant was used to lay a pattern of ten magnetic mines between three and ten kilometres off Adderly and Godley Heads.

 

A vessel was believed to have been sighted by those manning the night OP at Godley Head, but the report was apparently dismissed by the duty officer. The mine laying wasn’t revealed until the log of the Komet was examined after the fall of Nazi Germany. The mines have never been found, nor has a similar field reputed to have been laid by the same vessel off Wellington. Amongst the theories explaining the failure of the mines, was that the batteries powering the mines had been allowed to go flat while they were still on the Adjutant. A different theory was that the mines were dropped in water too deep to allow the mechanism to properly operate. Recently, the option that the mines were never dropped at all has been put forward, since the only record was the Komet’s log book. However, the Naval and Coastal Defences of Wellington did hunt for a vessel acting suspiciously off the Wellington Harbour entrance, which was presumed to have been the Adjutant. Despite the lack of active service, the guns, nevertheless, served their purpose. Like many service personnel, they also only stood and waited. Four German commerce or merchant raiders, the Orion, Komet, Pinguin and Atlantis, plus the accompanying Adjutant, sank a total of fourteen ships and mined a further five in the Australasian region within the first two years of the war.

 

German and Japanese submarines scouted the coasts for the remainder of WW2. Had it not been for the defensive spines of Godley Head and other coastal defence batteries, we would certainly have endured much closer and more painful attention from these passing enemy vessels.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Onfr bs n gerr

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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