Day 81

Day 81 Darwin

Well, as you can see, there are pictures today. Not as many as usual, but then there were no crocodiles

Old Darwin Home

Our guide Garry

or gorges. We had a beaut day today and visited 2 museums and did one tour, well the tour took us to one of the museums and the other one we did ourselves. Well the first tour was the Bombing of Darwin Tour run by a guy by the name of Garry. We had arranged to be picked up from outside the Casino. We had arranged that he would be there at 5 to 9 and meet us in the carpark, how hard could that be? Well as usual more so than we thought. We got there in plenty of time at 8:45 and we looked at the casino and there looked to be more than 1 carpark. Whilst I staggered up to the entry I could see, Maureen went off to see if

Bullet hole in fence outside house

Cannon hole in fence post

there were any more entries. I went up to the front entry where it joined into the hotel, a bit like the Burswood casino in Perth for those locals playing along. Maureen said that the doorman said he sometimes picked people up there. I propped myself there and I must say it was a very hot and humid day so I was sweating buckets and Maureen decided to go into the casino and join up, something we had intended to do on the way back, but you know how it goes. Naturally 30 seconds after she walks off I see the tour van pull up in the carpark but a couple of hundred meters away. I go inside to see if I can see Maureen, no luck, back out and waving away to try and get his attention, no good, he is looking in the carpark and

Submarine Net Mooring

Beach where submarine net went

calling on his phone to try and see where we are on Maureen’s number so I assume she will answer. So there am I going in and out trying to spot Maureen all to no avail. No worries, I think, I will waddle down the road to him. I start going and he drives off. Ten seconds later, Maureen arrives! Her phone rings and it is him and to cut a long story short we had to wait for him to pick up another couple and come back for us. Eventually the confusion is over and we are in the bus with 8 others and it was a good tour. Garry is a great story teller with a very aussie accent. He has lived up here for years and obviously loves his job and the story to tell.

On February 19 1942 just 5 days after Singapore fell, over 242 enemy planes, more than bombed Pearl Harbour, in 2 waves, bombed Darwin. The official death toll was 240 odd but the locals who had to clean up say it was more likely 10 times that and it was covered up at the time so as to not

Shell in gun emplacement

Search light

scare the population and they have maintained that figure ever since, simply because no one can prove one way or the other. The Japanese were led by the same pilot that led the Pearl Harbour raid. They surprised the town by swinging around the back of Darwin and coming from the land side and not from the sea as we had expected. To say we were caught with our pants down is an under statement and as per usual, we were unprepared for it and ignored warnings such as the Priest at Bathurst Island who radioed in that they were on the way and the locals just assumed he had got it wrong, 30 minutes of warning ignored.

B52 in hanger

Me and my Mirage

The tour took us to the park in town where the foredeck gun turret from the USS Peary which was sunk and this very turret was firing as the ship went under, has been mounted and it points out to where the wreck is. You see some of the old houses in Darwin on the top of the cliffs overlooking the harbor and the fence posts out the front, still have bullets and bullet holes still in them from that day as well as huge chips from bullets hitting the foundation! From there we went down to the harbour where he points out where the bombs fell on the wharf and also where the Neptuna was anchored and was hit. She was carrying

Bomb Bay B52

Wreckage from Kittyhawk

ammunition and mines and went up like a volcano. The scene must have been horrific. He told us about how the night before the raid a plane was heard circling the harbour and seen to flash lights to someone who was on the west side of the port who flashed back. This was a reconnaissance plane and they had a spy on the harbour who had been passing on shipping details for some time. The spy was later identified as John Gordon, a Scotsman who when they arrested him, had a picture of Hirohito on his wall and had spent

B52

Displays under and around B52

time in Japan. He was arrested and eventually put on a train back south, but when it got to the Station south of Katherine, he could not be found, funny thing was, no one went looking for him.

The pilot who led the raid as I said, led the raid on Pearl Harbour, said after the war (he survived the lot) that they made 2 mistakes in the war, 1 was attacking the Americans and the second was not invading Darwin the following week as they had planned. The allies were all expecting the invasion and had drawn up a plan where they surrendered the whole of WA, NT, most of Queensland and focussed on the line between Brisbane and Adelaide. MacArthur  heard about it and changed our

B52 Cockpit

Wreckage of zero shot down during raid

Prime Minister’s mind and hence the plan to fortify the NT was formed and we started bombing them back from all our new bases. The raid was only 1 of over 100 raids on Australian towns and over 60 in Darwin alone.

We also saw the anti-submarine boom gate moorings on the beach. No subs ever came into the harbour as their spy had confirmed the gate was there but one was sunk out of the harbour I-124. It is still there and there is an exclusion zone around her. The conspiracy theorists say it is because she has remains of Australian sailors from the Sydney on board and they want to keep it covered up, the other story is that it was laying mines here and sunk with

Spitfire

F111

many still on board and they don’t want some stupid diver to set one off! Mind you that is what they want you to believe, say the conspiracy theorists!

The people on our tour from the east had no idea how often the raids were, they had the idea it was a one off thing and hardly any knew of WA being bombed. They also did not know of the Brisbane line either, maybe the east coast is too far away to have worried about it in their schools. We ended up in the War Museum and had a good look around there before heading back to our car.

We decided to grab some lunch and whilst we were there we said we would drop in at the Aeronautical Museum on the way home and we did. The museum has this big hanger and in it is the

Apache Helicopter

big ass B52 bomber there. It was given to them by the USAF and it is huge. Everything in there circles it or is under it. There is a spitfire, F-111, Sabre Jet, Half a B25 bomber, Apache Helicopter, Sea King Helicopter and dozens more all with this Bomber. It is very impressive and well worth a visit. It has stuff again about the bombing and even parts of the Zero that was shot down that day and landed on Bathurst Island of the way back. Great story about it was the pilot, Petty Officer Hajime Toyoshima, crashed on the island and hid out for 2 days waiting for a submarine to pick him up, in the meantime a local aborigine by the name of Matthias had been following him. He crept up behind him and poked him in the back with a stick and said “stick ‘em up, I am Hopalong Cassidy” and he did. Matthias had been watching western movies with some yanks and thought this is what you did. So the guy is arrested and is eventually transported to Cowra where they had established a Japanese POW camp and as you may know, there was a mass breakout there and the prisoner who led it was this same one! Sadly he got out of the prison and committed suicide by lying on a train track.

It was interesting to read and hear the story of the 10 Kittyhawks that were caught up in the raid. For those who have seen the film Pearl Harbour, the heroes get their aircraft airborne during the raid, well I never really heard it actually happening in real life, but it did happen here. These 10 had been escorting a convoy and arrived back right in the middle of the raid! There commander order 5 to stay up whilst the other 5 refuelled. Of the 5 who were still up 4 were shot down, the commanding officer took off again, got to the end of the runway and was shot down 300m in the air, he bailed out, survived hitting the water, swam ashore and was running back to the base when he was shot by a zero and killed, the next pilot took off and got airborne but his landing gear would not retract, he swung around to try and land but he was being shot at by the zeros and then as he got near the base was shot at by the defenders because his lowered wheels made him look like a Japanese dive bomber! He made it back down. The next one took off and was set upon by the enemy and shot down into the mangroves nearby. The last two took off and were again set upon and one was shot down but the other went to his aid and in the process shot down 2 enemy planes before he ran out of ammunition and he went up into the clouds for cover until they left.

We finished the day back at Girt relaxing in the cool. We found that we can fit in another half dozen tours and trips to the surrounding parks, so we are off tomorrow to see what we can fit in.