Darwin's finger of shame points at military

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nobodyofnote
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Darwin's finger of shame points at military

#1

Post by nobodyofnote » 11 Feb 2012, 03:04

Darwin's finger of shame points at military

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It is not hard to make the case that when war came to our shores with the bombing of Darwin on February 19, 1942 - 70 years ago next Sunday - Australians behaved abominably.

There was panic, looting, cowardice, desertion and a stampede south to get out of harm's way.

Yet we could ask ourselves today: if you were under attack from waves of Japanese aircraft dropping more bombs than fell on Pearl Harbor, were unprepared, had not received any training drills, had no warning, had no leadership and feared imminent invasion, might you have behaved in the same way?

It took many years for the awkward truth to emerge about the panic and abject failure of leadership following the bombing. By any analysis, it was not a good look. Yet the negative truth masked other, equally true, stories of courage and heroism among soldiers, sailors and civilians alike.

An embarrassed official wall of silence sprang from John Curtin's government's belief that the less the public was told, the better. The reasoning was that the truth would have rocked national morale, eroded the nation's will to fight, caused fear and possibly panic in the populated south and harmed the war effort.

This is probably true. Australians had been shaken by the speed of the Japanese advance through Asia. The supposedly impregnable British fortress of Singapore had fallen just days earlier, the northern parts of New Guinea were occupied, and suddenly the war was on our doorstep.

The government decided that news of the Darwin disaster would have a devastating impact on morale in this hour of great peril.

But suppressing the news was also in the government's interest. Any understanding of the devastation caused would have shown the failure of the government to anticipate or prepare for attack, the shameful incapacity of the military to react with any skerrick of leadership and the bungling and confusion of the Northern Territory's bureaucracy.

Yes, events after the bombing were shameful. But they were not the people's shame. The bombing raids were carried out by the same Japanese carrier-based taskforce which had launched a surprise raid two months earlier on the American Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor. This "day of infamy" brought America into the war.

The first wave of bombers was spotted passing over Bathurst Island to the north of Darwin half an hour before the first bombs fell. News of the sighting was radioed to the RAAF operations centre in Darwin, but was ignored by officers on duty because they believed the aircraft were American Kittyhawks returning to Darwin.

No air raid warnings were sounded in Darwin until seconds before the first bombs exploded. This led to many deaths. Even a couple of minutes' warning would have allowed many civilians to take cover in slit trenches.

The first aircraft pattern-bombed the city and airfield, and they were followed by dive bombers and Zero fighters, which targeted ships in the harbour. Eight ships were sunk and many others set on fire. The munitions ship, Neptuna, was tied up at the inner wharf when it copped a direct hit. It exploded with the loss of at least 45 lives. Men were blasted into the sea, burning with fuel oil: some were rescued in acts of extraordinary bravery, but many others perished.

The first wave of the attack lasted 40 minutes. An hour later, the second wave began with high-altitude bombers pummelling the RAAF base at Parap, site of the present Darwin airport. At least 22 aircraft were destroyed, including two Catalina flying boats.

The Japanese encountered little resistance. A lone Kittyhawk managed to meet the incoming fighters but was quickly shot down. Anti-aircraft gunners fought hard but with little effect. They had received no training.

The raids left Darwin stunned. Chaos, bordering on anarchy, reigned. Civilians looked to the government-appointed NT administrator, Aubrey Abbott, for instructions but he dithered, expecting the military to take control. Almost immediately, word spread of an imminent invasion. Civilians began a southward rush by any means available. The panicky exodus became known as the Adelaide River Stakes, as people packed whatever possessions they could manage and took cars, bikes - even the council sanitary cart - or walked towards Adelaide River, 10km to the south. The exodus may have been chaotic, but a civilian rush to leave a battlefield is hardly a cause for shame. Instead, the finger of shame can be pointed at the military.

After viewing the total destruction at the airfield, the RAAF station commander ordered his men to meet at a kitchen station half a mile down the main south road and half a mile into the bush. This order was passed on by mouth and was inevitably corrupted. Some men went three miles down the road; others seven. Some men simply took to the bush. Four days after the bombing, 278 RAAF personnel were still missing. One made it to Melbourne in 13 days.

Meanwhile, administrator Abbott had called on army provosts - military police - to assist civilian police. They were a motley bunch who declared themselves to be in charge. There were reports that the MPs, drunk and waving pistols, instigated the looting which followed the bombing.

At Government House, Abbott was busy organising civilian police to help him remove liquor from the cellar and to pack the official crockery so it could be shipped south. The lamentable lack of leadership up north was also evident in Canberra. The government was stunned by events.

First newspaper reports said there had been "considerable damage" in Darwin, but later stories told of minimal impact.

Two deaths, said one report, when the real figure was at least 243. Japanese bombs ineffectual, said another, when the truth was that Government House, the police station, the hospital, the post and telegraph offices, half the city and the entire airfield had been flattened.

On March 3, the government appointed judge Charles Lowe of the Victorian Supreme Court as a commissioner of inquiry to investigate the raids. He left by plane at 1.30am the next day, and began hearings on March 5.

Thenext day he cabled Canberra saying Darwin in its present state could not be defended and urgent supplies and reinforcements were needed. Lowe's inquiries continued almost around the clock for five days. Dozens of witnesses were cross-examined.

On March 10, the commission adjourned to Melbourne, where hearings resumed on March 19 for a further five days. On March 27, Lowe presented his first report to government, but it was not made public until 1945, when it was tabled in parliament and all but ignored by politicians, the military and the press. The awkward truth was still too raw to be dealt with.

Lowe used temperate language in his report, but there was no mistaking his meaning. He blasted top RAAF brass for a lack of "competent leadership", which had led to "deplorable" outcomes. He said the quality of the men was not unsatisfactory, but they had been failed by a lack of training and a lack of leadership.

Many of those military men who absconded into the bush had not been trained in the use of rifles, had only a few rounds of ammunition, and were unwilling to "hang around to be massacred by the Japanese."
Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/fe ... 6268053891 (The Australian, 11th February 2012).

South
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Re: Darwin's finger of shame points at military

#2

Post by South » 11 Feb 2012, 10:53

Good morning N.O. N.,

Interesting material.....

What is a "Council sanitary cart" ?

Re: "in Canberra. The government was stunned by events.";

"Government" is a collective noun. Some individuals anticipated war. A similiar environment, less the attack, was seen in southern California. After the attacks on Guam, Wake, Hong Kong, Phillippines, Malaya and Pearl Harbor (+ Schofield Army barracks - [Gen Harold Short also "charged"]), southern California went into a semi-panic approaching the initial Darwin evacuation. Every aviation factory, radio station and oil field made demands for armed guards. The US was in similiar shape to the Aussies.

After action reports and history books - and newspaper articles - still use the theme to blame the military first, then the political echelon - but not the citizenry that offer their minimal participation, at best, for national security.

Who wants to stand outside and watch the shores of Dover when the party is inside ?!

Appreciated reading this article.


Warm regards,

Bob


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sunbury2
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Re: Darwin's finger of shame points at military

#3

Post by sunbury2 » 12 Feb 2012, 03:26

I read the article, and yes that is one of Australia's skeletons in the closet. Hundreds fled, one even going home to Melbourne! Yet the majority stayed and did their best.

The thing that concerns me the most is the reverse airbrushing of history. Usually Australians find their war effort gets pushed aside but in this case it is the USAAF that is being quietly removed. The 10 Kittyhawks of the US 33rd Pursuit Squadron, were the only air defence.

http://www.vrb.gov.au/dvapublications/C ... -42-45.pdf
Darwin would have been without any air defence except that ten Kittyhawks of the US 33rd Pursuit Squadron en route to Java had turned back to Darwin. Five of the aircraft landed while the other five remained in the air. In command in the air was Lieut Robert G Oestreicher who spotted Japanese planes diving on the Kittyhawks. He shouted a warning that Zeros were attacking. However three of the Kittyhawks were quickly shot down with two of the pilots being killed. A fourth American airman, although wounded, managed to land his damaged aircraft. Lieut Oestreicher was the only pilot who stayed in the air during the raid and was able to shoot down two Japanese planes although only one kill was confirmed. The five Kittyhawks that had landed were either destroyed on the ground or were shot down before they were able to regain combat altitude. Two of these pilots, including their Commanding Officer, Major Floyd Pell, were also killed. A second raid of 54 bombers two hours later on the same day met no resistance in the air. Antiaircraft guns that day destroyed four Japanese aircraft and probably destroyed another four.(1)
Australia had no modern fighters whatsoever, there were Australian Spitfire and Kittyhawk squadrons in Britian and the Western Desert, but in Australia nothing. It was the generosity of the US in gifting Australia some squadrons of Kittyhawks that allowed the further defence of Dawin and New Guinea to occur. That crap movie "Australia" makes no mention of the US Kittyhawks when it "did" the 19th of Feb air raid , airbrushing away facts to promote an "approved" fiction.

Australia makes much of its Boomerang fighter, built largely from Wirraway parts (Harvard trainers with guns). The fighter was junk and only a PR campaign . Australia's top ace Clive "Killer" Cadwell was damming in his assessment of the Boomerang. It was relegated to ground attack and never engaged any enemy aircraft.

nobodyofnote
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Re: Darwin's finger of shame points at military

#4

Post by nobodyofnote » 12 Feb 2012, 14:30

Greetings Bob, sorry for my delayed reply, I was away on set.
South wrote:What is a "Council sanitary cart" ?
Originally pulled by horses, then later motorised, the sanitary carts were essentially designed to pick up waste from houses such as bed pans and buckets. These were in the days before connected sewerage, and was the job of the local council. Most houses pre-WWII used outhouses, buckets, and bedpans. Behind each property there were lanes used to service the removal of such disposables. The carts used to come at night to collect the waste, giving them the alternate name of "night cart". There is a picture in the Northern Territory library showing such a cart in 1942:

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Peter H
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Re: Darwin's finger of shame points at military

#5

Post by Peter H » 12 Feb 2012, 22:02

I remember as a kid some areas of Melbourne still had "dunny" men. :lol:

Dunny=outhouse toilet

South
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Re: Darwin's finger of shame points at military

#6

Post by South » 13 Feb 2012, 09:47

Good morning N.O.N.,

Appreciate picture and narrative.

Thank you.

Warm regards,

Bob

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Peter H
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Re: Darwin's finger of shame points at military

#7

Post by Peter H » 18 Feb 2012, 02:49

Greater scheme of war frames Timor as Japan's true purpose in the attack on Darwin
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/wo ... 6274152668
WHEN the first wave of 240 Japanese planes began bombing and strafing Darwin just before 10am on February 19, 1942 - 70 years ago tomorrow - a convoy of 13 enemy ships carrying 6000 troops was closing in on the island of Timor, which they began invading 12 hours later.
Instead of being an attack on Australia and a prelude to invasion, as is widely believed, the bombing of Darwin was part of a synchronised plan specifically aimed at knocking out Allied sea and air power based in Darwin ahead of Japan's invasion of Timor. The Japanese high command believed these forces could be used in a counter-attack on their troops on Timor, 700km northwest of Darwin, which is why they launched a raid on a massive scale.

The Japanese knew that the destroyer, the USS Peary, was anchored in Darwin, and they mistakenly believed large numbers of B-17 and B-24 bombers from the US Air Force were stationed there as well. The Japanese planes sank the Peary along with seven other naval and merchant ships, but they failed to find any bombers. Instead, there were only a handful of Kittyhawk fighters from the US Air Force, most of which were destroyed. In all, 252 people were killed in the bombing of Darwin.

From 10pm that same evening, the Japanese landed about 5000 soldiers, naval marines and paratroopers south and east of Kupang, the capital of Dutch Timor, where 1100 troops from Australia's Sparrow Force were based. At about the same time, the Japanese landed another 1000 troops in Dili, the capital of Portuguese Timor, where 270 men from the 2nd Independent Company - a special forces unit - had landed despite the protests of the neutral Lisbon government.

Timor was as important to Australia's defence as New Guinea because it could be used to launch attacks on northern Australia. It was vital to the Japanese. In Allied hands, it could be used to launch an offensive against Japan's forces in Indonesia, then known as The Netherlands East Indies.

Japan's official history of World War II, published in the late 1960s, makes these facts clear. The records are written in Japanese.

The Australian War Memorial's summary of the bombing of Darwin on its website makes no mention of the connection with the Timor invasion, and nor does the Department of Veterans' Affairs website, ww2Australia. The National Archives of Australia, however, does mention these facts on its summary page.

Haruki Yoshida, a volunteer researcher associated with the AWM, translated relevant sections of the Japanese history for my book on the 2nd Independent Company's campaign in Portuguese Timor, The Men Who Came out of the Ground. He says the information linking Darwin with Timor is "scattered" throughout two separate volumes of Japan's official history, but it is there to be found.

An AWM spokesman said the connection between the Darwin bombing and the Japanese operations in the Dutch East Indies is made "in a longer, more detailed, discussion of the bombing of Darwin", given by Peter Stanley in 2002, which is available on the website. Even in this presentation, Stanley didn't say the invasion was so tightly linked to Timor. He said: "Darwin was attacked therefore not as the prelude to an invasion of Australia, but to support Japan's seizure of the Netherlands East Indies."

Stanley, now a historian with the National Museum of Australian, says that seeing events in "isolation" is becoming more commonplace in the way Australia views its history.

"The problem with Australian military history is that much of it is parochial, much more than it used to be," he says.

In past decades, Australians saw their role in WWII as one of turning the tide of fascism in Europe and Asia, whereas it is now seen as being entirely about the defence of Australia.

Stanley says part of the problem is that few people have translated and read Japan's official records, and that military history has developed a "populist strain" that may be dramatic, but not necessarily accurate.

The sinking of HMAS Sydney in November 1941 is another prime example of how events are seen in isolation. The Sydney-based media has in recent years extensively covered the ship's sinking and attempts to locate the wreck, culminating in its discovery in March 2008. But the loss of the Sydney with all 645 crew on board is part of a much bigger tragedy - perhaps the nation's greatest - that has been overlooked.

When the ship encountered the disguised German raider the Kormoran off the West Australian coast, it was returning from having escorted troop ships bound for Singapore. This deployment, that eventually involved sending 22,000 men from the 8th Division to Singapore, Java, Ambon, New Britain and Timor, proved to be entirely ill-conceived because it dispersed lightly armed forces over a vast area. All but one of these units was overrun and captured by the Japanese, and more than 8000 men later died in captivity. So the men who went down on the Sydney were the first casualties in this disastrous deployment.

The unit that evaded Japanese capture was the 2nd Independent Company, also known as the "second-second", which fought a 10-month guerilla war against the Japanese and tied up thousands of troops during the height of the battle for Kokoda. The men in this company attributed their success to Portuguese and Timorese partisans who came to their aid.

At 10am tomorrow, East Timor's Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao will attend a ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Timor and the beginning of his country's involvement in WWII.

The ceremony will take place at a small memorial at the top of Sydney's Martin Place dedicated to the special forces units that served Australia in WWII.

No doubt many Timorese will be mindful of the heavy price paid by their country in this conflict, given that census records suggest the loss of 50,000 Timorese as a result of the heavy fighting in 1942, Allied bombing of the colony with Darwin-based squadrons, and Japan's 3 1/2 year occupation.

An exhibition about the 2nd Independent Company and its Timor campaign will open today at the WA Museum in Perth.

Paul Cleary

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Graham Clayton
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Re: Darwin's finger of shame points at military

#8

Post by Graham Clayton » 27 Jan 2014, 01:58

The excellent book "Carrier Attack: Darwin 1942" by Dr Tom Lewis and Peter Ingman (Avonmore Books, Adelaide, 2013} has withering criticism about Oestreicher and his conduct during the Japanese Raid. Rather than fighting, he dived away to save himself, and hid in clouds to the south of Darwin for the duration of the raid. leaving his B Flight formation to fend for themselves.
"Air superiority is a condition for all operations, at sea, in land, and in the air." - Air Marshal Arthur Tedder.

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