Noel Phelan's first career was as a science and mathematics teacher. He then  moved into IT with IBM as a systems engineer and spent 25 years in various  technical and management positions.   He has been a volunteer guide at the Maritime Museum for over 15 years. Noel  was the team leader of the speakers for many years.  Noel is a Past President of the Northbridge Rotary club. He spent many years as  sailing captain of his sailing club.  He also spent several years with Marine Rescue and the Rural Fire  Service.  Noel is also a volunteer at the Naval Historical Society where he has developed three Navy harbour  cruises. He has also organised a speaker’s program for the Navy Historical Society where the  presentations are delivered by Zoom to the 500 members around Australia.  He recently fulfilled a boyhood dream to fly a WW II fighter by flying a SPITFIRE at The Imperial War Museum  at Duxford in the UK.

Noel presented the story of the MV Krait and Operation Jaywick, considered to be the most daring and successful seaborne raid in military history.  Operation Jaywick was a raid on shipping in Japanese-occupied Singapore harbour between September and October 1943. The raid was carried out by members of Special Operations Australia (SOA) from Z Special Unit. The team comprised of four British soldiers, and 11 AIF and Royal Australian Navy personnel, commanded by a British officer, Major Ivan Lyon.

Disguised as Malay fishermen, Lyon’s team travelled from Exmouth in Western Australia to Subor Island, 11 kilometres from Singapore, in a captured boat, renamed the MV Krait. The Krait was a slow-moving, wooden-hulled vessel about twenty metres long and sporadically suffered engine trouble for the duration of the voyage.

On reaching the island three-and-a-half weeks after leaving Australia, the team launched three two-man collapsible canoes (folboats). Lyon and five others then paddled into Singapore harbour. Arriving at night they split up and slipped from ship to ship attaching limpet mines, paddling another 80 kilometres to rendezvous with Krait six days later on 2 October.

When the mines exploded, seven ships were sank or badly damaged. The Krait recovered its intrepid but exhausted canoeists and travelled back to Australia, arriving at Exmouth on 19 October 1943.